awesome gram

I've mentioned earlier that I'm just figuring out instagram and it's awesome!  Love love love that I have access to photos I'll actually use.  Because, regular phone pics pretty much just stay in my phone and I do nothing with them.  But instagram photos suddenly become hip photos.  And I instantly feel like a rock star.  I upload them to flickr or shutterfly or wherever and can print them.  Here's another app though thats really fun- postagram.  Take a photo and make it a postcard, send it when your on vacation to those you're missing, birthdays, weddings, a trip to the zoo.  Grandparents will love it.  Heck I'd love to receive anything that's not a bill in the mail!

Here's a photo that my new SIL's (she's the cutie in a white dress) brother took of their wedding day and sent me a postagram of them cutting the cake.  I'm not sure if you can tell but you simply pop out the 3x3 photo and keep.  Its printed on pretty good quality paper.  Sturdy!




 Postagram is a free app and the first 5 postcards are free! After that, only $0.99 to ship! I'm excited thinking of the fun I could have. You know those awkward moments you have with friends? The white elephant party with someone opening a box with a live rat? (Um yeah, those are the kind of friends I have!) Get your phone camera ready and catch their surprised face, you'll still be laughing a week later when the postcard arrives in the mail!

super sappy gift ideas

I love sentimental gifts.  The ones you give and the receiver starts to tear up a little.  You know what I'm talking about!  The perfect gift- it's my obsession to find.  I'm in love with memories.  I feel desperate to make and keep them for my family.  So hear are some gift ideas I've been collecting- maybe you could use a little gift inspiration.....

super cute book idea and image found here

Seriously?  How stinkin' adorb is this idea?  Of course the fun typography, amaze balls pictures and bold colors don't hurt either.  This screams ultimate gift hands down.

And along the same lines is a Father's day book found here 

This Father's Day book is way cuter than the schlumpy one I've been doing and adding to in the past.  But I'm still grateful for my schlumpy one with all its funny kids comments.  I've also seen a book where you ask the kids 20 questions each year on their birthday and make it into a book.  Love that idea!


And because I love photos (obviously!) and the huge sentimental feelings they create I have to include more ideas of what to do with your treasured family photos.

This image is from Martha Stewart.  No instructions were included but I assume a little mod podge magic and an old tray or jewelry box could be used to recreate this.  I love using old family photos.  Of course don't use the original!  Scan and print first peeps!

And I'm dying to somehow recreate this bench you know, for under the $2300 british bucks this cost.  But isn't dreamy?  You can customize it with any quote.  I'm thinking of maybe a painted version obviously.  But something with beautiful quotes has to be top on top gift giving list.  Love sentimental, perfect quotes.

If you have a cajillion dollars go to this site and you can buy it!  And then call me, cause I'd love to be friends! :)

And if you have a budget more like me and like funny sayings here's another idea.  My mom will totally appreciate this one:

found here with this etsy seller

But if you don't have time to take amazing pictures and make a book or scroll saw a bench poem or mod podge a tray or embroider a hank hill quote, here's some fun gift box ideas.  I think gift baskets have come a long way from smoked sausages and cheese.  Here's some hipper ideas:

This girl has tons of great ideas for gifts and I love anything that fits into a fun jar.  Go here to see more fun!

I love this fun little suit case filled with colorful cupcake supplies.  Go here to find all her gift ideas for under $5!  I've seen sunshine in a box ideas where everything is yellow and brightens someones day or even ice cream sunday kit in a box with fun cones and ice cream scooper and great toppings.  Mmm.  Love!  But for your more practical friends (aka: me!)  I love the idea of fun wrapping supplies or party supplies as a gift.  Who doesn't love super cute paper products??  There! You have my ideas or the ones I stole and hopefully will make.  I may have blogged a few of them before, but only because they are super awesome and I apparently need to put these ideas to use!

diy life coach

So I'm thinking that with all our DIY projects-gone-bad, maybe the hours/money wasted doesn't have to be, well..... so wasted.  So here it is- "everything I know about what NOT to do" for you newbie DIY-ers.  Maybe you can read this and avoid some costly mistakes.

Mistake Number Uno:
Don't skimp on flooring.  Do it right the first time, or you'll regret.  I promise!  We debated back and forth for months on flooring.  Get the real wood?  Get the engineered wood?  The guys at lumber liquidators convinced us that engineered wood was better.  They said the installation was easier, especially on our concrete slab.  They said it was dent-proof with its oxidized coating and that it could withstand any 3yr old boy.  They said it was less likely to warp.  Let me tell you- everything they said was wrong!!!  We purchased a Brazilian Redwood engineered floor.  Glue down right on concrete.  Read all the manufacturing directions.  Read every tutorial on Lumber Liquidators site.  We installed the floor and it looked amazing.  Absolutely gorgeous.  I was in love...... and then my children walked on it.  You know how a glass door looks like with a 3yr olds version of finger painting using a PB&J sandwich?  Well you get the idea.  Thats what my floor looked like.  Every single day.  I had to mop that floor and plead with my children to leave on their shoes.  When guests came, I begged their children to leave their shoes on!  Oily children's feet were horrific on my floors.  And a dog on top of it?  Well lets just say their aren't enough hours in the day to mop that floor.  Warping issues galore- we had to install a whole house humidifier to correct the problem and replace about 30 boards.  That's a fun project- to replace boards.  The knicks and scratches were horrible.  The floor wasn't stained it was naturally a reddish brown, but when you dropped something on it, you got a white mark on it.  The wood wouldn't scratch but the top coating would and it was white! Good riddance!  It was seriously one of the top reasons we sold our house.  I feel so bad for the current owners.  They have 4 boys!  And a dog! I should send her an apology letter..... and a mop.  She's going to go thru a lot of mops!  Its been two months since we moved and every day I smile at my real wood floors.

My dream flooring would look more like this: Herringbone.  (Sigh)

Mistake #2:

Do your pricing homework.  Sometimes you don't save money by doing it yourself.  I have had many baby shower gifts and birthday gifts cost double what I would've spent because I didn't do my pricing homework.  I just went to the craft store.  Purchased every cute piece of fabric I found.  Bought all the cute scrapbook paper & supplies and then dropped my jaw at the check out counter and had to go home and "make it happen" with hours of work ahead of me and my lofty quilt idea or b-day banner idea.  I have made homemade gifts for years, but now I'm a bit more selective with what I spend time doing.  It was getting a bit over the top with time and MONEY!  Here's a pricey quilt, and by pricey I mean both money and time.  Lil sista Mandy made this and it is adorable!!  Totally worth it- especially if I'm the receiver! :)

                                                        quilt and tutorial found here:

Mistake #3:
Know when to call a pro.  We are horrible painters.  I mean, it looks pretty darn nice when we finish painting but only after we spend two weeks painting a small girls bedroom.  The house is trashed.  Every room is completely torn apart.  7 trips to the hardware store for more paint.  Its ridiculous how awful we are at painting.  And we Hate it.  That's right, with a capital H!  I did some paint pricing and have found a painter who will paint a room for $80-100 for labor.  Baseboards?  Only $20! Ceiling?  $20!  Seriously?  I'm never painting a full room again.

Mistake #4:
Don't trust the "pros" at the hardware store.  We've had A LOT of bad advice from them.  A wall texture fiasco that we can't get over 6 yrs later.  Plumbing advice from Dr Seuss would be better that the "here's whatcha gonna do" at Home Depot.  Don't take short cuts.  It never works out.  Especially when painting furniture.  Every time we've skipped sanding, we've regretted it!  (However, Im anxious to try the zinsser primer that everyone swears by)  Oil based paint is also a requirement on baseboards.  Don't let them tell you that their stuff is as good as oil based paint. (You have to go to specialty stores for oil based paint) We bought the "works as good as oil based" paint because it was a whole lot cheaper and paid someone to paint all our baseboards and 6 months later they looked horribly beat up.  Was it worth saving $40?  Absolutely not!  Oil paint people.  It's SO much better for furniture, cabinets and BASEBOARDS.  It's a must, don't believe otherwise!  And another tip because I'm such a fountain of know-it-not knowledge- blogs with step by step instructions are far better for REAL painting results than the people behind the paint counter!

Mistake #5:
No impulse buys.  We have had our share of sales that suck us in.  And we end up getting something because its cheap instead of getting what we want.  "Someday we'll change that ugly light fixture, but for now we'll just get this cheap one".  Guess what?  Someday never happens and even though the light fixture was only $60.  You're stuck with it.  Forever.  Cause it was a pain in the rumpus to change!  We also subscribe now to Consumer Reports.  Its great to find out how appliances and large purchases score and whether they'll hold up.  A lot of expensive products don't do well!  (aka: love sony but don't buy their dvd players!)

 I bought this light fixture on clearance for $50 from Lowes

But what I really want is this light fixture from west elm:

Good thing I moved and I have a chance to fix all my wrongs!  My first 2 homes were just practice, right?  So there's my top 5 mistakes off the top of my head.  My loss is your gain!  Hopefully you won't have the awful DIY experiences we did.  But then again, if i didn't have these falls, I wouldn't be such a crafting genius now either.  Bwahahaha! (insert evil genius laugh)

i movie love

I'm obsessed with cool home videos.  Not the 20 minute- watch the kid open his birthday gifts kind of videos.  I want the fun, fast paced, glimpse of everyday life, but sped up with a pop-ish song, home video.  After all, we slave away trying to make our children's vacations, birthdays, Christmas, summers amazing and by the end we are so exhausted it was hard to remember what we even did!  That's where iPhones, iPads and iMovies come in.  I take really fast videos.  (Under a minute are the easiest to edit, I prefer 30 seconds.)  Add some instagram photos- (cuz i love me some instagram) and then add a fun song.  The twangier the better!  I find the length of one song is the best length for a video.  We're such a fast paced world so why not fast paced home videos?  Upload them to vimeo.com and voila!  You can share them with friends and family.  Just try it- you'll instantly love it.  I even made this one below all on my iPhone.  No fancy iPad or mac.  No need to be upset during long waits at the dr office or carpool.  You can make a movie while you wait!  *Helpful hint: Vimeo and youtube would only allow me to upload videos that had music that weren't altered (shortened on my video) AND they had to be downloaded from my iTunes account to show authenticity.  Maybe someone knows a work around this, but I tried.  Using iTunes and iMovie together were the only way I could upload to Facebook, vimeo and youtube.  Let me know if you found a way to use music other than from iTunes.

Here's what my first week of summer vacation looked like with my little sister: As you can see, we were over run with kids, kids, kids!

Glimpse of normal life

My life has been a complete whirlwind and I'm searching for some normalcy right about now. We just got back from a month long vacay and I'm dying to get into a routine. I'm anxious for some sort of summer productivity, organization, anything but living out of a suitcase or digging through unpacked boxes to find something. We moved a little over a month ago. With only 25 days to find a home and close on it and move in. Honestly, 24 hours before the movers came to load up the truck I wasn't even sure where they were going to take it! Packing all those boxes made me want to strike a match and watch them all burn (thanks Taylor swift song lyrics- totally in my head now) just so I didn't have to unpack them all! But we survived. Just barely. Stomach flu and all. I can finally laugh about my husband and I having the stomach flu while the furniture was being taken away. It was lovely. I wouldn't have survived without my friends and family whe risked their lives walking into our germ fest. Haha!

 So I look around my new home anxious to find some peace and calm. Trying not to focus on all the new projects at hand but instead find happiness in my few areas that don't look so bad. And with that- here is a little glimpse of my happiness right now.  (aka:  Instagram is also my new happiness.  I still don't have my computer up so I'm typing this on my phone and using phone pics.)

life lessons

This last month is a blur.  I wanna fast forward and jump to the good part.  Why can't I TIVO my life?  That would be something right?  But since I'm stuck in this packing/moving/paperwork chaos I might as well get something out of it.  So I sit back and realize that I've learned a couple things since I found out we're moving.  Wanna know what they are?  I'll tell ya:

1.  I can do hard things:   Really hard things like being nice when I don't have any more patience.  Someone get me a gold statue cause I deserve an Oscar with my performances!

2.  Sarcasm is every mom's sanity when it comes to stress:   That an chocolate...... and a 12 pack..... coke zero of course!

3.  Everything will work out.:  It may take awhile.  A really really long while, but eventually it will work out.  There was a quote I saw once that said.  "It all works out in the end, if it didn't work out, it's not the end." The thought has crossed my mind to punch someone in the face if I heard that saying one more time, but then I  refer to my number 1.

4. "Life's full of tough choices.  Aint it?"  Insert Ursula (from Little Mermaid) and a deep throat laugh and you've got yourself the truth.  Sometimes I don't know if I'm making the right choice.  Oh what do I do?  Show me a sign!  But then, I just jump.  And maybe instead of freaking out, I just enjoy the view on the way down?  Wouldn't that be something?  Enjoying the fall.....

5.  Avoidance of dealing with real problems, aka:Pinterest:  Some people find Pinterest and Facebook to be depressing reminders of everything they didn't do that day.  I'm sure their will be a Pinterest anonymous meeting popping up soon with day old donuts and folding chairs, but until then-  Stop comparing and start dreaming!  Instead of wallowing in my self hatred of disorganized boxes and clutter everywhere, I'm dreaming of what I may or may not be able to create in my next home.  Otherwise, I'll just end up going back to bed and covering my head in a pillow.

So to sum up my last month:  I act as if every things ok & I even start believing my own performance.  When I really want to freak out, I just find some chocolate in one of my 20 hiding spots & hit the coke zero & get on Pinterest.  Pretty much I just avoid dealing with reality and then use sarcasm to make it all better.    I'd be an awesome guidance counselor right?  And just because posts without photos are insanely boring, here is some of my pins.....  You can find the sources for all of them here  & here


Um, sorry mom, but this is way cooler than the red teddy bear border wall in my room growing up.  And I say that with love.  Because at 6yrs old, I didn't think rooms got cooler than bordered teddy bear wall paper....

Chevron wall?  Well hello there!  Can I buy you a non-alcoholic drink?  This will be my new entry.  Promise!

I will find a room or maybe 7! with this shade of turquoise on the walls!  Its ahhhhh mauz ing!

Stripes.  If I was president, stripes would be a required subject in school.  Love.

Chevron and Turquoise and Owls, Oh My!

It's times like this when I begin to wonder if I'm really related to my sisters..... How is it possible that they (and my mom) are sewing geniuses when I can't sew a straight line? I kid you not! I'm super awesome at using the ripper to unstitch every single thread that I've EVER sewn. Then I re-sew, then I re-rip it out, til there's very little fabric left that is unscathed. It's beyond ridiculous. I'm beginning to think that I'm allergic to sewing....

Fortunately, I have very generous sisters/mom who feel sorry for my pathetic skillz and make me super awesome/ insanely cool gifts. This happy package came in the mail today & I couldn't be more thrilled to receive such an outrageously fun gift from my lil' sista Mandy! Get ready for the pics peeps. Put down your diet cokes (so you don't choke with crazy excitement), steady yourselves (so you don't fall off your chairs) and hold on to your socks, cause I'm about to fill your screen with some chevron happiness!



Squeal! Doesn't this little corner just make you happy? Who knew all it needed was turquoise chevron to make it purrrty? Let's take a closer look at the quilt my loverly sis made.... (big sigh, followed by huge smile) I mean first turquoise, but then she edged it with a fun chartreuse folks! S. T. O. P. IT! It's too good.....






As if that didn't make your heart pitter patter enough...... then come the owls!

Who00 (get it? Whoo Whoo? My jokes bring down the house with 2nd graders!) needs a boring backside of the quilt when you can have these funky little creatures to smile at! I'm super sorry Mandy I opened my birthday gift way early, but I can't possibly put it away and pretend I didn't see it! I'm just too happy! Love is not a strong enough description. More like stalker obsessed with my quilt! Don't be surprised if I find a way to wear it as an accessory. I'm thinking wrapping it around like a sweater adding a skinny yellow belt and finishing it off with ruffly flats..... perfect!

I'm linking to these fabulosa sites:
Blue Cricket -sorry can't find her button