30 May 2009

Another Lovely Day <3

Not only is it a fabulous, sunny, 80 something degree day here...it has also been super full of fun! I woke up early and bagged up all of the items that Adam and I pulled for our garage sale (lots of stuff), cleaned the living room, and straightened up the kitchen. Adam, worked on all of our dishes, the laundry, and cleaning out our closet. A very productive morning. At around eleven, my mom came by with the CRV and we loaded everything up to store in her garage until the sale. After the unloading Adam and I decided to treat my mom to Jilly's Cupcake Bar. She has never been to a cupcake bar but we knew she would looooove it. We tried the Strawberry Cheesecake cupcake, the Dreamsicle cupcake, the Turtle Cupcake, and, of course, The Twisted Red Velvet...delicous!! This is all that is left of the cupcakes :D

I am slowly savoring the Red Velvet cupcake :)
When we got home I was bombarded with Happy Mail!!! Yes, I am truly looking forward to checking the mailbox these days...I love it! I got the most beautiful postcard from Guatemala from my lovely friend, Katie:

I collect postcards and I did not have any from Guatemala which makes it even cooler!! Katie, by the way, is a very amazing woman and I am soooo lucky to have her as a friend :) We used to teach together and then she became the world's greatest Arbonne consultant and is able to stay home with her gorgeous little Guatemalan :) Check out her blog to read more about her and the mission trip that she just took to Guatemala :)
I also recieved a new bracelet from the Invisible Children campaign that I am part of!

What I would give to be able to go on a mission trip to Africa!!
Next up, a fun fun Xo5 package from Kimi!!!


I loooove everything that was in it. It is representative of her five favorite things :) I am sooo lucky to have Kimi as a bestie!! Thank you Kimi for the amazing package :) I adore it and I am already wearing the chapstick :)
Also, my RVA package came! Yay!

my favorites are these ACEO's by Elsie and Rachel...love them.

And speaking of the ACEO's, I decided to store them in my vintage Holy Cute album that I also got from RVA:


Well, I was so inspired by all of the great mail that I recieved that I decided to get crafty myself :)
I did some painting:

and made some scupty charms of two of my most favorite foods :) Soft pretzels and cupcakes...yummy!


I am soooo digging the rhinestone salt on the pretzels. I think that I want to share the Happy Mail wealth with my readers so...who wants a charm?? Let me know! First come, first serve :)
I loooooove my readers
I am going to try and talk Adam into helping me do the second coat of cake batter in the living room. I can't WAIT to get all of that painting done and all of the furniture put back in it's place...wish me luck :)
bye <3

Photobooth Friday <3

I took this picture yesterday, promisecakes <3

i love you!

29 May 2009

Today=lovely

After school today my mom had made her delicious Chicken Spaghetti and TEXTED Adam and I to come over. yummy!! It was great visiting with her and letting Catalina run around in the back yard. She loved the yard so much that we are letting my parents keep her for tonight :) She misses her grammy and grampy :)
When I got home, the mailbox was full of amazing Happy Mail from lovely friends:

First of all, how cute is that banner that Jaime made for the Happy Mail blog? (Which by the way is accepting more people for the next round!!)
I received this special special embroidery from Jaime herself!

One of the million reasons why I love Jaime soooo much is because she is so generous and caring. I had left a comment on her Flickr about how much I loved this piece and then boom! I check the mail, and it's in my mailbox. It came yesterday actually, which was a really crappy day. It's amazing how one person's giving heart can change your whole day!!
Next, I got this cutie-pie letter and stickers from my new Canadian pen-pal, Suzanne!! Thank you Suzanne!!!

I loooove it! and I will be sending you something back very soon!
These cuties came from France:

AND this gorgeous headband came today as well:

It is soooo Whitney (from The Hills).
And to make my night even more fabulous, this is what I have been doing since I got off of work:



cutting lots and lots of squares from the new Hether Ross Far Far Away fabric :) Eeeek!!! Sooooo lovely and so soft! Here are some close ups of the different prints:

And here is the quilt that I was inspired by :) Image from Film in the Fridge:

I can not wait to get started ironing and then sewing!! I also need to go to Jackman's this weekend and see if I can get some help binding my last quilt!. I need to get it done so that I can have a finished product and not a collection of quilt tops :)
I am off to create!
I think that I may do some painting tonight too, we shall see!!
Have a lovely weekend friends.
xoxo

27 May 2009

progress

I can not believe that out of the bazillion pictures that i have in iPhoto not one of them is of my living room pre-renovation. I also can not believe that I didn't take a picture of it Monday before I started!!!
I did however, take some pictures along the way :)
My living room started out as a chocolate milk brown color. Very homey and cozy and perfect for what I was going for 4 years ago when I painted it :) The new color that I wanted is called "Cake Batter" I'm pretty sure that you can't go wrong with a paint called cake batter! It is like a really pretty beige I guess. I wanted something neutral so that as my style changes (as it does A LOT) I can just change the accent items as opposed to the whole room. Does that make sense??
Here are pictures during the priming stage...



And here it is after coat one of the cake batter :)


I pulled this ugly faux wood grid thing off of the sliding glass doors and i love it because it's such a pretty view. Also, does anyone have any suggestions on how to make that fireplace less of an eye sore?? I mean come on!!!
Also, here is a piece that I will be putting in my living room post-reno. I found this cute child sized rocking chair at a flea market in New Mexico. Love at first sight:

oooohhhh! and I made that pillow tonight during the storm :)
Here is a better look at the front:

and the back:

I love making pillows!! I still want to make one more, find a new (or used) neutral color couch, and make curtains. Those are my short-term goals for this weekend...
On a side note, I guest blogged over at Polka Dot Robot last week and today...check it out!
AND...only four more days left in the school year for me!! soooooo excited :)
have a great Wednesday night lovies.
xoxoxo

25 May 2009

1993-ish

I know I keep going on and on about making my very first ever quilt. It has been on my list to-do's, my goals lists, my 30 before I am 30 list...every list :) Well, I have a confession to make...
I have made a quilt before :)
I wouldn't necessarily call it a real quilt, or maybe I would, who knows? Also, I made the entire quilt top but had my grandma's quilting club at church bind it and make it into the actual quilt for me...I was 13.
When I was in 8th grade I remember being at my grandparent's house in her basement (which was as magical as a basement can get). I was going through her drawers in the first room and found an entire drawer full of vintage fabrics!! I mean the drawer was jammed packed and it was a big drawer. I fell in love instantly. In fact, this may be about the time Fabric and I started our love affair. I asked my grandma if I could have the fabric and she said yes (as she always did when we stumbled upon a treasure that we couldn't live without in her house).
I think my original plan was to make dresses but later decided to make a quilt. I have always been super sentimental and wanted something that I knew I could always remember my grandma by, and her basement.


I OBVIOUSLY had no clue what I was doing :) I traced the squares out with a sharpie and ruler and cut them out with scissors :) I hand sewed the whole top and then went back over the whole thing with my grandma's sewing machine (my favorite sewing machine) when I realized some of my stiches were way too big or far apart. My dad taught me everything there was to know about the sewing machine :) I oiled it, threaded, changed bobbins, changed needles, etc. Good times :) Good memories.
I decided that I also wanted to add other memories to the quilt. I wanted it to be as crazy and as symbolic of myself at that time.
* So, I hand sewed patches onto some squares of things that I loved or were special to me:




Grateful Dead patch (oh I thought I was such a dead-head) :)
My little Pony patch
My dad's name patch from Vietnam
A Brittish flag (which I was sooooo obssessed with)
* I also hand sewed sequins on the quilt in certain places. It took me like a week to do this rainbow :) (You can tell this has been throught the wash a few hundred times)

and other places too!


I mean, who doesn't add bling to their quilts right??
* And sharpie too!!
I guess I felt the need to make this a green and black zebra print instead of the original white and black :) I added my name too apparently.

* Finally, I used iron-on printer paper to put pictures of the two loves of my life at that time...(embarassing)

Oh James Dean (so lovely) and that guy from Goo Goo Dolls (don't even know his name and apparently we were in love at one point).
So yeah, that's my very first quilt :) Like I said, I gave the top to my grandma and waited very patiently for 3 weeks as they bound it and added the ruffle trim that I had picked out :)
Even though this quilt is a HOT mess, I loooove it so much and I treasure it and I still use it daily, on the couch, as I blog. Great memories...
You can see why I didn't count this though right?
Im actually getting kind of emotional writing about it...LAME!
Ok, back to getting organized, I think I am going to tackle painting my living room tonight. Painting rooms is one of my favorite things. So relaxing....

unplugged...

Well, the second half of the unplugged challenge was to document it and share with the blogging world :)
No internet...

No television...

Adam and I had planned this day to be our unplugged day, last week. We had planned to spend the day seeing St. Louis sights. Our main goal for the day was the Missouri History Museum. Adam loves the history of the Civil War and their featured exhibit was all about quilts!! Perfect for the both of us. As smart as we are, we didn't think to get online the night before and get the hours, directions, phone number, nothing :) Obviously we could have called information or had someone else find the info for us, etc, but we literally didn't even think of that :) Our plans were spoiled and we decided we were on our own...my morning plans were to help my mom get my dad a new matress for his birthday/Father's Day. Adam's plans were to go to church and go to Target.
So, I woke up super early, wide awake at 6:00am, full of inspiration. At first, I stared at my laptop longingly:

But then, I went into the craft room, dug out some "Springy" fabric, my cutting tools, pins, and my sewing machine, and whipped up a lovely Spring Apron to give to my mom as a gift when she came to pick me up :) (You can never give your mom too many tokens of gratitude my friends)

She looked soooo cute modeling it :)
My mom and I had sooooo much fun running errands!! We went all over the place: Macy's, Gap, Archivers, Borders (my fave), The L-Bizzle, Target, and Sams. Target should count as like 50 stores because we walked the entire Greatland Target at least 15 times looking for the Orla Kiely canisters for Nicole with NO success :( It was fun because I can not tell you the last time I had been at a mall!! Crazyness! We had major business to take care of, and we accomplished a LOT! Fun times spent with mom is a great way to spend a morning :)
At this point it was like 3:00 and I felt sooooo bad that Adam had been stuck alone "unplugged." I tried calling him many times to tell him to go ahead and "plug" himself back in. I mean just because I am taking the challenge, doesn't mean he has too! But no answer...
When I got home, I had found out he had went to church (great sermon), read comic books and then went to sleep, so I didn't feel bad anymore :) It was a great day for a nap :) After we got settled, Adam and I headed over to my parents house for dinner! I love family dinners, they are the best!!
We played outside with Cat for a really long time and just enjoyed the beauty of Spring in my dad's yard:





lovely!!
After dinner, Adam and my dad usually retreat downstairs to watch a movie and even after all of the peer pressure (dad) Adam stood firm and suggested we play cards:

which was sooooooo much more fun than watching TV or reading blogs. It was a blast and we played for over an hour! I, of course, was the big winner :) Big winner doesn't mean much when you're betting with nickels but I left with $3.75 :) Score!!
After my parent's house, we went back home, Adam took another nap while I immersed myself with beautiful music (Larson, Bon Iver, Slumdog soundtrack, Once soundtrack, Deftones, Marie Digby, Ben Folds, Ingrid Michaelson, etc)...and went back to creating!!
I made the most beautiful patchwork pillow (Pretty online class project) to use in our soon-to-be completely re-done, Rachel Denbow inspired living room. I love it!



I can not wait to make more pillows, and curtains, and a table-cloth for this room :)
I added a lot more to this pile:

No, the chihuahua is not for sale :)
Made a dent on this room:

looks muuuuuch better than the previous post eh??
I also spent a lot of time with my journal <3

When Adam woke up, we layed on the couch and read Harry Potter-Book One to each other (magical) <3 I love to re visit that series every so often <3
And even though I was still awake at midnight, and again at 2:30am, I didn't once feel the need to get on my computer!! What a fun day. I got soooooo much done and spent a lot of time creating and cleaning...it was great!! I will admit that at one point I did look at the clock and thing OMgoodness, SEVEN MORE HOURS!?!?! But honestly, that only lasted a second :)
Great day of being unplugged, we will definitely do it more often :) Thank you Jodie for challenging me, I enjoyed it.