News Update

Hi girls, I promise I'm still alive and kicking here.

If you follow me on Facebook, you might have seen one of my recent updates that I got a job! It happened really fast - interview was last Thursday and by Friday morning I had a phone call with the offer. Yesterday was my first day there, and it was a total whirlwind (like most first days are).

I only have a few minutes here with you now before I have to head out the door but I want to thank everyone who responded on Facebook for their good luck wishes. My friend Kim wanted to know if I'd still be doing crafty stuff and keeping up with this blog. The short answer is yes - I love it way too much to give it up. There probably will be an adjustment period as I figure out how to balance my time, but I'm sure it will all work out!

Love to you all - I also promise to get back to reading and commenting on everyone's beautiful blogs...I've only been away from my computer for a few days but it seems like forever!

Have an awesome day!

-Em

Memorial Day 2012

Photo of the Week from Arlington National Cemetery

At your BBQ's tonight, remember to set a place for the brave men and women that made the ultimate sacrifice.

God Bless America!

Welcome Summer!

I think I’ve mentioned recently that summer is here in full force in Florida! The sunshine is hot and the afternoons are sweltering…and it’s only going to get worse from now until August. We’re still enjoying it for now, so I’ve been really excited to add some summer color to the house.

I wanted to add some season-inspired brights, like pink and green (like juicy watermelon), yellow and teal (like a banana raft in the pool) and pink and orange (like faux flower embellishments on flip-flops). For today though I only had green on hand and a bouquet of orange flowers from Mother’s Day.



I made the cute little picket fence prop from scrap wood…I’ll give you a few guesses to figure out what it really is! The banner was hand painted – I didn’t feel like bothering with trying to transfer the “right” way, and it actually turned out exactly the way I wanted!



I actually don’t have a lot of tabletop surfaces for vignettes in my house so I arranged these on top of the media bookcases in our living room.













I’m off now to go meet my hubby for lunch – and then I have TONS of cleaning to do this afternoon! I may or may not have a chance to write & schedule a post for Friday so if not I hope everyone has an amazing long holiday weekend!

linking up with the Open House Party at No Minimalist Here!

DIY "Life is Better at the Beach" Wall Art

It's Monday again and another week is in full swing! We've got a busy week ahead of us so I may not end up posting on Friday since we have plans for the long weekend.

We had a great weekend at our house. I took an early walk around the neighborhood on Saturday morning because the weather was so gorgeous, hit some yard sales, and then crawled back under the covers for some quiet reading time while my husband and son were at the grocery store.

Yesterday we got out the inflatable kiddie pool, and sat in the shade with popsicle with the kiddo splashed. We worked on one crafting project together, but I tried to take it pretty easy since I hurt my back before the weekend started (victim of domestic horseplay with the child). I think he's almost too big for me to roughhouse with anymore (or at least not without causing bodily injury to myself).

Summer has definitely arrived here in Central Florida, and I'm finding myself missing the beach. My little sister turned 26 today, so I decided to tap into that feeling and make her a gift with a beachy vibe - she loves the beach even more than I do, and now that she's living in Maryland she doesn't get her Florida beach fix much anymore.

I grabbed a piece of ivory cardstock that I already had and went to town on it with my son's watercolors. I blended and mixed a bunch of colors together to create an abstract water and sunset inspired background. I didn't want it to be very detailed or planned out so I just brushed on a few shades of blue accented here and there with almost every other color on the palette.

Then I searched Pinterest for a beachy quote - the best one I could find was "Life is better at the beach" which pretty sums up my sister's personality to a T. I typed it up quickly on the computer (using Word) and printed it out.

After I figured out where I wanted the words to appear, I rubbed sidewalk chalk on the back of the paper.

Carefully re-position the paper, and use a pencil to outline the typed letters.

The words will be transferred to your page in chalk. It doesn't actually come out this dark, but I altered the picture so they were easier to see.

All you have to do next is grab a small paintbrush and fill in the letters!

Super easy, right?

I used the same process to add some seashell details.

Voila! Easy to frame for display. You can even use a chip-clip to hang it up in your cubical at work - which is probably what she'll do :)

Today I'm partying with

Debbiedoo's Newbie Party
Brassy Apple's Make It Monday
Tatertots & Jello

Evolution

Relax, we’re not talking about Darwin today. The evolution I’m thinking about now is about my thought process and the nature of design.

One thing I think I’m really good at is helping other people, specifically with organization, decorating, and planning. I’ve done party and event planning, supervised post-moving organization and unpacking, and been put in charge of various decorating and staging projects. It’s safe to say that I’m super organized and on top of things. I can take charge, get things done, and play the “bad guy” like nobody’s business when needed (normally I’m pretty reserved, introverted, even on the shy side).

Somehow these talents don’t apply to myself, though. When it comes to making decisions for myself or starting a major project, I have a terrible time getting started. I just have too many “blinders” on and that makes it hard for me to be objective and just start.

This is one reason why not much has been done to decorate our home. Another is that I’m reluctant to spend my money,time, and resources on something that’s just “good enough.” It seems more practical to just wait until I know exactly what I want instead of settling. A perfect example is the fact that we still haven’t put in any kind of window treatments in the main living areas of the house (blinds for privacy, yes – but I’d love to add some kind of treatment {or mis-treatment}). I don’t want to just buy anything just to have curtains up so instead I’ve waited until I can make a decision. Until I have a firm idea of what I want to do with the space, until we have the extra cash, until…

One thing I just realized yesterday is that decorating is like having kids – there’s never a “good” time no matter how much you plan for it, you just have to make it happen. Design is a process of evolution. It is fluid, not concrete. My house is never going to be “done” because I will always like to move things around, “fluff” with different trends that come and go, and switch things out to keep it fresh and interesting.

I’ve seen this quote by William Morris lots of times, and I’ve tried to apply it to our home. I think I’ve been following it too literally (in the case of my dining room and my inability to decide on a paint color for the kitchen) – but at the same time I’m not following it at all. There are plenty of items in our home that are neither useful or beautiful, but we’ve allowed them to stay anyway. I think it’s time for me to re-think my application of this!

This thought process took place yesterday while I was talking to my friend Katie from On the Banks of Squaw Creek. She was helping me with some ideas for the dining room and many of her suggestions were things that I had thought about before but had never done anything to put them into action. I realized that the only thing holding me back is myself. I’m going to try to change that! She helped me remember that there are lots of ways to make your home beautiful on a budget…and that goes back again to my belief that your home should be a beautiful place of refuge that is a reflection of your own heart. Thank you, Katie!

I know this has been long and light on pretty pictures…if you’re still with me, I’ll reward you with some pictures of Katie’s beautiful home.Make sure you head over to her blog and look at some of her tips for creating gorgeous vignettes! She has some great ideas and a wonderful way of explaining her techniques.

Thank you so much for sticking with me until the end here…I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

Personalized Doily Tote

I wanted to share a really simple project today that I made recently as a gift for a friend. It was super simple and fun to do!



You’ll need:

plain canvas tote (available at any craft store or Wal-Mart)
doilies
masking tape
fabric markers
chalk

1.

Start with your canvas tote. Iron if needed – mine had been all bunched up in the store so it was pretty wrinkled.

2.

Place the doily where you’ll want the design. I wanted mine in the middle, but you could place it off-center or overlap to the other side of the tote.

3.

Use masking tape to secure doily to the tote. You want to make sure it’s not going to slip out of place while you’re transferring the design.

4.

Use your fabric marker to fill in the negative spaces as desired. You can use the entire doily to create a full design, or just part of it. I wanted to leave space open in the center so I only did the outer ring.

Be careful when peeling the tape up to fill in the spaces underneath the tape – the doilies are delicate and mine started to tear when I did this step.

5.

Once the entire design has been filled in (or only as much as desired), lift up the doily and tape to reveal the design transferred to the tote.

6.

If you want to personalize the tote with a letter or name, grab your chalk and lightly sketch it on. I’ll share the transfer technique I used next week.

7.

Use your fabric marker to re-trace the outline of the chalk design you just made, then fill in the insides.





That’s it! You can repeat for the other side of the tote if you want a design there as well.

I didn’t think to stage photos of the full finished bag before I gave it to my friend, but there’s really not much more to see. It’s pretty self-explanatory! This was so easy to do, and even if you don’t have many of the supplies they’re pretty inexpensive to pick up (especially if you have one of the 40% coupons from Joann’s)…I definitely think I’ll be making more of these!

Linking up with...

Savvy Southern Style
Home Stories A to Z

Mother’s Day Recap

Good Monday morning to you! I hope you all had a great weekend and a wonderful Mother’s Day!

On Saturday morning, the kiddo and I drove down to Sarasota to surprise my mom with a weekend visit. I’d made arrangements with her husband so he knew we were coming, but when she answered the door and saw us standing there she just about fell over.

Saturday afternoon, we spent a few hours in the pool (something I never get to do anymore but love), went to The Fresh Market to get stuff for dinner (I had never been there before but that place is AMAZING!), and had some really great quality family time eating dinner out on the patio.

My mom took the kiddo to the playground for a few hours on Sunday morning and left me at her house for some relaxation. I got to take a looong hot shower without being interrupted or having to hurry – I don’t remember the last time that happened! Then I crawled back into bed and got to read for almost an hour…all by myself! I love my family, and of course they’re priority #1 but I’m an introverted person and it’s really nice for me to have quiet time to recharge. I don’t get that often so it was pretty special!

Did I mention we went to Fresh Market? I had never been to one before – we don’t have one near our house but now that I’ve been to one I want to go to there. We got these red velvet cupcakes that were to die for…seriously. SO yummy.

We also looked at some old family pictures that she had brought back with her from a recent trip “home” to New England (where we’re from originally).

There were more (a lot more) but you probably don’t want to see a whole entire post of random family pictures. I’ll spare you, this time.

After lunch on Sunday it was time to pack up the car and head home…I love going to visit people but as Dorothy says, “there’s no place like home!”

When I finally made it home, my husband had a surprise waiting for me…

(I’m so sorry for the bad cell phone pics – we had literally just walked in the house and my camera was still in the car)

I thought it was just a nice little setup to show off them menu and card, and the slideshow of mother-son pictures he had made for my computer…

…then he said “That’s your new computer!” and I about fell out of my chair (or at least I would have if I had been sitting). But I’m not exaggerating when I say that my jaw dropped!

I was so not expecting that! My old computer was 6 years old and while it worked ok for what I needed it to do, he wanted to throw it out the window every time he even looked at it. It was slow, the memory was full and I was working off an external hard drive, and the screen was falling off. He knew it wasn’t a great piece of equipment anymore, and he wanted to get me something new that would help with my blogging…all because he’s proud of the work I do as a mom and wife and everything I’ve done with this blog and he thinks I deserve it. I’m so lucky to have such a wonderful husband! I think he’ll get a special post about how awesome he is…like on Father’s Day!

And don’t you love how he staged it? He said he wanted to make sure it looked really nice since he knew it would be going on the blog…I think I’m starting to rub off on him a little!

He also made me a yummy dinner – one of our favorite “regular” places to go (not for a fancy night out, just for fun) is Buffalo Wild Wings. Since we live out in the boonies (like I said above) we don’t get there often since the closet one is 45 minutes away. He knew I had been craving some of my favorite parmesan-garlic wings so he decided to recreate them for me. They turned out pretty great! After we ate, he cleaned up the entire kitchen so I wouldn’t have to worry about it, and all three of us headed outside to enjoy the evening and throw paper airplanes (the kiddo’s newest obsession). It was a gorgeous night and we all had a great time.  It was the perfect end to a great Mother’s Day!

And remember the sneak peek I showed you last week? Here’s how it looks now…it’s almost done! I thought I would be able to finish it after I got home yesterday but there was other stuff going on and it just didn’t happen. That’s okay though – I’ll finish it up today and get a tutorial posted later this week.

How was your weekend? If you’re a mom, I hope you got totally pampered yesterday – tell me about it!

Sneak Peak

Hi all, I've been pretty busy this week so I haven't had much time to blog. I've been thinking about you all though!

Wednesday I had every intention of doing a post, but the project I was working on didn't turn out the way I planned AT ALL. I had to go back to the drawing board but luckily things are back on track now.

Here's a sneak peak of how it looks right now.

I'll be back on Monday with the final product. I'm pretty happy with how it's looking!

Today I have a job interview that I need to leave for in...less than 30 minutes. I need to get going (it's hard to get a 3 year old to focus long enough to get in the car LOL).

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and if you're a mom than Happy Mother's Day to you! I hope you enjoy all the blessings of your families (and maybe a little much-deserved pampering too)!