New Touches

Just a few little changes in mi casa...

I have had the same Southern Living flower bucket hanging on my front door forever, I never even had any flowers in it. I can't make myself spend that much money on fake flowers. The ones that look good are expensive, even though they last forever, I just can't do it.

I am in love with my new H :) I will probably do another post on how I made it, it was very difficult and complicated, don't try it, you should just pay me to make you one.

Just kidding, it's SO easy, you'll see!

I also have to give credit to my homegirl April Conway for telling me to put the bow on top. It totally made it 100% cuter!

Next is my heart on a stick... my mom made this awesome heart with wings (along with a lot of other things) for my wedding reception. I have hung onto it for the obvious reason of... it's awesome!

It looked like of naked hanging on the dining room wall by itself. While I was in the alley a couple weeks ago I found this beautiful limb, perfect for nailing to the wall, right? (Isn't that what everyone thinks when they find a stick laying in an alley? No?)

The heart is actually hanging from a little piece of the stick so it kind of swings back and forth a tiny bit with the air from the ceiling fan. I love it!

This is the most random thing, I know, but I love it. An old bottle, I have no idea where it came from, I have a stash of things like this in my hall closet. 

When I was making the H for the door I had a perfect little strip of fabric left over that I thought needed to be tied onto something for an extra touch. I ended up hot gluing it onto the bottle.

The bottle is just sitting on the tray I put our keys on by the front door.

Makes me happy :)

New Living Room Art!

Yay! I have had my eye on this project for a long time and finally got to do it! 

The beautiful thing about being a teacher is getting summers off, don't let anyone ever complain about that! Yes we still have to go to staff development and work in our rooms to get ready for the next year but you still have a beautiful amount of time to work on projects, oh yeah, and hang out with your children :)

I saw this on Pinterest, I think I actually think it's one of the first things I ever pinned, aww.

I fell in love with the look and the words, they are actually the lyrics to an Ingrid Michaelson song. (I may or may not have spelled her name wrong, sorry Ingrid)

The link to the original project is here. Me Oh My... It's a super fun blog with lots of cute stuff, I highly recommend browsing through it!

So I had this awkward spot in my living room and wasn't sure what to put there and then it came to me... a big plank of wood with something cute painted on it...

There's my plank of wood... It took forever for me to actually stain it, and of course I took pictures because it was the first thing I ever stained, and I think I did a pretty good job

I don't remember the brand but I do remember the color was ebony. It actually stayed in my living room just stained for a long time, I think it looks pretty :)

But I finally put a good movie on and plopped down in the floor and started painting the words to the fun little song.

Oh yeah and it looks awesome with my new lamps! I love my new lamps, I went to Home Goods for the first time this summer and scored them for an awesome price! 

I am thinking of doing a booth at the First Saturday show at the Chicken Farm Art Center in August, trying to make some extra money and get my 'business' started... I feel like a child with a lemonade stand when I saw my 'business', I have no 'business' I make no money, lol. One day...

Anyways, I really enjoyed making this and thought about doing some smaller ones, that could hang on a wall or sit on a table/dresser with sweet sayings, verses, something...

Before and Afters

I have been redoing some stuff around the house and wanted to share.

The story of the tuffet...

 I bought it 5 years ago when I was working at Tuesday Morning, it came off the truck without a tag and there wasn't another one like it so my sweet manager damaged it out for me for $6! We had just got married and I had an apartment to decorate, I loved it. It used to have fringe around the bottom and some pretty trim around the top but over the years of little boys it all got torn off. It also has some awesome stains on top from a sweet husband using it as a dining table on his lunch break. I could never part with it. So I made a slip cover...

 Now I realize this slipcover is far from perfect but the longer it's used the less ghetto it looks. I also love that I can just take it off and wash it if life ever happens to it, and it will.

The story of the china cabinet...

When we moved into our house I was looking for a hutch to keep some extra dishes and my in-laws (the best ever) gave me this china cabinet! It was part of the dining room set they bought when they first got married... not too long ago my mother in law looked at me and said "Biz, you can paint that" and the next day I went and bought paint :)

 Now it does have doors on top but it's taking me forever to finish painting them so for now the top is doorless, but I think it still looks good, I love the color of the inside.

The story of the lamp...

It has an ugly shade, bought it "as is" at Pier One, the harp was broken. I bought a new harp and recovered the shade with some awesome fabric!

And the bookshelf...

It was boring, I arranged the books by color but it still needed something else, I painted the back of it with some purple paint left over from the kitchen.

 I also moved my dining room to the front room. It was an awkward room because there was no light and it was pretty stuffy. Jade installed a ceiling fan and we moved the dining room and piano and it opened up the house SO much more! Love it!

Planty Planterson

Monday was lovely... We ran errands, fun errands. I bought plants, I worked in my classroom and actually made some progress and played with the boys.

One of our errands was Lowes, Jade had to look at boring things so I went to the garden area and promised not to get carried away, and I tried real hard not to. I usually get a couple plants to add to my pots but I got some for inside this time, I'm real excited!

This little guy is adorable, stands about 5 inches tall. I have nothing to put it in,  I just know I'll find something perfect.



My house is pretty old and ghetto so I try my best to make it look like a cottage and one of my favorite things is to fill the front stoop with flowers and plants. I had some already but added yesterday. I'm probably half way to full...

On Pinterest I saw an awesome idea for a kids play garden, a space where they can plant their own plants, make it look however they want and more importantly for my boys, play in the dirt and with bugs. We did one of these for the boys yesterday, it's so much fun!

On a completely separate note I forgot to share one of my favorite projects I did a couple weeks ago. It's a heart map, all you do is get an old map (I went to TXDOT and got about 4 for free) Cut out a heart around a place that is special to you, I chose Port Aransas, one of my favorite vacation spots. I put an old piece of burlap for the background and put it in an old frame I already had and tada...

As soon as I get a New Mexico map I'm going to make one with Ruidoso, our honeymoon spot.

And as I'm typing this morning this is Max's outfit of choice, I think it's absolutely adorable

Wednesday!

The end of the school year is always very exciting and never sad. This year was a little different. Last week was my last week as a middle school teacher. I got a new job teaching at an elementary and I could not be more excited. I will have a PPCD classroom (Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities). The last week of school was a roller coaster, I was sad to leave the friends I had made at Lincoln Middle School and some of the students that I had formed relationships with but am SO excited to move on to my new classroom that I had been waiting 4 years for!

Now when I get stressed or excited I try to change things, anything. That is usually when I get my best projects done, it's therapy. On Wednesday of this emotional week my husband called me to tell me that he was leaving for a fire and didn't know when he was coming home. So I made a trip to Hobby Lobby and Lowes and went home and got to work. 

My sweet friend Aubrey's 30th birthday party was coming up and I was making the cake. I hadn't done the kind of cake before so I decided to do a practice. I also needed something to contribute to a luncheon at work so that was going to be perfect.

This cake was amazing. I just used a white cake mix from a box and divided the batter up into 4 bowls and added food coloring to each one. I forgot to take a picture of this step but I do have a picture of some cute boys being helpful.

Two colors went into one round pan and the other two colors went into the other pan.

Bake like the box tells you to and then I just put white icing on it and it was gorgeous! For Aubrey's party her cake will be red and turquoise with buttercream icing!

That night I also tackled 4 other projects in my house. I have a cute little door at the end of the hallway between the boys bedroom and their playroom. It needed to be turned into a chalkboard...

The weekend before I had painted my entertainment center a gorgeous turqouise/green color and then panicked because it didn't match the rest of the living room. So I found an old board from something we tore apart in house remodeling and painted a chevron stripe on it to put above the entertainment center but it needed something else. I had found a damaged out frame for $16 at Hobby Lobby with the intentions of painting it a fun color and then putting around the black and white board and I got this... ( I still haven't decided on which fun color to paint it or if I should leave it alone.)

Then I had a corner to the right of the entertainment center that is naked. We have a couple large floor cushions that stay there along with a couple of Max's larger toys that he plays with in the living room so putting something in the floor isn't an option. It is also too awkward of a place to put a picture, maybe. Anyways, I decided to make some tissue paper pom-poms that I see everyone putting in their baby girl nurseries. Well, I don't have a baby girl so I decided that I am going to put some in my living room.

Oh yeah, and one more thing... I had an empty little spot in my kitchen that needed to be filled, so I found an old picture that I wasn't using any more and painted over it with chalkboard paint, and it was the perfect size for the spot!

I'd say that was a successful therapeutic day!

Extremely Amateur Photography

I have a semi-fancy camera and am trying to teach myself how to use it and how to make the cool looking pictures that I see everyone else has. Just thought I would share a few of my favorites... it's a random mix :)

I hate my face in this one but it's too cute of a picture

I couldn't resist this one

Guess who made me take this one