Won't you be my follower?

I am working hard on growing this blog and filling it with my creative ideas.  It brings me AMAZING joy when people decide to become my follower.  In blogland, followers seems to be a badge of honor - making the blogger feel appreciated and "liked"!




Homemaker on a Dime started a great link party - designed to help new bloggers like me find new followers.  So stop over, check out some of the great blogs that have linked up, become a follower and share your blog too!

Paint Chip Wall Art

The walls are slowly becoming "accessorized" to coin a phrase from my daughter's favorite book Fancy Nancy.  I have been working on our guest room as my Mom is coming to visit in a couple of weeks and I want her room to feel welcoming.  As I mentioned yesterday, the repurposed headboard wall art I told you about yesterday was planned to put in the guest room but may just find its home in another room.  So I still needed a plan for this room.

I loved this idea over at Creative Passage for a paint chip mosaic and I new I needed to use this idea somewhere in my house.  Yesterday I was delivering a few boxes of girl scout cookies to a friend so I ran in to a thrift store that was in the same shopping center and found these awesome custom frames - I swear there were like 15 or 20 of them.  I grabbed 3, then stopped at Lowes to load up on some paint chips from their Seaside Retreat collection.

I kept the blues together, the browns together and the greens together and I love the look.  I simply layed them out, taped them with some scotch tape so they made a sheet.  I had to trim them slightly around the edge since this was a somewhat unusual frame size.  My chips had rounded corners which left a small opening at the corners so I simply taped a piece of copy paper to the back so that the openings were white.  I may go back and embelish each of those corners with something but I haven't decided.

I love how they turned out and can't wait to share the entire room but I have a couple of more projects before I will do the big reveal.  I did run back to the thrift store and pick up 6 more of the frames as I have an idea for our office with these frames and some gift wrap I picked up on clearance at Christmas.  At $2.00 each I couldn't resist.  These are really nice, custom frames with real glass.  I may even pull a couple of them apart and make a square fram with the long sides from 2 frames (and of course a smaller square using the remaining sides).

Repurposed Headboard

I love hitting yard sales and thrift stores.  You just never know what kind of treasures you may find.  Last week I headed across town to the new, expanded Habitat For Humanity Store and saw this circa 1960s headboard.  Not really my taste and while it looks like wood, it is formed plastic over a piece of particle board, attached to a frame with just a couple of screws.  I wasn't in the market for a heaboard and it really wouldn't go with the more modern feeling of our home.

BUT, all week long this silly $10 headboard kept popping in to my crafty brain.  It kept saying, "I am not a headboard, I am a beautiful architectual wall hanging, buy me, bring me home, let me be beautiful."  (I know, it can't talk but that is what I was hearing.) 

I have seen many beautiful pieces of furniture out there in blogland that started out gaudy and dated given a new lease on life with a coate of paint.  So, when I was back on the west side of town over the weekend I swung through the Habistore and it was still there (elation)...I picked it up and carried it up to the check out.  When I got it home I loved it even more.  I immediately got out the drill and pulled it apart.  I grabbed the can of creamy white spray paint I had bought for a different project and went to work. 

Here she is...isn't she amazing.  They need another coat of paint but I am in love.  My plan was to put these in our new guest room, but while sitting on the couch last night and looking at our beautiful new Behr Pure Earth paint on the walls, I had an idea...what would they look like in that great big opening above our fireplace.  So I grabbed a couple of them and propped them up.  Even my husband loves the look.

 Only problem is, it would be awesome if we had 4 of these beauties - sadly there are only 3.  One idea is to hang them vertical one on top of each other, 2 verticle with one horizontal and then add a wrought iron piece, or ....????  So until we come up with a plan, I guess we will just lean two in the giant opening.  We both love, love, love the contrast of the creamy white against the earthy beige.

This love story is to be continued...

Mastering the Art of Being a Cookie Mom

My baby girl is a kindergartner and a very proud Daisy scout - her first year!  When the call was made to find a cookie mom for the troop, I excitedly volunteered (I know, I had NOOOOO idea what I was getting myself in to!).  I love Girl Scout cookies as most everyone does and I really wanted my baby to experience this.  I was never a GS so this world is very new to me.

So while everyone in blogland is busy organizing and cleaning their homes this week -- I have been trying to get my self organized for cookie sales which began TODAY!  Here in Arizona we do cookies on demand, so instead of taking your order and then waiting for them, we get the cookies up front and sell them cash & carry!

Yesterday my husband and I went to pick up our initial order for our troop (17 girls).  I had pre-ordered 64 cases but since we had room in the truck (wasn't sure what would fit) we picked up 42 additional cases.  Yes, at one point yesterday, I was in possesion of  1272 boxes of girl scout cookies - YUM! 

**1/23 update - you can fit more than 110 cases of cookies into a Honda Pilot and I now have over 2000 boxes of cookies at my house - YIKES!!!!**

So my organizing included breaking up the boxes so each girl would get their intial order.  I made a spreadsheet to help me keep track of what everyone has and to master my inventory.  I can tell you now, I will be headed to the cupboards tomorrow to pick up another 100+ boxes!  Crazy stuff!!!  (The cupboards is where we go to pick up additional boxes of cookies throughout the sale - as there is no way we could get them all up front - can you say warehouse.) 

I am just glad that we have a big open room in our new house that has not been given a true purpose yet - great place to store those cookies!!!

S & I had fun creating her Cookie Mobile too!  We repurposed the canvases that I had painted to match her bedspread at our other house as the colors were perfect for the big cookie sale!  Everyone loves her mobile cookie store!

** If you are in Tucson, let me know if you need some cookies!  My girl would love to get you the boxes that you need  want!!!**

Conversation ♥ Cones

I have been inspired in 2011 to do more crafting and decorating of our new house.  I love being creative and the excitement of completing a project or two.  So a friend of mine shared her new craft blog Simply Crafty Blog on facebook where she had just completed a wreath using conversation hearts.  I loved it but decided to do a little twist on it.  So (as she said) off to Dollar Tree I went to pick up a few bags of hearts and a couple of styrofoam cones.  I had to hit a couple of stores as the first store I went to did not have the cones but I knew I had seen them at one of the other locations - near my favorite new Goodwill store but that is a post for another day.

With glue gun in hand, I burned a few fingers and completed two awesome cones.  The extra hearts went into my favorite vase (from Goodwill of course) and the subway art printable I found at eighteen25.  Here they sit on the hearth.  Happy Valentine's day!

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On The Menu

2011 is our year to get our family eating habits back in check.  Our plan for the next couple of months is to focus on the basics - more fruit and vegetables (atleast 5 a day), more lean meats and less white flour.  So, here is the menu plan for the week...

Monday - Pot Roast with roasted vegetables

Tuesday - Taco Tuesday (chicken)

Wednesday - bbq pork sandwiches

Thursday - Hawaiian pizza on the grill

Friday - Chili

Saturday - leftovers

Sunday - dinner at the in-laws

Framed Monograms

I was looking for a way to use some of the beautiful holiday ornaments that are now on clearance.  Many of the ornaments are very holiday specific however there are some that can translate year round. 

A few years ago I was looking for some art to hang in our master bathroom.  I had picked up some pearl monogram letters at Christmas time and that is when I got thinking.  Why couldn't I frame them.  I went to my stash of picture frames and found a couple beautiful wood frams that I had picked up at Pottery Barn on clearance and they were perfect.

The frames had 3 different mats inside that you could choose from.  This was perfect because the thickness of the mats created the perfect amount of space between the glass and the back of the frame to account for the dimension of the letters.  I found a nice corresponding piece of scrapbook paper for behind the letter and thus some beautiful and romantic artwork for our master bath.

Note:  Since we just moved last month, we haven't begun to hang up our artwork so I had to dig these out of a box to snap a few pictures.