Bathroom remodel

My husband and I love our house, but what fun is owning a house if you cant put your own touches on the house and make it home. When we bought the house it had lots of things updated already, beautiful hardwood floors, new counter tops,and the down stairs was nicely painted. But we wanted to do some other simple updates on our own. Why you may ask..well 1. Because its our house and we can  :) and 2. for the experience and knowing that we can do it. Our powder room down stairs seemed like a great place to do a small yet dramatic change.

For a good oh 3-4 months we had about 4 paint chips on the wall to decide on what yellow we wanted. In the next picture you can see the yellow we painted the upper half of the walls and below is the brown tan color it already was. Can you see what the next step after painting was?

Thats right other than some yellow paint our bug change was some wainscoting on the walls!

Now with this what did we learn?? Paint the paneling before installing!! it took many coats and air bubble/seaming filling but we love it.

Our vanity is actually a wine rack turned vanity from homegoods! The sink was bought on overstock which was truly the best deal we could find on a vessel sink and faucet. 

Mirror!

And now all we need is some art for the walls!! 

Cards made on silhouette sd

So a few months ago my husband bought me a silhouette sd!! And let me say I am in  love! So far with it I have done some scrapbooking and cards! My husband just told me that we are gonna save money and that the machine is going to pay for its self with the cost of cards these days. Below i am posting some of my cards that i have made in the last few months for birthdays and thank yous, enjoy! My upcoming silhouette projects include cupcake wrappers and tshirt vinyl for my best friends son's second birthday!

Picture Perfect gift...

For my best friends birthday I really wanted to make her something special! For the longest time i have wanted to make a french memo board. I have one I purchased on clearance at some point, but you look at them go "I can make that!" so why not try since they are so dang expensive in the store! And the best part you can make them with any color/fabric combo your heart desires.

I wanted her gift to be a surprise (of course) but I wanted her to like the fabric! So I sent the following picture (thank goodness for smartphones!) so she could pic a fabric but have no idea what it was for.






My friend chose the second one in from the left! so cute!

All you need is..
~Canvas-I used 16x20 but use any size you want!
~1 yard of fabric
~Matching ribbon- i bought 2 rolls but one was enough my my project.
~Quilting Batting
~buttons or any decoration of your choosing
~stapler and lots of staples
~hot glue gun
~sewing things



Step 1
Cut and lay out batting so there is about one inch extra all the way around the canvas (you will do the same with the fabric)

Pull batting tight and staple into the wooden frame of the canvas!
Step 2
Follow step one for your fabric piece over the canvas and now batting.

Step 3
Cris cross your ribbon stating at one corner and going to oposite. Example lower left to upper right. Start with corners and then do as many other diagonal sets in both directions. Be sure to keep ribbon tight and just staple them into the back :)

 

I don't have a picture of the button step but basically where ever my ribbon crossed I sewed on a button. The button is for looks and much as it is to make the ribbon even tighter for holding pictures. On the back of the canvas I used the hot glue on my sewing knots to make sure everything would stay in place.

Blogging while flying using google chrome

The title says it all, I am on a plane flying to San Francisco to see my family, and blogging online at the same time! So how am I doing this you ask? Today I am flying with Virgin America and they are partnered with google to give passengers the chance to try out the new chrome book and os system for free on specific flights! It was so easy to get, right at my gate there was a special desk to check out the free laptop. The check out process took maybe 10 min, mostly i was just logging in to my google account and agreeing that if i don't return the lap top my credit card would be charged 450$! (oh its going back haha)

So far I having a lot of fun with it. The best way to describe it is part mac, part laptop, part smart phone (it uses apps!) The computer has no actual desk top page thats all in the browser so if your not on the internet the browser still opens to get to your programs. Its easy to use and I cant wait to play some angry birds on it hehe.

Pics coming soon..after I land and can connect my camera to my own computer! Check back.

This blog was written at an altitude of 35950 feet , 461 mph, with 1484 miles left to san franciso!

The purple monster in the room

Whats the best thing about having your own home? You can change the things you don't like! Some of the first things we did in our home when we moved in was just changing out all that old brass looking light fixtures (yuck!) that were still here from when the house was built around 1996.

But what we really wanted to change was the purple monster in the master bedroom. In all honesty there was 2 purple monster items...A fan and the wall!

YUCK!

And now 

oh thats better!

Now we lived with the wall color for about a year till we decided what we wanted. We went for a blue brown scheme in the room and for us its great. Keep in mind we aren't decorators and don't hold it against us.

Now this picture was taken while we first looked at the house. See the purple wall? Well with the lighting it might seem brown but just look at the fan again and you will know the true color.  Not only was the wall ugly but would a king bed even fit? We had to come back and measure and it does! The room is actually really big so why the bed is like that i have no idea.

 

Awww better! except now the other 3 walls look yellow :( good thing they needed to be painted.

Here is the finished product! All wall painted, new night stands a home made head board (home home made in a weekend!) 

Yay! our next project.... the Half Bath down stairs..coming soon!

The third C-Cats

So I grew up always having a cat, even if that meant me and mom sneaking one home or somehow one just never leaving like it was supposed to haha. Dad always ended up loving the kitty. Even if he complained I knew he liked the cat as much as me.

So back home with my parents I have a fur ball Named Toby

 

Like I said a fur ball! Toby is about 13 years old. Somehow he goes out and comes back, I think the coyotes are scared of him haha.

Dave (my husband) got a sweet little girl kitty named Latte about 6 years ago

And then when we moved to Illinois (me leaving my family friends and kitty back on the west coast) and decided to get me a kitty! And so enter the wild and crazy Chai. Now when I say crazy there is no exaggeration. He opens cabinets, climbs, talks and well sometimes he has to have a time out in the bathroom to give us a break

 

As of right now these are our kids and its all we can handle haha.

Somewhere over the rainbow

I am a Nanny of 2 great little dudes. One had a birthday in March so I decided to have special little GREEN play date. We had green food for snack (green jello, green grapes, green milk-yes i said milk) the kids loved it. We put on some St, Patrick's day stickers on a shamrock and made green noodle necklaces! But everyone went home with one special treat... a Rainbow cupcake!!!!!! So fun and so easy that after i posted it on Facebook I had 2 friends make them plus they each had a couple friends make them!

Rainbow cupcakes (or cake if you really want)

white cake batter ( I used box cause i was short on time feel free to make your own)
One set of food coloring
cupcake liners (but of course)
6 bowls and spoons (I used disposable of both)

Separate your cake batter evenly into the 6 bowls. give each bowl a spoon.
In each bowl mix the six colors of the rainbow
                                      Bowl 1- 8 drops red
                                      Bowl 2- 8 drops yellow, 4 drops red
                                      Bowl 3- 8 drops yellow
                                      Bowl 4- 8 drops green
                                      Bowl 5- 8 drops blue
                                      Bowl 6- 8 drops blue, 4 drops red
You should now have
                                      Bowl 1- Red
                                     Bowl 2- Orange
                                     Bowl 3- Yellow
                                     Bowl 4- Green
                                     Bowl 5- Blue
                                     Bowl 6- Purple.

 In your lined muffin pan start layering in each color starting with purple and working your way to the red. Bake and Top with a white frosting or whipped cream and maybe add a chocolate coin (thing end of the rainbow). The kids will be so excited and that makes it all worth it.

 

Sorry for the bad picture it was a quick upload from the phone to facebook.

The cupcake thing!

So cupcakes are the thing to bake these days. I am trying and so far I got the cake part down but I am really having fun trying to decorate them different. I only have like 4-6 tips and I don't get to practice much but I always have fun!

These so far are my favorite! I got the idea from last years october issue of "Every Day with Rachael Ray" Magazine and I made about 3 dozen for a halloween party.

 Cupcakes
 Chocolate frosting
Cream cheese frosting
Red food coloring
Dark food coloring (black/green)
Pipping bag and tips

Use your favorite cupcake (these were just yellow cake to appeal to the masses). Cover with chocolate frosting.

In a small bowl put aside some cream cheese frosting and use food coloring to make the color of the eyes (in this case a light red) then in another bowl another very small amount died black or green (something very dark)

Take a tip  that would make wide lines and make your bandages across the chocolate with cream cheese frosting. Make sure to leave a spot open for the eyes.

With a small round tip make the dots for the eyes. To do the back dot on the eye I found it easiest to use a toothpick dipped in the dark colored frosting and just touch it to the red.

Here we go!

Well not  sure who is going to see this but i figure blogging could be fun and a great way to get more pics of my projects out there! As you can see from my title this is going to be about all things creative, yummy, and furry in my house! I cant wait to post projects i am working on and see if i can get anyone to read this :) I guess its important to know my sister and I grew up with home cooked meals almost every night. In my mind no one is a better cook than my Mom and my Grandma is the baker! We can ask my mom how she cooks something but she will always say "Just remember I never make it the same way twice and I don't measure." So now we know mom doesn't bake cause she wont measure (jk), but she will do her best to tell me what to do, but its never as good as hers! So I look online, in magazines and books and follow recipes to the T (it would drive my mom crazy. I know cause its what my dad does and she tells me every time he is cooking haha). So in my family I see big cooking shoes that I am not even close to fitting in to yet.