Happy Mother's Day!

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Happy Mother's Day!  Mom...I love you!  Thank you so much for all you've done for me in the past and for all you continue to do for me!  This past year was a doozie, and your love and support has been so greatly appreciated.  Thanks for being such a great example of hard work, dedication and self sacrifice.  And also thanks for being the adorably quirky, penguin costume wearing, paleo diet eating, constantly nurturing, slightly over-dramatic, and on trend woman that you are today.  I love everything about you!  (Also, I think you should write a cook book, because I'm fairly sure you could get your own show on the Food Network. Why did I not realize how good I had it in high school?)

And also, I'm one of the few lucky ladies who have been extremely blessed to have an amazing mother-in-law!  Gail, I just love spending time with you!  Thanks for being a great listener and a great advice giver.  And especially thanks for agreeing to keep the drum set at your house:)!

To all mothers, have an incredibly blessed day today and every day!

Friday Night is Family Movie Night!

For the last few months, we've been having fun with Friday Night Movie Night.  It usually involves pizza that we eat downstairs while watching a movie of Lucky or Charm's choice.  It is so much fun for everyone, and we look forward to it every single week!

Last Friday, I decided to try out a kettle corn recipe that I found at Recipes.com.  It was so easy and so yummy!  We enjoyed our delicious kettle corn dessert and watched our movie and had a wonderful time.  Of course, I had to have fun with the popcorn presentation:

I used a beverage container that I picked up at TJ Maxx earlier in the week after a quick dermatology skin check with the kiddos.  (Read more about why family skin checks are important here.)  I'm so lucky that my dermatologist's office is across the street from a TJ Maxx...a little retail therapy never hurt anyone:)!

I had seen a container similar to the one I picked up here:

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And I also had seen a similar newspaper popcorn holder in an old Pottery Barn catalog:

(I have binders with 'inspiration images' and 'DIY' project ideas, and I've had this picture saved for awhile.) 

So I turned these items:

Into this:

We'll be making kettle corn again in the very near future!!  Happy Friday to you all and have a great weekend!

Wine is Good for You

That's what we believe around here anyway, and although Bill and I met in a bar where we were both drinking beer:), we still love a good glass of wine with increasing frequency as of late.  We found a couple organic wine options at our local Trader Joe's and we love them!

As for the corks that come out of the bottles we're consuming, we're taking after my dear Aunt Judi and saving them.  Judi has a huge tub full of them in her great room.  It's quite an impressive collection.  We've been marking a few of our wine corks with important dates that we popped open a wine bottle for...like holidays and birthdays, and even cinco de mayo:)!

And we've been placing the corks in this 'vase' of sorts.  It's the same set up we used for this post.

It's been fun to watch the cork level rise:).  Has anyone else been collecting wine corks?  Has anyone made art out of them?

Float Like a Butterfly...

...or you could just add some to your home decor:).  It is spring, after all.

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I had to get in on the butterfly action!  I rounded up these supplies:

Butterflies from Kohl's that I picked up a couple years ago, some sticks from the backyard and some $1 store moss rocks (like I used here).

To create this:

And this:

I love cloches.  I found the dome cloche at Kohl's 60% off, with an additional 30% off coupon, it was about $16.  The huge bell cloche was $19.99 at Home Goods and the tray it rests on was a $3.74 Target clearance buy that has been waiting for a big glass cloche to set on top of it for about 1 year.  

Spring has sprung in our house.  Yeah!!

Also, I wanted to mention that this house will also be seeing some mounted faux butterflies in the near future.  I usually wait to post my projects until they are complete, but if anyone reading this is interested in a mounted butterfly display, it would greatly benefit you to know that Michael's is clearing out a big selection of shadow box display frames currently, along with some regular frames as well.  I picked up five shadow box frames/cases on the cheap with prices ranging from $3.99 to $11.99.  Many were marked down about 80%!!  I may make a wall art collage out of a few of them and turn a couple of them into presents:)!

Also, I saw this picture in the May issue of Country Living Magazine: 

I did some searching for die cut butterflies and found that the source listed in Country Living Magainze, Blumchen, offered the best deal for orders of 4 butterfly sheets and larger, and this etsy seller was the best deal for less than 4 sheets of die-cuts when you include shipping.  

I ordered several sheets, and I can't wait for them to arrive!  I'll post my finished result in the future:)!  Does anyone else have butterfly fever?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Yeah for head umbrellas, 'just like mom' dress up time and potty training!!

Hanger Happiness

After spending a week staring at three different colors of velvet hangers

and wanting to upgrade from the white plastic hangers we've been currently using

I saw this post by Carrie at Dream Green DIY which featured a closet using wooden hangers.  I loved the way it looked, so I quickly returned the velvet hangers (which would be a better choice if I had limited hanging areas for my clothing or if I had an enormous collection of clothing) and made a trip to IKEA for some Bumerang hangers.  I purchased 20 eight-packs of hangers for $80, and stumbled upon a $40 IKEA gift card in my wallet from awhile back...so it felt like I made the upgrade for a mere $40:). 

This upgrade was definitely not a 'necessary' upgrade.  The plastic hangers were working just fine.  Perhaps that was why I struggled for so long to make a color choice on the velvet hangers.  I didn't really love they way they looked (though they are very practical in certain closet situations), and I figure if I was going to spend money upgrading hangers, I wanted to really love them.  And now I do.  Here is a sneak peek (I'll do a full closet reveal in the near future.):

The tangled wires above Bill's shirts on the left side are from our bathroom tv and cable box that is mounted on the other side of the wall.  I'm trying to decide if and how I'll make it a little nicer up there:).  Cord control recommendations anyone?

And here's a before and after from my side of the closet:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I just love the new look.  I was joking with Bill that now my hangers are nicer than my clothing:).  Guess I have to do a little shopping, huh:)?

Have a super weekend!

The Hello Goodbye Series: Cotton Talk

If you read this post or this post, you know that we've been making an attempt to reduce that amount of chemicals in our household.  We started in the kitchen by switching from teflon coated pots and pans to cast iron pans and stainless steel pots.  We've made a couple other changes in our kitchen as well, but I wanted to focus this post on bedroom textiles.

After considering that we spend a third of our lives (8 hours/day) in our beds, it seems like a good idea to eliminate any man-made fabrics from our pajamas and bedding.  It only makes sense that nearly covering our entire skin surface in a natural product such as cotton or wool is better than covering ourselves with chemical laden alternatives like nylon and polyester, especially those that contain chemical flame retardants or wrinkle guards.  

We have recently completed our goal of switching our bed sheets to the 100% cotton variety (In most cases organic cotton thanks to Target's reasonably priced organic cotton line that is on sale this week:)!  Also, I was able to print a $5 off coupon a couple weeks ago from Target.com, so I was able to pick up a set of organic cotton twin sheets for $18 this week.).

Also, we've shifted to using cotton pajamas, especially for our kiddos.  The task of tracking down cotton pajamas was easy for Charm who is still in toddler sized clothing.  The majority of his pajamas were 100% cotton already, so he was set.  My task proved much more challenging for Lucky, since the vast majority of retailers only sell polyester or cotton pajamas with flame retardant in them for young girls.  Lucky had 2 pairs of cotton pajamas to start and about 100 pairs of polyester pj's (really about 8).  I did find one pair of pajamas at Gymboree that was 100% cotton a couple weekends ago, and  I did splurge on a set of Hanna Andersson pajamas for each kiddo a few weeks ago, but they were on sale for $30 per set of pajamas.  Budget-wise, I couldn't fill up a pajama drawer (my goal was to have 7 pairs of pj's for each child) with Hanna Andersson pj's, so I got creative and picked up a few simple cotton t-shirts for $6 each at Target, and paired them with a few cotton leggings that my sister gave Lucky last weekend.  (I also picked up a pair at the Gymboree sale a couple weekends ago for $1.50.)

Hello Cotton Pajamas (and Sheets):

Goodbye Polyester PJ's (and sheets):

Lucky and Charm are officially set in the cotton sheet and pajama department, as are Bill and I.  And while we all sometimes wear some man made textiles during the day, at the very least we are in cotton 1/3 of the time, and every little bit helps:)!