Courtyard Garden Before

Our home has this courtyard in the front and ever since we’ve lived here (4years) it’s been unused. When we first bought the house it had a horrible, ugly, dated and unmaintained “pond”. I can’t speak for how it looked when it was first installed but when we got it, it was awful. I yanked everything out of there as fast as I could.

Now, we’re left with an empty space that David has to mow. We’ve talked about several ideas. We wanted to put a floor in, maybe stone, or brick and then have a sitting area. But, the flooring cost stopped us as other things were much more important. So, it’s still empty.

We have a new idea though; we want to turn it into a garden. A veggie garden.

Last summer, I finally planted a veggie garden in the backyard. You see, we’ve never lived anywhere long enough for me to feel I could invest a garden into it. After living here almost 4years I decided it was time.

So, I planted a few tomato plants, a strawberry and some peppers. The strawberry didn’t do very well, the peppers did ok, but the tomatoes were awesome! I loved them!

This year I want to expand and we need to keep the dogs out of it, so the courtyard seemed a natural place. It's about 13'x12', so it’s a decent size for lots of plants.

I want to grow several kinds of tomatoes, okra, peppers, basil, cilantro and some other stuff too.

Anyway, this is the before of the courtyard and hopefully in about 2months it will look very different!
I'm so excited about getting it ready and getting plants planted!

Decorating is MY art

Ever since I can remember, I've loved decorating my space. My room as a child I'd move the furniture around and wanted pretty things in the room. I remember when my parents were trying to sell our home and they were doing an open house or showing and I actually staged my desk. I had the colors and coloring book all laid out like someone was just there. I know so dorky!

Then when I got married I was beside myself with trying to set up everything to make it look great. We didn't have much everything was a hand-me-down. But I did my best with what I had.

Over the years I started to notice that I was constantly changing my decor. I'd get bored with the way something looked or my tastes would change, or we'd move (6 homes in 12 years) and I'd have to change something.

We've finally stayed in a house for 3 1/2 years (big for us!) and instead of the challenge of a new environment to decorate I'm settleing in to this one and really figuring out what I like and don't like and what works for us right now.

Master Bedroom Before

I know that some people probably look at me and all my decorating posts and think that I'm focusing on silly stuff or that I spend too much time/money on things that they think are irrelevant.

I follow several decorating/creative blogs and yesterday I read a post from one of them that really spoke to me. Let me share an exerpt from it:

"Nobody accuses the writer who is restless with the pen and a blank page of  trying to find her contentment in the wrong place.  Is the singer who changes the arrangement, the pianist who craves the keys, the painter who tweaks the canvas, the collector searching for that one last treasure, the songwriter who paces the floor waiting for the perfect words,  are they looking for meaning and contentment in all the wrong places simply based on what they are passionate about?  Is it about time they smartened up and stopped wasting their time? No one would dare accuse them of such.  I think they are created to pursue their art."  The Nesting Place

When I read this it was clear to me that yes, I am passionate about decorating my home. My home is my canvas and I love to play with it. I know that God created me to use my hands and my eyes to create beauty.

So, as I decorate my home, create a crafty item/project, put together outfits (yes that's art too) I'm being who I was created to be and fulfilling some of my passions (I have others too).

I'd love to hear what you think about art, passions, decorating and such!

WIWW #3

This is one of my favorite outfits, it's cute, and comfy.

Boot cut Jeans-Kohl's

Brown Heels-Famous Footwear (pretty comfy for heels!)

Cardi-Target

Necklace- I made

Shirt-DKNY/Dillards

The shirt my mom actually picked out. We had gone shopping for clothes for me about 3 weeks postpartum and this hid my baby belly well and was comfy and cute.

I'm linking up to Pleatted Poppy. This is done to get us SAHM's out of our sweats/jammies and to put some effort into ourselves.  

A Little of Everything

Since I don't have any finished projects to show yet, I figured I'd talk about what I'm doing and what's been going on.

First, we had a messy weekend with David digging 2 big holes. After the snow melted and we still had a lot of water in the front yard not drying up we figured there was a leak and our water bill has been high. We think the extreme temps (for Oklahoma) made it come to light. So, David took off work early Friday and started digging holes to find the leak.
Thankfully by Saturday afternoon the plumbers had fixed the leak and we saved money on the bill by digging the holes ourselves (or David digging!)

We've been trying to enjoy the beautiful spring like weather here. I took Trey to the zoo on Thursday. We got a zoo season pass for Christmas so we'll be spending a lot of time at the zoo this year.
We cleaned up the backyard in anticipation for building and planting our garden and for lots of playtime!

Trey has been sick on and off the past 3ish weeks. Getting his first ever ear infection (at 2 1/2yrs old). Runny nose and coughing. It seems that when I take him out in nice (60's/70's) weather he ends up with something the next day. I'm not sure what to do about that. We are using some essential oils to help the symptoms.

I'm in the process of a couple of projects: sewing a dress, hemming some of my shirts, planning our gardens, and making some pillow shams for the master bedroom.

The dress is giving me problems, the pattern isn't the easiest to understand and I'm a bit rusty.

Now that I have a sewing machine that works, I'm undertaking hemming a bunch of my shirts. I'm short waisted and the majority of shirts I find are too long. I was getting them hemmed at a tailor shop but after my Goodwill finds (about 10) I now have too many to affordably get them all hemmed. So that's on my list for this week.

I'm trying to figure out how to layout my garden beds for everything we want to grow this year. We want lots of tomato plants, peppers, okra, strawberries, basil, cilantro, and maybe some blackberries and onions. I'm so excited for the weather to stay warm enough to get planting!

I found some remnant fabric at the store last week that should be perfect for making pillow shams for our bed. I haven't planned this out yet so it's a bit early to tell you how it's going.

So that's my random goings on.
What projects or things have you been up to lately?

WIWW #2

Ok, here is a couple of outfits I wore this week.

Sorry, the left side of the outfit is dark, I'll work on this.

Brown heels-Famous Footwear

Jeans-Kohls

Purple cardi-Target

Green shirt-Goodwill

Necklace-Claire's

Shoes/Jeans same as above

Turq tank-JCP

Brown cardi-Banana Republic (found at Goodwill)

necklace same as above. It's new and I'm still getting used to it being so big. I don't normally wear such big pieces of jewlery, but I'm challenging myself a bit!

What do you think?

Trey's Room Update

Last month I posted about some picture frames I put up in Trey’s room. I only had 4 at the time and as most of you will know, you need an odd number of items grouped to help it be balanced.

So, I looked around Goodwill and found another frame. I also decided to move another frame in there from the kitchen.

Back in September I found at Goodwill a blond frame with 4 picture openings that had never been opened. The frame needed a little glue but other than that it was in great shape. I don’t like blond wood colors so I knew I’d paint it.

I did paint it, actually I spray painted it a turquoise color and had a blank wall in the kitchen that I thought would be a great spot for it. For a few months it’s hung there and been fine but I haven’t loved it, actually I haven’t even liked it. The color wasn't working for me and it wasn't working in the kitchen. But sometimes I leave something until I know what to do with it.

Then it hit me that it would be great, repainted black and hung in Trey’s room! So, that’s what I did! I printed some new pics and now the wall is really filled in and I really like how it looks.

Ok, here's the before before with a naked wall

Here's the before after, with only 4 frames

And again the current after

Sharing the Love

In honor of today: Valentine's day, I want to share with you a post my wonderful husband David wrote on his blog. David is passionate about marriages, cooking and writing. Please take 2 minutes and read his post: It has been almost 13 years

Happy Valentine's day to the love of my life!

Summer '06

We are celebrating here at home tonight. What are your plans for today?

Master Bathroom Before & After

Our master bathroom is actually just a toilet and shower stall. Our sink/counter/mirror is in the bedroom. That sounds very dorm room like but it’s not. It looks better than that. Anyway, that little room has been very neglected. I haven’t known what to do, didn’t want to spend much, and no one ever saw it so it wasn’t a priority.


Now, that I’m really trying to get the master bedroom in shape the bathroom had to follow. So, one day I decided to just paint it.

When we bought the house it was painted a brownish color. The color it’s self wasn’t bad but in a windowless room it was a cave. Then, while I was prego with Trey I got it in my head it “had” to be painted, and painted a blue color.

So my wonderful hubby painted it for me. I was going for a soothing, ocean feel. But that fell short. It was just blue.

Here’s the blue bathroom

That’s ok though, that’s the great thing about paint, if you don’t like it just repaint it!

I decided to use some paint I already had that was leftover from another room in the house. It’s a creamy neutral color that really lightened up the small space. Did I mention that the ceiling height is shorter in there too?

So, I got it painted, and then I had a shelf that I wasn’t using that I had David hang, moved a picture in there and added some extra decorations to the shelf.

It turned out better than I expected. I really enjoy going in there now and it looks like a real room in the house instead of a cave!

AND, it was all FREE! Woo-Hoo!!!

I’d like to get some new rugs but these will do for now. And I need some seashells to go in the glass vase.

What I Wore Wednesday

This is the first in a series I hope to continue, called What I Wore Wednesday (WIWW). I’m inspired by another blog that I follow that started this. I enjoy it because I get ideas and inspiration from other women on how to put stuff together or where to get something. And since I love creating, clothing is just another outlet of that.


So, here we go.

The sweater is Old Navy (I actually bought it at Goodwill)

The blue cami is Maurice’s

The jeans are Apt 1, Kohl’s

The red shoes are from DSW shoes (my new favorite shoes)

The necklace is my own creation and says Trey on the charm with a blue bead

Yes, my sleeves are rolled up, I do that when I’m at home. The sweater looks really short on me, that’s because I’m short waisted (short torso) but it’s actually a perfect length for me. The white smudge by my shoe is a defect in my mirror (that’s what you get with cheap mirrors).

Sorry about the picture quality, I’ll work on getting better ones for these posts.

Goodwill finds

I've been away longer than I intended. We've have some crazy snowy weather, and a sick little boy.

However, we were finally able and SO ready to get out on Saturday. We decided to go Goodwilling (is that a word?) to see what we could find. David and I love doing this together and have found some good stuff over the years. This weekend was no exception.

I went looking for some clothes and some house decor stuff. I love looking for clothes there, they have all the short sleeved shirts together and then all the long sleeeved together and then they are put in color order (ROYGBIV), which I LOVE! I usually think this way when it comes to clothes so it works well for me. Oh, and you can't beat their prices!

I did find several nice tops from Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Ann Taylor Loft. Sorry no pics of those right now. I'll do a post on that later.

The house stuff is the way cool stuff. You have to look through a bunch of junk and sometimes you have to look beyond an item's color or original condition. Most things can be painted  and some stuff just needs a good cleaning.

Here's what I found.

I found a set of 7 wooden bowls. There are 4 matching and then 3 matching. I LOVE wood items and these bowls were great! I don't know yet what I'll do with them but they would be great for decorating or using in the kitchen or for parties.

The basket is for the kitchen to hold all our vitamins. I don't like the color but that can be changed. I'm going to spray paint it when the weather warms up a bit.

The glass bottle, I just loved and had to have. I LOVE glass as much as wood so if I like the shape I get it if it's affordable. I can always use this in decorating around the house anywhere. Or, as a cute vase.

The colored baskets came together in a set of 3, 2 blue, 1 green. I loved the colors and thought they'd be great for spring/summer decorating.

The cutting board is an inch of solid wood and in good shape. We thought it would be good to use as a bread serving platter. We're going to sand the faces and then oil them so it's clean for us. And it's WOOD!

The black tray I thought would work to put on top of my bedroom dresser to hold candles. I put it there but didn't like it. So, it's in limbo right now. It needs a new paint job but that's easy enough. If I don't use it for decorating then it would be good for the table for parties. Maybe to hold some cookies or something.

The frame is just a simple 5x7 wood frame. Goodwill is a great place for picture frames. They are cheap, sometimes you can find cute unusal ones, and some just need to be painted or oiled to make them look great. This one is going on Trey's bedroom wall. I think I'm going to paint it but we'll see.

And lastly the black thing in the middle is a small tripod. This was a great deal. It has short legs and is made to sit on a table or shelf. I have one that stands at about my height but this little one will come in handy.

All in all, I believe the total for everything was around $5.

Ok, the wood bowls needed some TLC bad, so here's what I did. I used a damp paper towel to wipe them down then let them dry. Then I used some cutting board oil on them.

Here's what they looked like before, very dry.

 Here's what a little oil did.

SO much better!

The one on the left is the before, on the right after. Better huh?! I'm in love with these little bowls!
I can't wait to go back to Goodwill and see what else I can find!

A Blizzard and New Lamps

So, here is Oklahoma they are considering our snow storm a blizzard! It started snowing during the night and it's still snowing. It's beautiful but the news is saying stay home unless you absolutely have to go out. Thankfully David's work shut down for the day, so we are hibernating! I think I just saw on the news that our wind chill is -28, and it's only 2 above. So, it's a bit chilly out!!!!! And yes, that snow drift is as tall as the chairs, and the table and chairs are all under a covered porch.

Last night I went to Marshall's and found some new bedroom lamps. I've been looking around and found some at Lowe's and Target that I liked (the bases) but I was hoping to find some a bit cheaper. Marshall's came through. At $40 a piece for the base AND shade they were cheaper than Lowe's and Target who each had just the base for $40. So, I'm super excited!

When we put them up last night to see if they were going to work, I mentioned to David that I hated the look of our alarm clocks. He said I could get rid of his, since he uses his phone as an alarm. YES! So, since I don't use an alarm anymore, both got unplugged and removed!

The night stands look so much better and the bed wall looks much cleaner and less cluttered! I'm very excited about that! For a before on how the nightstands looked go here.

Now I just new some new tables.....