Stationery card

Here is our Christmas card for this year!

 

 

 

 

 

Simply Jolly Christmas Card

Quick and easy: Christmas photo cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

{fall is here}

Well I managed to go the whole month of September without a single entry. I can thank that to graduate school. Some of you may be familiar with it, it sucks your life away and leaves no room for hobbies. :) Hopefully I'll be able to do a little bit more of my homey/crafty hobbies coming up as I'm about to cut back on my job even more to make the grad school less painful. Plus I have a list of things I want to do!

Anyway, this weekend was rather eventful compared to our past couple months of weekends.

On Saturday morning we took part in the Walk for Life, put on by Liberty Women's Clinic. The walk benefits Liberty Women's Clinic, an organization that serves as a resource for pregnant women and encourages the pro-life choice. Caleb and I decided to participate in honor of my late father, Tom, who was a large supporter of pro-life efforts. As a way to honor his memory, we decided to wear the same type of footwear he was often found wearing: black dress socks and sandals:

Caleb was forced to wear flip-flops because he couldn't find his slip-on sandals :)

After the walk, we decided it was time to pick some pumpkins! We have a favorite place to go up in Rushville, MO {Caleb's hometown}, called Crockett Farms. They have every type of pumpkin and gourd along with corn, milo stalks, hay bales and mums. And all for the right price! I also love how the owner sets everything up, it's adorable and she has lots of great ideas on how to display your purchases.

So when we got home I got to set it all up, my favorite thing to do! Here is how my mantel turned out:

Books are always present in decorating

Indian corn in a tall basket

I had seen a picture of a mantel decorated for fall with lots of muted tones, so I went for the pale pumpkins and gourds to try to achieve that look.

Hope your fall is starting off great!

thrifty find + succulents

Recently on Pinterest I have seen a lot of succulents.  They are awesome looking when planted in groups and sometimes come in really unique colors.  I saw some for sale at the Kansas City Rivermarket a few weeks ago for $1-2 each, which I thought was a pretty good price, so I bought a few.  I wasn't sure of what I was going to plant them in though.  They don't really need a traditional pot because they have a shallow root system.  I also wanted to plant them in an interesting container, preferably something antique-ish looking.  So I went on a thrift store hunt to find a container to plant mine plus some for a friend who enjoys them as well.  After several stores I finally came across these containers:

They were oval brass containers that had a bit of a worn down look, which is exactly what I wanted, and of course they were so reasonably priced at a couple dollars a piece!  I had read a tutorial for planting succulents before and so I follow the same steps it described.  First I added a layer of rock to the bottom of both containers.  Next, I took a coffee filter {which fit perfectly in the containers} to hold the soil above the rock so that it could drain well.  Too much water is bad for the succulents since they are cactus-like or in the same family or something like that...

So I added the plants and was happy with the way they turned out... One for me and one for my friend for her birthday!  Supposedly they are easy to care for too!

I also want to try putting them in flour sifter like this picture.  It would be so cute in a kitchen.

From fiskars.com

Have a good weekend!

{summertime snapshots}

Here are some of my favorite photos and memories from this summer {which seems to be quickly coming to an end} :(

These are all from the city market

i love taking pics of food and then hanging them in my kitchen!

there are amazing flowers to be found at the market

not 100% sure what type of vegetable this is!

Caleb took this pic of me at the market with his phone :)

These pics are from the 4th of July which we spent at my sister's {Leanne - check out her blog} house.

the boys being boys

Lainey learning to be goofy... wonder where she is learning that from...?

making faces :P

Miss America! Made by Lee :)

These pics are from out trip to Tulsa to visit Caleb's brother Bryan, his wife Kristi, Kyler & Kamrin

Caleb & Kyler getting their morning read on

Sweet Kamrin :)

What would a summer be without some Royals' games?

Caleb & Lainey posing in front of the fountains

Last but not least, a long weekend trip to Las Vegas with the girls!

Before the first night out, L to R: me, Shelby, Dawn, Linsey, Kristin

Shelby & Linsey at Serendipity

Dawn & I about to dig in!

I will miss summer when it's gone but I also LOVE fall!

before & after {dining room}

I love looking at before and after shots of home renovations.  I could do it all day long.  I thought I would share some of my own before and after shots since we have done a good amount of work to our home.  We have lived in our home for two years now.  It is a split level home with about 2300 square feet.  A little bigger than we first anticipated our starter home to be, but it was the right one!
The decor of the house when we first bought it was earth tones, every room was tan, and any stained wood was a honey oak color.  I liked it well enough but it wasn't exactly my style... so soon enough we got to working! :)  I'm going to share pictures of our dining room {which is really just a dining area} because its just our eat-in kitchen area.  Here are the before pics:

The kitchen table showed in the before pics is the same one I bought for $30 off craigslist and used in my college apartment!  And good news about the floors was they were in good shape... ready to be refinished! Here is the after:

rug - Ikea, table & chairs - Crate & Barrel, picture frames - Pottery Barn

First in the room, we painted.  The main walls {which carry all throughout our living room and hallway} went from tan to a light blue/gray.  Then we painted the back wall that has the windows, door, and cabinets from the dark green they had to a charcoal gray.  We also switched out the stained trim from around the windows and door to white.  The floor got a refinishing {which we hired out} and went from a honey oak color to a dark walnut. 

We retired the kitchen table from the college years and replaced it with one from Crate & Barrel.  It took me FOREVER to decide on a table.  But I'm very happy with it!  All the chairs are from Crate & Barrel as well.  The two on the ends of the table are the chairs that match the set sold in the store.  The wicker ones {which I actually have 6 of but I like a little more room on a day-to-day basis} are a grayish color that I paired up with the table just to have a little bit of a mix and match look {less mix and more match though}.  The rug is from Ikea, which we picked up on our trip to NYC - which you can read a little about here.  And yes, my husband carried the rug through Manhattan to find a post office and we had it mailed back to us, love him!  It was well worth it because I think the rug adds just the right colors to the space.  Then I chose to hang pictures I had taken in some awesome frames I got on clearance from Pottery Barn.  Notice how my sunflower picture nicely coordinates with my bouquet on the table. :)
Things I would still like to in this area include getting or making some window treatments {probably buy some cause lets be honest, I don't really sew}, and I'm also pondering the idea of painting the back door a color... but we will see.  So this the the first before & after to share with you all... more to come!

my favorite home decor store!

I feel like it was meant to be that I moved into a home that is only about 7 min and 20 seconds (or something like that...)  :)  from am amazing home decor store.  The store is Nell Hill's, find it {here}.  I can't afford everything in the store {like some of the furniture}.  But they have great, affordable accessories and tons of inspiration.  I go here all the time just to look around.  One of my favorite areas is the fabric section!  They have a large selection of fabric on bolts.  I often take pictures with my phone of some the most inspiring finds, so here are a few.

I want a giant gray bookshelf like this! {Insert snarky comment by husband here about everything I like being gray.}

Love the art and accessories.

Excuse my shadow in this picture... oops.

Bamboo lanterns, bought these at Nell Hill's and here they sit in my family room.

Picture from the Nell Hill's website - the most amazing ottoman ever!

If you ever have the chance you should definitely go!

around the house

For the past couple weeks I have had little free time, and even less time to blog about anything! I have changed a few things around the house.  I love switching out decorations for the seasons, and sometimes even more often.  My last post was about my new obsession with Pinterest.  I absolutely love the site because I can get so many ideas from it.  I recently found an idea for making yarn covered letters using cardboard letters from a craft store. So I decided to give it a try... and even Caleb helped!

 Here is the finished product on the mantel, one of the places I change my decor a lot.

I love decorating the mantel and changing it out a lot! I have a few pieces that always stay up there, like the antique plaster frame and usually the candle holders.  I recently put a sentimental piece that belonged to my late father.  It is an old glass bottle with a cork lid that has pennies in it.  As a kid I would always take the pennies out and then put them back in, and usually "steal" a few in the process.  It looks like something I would have bought from an antique store if I would have seen it for sale, but it came from my own family which makes it so much better to decorate with because there is a story behind it.

I also recently purchased some new pillows for my basement family room sectional! Two of them {the black & white ones} are from my New York trip, I bought them at Ikea.  The purple and blue ones are from West Elm.  I got them on sale for $9.99 a piece! You can find them here.  Not only are they on sale but it was free shipping for them!

 I really like the combination of all the pillows and I think they look really good on the couch.  Before, my pillows were really boring, but now they really stand out and look like they are supposed to be there.  Plus, I am going to be bringing more of the purples into the room on the next project I'm working on for this room... more on that later though.

my new obsession

It was a little more than a week ago that I stumbled upon the website Pinterest.  I am now offically in love and obsessed.  It is an amazing website for people to post images of whatever... and there happens to be a lot of homeish type things on there, which has me hooked.  You can have "boards" where you "pin" things you like. Most boards are categorized as to what types of images are pinned there.  A few of my board categories include "For the Home", "Photos I take" & "Home Exteriors".  I definitely don't have as many boards or pins as some do, but trust me, I'm working on it. {just ask my husband}

I also think it is such a great way to keep a log of things you love and you can access it whenever!  And even crashing hard drives can't take it away from you. {which is something I'm always looking out for now}  :) Here are a few of my favorite pics I've found via Pinterest...

Check out where all these pictures came from and all my boards and pins here: Laurie's Pinterest