Wednesday morning inspiration

So, the current mood in our house this morning is lazy and chill. So much like yesterday when I was having a lazy day with my girl and was having a hard time making it to the gym. I am proud to say I did make it to the gym yesterday after all...my will power won! Yesss!

Today, not so sure that will happen. Mckenna and I are both eating breakfast with Curious George and my blog list =)

While looking through my fave blogs I came across this new project from Emily at Jones Design! This is too cool to not blog about!

A new spin on a covered cork board! In love. Must make! My sister Callie needs to make this too! Just sayin...

Click here for the full tutorial on how to make this. I love how she hung it over their bed in the master bedroom and hung only personal memorabilia about her and her hubs on it. Very sweet and creative.

Now go create something today! I am going to!

Happy Wednesday!

Cake Pop Challenge

Along with not having a green thumb {yet} I also am not a baker. I love to cook and I can make a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies that will blow your mind, but other than that I've never been one to spend time baking.

However, throw some creative juices in the bowl and a cup of challenge and I'm down like four flat tires! I accept the cake pop challenge!

{how cute are these things?}

My friend Mel loves to bake. She took the cake pop challenge this past weekend because her friend Tawsha attempted them before her. I was there to see the process of Mel's cake pop experience and saw how difficult it is to get those Balls to stay up on the stick.

I am ready to take this challenge now and bring my cake pop game to the table! If you take a minute to check out Mel and Tawsha's blogs you will see how theirs turned out...it's not as easy as you think to make these sweet, tasty and cute balls.

Check out this site Bakerella when you have a minute and I bet you will find a reason to make these creative, cute little guys {or any other pastry masterpiece she has}...Easter maybe? I think yes... I'm now on the search for the perfect Easter cake pop!

{if you can master these things what a great way to package them and hand them out for Easter gifts! You can find those little tin buckets in the $1 bin at Target right now}

{this one makes me laugh for obvious reasons! Check out the way the gal positioned the other chicks staring at the one with the side of his head missing! Awesome!}

{love these. Probably way past my fondant abilities, but I would love mine to turn out like this. I can just hear Mel laughing at my enthusiasm}

{totally cute, but not happening from my kitchen! I know my limitations}

Are you inspired to make your own now? If so, I want to see them! Have you made cake pops yet? If so, how did it go?

Stay tuned for the outcome of my precious cake pops and wish me luck!

Happy Tuesday!

Green Thumb? I think not...

So, here's the thing...I don't have a green thumb.

We moved into this house 4 1/2 months ago and all I can think about is that we are on almost an acre of land that is lacking on every inch in the landscape department and I don't know where to start. Every corner of this property is intimidating to me when it comes to designing a nice, attractive, easy to care for landscape plan

{I know it will take years and I like things done yesterday}

So, today I decided I had to start somewhere...

Brian brought these home from Lowes on Sunday. I was having a bit of a break down that day regarding the kitchen and the state of disarray that it's in {It happens every now and then, I'm not gonna lie} I can't ignore the fact that every dish we own has a home in the laundry room right now...or still. Our good friend Steve came to the rescue with his paint sprayer and got started by priming the cabinet doors and drawers {they have been sanded and cleaned for weeks} Since he has a real job {other than spraying our cabinets} we have to do this over the course of a few days. Next is the paint! Yay!

Anyways, Sunday I just flipped like a crazy woman, so as McKenna was napping and I was in the garage sanding the last of the kitchen drawers Brian left {I didn't blame him} to go run a couple errands. Those errands included these pretty flowers and my favorite sushi roll from our favorite sushi restaurant! Ahhh...he's a good fella! I heart you babe! {he hates when I say I "heart" anything}

So, I took this pot that was left over from the previous owners cleaned it off with some water and a basic scrubbing/cleaning brush and took a can of white spray paint to it.

Easy, enough so far.

Took a trip to Target, picked up some potting soil {and just a few other things of course...it is Target after all} and McKenna and I started the beginning of our landscaping right here in this little planter. It's a start, right? =)

After looking at the pictures I just decided I'm going to go over it with a color...maybe yellow or orange and sand that color back to show the white and the natural stone color. Hopefully it looks a little old and worn in after that.

Does anyone know what kind of flower this is by the way? lol...I have no clue!

Friday Inspiration...McKenna's room

So after about 2 hours {McKenna is in bed for the record} of trying to figure out how to create a custom header for my blog I decided I had shut that down and look at fun stuff before I throw my computer across the room! So, off I went to my inspiration folder to start creating a design board for McKenna's room. I thought I would share ideas with you. Feedback is definitely appreciated!

First of all... here is a mini Kitchen update:

The kitchen is slow go. We keep getting side tracked with other smaller, less intimidating projects that spend our kitchen money, but this weekend we are getting our cabinet doors and drawers painted! Thanks to our good friend Steve!! Thanks Steve...I owe you some brownies!

So, McKenna's room has been on my mind lately. She is so big now! She's 3! When she was born I went green, pink and white for her nursery.

{Her room in our Wisconsin house was huge! 17x20}

{I like how Eeyore and Lucky the dog look like train wreck casualties just laying there}

{look how tiny McKenna was!}

I am so done with pink and green and am moving on to something she can grow into for a few years. I recently painted her walls Valspar's "sky blue 2". McKenna likes to call it Cinderella blue. It is a very soft blue and I love it!! So here are a few ideas on the design board for her room.

How much do you love this art wall to display all that precious artwork!! I found this on the houzz site under the wall gallery idea book. So many amazing gallery walls so check them out! But I plan on picking up frames at thrift stores and garage sales, painting them all white with a few bright pink frames scattered around to create Mckenna's art wall. I love a gallery wall over a staircase, but the reason I am posting this picture is because I have that table lamp in McKenna's room right now...love it! It's so girly and sweet! It looks good in this hallway too.

I found this somewhere {I wish I could remember where} and LOVED it! All I need is a butterfly punch and I'm gonna go butter fly crazy on my scrap paper. This will be going on her art gallery wall =) Doesn't ALL have to be HER art work does it?

I dig this one too! I think I like the butterflies better...

Yes, this is a bathroom, but I wanted to show you the bead board ceiling we will be doing in all three bedrooms. Awesome, right? Great tutorial on how to DIY here on house of Smith's blog. You know how much I love this girl!

I'm happy to say I have an extremely talented and artistic blood line! My birth mom, Boots, is crazy talented with painting {and just about anything artsy} and has offered to paint a mural in McKenna's room. I found this one and LOVED how sweet it was. I love that it's one dimensional and graphic. Very much more my style rather than something extremely detailed. Although, Boots could tackle that too.

The colors will be different but you get the idea.

Right now, there are sheers on her window and I love how airy and open it feels for such a small room. She went from a 17x20 room in Wisconsin to a 10x12 here! haha...she could care less. So, since it's a smaller room I don't want to weigh it down with floor to ceiling panels on the windows, but I wanted to bring color in with the white sheers so I decided to make her pennant banner to hang from her curtain rod. Kinda like a valance, but a banner like this one from the Pottery Barn website! =)

We are off to get her new big girl bed this weekend and I am at a total loss of what I want for her bedding. I'm thinking all white bedding {yes, I know I'm crazy} with a bright pink and white striped bed skirt and some pretty colorful pillows.

This is a picture of a book on her bookcase. The reason I took the picture is because I love this pink with the soft blue. I bought this book at a small boutique in Milwaukee when I was still pregnant with her. It just made me laugh. "This little piggy went to Prada". She doesn't get it now, but one day she will appreciate the humor in it.

Ok, now it's way past my bed time and I need to dream about my kitchen remodel so good night! Thanks for reading! Oh and have an awesome weekend!!

xo

Gushing...

So, I'm gushing about these pictures a little late in the year since McKenna turned 3 more than 3 months ago, but I want to gush anyways! I don't always have to post something crafty, right?

Our awesome friend Kevin {my BF's boyfriend} took these pictures of McKenna on her birthday this year.

McKenna is a New Year's baby. Born new years day in 2008. This new years eve we spent in Seattle with Kevin, Stacey and some other amazing, fun people. We stayed the night at Kevin's and the next morning we woke up, watched our girl open her birthday gifts and then spent hours walking around Seattle Center. The weather was amazing! It was cold, but the sun was out and it was just perfect.

Here are the pictures Kevin took of our girl on her 3rd birthday.

Thanks Kevin! We love your face off!

{working hard on holding 3 fingers up instead of 2}

{she got it!}



{haha...love this picture so much!}
{this sweet smiley face is more like it}

{bundle up baby, it's cold out here}

{daddy is always good for a shoulder ride}

{for me it never gets old seeing pictures of these two together. So sweet}

{love these. So cool}

Thank you Kevin! The pictures mean so much to us! xoxo

Brian, Shelley and McKenna

Junk to crafty little treasure

So, one of my little random garage sale finds last week turned into this:

I stepped out of my comfort zone with color and went with a funky Valspar color called "sweet tomato". This cute little sign is now hanging in my freshly painted "morning fog" craft room! It's not very organized right now, but it will be soon! I promise I will get pictures of the craft room once I get it all prettified. For now, this was the project I worked on yesterday.

Right now, I want a little splash of this color in every room...I think. Ask me again tomorrow when I come off of my "sweet tomato" high =)

So, here is where this project started.

Friday garage sale, found this old carved wood frame for a $1! It had to be mine! Went to Lowes and picked up this $3 jar of my "Sweet Tomato" paint. It's so cool that you can buy such a small can of custom paint for small projects l like this.

Oh, just in case you are wondering what relevance that decoupaged paperclip has in this picture...and you probably missed the post from a few weeks ago. That floral print paper above was my color inspiration for my office. The office walls were painted the blueish/gray color on the paper and the orange and greens are the accent colors I'm using.

Hence the "sweet tomato" paint =)

So, I just cleaned up the frame with a clean damp cloth, dried it off and painted away.

{It took 2 coats of paint}

I would just like to say that I did not have my inspiration piece with me when I was at Lowes. I guessed at the color...not bad huh? I LOVE it!!

The background paper is some scrapbook paper I have had for literally YEARS AND YEARS and I never knew what to do with it. That paper knew all these years that it would be perfect for this project =) The opening of the frame is 9x14. Thank goodness I had two sheets of that 12x12 paper =)

The quote "Create {every day} was cut out with the cricut {thanks Melinda}. The black and blue card stock was also in my scrapbook paper stash.

Final results...one cute little frame makeover for my craft space/office that cost me $4

Now what else can I paint that "Sweet Tomato" red....

First garage sale of the season...

Oh yeah! It was a good start to the garage sale season today.

Totally random, not-planned, because I had no intentions of stopping by a garage sale, but this one was advertised starting about a mile from their house so I thought it must be good. It was! Usually the random stops are the best ones.

I had these two little monkey's with me...McKenna and our sweet friend Sierra. We were actually on our way home from the Children's museum. They were like "ugh...who's house is this...are their princess' here...?"

however, they were happy to keep me company while I browsed the goods =)

Here is what I found!

This sweet beveled oval lead mirror. It's huge! Size is 24"x36" and it's going right over McKenna's dresser! $5 people...I can't even stand it! They had 6 of these for sale...the sale just started today, if you are local and need an oval mirror. Who doesn't need one for this price somewhere in their house?

The these two awesome, old wood frames. Of course they will get Shelley-fied with some paint and sanding, but for $1 a piece, I'm up for that challenge =) Twist my pale, white arm!

I love the detail on this one. I'm pretty sure it will end up in McKenna's room somewhere with a big pretty "M" in it =) Just a thought.

$1? Are you serious?

I wish there were 10 more of them...I wish there were, my husband is glad there wasn't. =)

{up close detail...it's about 2" wide and solid wood}

Anyone else hit any early garage sales yet? If so, what did you find?

Back to my love...

Scrapbook Therapy

Every now and then I get so caught up in crafting and other projects {when I have time to be creative} that I forget to work on my scrapbook albums. With all the projects I have going on at any given moment the one place that I find the most serenity {for lack of better word} is scrapbooking. It is my happy place.

So, yesterday after Mckenna went down for a nap {and Brian was parked in front of the PS3 playing Call of duty} I went in my craft room, shut the door, turned on Pandora and started scrapbooking. It felt so good.

These are pictures from the first summer here in WA {2009}.

As you can see I don't scrapbook my albums in chronological order, I scrap what makes me happy, right then and there and these pictures make me so happy!

Just look at her!!

I eat those cheeks for desert!

This one is tough to see {well, except for the crooked trim on the right side...note to self: fix that when you are done with this blog post}, but it's one of Brian's favorite pictures.

This one was taken this past November when we drove up to Crystal Mt. to cut down our tree. I soo heart this picture...seriously heart! I can feel Brian rolling his eyes as he reads this. He hates it when I say "heart". Heart, heart, heart this picture babe!

Ok, off to fold some laundry...Glamorous, I know.