Jade Sparrow

My passion is decorating but once in a while I get in a crafty mood and enjoy making something with my own hands. I ran across this wreath tutorial I wanted to try out on one of my favorite blogs, Jones Design Company. My friend Erin and I have been looking for something fun, creative, and not already available, to sell on Etsy.com. I thought this was the perfect start for our new adventure. Saturday night we met up at Joann Fabrics, stocked up on all our supplies and headed to my trusty dining room table to get our craft on. After about three hours and some trial and error, we came up with some pretty darn good looking wreaths. Jordan took the awesome pictures and made the store banner, so we owe him a special thanks. If they don't sell, everyone should be expecting wreaths for Christmas, but if they do, that's cool too.

Please visit Jade Sparrow to see our pretties and let us know what you think. Oh, and buy a wreath, haha! (I know how to make pictures links now, because I have the coolest husband ever, so click the pic!)

$1 Shadowbox

One of my favorite ways to decorate is to use items with meaning. Anyone who knows me well knows how much my family means to me. When my grandfather passed away 2 years ago it rocked my little world. Dad had given me some old pictures of Papaw and I wanted to display them in a big way, so I could see it every day and be reminded of where I came from and who I'm living on for. I used a large blank wall in my living room to hang not only the picture of Papaw, but also collection of family photos.



1. This picture was taken at our wedding and included all of our immediate family plus my three sets of grandparents
2. My favorite wedding picture
3. Our little family on Thanksgiving 2010
4. Papaw and his 5 kids the last time they were all together before he passed away
5. Papaw in the navy, year 1944
6. My mom, her two brothers (one has passed away since then) and Mamaw
7. Jordan's family at his younger brother's wedding
8. Jordan's family at Christmas 2008

I have a collection of small sentimental items I want to start adding to the wall. The first of which is the shadowbox in the upper left hand corner. It displays one of the bullet shells that was fired at Papaw's military funeral. I had been searching for a shadowbox that was small enough to blend into the other collection of photos. I found this one at the thrift store for a dollar. It was yellow with a butterfly picture in the center.

(These are my thrift store finds for the week)



I took the box apart, spray painted the frame white, and from there I got ghetto creative. I wanted the bullet shell to be on a white fabric cushioned back. I used super glue and makeup sponges (I was working with what I already had on hand) to make the padding and an old white dress shirt I hadn't worn in years for the fabric.



I'm really happy with the way it turned out. You can't even tell there are makeup sponges hanging on the wall :)

What She Said

Two days ago my 88 year old grandmother fell and broke her femur. She had surgery to repair it yesterday. Thankfully I have a big family. Lots of people to convince Mamaw she has to eat, has to get out of bed, she even had to be convinced she had to have surgery. So this isn't the post I've been dreaming up. I have a bedroom that's complete, a $1 shadow box that I'm immensely proud of, and some indoor potted plants that have survived. All of them really want to make it to the blog. But Mamaw trumps all indoor plants. As the nurse in the family I feel a lot of pressure to always be there or at least be available. But I also bring it on myself because nurses are fixers, we don't rely on other people to gather and relay our information and preform the task to getting our patients on the road to recovery.

While I'm busy playing private nurse I will leave you with this video of Mamaw we took on Labor Day.

$1 Basket

I've recently made it a habit to stop into a local thrift store every chance I get. Ever since I discovered the joys of garage sales and thrift stores (I know, late bloomer) I've learned one thing: if you almost think you could possibly like it BUY IT! I made the mistake two times of trying to go back to buy something I thought twice about only to find it gone. The first time it was a cute little rattan footstool at a garage sale. The second time was a pair of children's metal outdoor chairs that looked something like this:



I know! How could I pass up on something that was so incredibly adorable?! I actually did go back to the thrift store within a couple hours but some other very lucky individual had already snatched them up. They would have been perfect for my aspiring re purposing then selling junk idea.

Now that my booty is completely sore from kicking myself, I have definitely learned my lesson. So when I came across this pleasant little basket, with it's original tag still attached, I knew it was MINE! I didn't know what I'd do with it but I wasn't going to wait around and be the fool a third time.



I noticed that the basket was almost the exact same size as my brand new open shelves. Since the shelves were already filled, the space under them was perfect! It distracts from some of the ugliness of the light switches (Ever so slightly, but still). My dish clothes and towels fit perfectly inside. The colors even match like I had this all planned out. And having them in a basket on the counter is so much more handy than in the crystal bowl above the microwave cabinet (I had zero drawer space for them, that's just where I shoved them when we moved in and where they have stayed since. Trust me, it didn't make sense to me either).



Not bad for a $1 basket, huh?

Kitchen Shelves

I'm constantly looking for new ways to organize and declutter around here. Our kitchen isn't the biggest ever and thanks to Mom, I have more pots and pans than I'll ever know what to do with. Since they take up most of my already minimal cabinet space I have to find creative ways for all the
regular but much prettier stuff.

While looking through countless pictures of kitchens for our eventual kitchen overhaul, and reading my daily decorating blog roll, I've noticed that open shelving is the new in thing! I wanted to use some in my kitchen but I was definitely not willing to sacrifice any real cabinet space. There is a narrow, unused wall between the kitchen and dining room that was the perfect place for said shelves. Since it's so narrow I had to use some cut to fit shelves from Ikea (blech). I normally hate all things Ikea, but these worked! And they worked really well! Now I can display some pretty things and get some stuff off the counters.

Please ignore the white formica countertops that are STILL in my kitchen. I just can't bare the thought of undergoing yet another big remodel project. I like everything being in it's place! We've only had the floors complete for 2 months now. It's like a bad breakup, there has to be time to heal before you jump right back into another.



The little brown dessert dishes were a gift. They aren't something I use every day, but they are nice to display. And that frees up a buffet drawer to hide ugly things in. Our wine glasses are too tall for our cabinets, so we keep the other 8 in the dining room, but having two within arms reach is handy. The cookbook stand is something I use all the time so I needed that to be in arms reach but off the counters when not in use. I've had the tea pot for years and it had been hidden in the buffet with no place to be displayed until now!

Green Monster

A couple weeks ago my cross-country friend Andrea posted a picture on FaceBook of a "green monster" smoothie she was making. The color alone had me interested. So I googled green monster and came across the official Green Monster Movement website. Ends up it was made with spinach. Lots of raw spinach. Of course I was thinking there is no way a smoothie with a spinach base of all things could possibly be good! It would have to be one of those things you choke down just for it's nutritional value. But there were so many testimonials of people just raving about how good it was I had to give it a shot.

After reading through a couple pages of recipes I quickly came to the conclusion spinach+fruit=green smoothie. I used Breeze Vanilla Almond Milk for my liquid portion (because I prefer that over cows milk anyway), but you can use cows milk, yogurt, or soy milk also. I grabbed some of my favorite fruits (peaches, bananas, watermelon, mango) and went to town. And this is what my pretty concoction came out looking like!



I love that I can hide two servings of your recommended daily vegetables into such a tasty and easy to make drink. I even got Jordan, my very picky, 2-year-olds-eat-better-than-you, husband, to try it the other day, and he liked it! Not tolerated it (which is what he normally does when I try to get him to eat something healthy) but actually LIKED it!

Here's my favorite recipe so far:

2 cups raw spinach
1 cup Breeze Vanilla Almond Milk
8ish ice cubes
1 cup watermelon

That's it! I've drank one almost every day for about 5 days now. I've also tried it with bananas, mangoes, peaches, and Greek yogurt (that was definitely a no-go). I've figured out that whatever you pair with the almond milk and spinach, that flavor comes through very strong.

Just try it once, I promise you won't be disappointed!

Poor Pores

While I was surfing around YouTube looking for makeup and hair tutorials I happened upon this girl's video of her pulling off a Biore Pore Strip. It was disgusting and I can't believe I watched it, but I did and instantly grabbed my phone to add some strips to my shopping list.



I bought a box of 8 strips and came home to try one out. After I pulled the first one off, tears and all (It was too close to the skin around my eyes), I got to see all the nasty stuff that came out. It made me feel guilty for not doing this a long time ago and leaving all the nasty stuff in my poor pores. So then I plastered 3 more on just for fun and to see what else was hiding in there.

Sorry for the grim look, it's hard to smile while you have decoupage on your face


While I was letting those dry Jordan came home from work. Poor dude was at work sick all day long then had to come home to that site. Of course, for me it meant I had more pores that needed to be unclogged. So I plastered three straight across Jordan's nose and cheek bones. I forgot to take a picture before we removed them, and I didn't bother taking any of what came out cause that's just taking things too far, and I want to promote readership here, not scare everyone away.

Our faces are much smoother now, and we now know Jordan has small but deep pores and I have fat short ones. Then we had PB&J sandwiches for dinner and we will now watch The Cove. That's pretty much how I like to spend my Friday nights.

You Need To Know

On our 5 year anniversary back in March, Jordan and I found ourselves in Barnes and Noble looking through books. I found this cute little book called "1001 Things Happy Couples Know About Marriage." I started flipping through it and every page I read I had one of those "ah-ha" moments. So I bought the book and it has a home in the middle of our living room on our footstool/coffee table tray.



I pick it up once in a while and read it to Jordan. These are some of my favorite excepts, although most of them are right on.

35. You need to know never criticize each other in public. This can have far-reaching consequences.
101. You need to know that love is showing patience for a man who hasn't picked up his laundry in three days.
252. You need to know if you're unhappy, you're also to blame.
309. You need to know these nine words that can change a relationship: "I was wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me."
313. You need to know to not throw around the "D" word. Used often enough, everyone could start believing it's a possibility.
334. You need to know patience has never started a fight.
435. You need to know to never let her do the dishes or clean the house alone. You know, unless you're having surgery. Or you've been kidnapped.
460. You need to know to keep flirting with each other. It's how all this got started.
529. You need to know your children should be adored. But your spouse must come first
784. You need to know she really won't buy into the notion that men are the stronger sex until there's a noise in the house at 2am
900. you need to know men and women think about housework differently. For one thing, women think about it.

Cabin Bound

So I found this cabin via this blog and I'm booking it as soon as I confirm my holiday work schedule for January. It's in Waynesville NC near Asheville in the Smoky mountains. It's close to Maggie Valley also, so if the weather permits we will be able to go (snow) tubing or possibly even skiing. I looked at a couple other cabins but none of them compair to this view. From the outdoor hot tub no less!



And look how stinking adorable it is! It's so cozy without being overly "cabin-y".



I can just imagine how beautiful this porch would be completely surrounded by snow.



You have to visit the link to see all the pictures. They just get better and better!