Sunday Afternoon Daydream #3: Treehouses

Welcome to another installment of daydreams! Grab a cup of hot apple cider and curl up with me for a few moments, allow yourself to relax and let your imagination loose to wonder about for a bit.

Childhood is a time in our lives when we let imagination run freely through our days, shaping our world into a wonderland of our choosing. Sadly as "grown-ups" we tend to pack it away into a little box in the back of our minds and only pull it out for special occasions. That is one of the joys for me about getting to work with kids, I can keep my creative box unpacked and get to just be a big kid most of the time. I just hope I remember to keep doing this once I become a mom. Well...that was a bit of a rabbit trail to try and introduce our topic of daydream today, sorry about that. Anyways, today I want to take a look back to childhood, a look at one of the elements we all had or dreamed about having. Even many of us "big kids" wouldn't mind having one of these to escape to every now and again. I'm speaking, of course, about tree houses! Those simple constructions of boards and branches that can transform themselves into a wonderfully magical hideaway.

Growing up I had several tree houses in the empty lot next door. Most of them where built with much assistance from my dad, but as we grew older we started making our own places in different spots all over the lot. Now none of the ones I had growing up  were nearly as glamorous as some of the ones that I have found while perusing Pinterest. I'm almost afraid to show any of these to my poor husband, I can just see the look of "oh crap" on his face trying to think of how he is going to pull something like that off one day! Hehe well, a girl can dream ^_^

Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com via Kristie on Pinterest

Sunday Afternoon Daydream #2 (belated)

A day late but yesterday was a little bit crazy. My husband is a children's minister and yesterday was a jam-packed day for us. It being Halloween this weekend we had the church's fall festival, but this year we did something different; we took it to the street. Instead of having it at the church we were able to host it at a local grocery parking lot. It was a lot of work and fun last night but needless to say there was little time for blogging, what with getting costumes together, attaching a 4-5' extension onto my hair(I was Rapunzel), and painting kids faces until way past dark.

I will have to admit this is one of my favorite times of year, I love Halloween. Not so much the commercialization of it, and I'm not really a big fan of the gore fest it seems to have turned into, but I just love the whole idea of getting to dress up and be someone else for a night. I think it appeals greatly to the theatrical side of me, as well as my inner kid that never grew tired of playing dress-up.
I also just love the smells, the colors and tastes that come with this time of year. Normally you won't seem me go near saturated, warm colors, I am a pastel girl through and through, but there is something so magical about fall time. The amazing colors of the falling leaves, the smell of ripe apples and hot apple cider, and the sight of pumpkins decorating the stoops of houses everywhere all signal the arrival of this wonderful time of year.

So if you haven't guessed it yet, this week's daydream is fall decor, more specifically the ultimate symbol of fall and Halloween: the pumpkin!

I think this originally came from Martha Stewart

Source: gardenofsimple.tumblr.com via Kristie on Pinterest

 Follow the bouncing pumpkin for more! ^_^

Cooking Adventures: Pasta, Soup, and Braids

OK once again I bring you my cooking trials and adventures! Once again I found some great recipes on Pinterest (yes I know I'm obsessed!) I thought that I would share them with you and my thoughts on making them.

Source: skinnytaste.com via Kristie on Pinterest

Looks fantastic no? Just hop along after the jump for more details!

Sunday Afternoon Daydream #1: Lilacs

So first off, NEW LOOK! I have been reading like crazy lists and lists of do and do not's for blogging and have been trying to get this puppy all set up properly before I really start. I'm one of those people I have to have everything look perfect before I can start or it bugs the daylights out of me! So, anyways, now that I have things looking the way that I want them I feel like I can start posting, thus I give you my first weekly series:

Sunday Afternoon Daydreams!  Ta da!

Ok so what this is, is basically an excuse to show off the cool things on Pinterest that I have found throughout the week. So what's with the name you might ask? Well, the first part is easy, I'll be posting (hopefully) every Sunday afternoon some time between church and choir in the evening, aka the part of the day that most people usually take naps. Myself however, well... lets just say that nap taking isn't the greatest idea in the world for me as I usually end up pretty grumpy after I wake up from one. So that being said I thought I would do something (semi) productive with my time while the house is all quiet, and lets be honest, what do we spend the most time doing on the wonderful addiction that is Pinterest? That's right...daydream. So there you have it, the name and the reason behind it, now to the fun part...the pictures.

The subject of this first series is Lilacs! There is something just so airy and beautiful about this flower. It smells like heaven, looks beautiful in arrangements, and is a great inspiration for color. That and well, it's just so darn pretty to look at!

Photo curtsy of Midwest Living

I have tried to chase down all the original sources of these photos, and you should be able to click on each and find your way to them. Let me know if any of the links don't work.

More behind the jump

Cooking Trials

Well one thing that comes with a new house is learning your way around the kitchen. Luckily I have parents who are both great cooks in their own rights so I grew up in a house full of wonderful food. Now my husband seems to have taken a shine to the kitchen as well so it looks like we will be following after my parents in that regard. Both of us love to experiment so sometimes eating with us can be a bit dangerous :-P
This week I have one recipe I tried that I will be doing for years to com, and one that'll need a little work before I serve it again.

New house, new wife, new life

As life is beginning to slow down again I have started looking toward my poor, dear, deserted blog. It looks quite sad with only a few posts, but hopefully that will start to change soon as life has been handing me much blog-worthy fodder to use.

For starters I am now officially a married woman!!!
Life as a newly-wed has been fun, stressful, and anything but boring. As our three month anniversary approaches I shake my head in wonder at all the changes that have happened in that short of time.

The biggest of these changes being: the move! 
I am now living in a new city, in my own house. Well, to be fair, we are renting it but we have free reign of the place as long as we don't knock out walls or something. It is a lovely cute home, built in the 1940s so it has some character, however the people before us did NOT take care of it so it needs a lot of love and elbow grease. If I thought moving into a place of all white walls was daunting, moving into a place with badly painted ones is a WHOLE new ballgame!
Over the next few months I shall begin posting my adventures with attempting to make this house feel more like home, and my adventures into the world of grownups, married life, and all the little quirks of being me. :-)

DIY Flowergirl Crowns

Part of the reason I started this blog was motivation to work on my craft projects and share my DIY ideas with others. Right now with the wedding  being 100 days away I'm mostly focused on Wedding DIY crafts and projects.  Thus I bring you my DIY project, my flowergirl crowns. (first DIY be nice)

Supplies:

Wrapped Floral Wire
Floral Tape
Small Flowers and leaves of your choice

 

This is the first crown that I made so with the second one I'll be trying to copy the pattern that I made with this one.

Here are all my supplies laid out for you to see. All of which you can find at Michals 

First thing you to is take two of the covered wires and twist them together to create the crown size you want.

(I forgot to photograph this sorry)

Separate the flower bundles out into smaller pieces and then start laying them out in a mirroring pattern. Start your crown from the middle. I picked two small white flowers placed them in the middle of the crown twisting the stems the opposite directions. Tape over each of the stems with floral tape.

My darling little one Ailinea decided she was going to help me separate the flowers...only she started carrying them all over my apartment. Ah but what would life be like without a cat to carry off our supplies?

Keep adding flowers on each side, you can make a mirroring pattern like I did or you can mix and match flowers and leaves at your pleasure.

I would recommend taping the stems down every time you twist a new bunch on. Keep adding flowers until you think that it is big enough. Keep in mind that your flowergirls heads are much smaller than yours. I left the backs unattached so that I can size them to the little girls' heads and then I plan on attaching ribbons :-)

Well there it is! My first DIY post!

Wecome To my Crazy Little World!

Hello! Queen Bee here!

So finally after haunting Diy blog after blog I finally decided to make one!

Smack in the middle of wedding planning I have been really obsessive in my hunt for DIY wedding blogs. Slowly but surely that hunt has taken a slightly different turn. I began to notice more and more "nesting" sights and that slightly buried desire to decorate and create my own nest was thrust into the foreground. Suddenly that decorating section at B&N started catching my attention. I began to realize that my little college girl flat was reflecting far too much "college dorm" and hardly any of the cottage chic that I had in my head. Determined to fix this I plunged into finding out just what makes a cottage...then I hit roadblock 1#, the joys of a minimum wage budget. Undeterred I began searching in second hand stores places like Ross, TJMax, always looking on the clearence rack for a good deal. DIYing however still has the greatest appeal, thanks to a God given talent and growing up with a wonderfuly crafty mother, not to mention I two newly earned FineArts degrees that are itching to be used.

Thus has come about my desire to start blogging. I thought that if I started my quest of creating a beautiful cottage nest to start off my married/grownup life though a blog, that I could tap into the creative strength and genius of the wonderful ladies who's blogs I have been haunting. 

"It takes courage to grow up and be who you really are" ~E.E. Commings