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 :)