Weekend Recap

Our weekend was another full one. Quite a smorgasbord of this and that.

 Saturday morning we were up and out fairly early for us {8:30}. W's really on this running kick. It's great. I wish I was more motivated to join him more often. He did his laps with the boys while I did a grocery run. Then we met back up and played at the park. Afternoon was spent de-cluttering our garage. I got rid of one more teacher box! Small successes!! I also found some great old photos.

Each of our senior years

Erin & I

I also prepped a lot of salad to bring to our dinner gathering. Except right as we were heading out the door, without warning, E tossed his cookies. First time, poor little guy. So instead we cuddled, read books, and hugged Benny the Bucket {as we lovingly named him} for the next two hours. Plan B for the evening turned into wine, take-out, and a redbox.

E woke up dancing to his music {W's figured out how to set an alarm to play music on E's ipod/sound machine so he stays in his room until it goes off} and was fit as a fiddle. Off to church we went.

The rest of the day was dedicated to wedding crafts. A friend of ours is getting married in 1.5 months and she's doing it entirely on her own. As much as I like seeing finished products about our home, I really love having the opportunity of blessing others. We're hoping to make her outdoor wedding classy, but without the typical price tag. We conquered her card crate and half the favors. The boys did a great job making the new crate look rustic, don't ya think??

Next weekend, we're tackling center pieces and details for the other tables. Somewhere in this mix, I need to start planning another girlfriend's shower.  Weekend time is sure filling up fast!

Jenkins Come to Town

It's been a little over a year since we've seen the Jenkins. They came back to the states for Tim's brother's wedding. It was so fun to see them again and especially now that the boys are older. We mentioned their last trip here and here. It's amazing how time flies and little babies grow.

The boys did SO much more interacting this time around. Good and bad. We got a healthy dose of what to expect with two kids who have conflicting wills. But it was wonderful nonetheless. Both are big talkers and said some funny stuff. And are really outgoing--they had a ball.

  I don't think there was one moment of quiet outside of them sleeping. And Ezra would take a three hour nap every.single.day Ethan was here. So utterly wiped out.

They pretty much spent the entire week outside. A boy's paradise.

A park trip...

Downtown for farmer's market and soft serve.

Pool time.

And Tim and Kirsten were so sweet to take Ezra with them to the Discovery Museum.  So I could have a day with just baby T. The house was so quiet!

And they had way too much fun in the bath each night.

The adults hung out each night eating and drinking things we shouldn't have. Staying up way too late for being parents of little ones. We had a great time catching up on life, cooking together and playing board games.

The Jenkins are the best house guests! Our place is already back together minus the loads of laundry...but I always have that. {sheepish grin} Now if only I could sleep for a week, I'd be caught up... ;) Ezra already misses his buddy and I can tell we'll be talking about him for a looooong time.

Craft Date Night

Okay, I know. I'm head deep in craft posts lately. And I love it. I really do. I was in such a dry spell during W's tax season and subsequent lay-off that I'm really embracing my motivation and just going with it. I thoroughly love the recent projects I've done, the monthly contributor news, the girls' craft night and a future craft night. I also got some really fun and exciting news that I hope to share soon. So I'm up to my ears in crafts. And that makes my heart happy.

William had a recent "aha!"-totally-awesome idea for our stay-dates {time we set aside for just us when we're at home}. We both have some strong interests that we talk about with each other and will often dabble in. But most of the time we're just shoulder-to-shoulder. I'm crafting, he's listening to podcasts about gun safety. I'm researching my next project while he's cleaning his fire-arm at the same table. In child development speak: we're parallel-playing. Nothing wrong with that. A few weeks ago, he came up with the brilliant idea of setting aside some weeknights to do some face-to-face time while doing one hobby together. We're not only interacting but we're also learning more about the others' passions. That man of mine!

We started with a craft. :) I gathered some supplies for a basic project that I was wanting to add to our master bedroom. I figured it was a great start...it including maps and all. That caters to a man, right?! Once the kids were down, we got to crafting. 

Supplies:

-Maps {free from AAA}

-Three picture Frame {clearance from Marshall's}

-Cricut

-Scrapbook paper {gray, light blue, and red}

 -Glue dots {or glue stick}

-Scissors 

-Pencil

Steps:

-I used the cricut to get a heart for tracing as well as the labels: "Met", "Married", "Live" and the little arrows

-W located our "spots" on the map then traced the hearts with pencil and cut them out

-I introduced W to glue dots while placing the arrows to mark our spots {he didn't love them but gave them a valiant effort}

-We glued the maps and labels to the gray background paper

-Put it all into the frame

And got this final product! :)

 

Now it's his turn to cook up our next activity!

Frolic

My favorite part of this spring season has been all the beautiful mustard plants growing wildly in vacant fields that are squashed between areas of development. They always look so inviting. Just begging to be explored with arms stretched out and fingers brushing against the waving weeds.

 On our various weekly errand-runs, I'd been hunting for fields that were accessible. Many of them are surrounded by barbed wire or are just out of our way to drive to. Then last week I found one that we could just walk into to-- right passed the "private property" sign. ;)

 I loaded the kids up in the van, grabbed my camera, and went out to the field. I taught Ezra about my love of open spaces, wild weeds, and carefree spirits. {He insisted on taking his pasta claw with us.}

{he was there too; in his typical fashion...taking the world in while tucked comfortably away on Mama's back...}

An afternoon well spent. Love my little men.

Craft Night {A Full Weekend}

I love that it's Friday and I'm just now covering our last weekend. Heh. Our weekend and weekdays have been full. A good, satisfying kind of full. A reception party + date night, men's church meeting, lots of spring cleaning, crafting, church, and BBQ dinner with new friends filled out our weekend.

The only gathering I captured was the craft night with some girlfriends from church. It was something we had talked about doing for months until last month when I set a date and invited them all over. It was long overdue.

And craft we did.

Monthly Contributor

I'm super excited to announce that the girls over at Newlywife have asked me to contribute to their blog on a monthly basis. Yay! Megan and Emily want me to share projects, ideas, and tips about DIY, crafting, and home decor. Such a honor so I'm feeling nervous. :) But at least this will give me a big kick in the pants to finish some of the projects that I've been neglecting. heh.

Check out my introduction here.

Striped Curtains {DIY}

One of the projects that really got me smiling in our updated eating area was the striped curtains. I'd fallen for stripes when they began to pop up all over the place. I wanted some of my own somewhere in the house. But anything worth buying was out of our price range. I went so far as to pin some other ways of getting stripes: painting, buying fabric and making it from scratch or using some other material. Well, I ended up going with the third option, but only after finding the best resource off one of my favorite blogs. I saw this post mentioning how Ashley from Under the Sycamore turned this duvet from Target into curtains. Perfect! I thought. I could totally do that! 

Off to Target to purchase this...then time for some quick math on the back...

Since the curtains had to cover our sliding glass door, the width of the duvet was perfect. I didn't have to mess with the measurements. The duvet's back made for a perfect lining. So I just cut the duvet in half, turned it inside out, and hemmed those two sides. By doing it that way, I had clean lines on both sides of each panel. 

I made the button end the top. The first stripe was gray. I folded that over to make a loop to slide the pole through. That took the length up by 6 inches, making it the perfect height for our door. I sewed on the front side of the curtain, along the line where the white stripe met the gray to get it as straight as possible.

Before...

After...

I truly LOVING these $35 curtains. I may or may not spend extra time downstairs during the day just to be near them. Or invite more people over than necessary just for them to see them. Wanna come by and visit?? ;)

Things I learned along the way...

...having a large space/table was super helpful. I used my mom's huge island to cut and pin...

...I'm still not a very straight-line kinda of sew-er-- W was the one who recommended sewing against the line where the two colors meet...

..the iron was my BEST friend with this project...

Stay Awhile {Dining Area Re-do}

Our eating area has gotten a big fat face-lift these last few weeks and I'm so excited to share the updates. I really didn't intent to update this space, although I constantly see it since we spend so much time downstairs. I think it must have all started when I added our up-cycled chalkboard-- from there, things just kinda morphed into lighter and brighter.

So here's a peek of what it looked like before {that is after two large, dark, flower prints were replaced with the chalkboard}...

And here it is today...

We've had {and still have} many gatherings so I've kept the two leaves in our table. I've updated the curtains, added a paper circle garland to the chalkboard {more on those later}, and hung a custom banner {courtesy of my talented new friend, Heather, from CMHandmade}.  I also still have some spring loot hanging around on the cabinet, including the faux blossoms I made`with tissue paper.

Our jasmine bush is currently in bloom. It smells oh-so-yummy in our backyard. E has been helping me bring in some of its flowers to fill a jar with. It's seriously the only plant we haven't killed yet and is so massive right now. We're getting ready for veggie garden attempt #3. Third times the charm, right?!

I would love to exchange the chandelier for something more simple and re-cover the chairs. Upholstery definitely terrifies me, or at least the tops of the chairs. But maybe there's a pinterest pin for that? ;)

I wanted to eventually update this space, but figured it'd be while. So, things just happened without much forethought. Ideas and resources that I'd been looking for just seemed to pop up at the right time so I jumped on them. It really is a fun place to eat, craft, and entertain now. Hopefully, folks will be encouraged to stay for awhile.