a work in progress

On black Friday we bought two boxes of frames at target, totaling $24 for 20 frames. Awesome. So yesterday I cut paper the sizes of the frames and starting laying them out on our massive yet naked wall. Next week I'm going to spray paint all them frames and them hopefully hang them up. Merry Christmas to me!

Recent crafts

pumpkin cream sandwiches

i found this recipe a few years ago in a real simple magazine (best magazine ever) and i have made them every year since! they are so so so yummy!

3 tbsp butter

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup pumpkin

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp salt

i didn't have any butter so i substituted with apple sauce and they came out pretty delicious (thankfully!)

don't try to scrape the bowl when the mixer is on...

mix dry ingredients together and add to wet mix

bake for 10 minutes at 375

 cream cheese filling: 2/3 cup cream cheese, 1/4 cup heavy cream (i just use a little water), 1/4 cup powdered sugar

enjoy!

 

try to resist the pathetic look your puppy dog gives you every time you are in the kitchen...

ENJOY!

fall wreath

made this a few weeks ago. a little piece of fall for our home.

my baby brother

proud sisters sporting the awesome shirts we made

 this past friday night was my "little brother's" last high school homecoming game. yes, i know what you're thinking. i don't have any brothers. biologically speaking it's true. i got stuck with one feisty sister. but after spending the last 15 years with the girl and two boys who live next door i now say without even thinking i have two sisters and two brothers. and the youngest of the five of us is andrew. i've known this boy since he was 3 years old. i used to give him piggy back rides, and now he's bigger and stronger than any of us. i mean look at him, he's a beast!

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he's got all sorts of schools looking at him in hopes of recruiting him, in both football and baseball. and while he can be the typical 18 year old boy and act like nothing can stop him, i'm so proud of him. realizing he is the last of the five of us to graduate high school has made me look back on all the crazy ridiculous times we've spent together. sometimes i get bummed that we all don't live next door to each other anymore and meet at the fence when we get home from school and spend summer days doing nothing and anything. but then i think how close we all still are and always will be, and i'm excited to bring my kids to andrew's college games someday, and watch my little sisters and brothers get married, and see our kids grow up together and be as psycho as we were. so here's to my baby brother. go out there and kick some booty. and always remember who carried you around all those years when the big bucks come rolling in :)

15 years and counting

fall has arrived!

 well, here i go again with my monthly posts... i'm pretty bad at this. oh well.

i'm so excited that fall weather has been here this past week! my feet are cold as i'm writing this, and that hasn't happened in months! andrew is so excited to have me put my chilly piggies on his warm piggies :) this is my favorite time of year and i love all the fun that comes with it. we kicked off the season with my birthday, and it was actually kind of a blah day for me. i don't know if it was me feeling old having the number 26 next to my name or what. we had a yummy dinner at my parent's with the neighbors and that's always one of my favorite things, so it wasn't a terrible day. but i got over it and i'm really looking forward to what's in store for this coming year of life :) next up on the list of fall things- our annual pumpkin party with friends, hopefully a trip to julian, baking pumpkin goodies, and wearing cute sweaters. and before we know it it will be time for turkey!

i have a few little projects lined up, so hopefully i'll be a better blogger and post some pictures. and i also have some plans for christmas gifts this year so i'll write about that soon too :)

chevron: the good and the bad

since we've been married most of the decor we have are frames with wedding pictures. after 15 months it was starting to get a little old. so i decided to start with the shelf we have about our tv. our ceiling is really high so i wanted something bigger that would fill the space a little better. while i was at joanns one day i went to browse the canvas section and they were 50% off! so i bought one and thought about painting some chevron on it, since it's all the rage right now. i also got a few bottles of paint at michael's.

i couldn't decide which color(s) to use at first, but i finally decided on the turquoise. i then found i template online of a chevron pattern, printed it out, and fit it onto the canvas...

after spending too much time trying to figure out a good strategy, i ended up marking the points of the zig-zag pattern and then lined up the tape using those marks...

then i painted...

i let it dry and then peeled off the tape to find...

yuck. the tape didn't work as well as i hoped :( i think the canvas is at fault actually, since it's a bumpy texture and the paint seeped under the tape in too many spots. so i then asked my hubs if i should paint the pattern a color and he thought the yellow would look best. so after spending about an hour doing that i had something that looked like a charger fan would own... and i hated it. no pictures with the yellow...sorry charger fans :)

i went back to joanns two days later, bought a bigger canvas, and went with the gray for round 2. i also nixed the tape idea and instead traced the template i still had. and then i painted. and painted. and painted some more. and ended up with...

 

 so much better!!!! if you look closely you can see imperfections, but from the couch it looks great :)

so that's my chevron story. i don't plan on doing anything like this again anytime soon. i do have more plans for the shelf though. i'll keep you posted :)

septmeber already??

where has the time gone??? i can't believe summer is coming to a close. it's always a bittersweet time; sad that the days are getting shorter and the warm weather is leaving but excited for all things fall
(which isn't much here in san diego but what can you do?). here's a few pictures of things that we've been up to the last few weeks...

penny and i went on a long walk. she's pooped.

sushi for the sister's bday

lego action with j & r

awesome concert in la jolla

river trip with the family

i STILL have not done anything to my studio... i'm ashamed of myself. i have stuff sitting on my counter ready to be hung and enjoyed by the lovely little faces that come into my room each week, and yet i have somehow forgotten about it every time i go to teach. sheesh... maybe next week i'll actually be proactive and take care of this project!!!

this and that

over the last few days i've had all these ideas for our condo, so i've pretty much wanted to tear everything down and start from scratch. curse you pinterest. lucky for my husband i didn't really do any tearing. but i'm hoping to slowly revamp this place. i recovered some pillows, i started a "painting" today and i'll post pictures hopefully tomorrow,  i'm already re-doing the bedroom makeover we did a few months ago, and i have ideas brewing for the bathroom. it's a good thing we only have 675 square feet to decorate.

anyways...

i'm also getting closer to having some fun decor in my studio and that makes me very happy! i sewed some bunting the other day and got some other items today and i'm making it a goal to have everything looking good by next thursday. fingers crossed.

happy weekend almost!

love is in the air

my hubs is so cute.

we've been to a wedding each of the last three weekends. that's a lot of weddings. but ever since we got married weddings have a whole new meaning. i love watching people who are in love! it makes me so happy seeing two people commit themselves to each other for the rest of their lives. and it makes me even happier when they are my friends :)

it also kinda freaks me out that i'm old enough to be married and my friends are old enough to be married. and to have babies. i could have sworn last year was 1998.

thoughts

i really don't like fake people.

i'm blessed with awesome family and friends, and i take all my relationships seriously. nothing is more important to me than the people i love and care about. so when i see others treat their relationships in a way i find wrong it makes me mad. and i wonder why i keep these kind of people around in my life. maybe i'm supposed to be an example to them, but sometimes i just want to kick them to the curb and say "good luck". but i guess that would make me the kind of person i just said i don't like...sheesh.

anyways...

i don't have any projects planned. i did get martha stewart's encyclopedia of sewing and some other goodness at the border's going-out-of-business sale and there's a whole section on dying fabric. and i really want to do some experimenting :)

look what i did today

we got this ikea chair off craigslist a while ago. (sidenote-my husband is a craigslist master.) it didn't come with a cushion, so we went down the street to our lovely ikea and got a cream colored cushion. it ended up being penny's favorite place to sit. after a while i started noticing how dingy it was looking, but the cover was dry clean only so i just put it out of my mind.

then penny decided to barf on the ottoman.

i took the cover off and saw how nasty it really was looking. we are not buying anything that color ever again! the cushions ended up being three pieces of thick foam, so i thought it wouldn't be all that hard to recover it in fabric i can wash here at home. or at my mom's house where laundry-doing is free. thanks mama :)

i got fabric, and today i covered the cushions (with mom's help. what would i do without her?) after a few mess-ups, i finished and i love it!

close up of the fabric

now i want to recover some of our pillows. my love of color has finally caught up with me and it's looking kinda crazy in this castle.

p.s.- i pride myself on being a good multi-tasker. but when it comes to sewing, i have a one-track mind. which means i have to do a lot of re-doing... baby steps i guess :)

my first apron

a few weeks ago my dear friend jess had a bridal shower, and since she is a baking queen i decided to carry on my mother-in-law's tradition and make her an apron. i'm trying to get better at using patterns so i found one for $3 and managed to sew it without any major issues :)

ta da!

well shoot...

i'm terrible at this whole blogging thing... maybe i'll make it my goal for the month of august to blog on a more regular basis. i did make a really cute apron for a good friend who is getting married in a few weeks, so i will post pictures of that asap. and i got some really fun fabric to recover the cushions on a chair we have, so that will be a fun experiment :) here's to being a better blogger!

it's july!

holy cow i can't believe it's already july! summer is in full swing in san diego; it's been warm and beautiful and the june gloom has finally said goodbye! i even got my first bad sunburn of the year. that means summer has officially begun in my book :)

i haven't had my sewing machine for about a month now, and i have lots of projects i'm dying to try once i get it back! it's supposed to be ready today, but they said the same thing on tuesday and it wasn't, so i'm not getting my hopes up. once i get it back i will post pictures of all the things i'm hoping to make!

i've also decided i'm going to finally get the studio i teach in looking at least a little bit inviting. i've been teaching there for almost two years now and it's about time i spruce it up. i'll post some before pictures soon, and i apologize if they make you depressed. 

happy weekend! here's to lots of barbequed things and waving flags and watching fireworks. and hopefully a s'more or two :) and how cute is that stars and stripes bunting???

beginnings of a bedroom makeover

since we got married and i moved in to the condo, we had done nothing to the bedroom. we finally got rid of the nasty carpet in november last year and had plans to paint, but that never happened. so, at LAST, my bestie came over one friday a few weeks ago and we painted! i wish i had before pics...

i had been loving the idea of hanging embroidery hoops with fabric after seeing lots of pictures of the idea on blogs and pinterest. and the best part of this idea is it's cheap! hoops are about $1 and thanks to my fabric obsession i already had tons to choose from. i also got some cheap frames from ikea and printed some free art from a website (can't find it for the life of me right now!) we put everything up with this awesome stuff..

no holes in the wall=YAY!

 

 

 

 

we did have to put the hoops with nails, but used tiny ones so it won't be a huge deal when it comes down someday. and actually, i'm thinking i want to add some more and rearrange, but for now i like it :)

we did pick up some more frames (one of them got mod podged last week) so i'm thinking i'll put some more frames in the mix and maybe another hoop or two. i'm just happy things are on the wall at at last!

and here's a picture just because...

                                                                                 she's so lady-like.

fun frames

 i'm not a fan of spending money. when it came to getting picture frames for wedding pictures, i was having a hard time finding lots of frames without spending tons of cash. so my first purchase was from my beloved target. i got three 5x7 frames for $10 i think, and four 4x6 for about the same price. only thing was they were bright green and yellow. not my favorite colors, but i got them anyway. after a while i got tired of the bright colors, so i painted them white. instead of getting the clean and crisp look i was hoping for, they looked dull and dingy. bummer. here comes the fun project! i got some mod podge and picked a few fabrics (i may have a slight obsession with buying fabric; the one thing i can spend money on) and spiced up the ugly frames.

before...nasty white

after!

 i'm much happier with these frames now! and i'm also obsessed with mod podge.

here goes nothing...

i've tried starting a blog lots of times, and it never really happened. so here's to hoping it sticks this time around. i've been doing lots of crafty things lately, and learning how to sew, and trying to make our "casual castle" look and feel like home. after i finish a project i always want to share it with people other than my husband (who thinks everything i make is great- i think he just says that because that's what awesome husbands do) and my pupster, who could care less if it doesn't involve food or a walk. so i'm jumping on the blog bandwagon, because let's face it, who doesn't have a blog these days? alright. here goes nothing...