My random blogging breaks have been because I haven't been home much and while I have good intentions of posting while I'm away, I always seem to become too busy having fun to sit down at the computer. So here's a quick update on what's been going on. :)

After getting back from Michigan (where we spent July 4th) we had a week of birthday celebrations! Our sweet Ruby girl turned three! We took her annual birthday picture, gave her some steak and chicken, and gave her lots of extra lovies.

Loren and I also celebrated our birthday that week, though I have no photographic evidence. We had dinner at Ditka's in Oakbrook and it was so yummy. If you ever get the chance to go to one of the Ditka's restaurants I highly recommend it! We came home intending to have a relaxing night in but instead Ruby got sprayed by a skunk! So, we spent the rest of the evening giving her a scrub and trying to get the stink out of the house.

We did get out to the Naperville Ale Fest and Loren really enjoyed it. It was a cool event and nice to get out and enjoy the sunshine. Plus, pretzel necklaces.

I left a couple days later to head to Washington for almost a week. It was such a great trip. I managed to see a lot of friends, spend time with my sister, and just feel like I was home for a few days. There was lots of eating, some wine tasting, and a trip to Pike Place Market.

Every time I visit now, I go to the Future of Flight museum and sit outside watching the airplanes come and go. I always feel so proud when I think that I used to work so close to the airplanes that I'm watching. It's also fun to listen to the tourists that are so impressed.

Leaving is always the hardest part of the trip, but I'll be back. Hopefully sooner, rather than later! :)

Thankfully Loren and I had some fun planned for this week to keep me from being too sad. We hit up the Goo Goo Dolls concert last night in Chicago. It's our third time seeing them and they always put on a good show. I don't have many pictures because I don't feel like they ever turn out great but I thought it was really neat when they had a bunch of giant balloons sent out into the crowd!

I have plans for two more concerts within the next 10 days so apparently I'm in a musical mood! I think that wraps up my busy July. I'll be back soon with some house updates (I painted!).

Love,
K

Simple, Sweet, and Sentimental

A sentimental Christmas tree ornament really is my favorite. Growing up we always had lots of mismatched ornaments and I always thought "when I have my own tree all the ornaments are going to match". And, I did that for hmm, maybe one year. And then I finally realized why my parents kept all those mismatched ornaments around; because they were special and meaningful to them and it's so nice to have a beautiful Christmas tree full of ornaments that make you smile. Anyway, our Christmas tree is also now filled with meaningful ornaments whether they were gifts, hand-me-downs from our family, or we've picked them up along our adventures together; they're special to us and fun to look at every year. I had seen a few wedding related ornaments on Pinterest and decided to make one for myself. A Christmas bulb filled with petals from my wedding bouquet.

To make the ornament, I bought a single somewhat large clear ornament from Hobby Lobby (I think it was $1.00 on sale), some white and silver ribbon, and had my Mom mail me some pieces from my bouquet.

This was literally the easiest project ever, in fact I barely even have any "during" during photos to show you. All I did was remove the top off the ornament and carefully insert the petals from the dried roses and then even more carefully put the dried little purple flowers inside the bulb. Then I just put the top of the ornament back on and tied a little bow to the top.

I also added a ribbon loop to the top so I could hang it on the tree (you could just as easily use a tree hook but we already put ours away).

Then I popped that baby on the tree and stood back to smile. We have lots of beautiful ornaments we received as wedding gifts, but there's something really special about seeing something that was actually part of our wedding on the tree. It makes me feel happy and swoon-y inside.

So that's it, what do you think? I swear our Christmas tree is crooked but I wanted to take a quick picture that showed the new ornament mixed in with our others. Anyone else make any Christmas ornaments this year? Please share in the comments below!

Centerpiece Update

Our dining room table is in need of some pretty serious attention. I have those serious plans working in my head, but until we get around to them I figured maybe a new centerpiece would tide me over. We'd been living with our table looking like this:

Several different ideas all thrown onto the table. The placemats and napkins have been on the table since we got married, the runner I think got introduced sometime last year, and the basket in the middle just landed there after I took it out of the living room. Things were too crazy for me so I decided to take a simpler approach. I purchased a little ceramic tray from Marshalls and finally found a few candles in my price range at HomeGoods. Candles are crazy expensive! What's the deal with that?! Anyway, I plopped the candles on the tray and put the whole thing in the middle of the table.

I filled in the gaps with a stash of wine corks I was saving for reasons unknown at the time. Seems like that mini hoarding issue worked out for the best! I like the corks as a filler and some of them have little memories written on them like one from my brother's wedding last summer and others from vacation memories. It's fun for them to be out on display.

In the end I decided to just keep the table runner and lose the placemats. They were just taking up too much room in my opinion. Oh, and I added some little plastic red leaves to the filler for some Fall sass in the dining room. It's not much but it gave the room a little holiday cheer.

So that's the quick little dining room update. I'm hoping to tackle the bigger project before Christmas but we'll see how that goes. :-)

Photo Wall - Finally!!

I have wanted to add a photo wall to our house for a long time. A really long time. But I could never figure out where the best spot was. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and settled on using the hallway upstairs. Obviously the hallway is a good spot, but it's not a high traffic area so I was a little bummed that not many people would see it but decided it was worth it to move forward. Here's the hallway before we got started (well, I'd removed one picture frame already).

I'd found this inspiration picture via Martha Stewart and decided to go with that idea. I knew that Loren would appreciate the somewhat symmetrical design and since I'd need his help with all the hanging him liking the idea is good. :) I picked up a bunch of frames from Michael's, just cheapies made even cheaper with my 20% off purchase coupon! I got the pictures in and started arranging the frames out on the floor.

I tried a couple different patterns but in the end we went with the second layout. There are no pictures of us hanging the frames because well it was tricky. There might have been swear words involved. And minor temper tantrums. And finally Loren just told me to go sit down and he finished all the hanging on his own. He is a good husband. It took a few hours to get them all hung but in the end it was worth it!

It took a little bit of time to get used to but now I love all the pictures! It's so fun to look at them all and see so many nice memories. And the way the frames are hung it's really easy to take the frames down so I can switch out the pictures often which is lovely! So, that's the photo wall adventure. Anyone else have a photo wall they love? I'm sort of itching to put another gallery up somewhere so I'll have to put my thinking cap on.

Booked

After an unintentional blogging hiatus, I'm back to share my new photo books from My Publisher! Loren and I had planned to make a photo book of our Europe trip (you can read more about that here and here) but never got around to doing it. Well, I tried but then got a little overwhelmed at both creating the book and the cost of adding all those extra pages! When I got an email from My Publisher that they were running a promo for free additional pages I knew it was time to get this book going!

I ended up using the custom publisher feature. It was easier for me to keep my photos in the order I wanted doing it that way instead of just having the program insert photos into the book. Once I got into a rhythm it went pretty fast. I actually ended up making a "yearbook" for 2011 too! I uploaded my books with about 15 minutes to spare before the promo ran out. :)

They finally arrived and I was so excited! Even the inside of the box was cute!

I'm super pleased with the quality of the book. The covers are really nice and the photo quality on the pages is beautiful.

I love the books and we're going to start making a yearbook every year. It's so fun to look through them and remember all the fun times we had last year. My only complaint about the entire process is that I couldn't figure out how to upload two different books on one order so I had to pay for shipping twice. But, I did save about $70 on each books so extra shipping costs weren't such a big deal. Anyone else a fan of creating photo books? I can't believe it took me so long to jump on the bandwagon!

2011 Recap

It's not too late for a 2011 recap is it? I hope not. We had lots of fun last year and managed to get a few projects done around the house. I thought I'd share a few of my favorite projects and a few pictures of some fun things that happened in our lives.

Projects first -

Guest room makeover. While it's still a work in progress I'm super happy with the progress in this room. The DIY headboard and new bedding is probably my favorite part of this room. It's just so cozy in there now!

The shower curtain I made for our master bathroom makes me so happy. The bathroom in general still needs a makeover but the new shower curtain was a nice improvement.

I also really like the stripes I painted in our half bathroom. It's just nice to have a little kick in there since it's a really small space. Plus, after all that taping, I like to talk about it! :)

Decorating the buffet in the dining room just needed to get done. It was long overdue and I love looking at when I come down the stairs everyday. Like everything it's still a work in progress but it's a big improvement in my mind.

Loren and I also managed to have a lot of fun last year. Some fun involved traveling and we had some fun just sticking around town here.

In February we took a quick weekend trip to San Francisco. It was a fun city to explore and neat to ride a cable car. Never did find any Rice a Roni though.

June brought our five year wedding anniversary. It's crazy how fast time has gone by. We enjoyed a nice evening out in Seattle.

We went to lots of home Husky football games this year and it was so much fun! When Loren and I were in college our school didn't have a football team but we've since adopted UW and love cheering for them at the games. Plus, they have fountain Coke Zero! Jackpot!

In a belated anniversary celebration we went to Maui in November. It was our first time visiting Hawaii and just a beautiful trip. We had the best time exploring the island and just enjoying the beach and relaxing.

We went to Michigan for Christmas to celebrate with our families but this also provided us the opportunity to meet up with some friends that we don't get to see very often. Our week in the Midwest was a nice way to close out the year.

So, that's my year-end recap. I'm looking forward to seeing what 2012 brings, hopefully lots of home projects completed and fun adventures. :)

Sand Dollars

A few weeks ago Loren, my sister, and I took a little drive down to Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast. It was a beautiful place and we were able to see some amazing sites...including a seal posing on the beach.

While we were there we spent some time searching the beach of sand dollar shells. My sister and I have always liked them so it was really fun to be able to find some ourselves. We brought them all the way home (and they were very stinky!) and started trying to clean the shells. It took forever to let the stink all soak out but it finally did. Now I had to think of something to do with my pretty sand dollars. I decided to frame them! I bought these clearance frames at Target for $2.48.

It was a sweet deal and my only expense for this project. I had three sand dollars and decided to use the smaller two and put them in the double picture frame.


I used the frame insert as a template and stuck some scrapbook paper to it to use as the background for the sand dollars. I just taped it down real simple.

To make sure I lined up the sand dollars evenly I put the matting on the paper so I could line up the shells prior to gluing them down. Then I just put a little circle of hot glue on the back of the shell and stuck them down.

That was it! A simple and quick little project to display our sand dollar treasures. I put the frame on the buffet in the dining room so I'll be able to see it everyday and it'll make me happy.

It was such a fun trip and I'm glad I have something pretty to remind me of it. Anyone make a little display or craft from a trip momento? Share the details in the comments.