Joining the "Southern Belle Dreaming"

In...Destination Contentment~

I know, no matter where I go,

You are with me.
I know, no matter where You lead,

You are faithful...


On lonely road, in valley deep,





Through river wide, over mountain steep,





Still I find You stay with me,
and You are faithful.



I am sure, despite all suffering,
I am Your hands.
I am convinced nothing can separate
me from Your love...


Nothing on heaven or on earth,
nothing past, nor what is to come,





No sickness, loss or pain,
For even in death itself,
You remain~
You are with me.

Note: To join in on "Destination Contentment", or to visit my sister's blog who started this idea, go here! :)

My kitchen mood board :)

Have you ever heard of a "mood board"? I read about this in a magazine some time back...you take a "board" of some type~ a bulletin board, a French memo board, or make your own!~ and when you are planning how you will decorate a room, you put anything that catches your eye on this board. Magazine clip outs, fabric swatches, paint colors, anything you love! And somehow~ and this can be the tricky part!~ you incorporate those details into your design plan. :)

SO...I am making a mood board of my own to hang above my craft desk. I was almost done, and had stapled the batting and fabric to a corkboard surface, but am undoing it because I found the brown of the corkboard shows through too much, but it looked silly with another layer of batting. I think it would have been fine to use a corkboard if my fabric didn't have a white background. So now I am using a foam board. Hopefully, I'll finish in a day or two, and will have something nice enough to show you! :)

But I thought I'd show you a blog mood board~ this one comprised of things I already have, either in my kitchen and dining room or things I want to incorporate into them, that are inspiring me as we redo our kitchen...these colors and fabrics will be a big part of the final picture!
























I find if I keep looking at these things, it keeps me motivated when looking at all the work we have ahead of us! (As well as all the ugliness of our unfinished renovation!) So hopefully, you aren't bored to tears! If you made it through this post, you deserve at the very least a thank you for listening! :) I hope you all are having a good week!
It's so nice how quickly the week goes when you have Monday off! :)

Have a blessed night,


Oh, by the way, when I showed the nurse at Rose's school what I thought were lice nits, she said they weren't lice! Some kind of dandruff, I guess! Oops! I was so relieved, I didn't even feel as silly as I would have! :) Plus the nurse was really nice, so it made it a little easier! Thank you for all of your kind comments regarding this little episode of the lice that weren't! :)

Happy Memorial Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! We came back from the cabin a day early~ thinking it would give us a day "off" before heading into another week...My husband and I each had different projects we hoped to complete, but ended up spending most of the day doing something much different and much more unpleasant. We found what looked like lice nits in our middle daughter's hair. Ugh! We were certain enough of it, we used the awful Nix treatment for both girls and my hair...they shared a bed at the cabin, and I napped on it...We have done SO much laundry, my husband vacuumed the car seats, I vacuumed beds and floors and my bathrooms are VERY clean now! (That being a silver lining...) Tomorrow I will take them to school so the nurse there can double check our work and make sure they can return...

Onto a brighter subject, I thought I'd show you a little project I finished...





I know it's been spring for a while now, but it just looked so much better than "welcome" by itself! I found the frame at a garage sale last weekend, and had already taken it apart and started sanding it, when I realized I should snap a "before" picture of it...




It came with a pink bow to hang it up with that looked just dreadful with the blue mat, but that was already in the trash can by the time I took this picture! :) This will be my "porch" chalkboard, I think! I am trying to think of some unique ways to decorate the front porch this year. :)

Well, I'd better run for now! I hope you all have a good night and a wonderful Tuesday tomorrow! :)

I'm dreaming of a vintage kitchen...

I have been having WAY too much fun at the Better Homes and Gardens website...do any of you ever visit their site? I admit, I do get a little annoyed sometimes at how many times I have to enter in my password and say no, I don't want the magazine because I'm already receiving it! But if you can get past these annoyances (and I intend to) you can find so many new and creative ideas! :) As you know, we have been working on our kitchen, and it has been A LOT of work! But I am excited when I think of the end result! I have been looking at kitchens at BHG, especially trying to find the vintage looking ones.




I love this large open kitchen, and the island with the pots and pans hanging above it~ I think anything you ate in this room would taste good just because of the atmosphere! :)




I love the bead board in this kitchen~ something we are definitely going to add between our cabinets and counters! :) Aren't these colors of red and green with the crisp white beautiful together?





Ah, red...I couldn't live without it! :)





And it's always interesting to see ways that go "outside the box" for ways to store kitchen items, ways that wouldn't cost that much to imitate...




I love how they used an old window to create this adorable china cupboard! I may have to copy this idea somehow...wouldn't this also make a cute potting shelf? Hum...will have to further contemplate that!

Well, that's all for me, or I truly will fall asleep on this computer! It has been a LONG day here, and tomorrow we leave for the weekend! I am going to hopefully do a little post tomorrow before we head out, but in case I don't~ Have a very Happy Memorial Day weekend! :) Are you doing anything special to celebrate, or maybe just taking it easy at home? If you are doing the latter, I am SO jealous! I am such a homebody, it's not even funny! I just love being at home, plain and simple. My family loves vacations, though, so I have to compromise on this, of course! But we will make wonderful memories, I know! :) Take care you all!

Blessings,

Favorite Finds on Saturday this time...

Hi you all! Happy Weekend to you! :) I was supposed to do "favorite finds" yesterday, but since I didn't, I thought I'd just do it today instead! Hope you don't mind too much!

Do any of you shop at Costco, if you have it nearby? We do, and although it's not my favorite errand, it ends up saving us a lot of $$$, so it's worth the effort!




And one thing we always buy there is the Krusteaz Muffin Mix they sell...this is just perfect for those times you want to bake something special for breakfast, but are low on time (or energy!). They give different variations on the box that you can make with the basic mix~ double chocolate chip, banana, jelly-in-the-middle, etc. None of them require many other ingredients to make them, and they always come out SO good! :)




My husband likes to make the double chocolate chip kind, but started substituting Quik chocolate milk mix for the cocoa powder they call for. I didn't think they'd turn out okay, but they are even better that way! Who'd ever have guessed? Certainly not me...




And I finally broke down and bought these cute glass jars...all three are different sizes. I just think they are adorable! Then again, I find most all kitchen cannisters irresistable, which is why I have so many, and also why I had a hard time justifying them. But when I was visiting Jen @ her blog Candlelit Cottage, she was showing all they had done to redo their kitchen, and I saw how cute these jars looked in her kitchen... SO,now here they stand in mine! I haven't washed them or anything yet, but just had to show you anyway! :) These will make such great storage spaces for rice, oatmeal and cheese-its! :)

I hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend! Have any of you been doing any garage-saling? The season has finally kicked off here, and I went to a couple of them today and found a couple of cute things I am fixing up. I will definitely show them to you when I finish! :)

Have a blessed night,

Happy Mother's Day!

Well, I've gone and done it again. I have not blogged in over a week! I wanted to, but I just couldn't seem to get to it this week! I don't know how some of you blog almost every day~ it's amazing! :) I am going to try to do better...

This past week I painted our son's room (the same colors; it just needed a couple of fresh coats!) and then my dad came over on Wednesday and we removed half of the wall that separates the kitchen and dining room. Because this was such a huge rewiring job, my husband and I hired an electrician for the first time since moving here! The electrician and his son were here the same day my dad and I were knocking the wall and cabinets down. It was a long day, but we got it down the studs. This weekend, my husband crawled up in the attic and installed a support beam because this wall is a partial load bearing wall. Now this week I will be able to take the studs out! This is just the beginning as we redo our kitchen and finish the dining room...




I finished this little project this week...I got this idea from Jeni @ At Home In Georgia. I so love reading her blog! :) And I loved how she created different words for each season by putting one letter in each frame! Mine didn't turn out as nicely as hers, but I am happy just the same! I used a few different fonts, but they all ended up looking the same! I moved the chicken picture to a different place in the living room, adding the topiaries instead. Looking at it now though it doesn't look quite right. I'll have to see what I can do about that tomorrow; I have an idea of what might look better. At this point, I am just thankful to have got this up before spring was over! :)




I hope all of you mothers had a truly wonderful day! Did you do anything special to celebrate? Or maybe the best thing of all was you didn't have to do anything! :) We went to lunch after church, which was so fun!




My girls...




My girls with their silly faces...




My guys...




Have you ever eaten at The Old Spaghetti Factory? We just love it there, especially us girls! I love the red train they have there, too...Well, I hope whatever you did, that it was a wonderful day and weekend for you all! :)

Blessings,

FitMama Friday

I thought I would do something different this Friday and postpone "Fantastic Finds Friday" until next week, and join my sister Christine over at Southern Belle Dreaming in her FitMama Friday! :)

I have been saying the same thing for a couple of years now. I really want to be tone and way more in shape than I am...which isn't much! I tend to be sporadic with my exercise~ either I am doing really well, or I'm not doing at all! :) So perhaps this will help me to stick with it! My goals are to:

1. Exercise at least four days a week, for at least twenty minutes total. Include the small weights for upper arm toning, with goal to work my way to heavier weights.
2. Drink MUCH more water than I do! Not only would it make me feel better, it would also help with these chronic headaches!
3. Continue to keep eating out at a minimum, especially fast food!
4. Drink less Diet Coke. I always try to keep it to two a day. This sounds like a lot, but it was way worse before! I have such a difficult time just drinking one can, but this is my present goal! (Again. ) I know soda is terrible, but am truly addicted to the stuff! Somebody help me!) :)
5. Keep drinking at least two glasses of low-fat milk each day. (Cannot stand fat free!)

I tried some new exercises this week, and WAY overdid it! I can't remember the last time I was that sore! I was actually enjoying myself while exercising, but was not feeling so hot a while later...Note to self: remember to take it a little slower when beginning something new!

Something I have learned recently: I heard an exercise expert say that a lot of times women think that if they don't exercise twenty to thirty minutes straight, than it is not effective. Therefore, many of us just don't do it at all. He said it is still very effective, even if it is a a little here, a little there! This helped me so much, because I can always think of millions of things I would/should/could do other than exercise. So now I follow this advice. If I can only snag five minutes in the early morning, ten minutes a few hours later, and five more in the afternoon, this still meets my goal!

I am naturally hyperactive~ meaning I can't sit down! But I have realized that just because you are up and busy, this will not tone your upper arms or stomach muscles! If only it would...

Do you have some form of exercise that you really enjoy? I know a lot of people, including my sister, have DVDs that they love. I have never tried these, but think I am going to try out the Hula Dance one my sister likes, just for the pain~ um, I mean fun~ of it! Well, that's all for me! I hope you have a fabulous weekend! :)