How many of us have a lot of jewelry?

I do! I do! I do!

I never 'knew' what all I had though because I couldn't find it or see it all. It was in drawers or in piles in a couple of different places in the bedroom.

Not any more! I can see almost all of my earrings and brooches now. A few select necklaces are out as well.

You know what's even better. I reused an old window that I had to make said jewelry shine! Here's what I made!

These jewelry holders are all over blog land, and I'm happy to say that this project didn't cost me one red cent. Well it did at one time, but I did not buy anything new to make this jewelry display.

So here are some close-ups!


I just stapled the hardware cloth inside of each frame. This was not as easy a task as one would think, but I made it work. Fitting the hardware cloth inside the frames and then laying down a bead of silicone probably would have been easier and more secure than the staples I used, but silicone would have taken too long to dry. I wanted this thing up pronto!

Another note - did you notice the heart hanging from the window? Its full of rose petals from the first rose that the hubs ever gave me.

Now I just need a good way to organize all those rings I have!

So I know we all have  things pinned under the "I want to try this" file.

Personally - almost everything I've pinned is in that file.

I can knock one of my pins to the "I've done that" file!

I saw this project a while ago and I knew I wanted to try it.

I like to think of myself as artsy. Not in the painter-can-draw sort of way, but in the ways I can interpret things. What I'm sharing with you today is definitely under the I'm-trying-to-be-a-painter category, and I think it turned out pretty darn well.

This is a progressive water color painting and I got the idea from here!
Elise has such great directions on her site, that I didn't have any trepidation about starting this  project. Seriously, she made it so easy.

Here are some more shots of my art project. I love the pop color she adds to the wall in my bedroom. You all know I've got a soft spot for orange. :)
So there's my pinterest-inspired art! What do you guys think?



Linking up to:

Have you missed me? I've been busy.

I've been busy - sweating.up.a.storm.

How many calories does one burn just by the act of sweating?

Its been so hot and our a/c is out, which means everything feels like I'm doing 10 times more because of the amount of sweat that is produced.

I've stayed pretty good with my calories though, and I've made a concentrated effort to drink more water. I'm shooting for 6 cups a day, but you know it doesn't always feel like I've done it - because of the sweat.

I've been able to get more 'exercise' in by vigorously cleaning my house. The boys have sinus infections so I'm trying to stay on top of the dust and pollen, which is difficult considering the windows are open 24/7 because  of said a/c.

In other news - I hit the pool Saturday with the kiddos and was self-conscious the whole time. Why? Because I felt like the girls were going  to topple from the too-big top I was wearing, but there was nothing for it, because I don't  have any well fitting suits. I'm going to have to rectify that if I plan on spending time at the pool this summer. Which will definitely happen, because I need a good physical outlet for the kiddos. You know school ends in 3 weeks. Eeek! Lots of pool time scheduled.

In other news - I've done something to my upper left arm, and aspercreme and sunburns do not mix. Talk about a stinging sensation. My shoulder/upper arm is killing me. I don't know what I  did to it, but I'll blame small fry. He likes to be picked up, not that I mind, because he's not that heavy. Only about 30 pounds, but I typically will lift him with just the left arm because the right arm usually has my coffee in hand, and we all know that coffee trumps almost everything.

So that's where I am. I don't know how much I weigh, or how much I've gained. Stuff still doesn't fit. I'm planning on making me some new shorts here in a week or so once I get my sister's dress done, and then I'll have a good handle on my new size, but I think I'm somewhere between a 16 and 18, with the hips firmly planted in 18 territory. All of this is just fine with me.

See you guys later!!!!

Well I finally bit the bullet and made myself a new skirt. I've been avoiding making stuff for me for the longest time because of my weight, but I've lost 40 pounds so sewing and outfitting myself with new clothes is fun again, not to mention why should I make myself some clothes that may not fit in a few months? Why? Because all of my old clothes are not fitting. Some are not even wearable, others are getting a significant amount of help from my belts. My friend's bachelorette party was the perfect excuse to get dolled up and step out in some new clothes.

Enter Butterick 5756.

How cute and flirty is that skirt? Perfect for winery hopping and enjoying the day with the girls!

The pattern was easy to follow and quite straightforward. The only thing that a little hairy was the pocket construction. The images in the guide sheet were not as clear as they maybe could have been and I really had to read carefully to make sure that everything was lying correctly so that the pleat didn't look funny. Otherwise, its a super simple pattern.

So here I am all dolled up. I paired the skirt  with a tight tank and then topped it with a nice cardigan.

 Sorry about the cropping, but I don't have a picture of me by myself. And why is it that out of three pictures I'm holding coffee in two of them. Oh well, I guess that is how I usually am. Coffee is my friend. :)

I completely love how the whole outfit came out and I love how girly and swishy the skirt is. What do you guys think? Does the skirt work?




Linking up to:

So what started off as a very long project has finally reached completion!

Wahoo!

So the journey started like this.

She's really beat up, but she's got such pretty potential. I love her lines and her femininity. Unfortunately, there's no saving the veneer. It has to come off.
It was tough going at times, and then I just had to stop, because the veneer was not coming off. So a $6 iron, some perseverance, hard work and about an hour later She was completely free of damaged veneer. yay! Now how to finish her? It would take me a while to figure it out. I fixed the pitting and gouges and then sanded until she was baby-butt smooth. Then it sat. And sat. And sat some more.

Then hubs and I moved it inside, and it sat for a few days. I did figure out what paint treatment she needed on the 2nd day though, then it was just finding time to do it. :) I decided on a dry brush technique using the yellow color already in our master bedroom and antique white.
After a mishap where I painted the desk portion and forgot to paint the mirror, the whole painting process took no time at all. So here she is back up in the room!

 Please pay no mind to the mess just off camera. I still haven't gotten all the fabric back into my sewing room. You'll also notice that pictures have moved around, and maybe even see a few new ones. More on one of them below!


 The hubs wasn't so sure about the shabby finish of the piece, but after everything was put together I think he liked it. He said he did, so that's what I'm going with. I love it! I love the whole look and how it all came together! I really love all the details too, including some of the cracked veneer that I didn't remove.
 So are you wondering about one of the pictures? Do you follow Straight Stitches on facebook? If not, then you have no idea that inside one of the drawers of this vanity I found a page of scribbles and math equations from either my aunt or my mom. How cool is that? The vanity was in my grandparents' outdoor shed and lots of critters took advantage of her, but they also left some nice details. Anyways, back to the paper, I decided that the perfect way to showcase it was to frame it and put it up near the vanity. I really like the story behind it and its just a cool thing to showcase.

So there's my new vanity and I am in love.


Linking up to:

Last night, on a whim, I decided to paint my nails. I never paint my nails. The polish doesn't last. And here's proof.

I did this lovely damage by assembling the vanity that I've finally finished. I am so pleased with everything and how it all came together!! I just need to snap some pictures of the finished product(s) and I can share everything. :)

Aren't I nice to make ya'll wait?

Yep. You heard that right, 40 pounds. I've officially lost 40 pounds since I started on this trek last summer.

Feels pretty good honestly. I know I haven't run in like two weeks, or really done much of anything the last few days, but I've still been mindful of what I've been eating and I'm still losing. From my last weigh-in on Thursday until this morning I lost the final 1.5 pounds I needed to.

Don't ask me how it happened, because I was not very good on Saturday. Went on my first wine tour for a girlfriend's bachelorette party. Then had a whole crap load of wine and got properly hammered. For the first time in like 10 years. I don't drink. Ask anyone. I don't drink and get drunk either. In fact, none of my current friends (sans the husband) have EVER seen me drunk. Maybe tipsy, maybe once, but I got properly hammered Saturday. Its my own fault, of course, I had two pieces of toast with apple butter, then went for a 3 mile walk with my parents Saturday morning, then got ready for wine with about 3 cups of coffee. We didn't eat lunch till probably 2, so by the time we were hitting the reds at the 2nd winery, the bar was holding me up. Of course, I did the sensible thing when I realized just how hammered I was, I said no to more wine (after the tasting). I proudly drank my water and ate my lunch (which had all been made with reisling). Lunch was delicious (Thank you Michelle!) and I even ate the celery. Shows just how drunk I was. I hate celery. I can't even stand the smell of it, but it was in the delicious chicken curry salad so it went down along with everything else.

I must say I've never slept quite so well as I did on Saturday night.

So today, I'm being super critical about what I eat. I also don't feel that hot. Stupid sinuses. I finally rid myself of a nagging sinus headache by taking a mid-morning nap, after cleaning and organizing Small Fry's toys. The napped helped the headache, but I could do without the stuffy nose I woke up with. Sigh. The joys of living in Virginia during the spring.

I'm also feeling a little blue, and it could be partly due to the not spectacular way I'm feeling, but I just feel like the hubs has kind of fallen off the healthy bandwagon (again). I was really pleased a couple of weeks ago when he jumped in with both feet, but now he's gotten out of the pool and I feel like I'm battling an uphill battle by myself again. I know I control what I eat and I'm fine with that. I control what the kids eat, also fine with that, but I feel like that I may have to start battling with feeding him because he may start to want to go back to our old ways, and that's not going to happen. I'll just  put my head down and charge through and you can either go with me (which will be easier) or you don't. I'm not going to back down or change back to the way things were. I do think I need to find myself a cookbook with more healthy recipes rather than the one section of my poor, beloved cookbook, but that's neither here nor there. I just don't want to battle.  I will win or you don't have to eat what I make, but I would just rather not have to battle. I'm also sad that he's stopped working out and just getting in some extra activity in general. I told him a bit ago that he would have to find balance in his life so that there was room for everything, but I don't feel like he's doing that. I feel like he's pigeonholed himself and only focused on 1, maybe 2 things. The biggest part of the feeling blue, is that I feel like he's not with me on this journey anymore. Like I said, I was ecstatic when he decided that he was going to do it, and then did it for a while, but then one by one things started getting sloughed off and returning to the way they had been. I feel like I failed a little bit. I know, in my head, that he's only going to stick with it if he truly wants it and I can't make him want it, but part of me still feels like I could have done something more. Silly? I know. Rational? Not at all, but I'm a social person and having him there step for step for that short time was pretty freaking awesome, and I had a nice high knowing that I wasn't doing this alone for once.

So there's my  pity party, I promise I'm done. There's laundry to be put away and I'm making my sister a new dress that needs to be started. Oh and there's the vanity to be finished and then moved. And then. And then. And then. And then. Story of my life. :-)

So last Friday was the last day of teacher appreciation week and Dev and I made his teachers some crayon monograms.

Now these have been done and done and done but I'm still going to share the ones that Dev and I made.

First I glued the crayons to some matte black poster board and then put it in a simple unfinished frame from the dollar store. Kind of makes it look like a chalk board, don't you think?

I hate you. I mean like if I could unscrew you from my body and replace you with a new one - I totally would.

This is not the post I was going to write today. Today's original post was going to be full of glee and whoop ass, but no - now it is full of anger and frustration at the limitations of my stupid broken knee(s). I would be angry at the right knee but it didn't piss me off this week. That was last week.

Did you know that today I lost 5 pounds total this month. How freaking cool is that? I'm ecstatic about it. 258.7 baby!!! Yep that's the weigh in for this morning. Woooo hoo!

I am still doing my strength exercises but today I added in 2 pound weights and gosh did it feel good.

Still watching my calories and battling my sugar addiction but I'm not giving up my coffee addiction so the sugar will stay.

So anyways on to why I'm pissed off at my left knee. I did my entire workout routine and was in the next to last cool down exercise. I was doing the standing knee yoga pose. I was balanced on my RIGHT leg and had my left knee pulled up close to my body, and I kept this pose for probably 20 seconds before trouble descended on me. I started to lose my balance and tried to correct. That didn't work and I let go of my knee but was trying to stay on one leg. While trying to regain my balance with my left leg in the air and my knee bent, my knee rotated in two different directions. The upper portion of my knee started sliding to the right; the lower portion stayed where it was. Enter panic. Remember I'm balancing on my right knee. Luckily, the hubs was downstairs and I called for him and he rushed over to catch me.

So here I sit, stewing in my frustration. My knee is sore, luckily the ibuprofen I took will help with that and I'm hoping that it doesn't swell to badly. Stupid knee. I am consoling myself with the fact that I did not fully dislocate it. That would have been awful and probably worth more tears.

It's been awhile since I've shown up here hasn't it? I apologize for my absence, but he reality is still that I haven't crafted anything. At least until last night/this morning and the night before.

Yesterday kicked off teacher appreciation week at Dev's school and today was bring in flowers for your teacher.

Since I'm trying to save money at every turn, I decided to see what I had around the house that would work.

Enter coffee filters.

I actually tried this project a couple of months back, but never completed it so when we started this project Sunday night (nothing like teaching your kids about time management) I figured it would be quite simple to get it done. The instructions can be found {HERE} on Ms. Martha's site.


I'm so silly. I should know that nothing ever goes as planned, but despite my mishap the flowers got done and look lovely.

I would say a few things about them though.
1) Make sure that your floral wire is secured tightly with the tape and maybe even add a drop of with glue to the first set of petals so that the stem doesn't pull out while you're working with the flower.
2) This is probably a no-brainier, but don't use pen to trace your petals on the coffee filter. I couldn't find a pencil so I used a pen and that's why I have nice blue tinged petals in the purple rose.
3) Martha uses nice water colors. I used crayola watercolors. They're not as intense as what Ms. Martha got but I like them nonetheless.
4) If your stem does come out of the flower after you've painted it, like mine did, I just folded the tip of the tape back towards the flower and taped that up like a boutonniere. Worked just fine.

I'll be sharing another teacher appreciation gift later this week!

Today is a good day.

Not because of the cooler weather or the aches and pains I'm feeling in my joints because of said weather but because I have returned to 261 pounds! Yay! Back down to 35 pounds lost. I know it may not seem like much since I've been hovering between 263 and 265, but since I've been on this plateau it's been the thorn on my side that I couldn't lose these last few pounds to get back to my lowest.

Now I'm not saying that I'm done losing weight, because I'm not but it's nice to be going the right direction again. I need to lose another 2.5 pounds by the 17th to reached goal and I think I might be able to do it. Yay!

I'm skipping my run today because of the aforementioned joint pain. I don't want to aggravate it. My right knee has been increasingly sore over the last week and my left hip and knee today decided to join in its misery. So hopefully a session with the foam roller on my calves and a good soak for the joints along with some added bananas will help me tackle the 4 miles tomorrow.

So I was first introduced to Nike+ back around Christmas time when the hubs got me the Nike sportband. I was overwhelmed and inundated with information and possibilities.

I tried to calibrate the sportband but every time I went on a run it wouldn't bring up the calibrate option. I would later learn it was because I was not running a consistent time.

I finally figured out that I could run on the treadmill and calibrate it that way because I could see exactly how far I went and be able to test their average pace against what Nike said.

Of course, there was a disclaimer in the Nike+ stuff which said they don't recommend calibrating it off of a treadmill, but what do they know?

Fast forward to today........ I know that the Warrenton Greenway is 2.96 miles out and back so when I finished my run and the distance said 3.17 - I groaned. Loudly.

I calibrated my Nike+ again. Eff.

Do basically for every .5 mile ran my Nike+ showed .52 miles. Eff.

So all of my times recently, except for today's, are off. Sigh.

Oh well. Now I have another thing to work towards again. :-)