Love Blossoms Here

And by love, I mean plants. And by here, I mean on my piano. :)

I have been craving green lately. Ever since January ended, I have been ready for spring. We were at Lowe's last week for their Build and Grow program (the girls both made a letter holder for their Valentines) and I wanted to peruse the plant section. You can imagine it was pretty limited. I have been eyeing some awesome succulent plants on the interwebs, but they didn't have any I was looking for. Enter Plan B. A fairly large plant, on clearance, for $5. Sold. We got home, I got the babe to sleep and my firstborn happily watching a fairy movie. Momma got to work!

Supplies I used: 

1 Glass Vase I had laying around

1 Clearance Plant

1 Small Craft Paint Bottle

1 Small Paintbrush

I also brought out some puffy paint, because I thought it would be fun to make some designs and then paint right over them, giving it a kind of dimensional look. I did not have the patience for that step, and I painted the inside of the vase, so it just didn't end up working for this project. And yes, you paint the inside of the vase. I just poured a generous amount of paint around the inside, bottom and swooshed it around with my paintbrush. There is no rhyme or reason behind your swooshing. Just swoosh away. Make sure the entire surface is covered. I then turned it upside down and let the extra paint drip out, leaving a super smooth paint job. 

From the outside, it looked like it came that way. 

After it completely dried, while I kept touching it and making smudge prints waited patiently for it to dry, I put my plant in it and proudly put it on display atop my piano. I love it. It really does make me happier having something green in my living room. Something living for me to breath in. I'm not really a winter girl, and since winter will probably last for another 3 months, this will help tide me over until spring gets here. :)

Chalk It Up to a Win

Ben and I are really working at de-cluttering our home. We've been getting rid of things like crazy. In the process, I've come across some things that I have completely forgotten about. Don't you love that? I found this frame in my office/catch-all-for-everything. I got it on clearance at Hobby Lobby. I think I probably paid around $10 for it. It's fairly large and in good shape, but it just wasn't doing it for me. The glass had broken and I almost just got rid of it. Then I remembered all of these pins on Pinterest in regard to DIY chalkboard art. I knew this was what I had to do. We had chalkboard paint in our stash of paints and I already had the paint brushes on hand too. 

This was a free project. 

Here is my frame as it started. 

STEPS

1. Lay out your board in your work space.

2. I primed mine because I had the primer and I though it would help the chalkboard paint adhere a bit better. I'm sure you could skip this step though. Just sand a bit before you start with the chalkboard paint.

3. Let primer dry completely. 

4. I did my first coat of chalkboard paint with a foam brush. It worked well, but took forever. 

5. Coats 2,3, and 4 went on with a foam roller. This worked a lot better. I was able to really saturate the board and get good coverage. This is what I would suggest if you try this project. 

6. DONE!

I then lightly sanded the whole thing to smooth things out. At that time, you condition your board. Pretty simple. 

Once you're done doing all of that, put your frame back together, hang up, and enjoy your handy work. You just made a free/cheap project from start to finish. And, it only took one day working on it off and on. 

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Finger Knitting a Scarf

Last night, after bed time, I got to thinking about knitting. I am able to crotchet pretty well and I have tried knitting with a knitting loom. I have heard about the arm knitting, so I thought I would try my hand at it. After watching some YouTube videos and trying my darnedest to make mine look like theirs, I got to thinking. Maybe I could knit with my fingers as well. So, I tried and it turned out great. It was a lot like a knitting loom, but you don't need the loom itself. You can use your fingers. 

Here are some pictures of how I did it. 

Step 1.  Make a slip knot. If you don't know how, just google it. It's pretty easy. Make sure it's large enough to be able to go around all four fingers. 
Step 2. Twine the yarn around your fingers. So, it's enveloping your finger. Basically, just twist it around your finger. This reminds me of brass knuckles. 
Step 3. Do it again. Twine the yarn around your fingers again. So, this time you have two lines on each finger. Starting with your pinkie, take the bottom line of yarn and flip it over the top line. Do this on all fingers. 
Step 4-however long you want it. Keep twining and flipping. The step 4 picture above show what it looks like when you have some chains together. 

After you get it to your desired length (I just had it wrapped around my neck a few times) you will want to cast off. Here, you'll just take your four loops and use the length of yarn you have at the start of your scarf from your slip knot and stitch it together. There is no rhyme or science behind this, just close her up. Tie lots of knots to hide your ends inside the scarf. This makes it an infinity scarf and if you've tied well, you won't be able to see where the start/end of your scarf is. 

I am able to wrap it around my neck 4 times, which is perfect to achieve the infinity scarf, cozy look. In all, I think this took me about 30 minutes. Super quick, super easy. Takes no thinking at all. Just my cup of tea. 
I also have other yarn that I might make into these too. 
Emma wants a pink one. :)

Entry to my Heart

I am a woman of lists. I have lists out the wazoo. I have lists of lists. Heck, I even have lists of lists of lists. This list is continually growing. Sometimes, if we're lucky productive, things will even be crossed off. So far, we have replaces all of our faucets and light fixtures. We've painted four out of our eight rooms. Not bad...50/50. 

This year though, I have some high hopes and some big dreams. We've been in this house for 2 1/2 years now, and I have yet to really make it feel like our home. It's certainly a work in process. We've come a very long way so far, but this rodeo is far from over. I have big ambitions, but a small wallet, if you know what I mean. We have some big items on our lists- like our two bathrooms, our kitchen, replacing our flooring, replacing our windows, and continuing to make out home somewhere we feel safe, comfortable, and we want to race back to at the end of our days. However, we had to save and scour stores and the internet for good deals. Recently, we got a new washer and dryer. They are Samsung front loader machines and there were mildly the love of my life when we first got them. Anything to make my life easier is fine by me. These were the first of our appliances that we replaced. The rest are yet to come. 

There is something I've been seeing a lot of lately, planked walls. This is one thing I am dying to do this year in my entryway. It is at the top of my list. 
When we moved into this house, everything was painted the same color. This included walls, ceilings, and even some fixtures attached to said walls and ceiling. Right now, I am crushing on these planked walls. This is something that could be done relatively inexpensively and I think it will bring so much character into our dull entryway. She needs a face lift, if you know what I mean. 

I have found quite a few tutorials on Pinterest that I will try to replicate for my space. Here are some of my favorites. Seems easy enough. 

1. The House of Smiths 2. Domestic Imperfection 3. The Lettered Cottage  4. Southern Living

Nursery Art

I love customizing things for me and my family. This includes art for their room. Now, I'm not one to go out and buy art. I'd much rather make my own art if I can help it. When I was pregnant with Kaitlyn, I got to work on some customized art for right above her crib. I wanted her to have something fun to look at and high enough to be out of her reach. So, I got together 3 frames, spray painted each one white, and went about getting some inspiration to put in the frames. 

I love trees, so when I found this tree with heart leaves on my Silhouette software, I knew just what to do with it. I cut the tree out with the plaid pattern and then cut the hearts out with another pattern. They didn't match by any means, but together, I think they go well together. If you don't have a Silhouette or other cutting machine, you can always print something out and use an x-acto knife to get the job done. 
Lord knows that's what I did before I got the cutting machine. :)

On the other side is a tree branch with a bird on it. Again, I choose colors that went well together, but didn't match. 

The middle picture was simple a small square of scrapbook paper that ties in colors from the pictures on either side of it. 

This was a really simple task and I love the results, even one and a half years later. Luckily, this little girl loves it too. The K was something else I just cut out and put in a frame. Easy peasy is my middle name.

Christmas Chain

Today, I am off work. That means I get stuff done. Something I really wanted to do today was a Christmas craft with Emma. We have never done a Christmas chain before, so I though this would be a good craft project to do with her. What could be easier than gluing paper together to make a chain? Also, she got to use her glue stick, so I figured it was a sure thing. I figured wrong. She got about 5 paper chains deep and decided she was done. It was "long enough". She is now watching one of the chipmunk movies. She is obsessed right now. Oh well. At least I tried, right?

Anyways, before she was over it, this was our game plan. I got four corresponding pieces of scrapbook paper (not too matchy-matchy), a glue stick, cutting board, X-Acto knife, and a 12-inch ruler. 

I got to work cutting the paper in 1-inch strips. Emma got to work gluing them together. Easy-peasy, nice and Christmas-y. :) Since she only made a short one and is now engrossed in her movie, I have finished with my strips and we now have a beautiful Christmas Chain. 

I know I'm not inventing the wheel over here, but we have never done this before and I though it was a fun craft project to do with my eldest child. 

Confessions of a Working Mom

Do you ever feel that you are the only one? For anything. It could be not eating breakfast because you forget, never cleaning your car out, bribing your kids to get them to sit 

for a picture you're hoping to use for the family Christmas card, or farting at the gym 

when you're the only one in the cardio cinema. No, that last one is only me. I wanted to post some things that no one knows about me. I'm hoping this will bring optimism to others. Maybe, with my confessions, you will know that your weirdness and uniqueness may not be so weird and unique after all. Maybe a lot of people don't eat breakfast because, literally, they forgot. I know that happens to me far more than I care to admit. 

Here are three of my confessions that I am experiencing today. 

First, sometimes I go to start something, namely painting my little piggies, and can only get one done before someone is yelling outside the bathroom door. That is not limited to my husband or my children. This goes for shaving my legs as well.

 I can't remember I shaved above my knee!  

Second, we put up our Christmas tree 2 nights ago. It continues to sit undecorated. Why? Because the night we put it up, I didn't get home until right before dinner and then it was bed time by the time we figured out how to put the dang tree up. You see, this year, we upgraded to a bigger, pre-lit tree and it was a little tricky figuring how to put it up. It tilts slightly to one side, so hopefully that won't be a problem. 

Thirdly, sometimes when I've had a long day and we don't have any treats in the house, because I try to limit how much sugar we intake, I resort to 2-week-old frosting from my daughter's birthday, smeared on graham crackers. Don't get me wrong. I think it's the best thing known to woman-kind. But, every once in awhile I would like to have something a little more dessert-esque. Like a real piece of cake, a bowl of ice cream, or a Twinkies. 

How about you guys? Any confessions of working moms or stay-at-home moms?