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Monday, March 30, 2015

Beautiful Paintings

ETSY has a great community of talented people.  Today I'm asking you to check out my friend's shop: MikeKrausArt Mike's a talented and fun artist who studied The Art Institute of Chicago. I love his work so much, it's just so fun and colorful. Please check it out! 

...And if truth be told, my birthday in June. Just in case my family is reading this ~ I like Mike's paintings. Just sayin...

paintings, landscapes, home decor, art, wall art

Isn't that pretty? I love the autumn woods, and I'm drawn to those colors in particular. 

His paintings of the woods, through all of the seasons, remind me of growing up, taking long walks in the woods, or cross country skiing through fresh snow.

The colors give his landscapes a fairy-tale feel, and that makes me happy.  

paintings, landscapes, home decor, art, wall art

The birch trees are genius.  (Hint, hint, Mom!) 

paintings, landscapes, home decor, art, wall art

And a little shout out for his painting of Skaneateles Lake, where I grew up. 

paintings, landscapes, home decor, art, wall art

The reviewers on ETSY frequently mention that Mike's paintings are even more vibrant in person. So, go buy something! Shopping makes you happy. :)


Please pin and share the love! 

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Merry Monday Link Party #47

Welcome to the Merry Monday Link Party #47

Announcements:

  • Our third Spring Craft Blog Hop is now open. This hop is focusing on Easter, Mother's Day, Recycle crafts, Earth Day, Teacher's Day, May Day, Cinco De Mayo, and general spring crafts. If your craft fits these themes, come link-up and be seen on 19 blogs! Link-up HERE.
  • May 26th - June 20th - Father's Day crafts, general Summer, July 4th. Want to help host the last Spring Craft Blog Hop? Sign-up HERE.

Merry-Monday, home decor, recipes, link party, link up, DIY, tips, DIY projects

Meet the hosts of Merry Monday

See what the hosts have been up to...

The Lady Prefers 2 Save
Intelligent Domestications The Kolb Corner
Craving Some Creativity
Happy House and Home
 


Most Popular

Easter Scavenger Hunt Printable

My Feature Pick


Making it in the Mitten made these adorable Spring Decorative Balls.  Cute, eh? Click the link and go visit Melanie for some DIY inspiration. (She has some great recipes on her blog too.) 


Visit the other hosts to see their features too! It could be you!



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Friday, March 27, 2015

Burlap Wreath For Any Season


burlap wreath, wire wreath frame, wreaths, wreath for any season
Remember when I hung a frame on the wall just to get it out of the way? And my son thought he was so funny:



So to show him how seriously I took his suggestion, I made a burlap wreath to hang in the frame. 

If you'd like to make one, you'll need:

16" Wire Wreath frame
6" Burlap Ribbon (get two rolls) 
Hot glue
Wire


You can see from the above photo, that this is simply a matter of using a wire wreath frame and looping burlap ribbon through the wire rungs.  But it's kind of difficult to explain! 

I'm not able to articulate exactly how to do this (I have a cold) but I will give you a link to a two minute YouTube Video on how to make the burlap wreath - HERE

Good luck making yours. What will you decorate it with? 


Sunday, March 22, 2015

Merry Monday Link Party #46

Welcome to the Merry Monday Link Party #46

Announcements:

  • Our third Spring Craft Blog Hop is now open. This hop is focusing on Easter, Mother's Day, Recycle crafts, Earth Day, Teacher's Day, May Day, Cinco De Mayo, and general spring crafts. If your craft fits these themes, come link-up and be seen on 19 blogs! Link-up HERE.
  • May 26th - June 20th - Father's Day crafts, general Summer, July 4th

Merry-Monday

Meet the hosts of Merry Monday

See what the hosts have been up to...

The Lady Prefers 2 Save
Intelligent Domestications
The Kolb Corner
Craving Some Creativity
Happy House and Home

Most Popular

carrot cookies

Carrot Orange Cookies @Little Miss Celebration PIN IT!!

My Feature Pick(s)

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset



Robin at Redo It Yourself Inspirations is sharing her Old Kitchen Island Redo.  Please go check out how awesome the Island is! 


Help grow this party by displaying this button on your sidebar or party page!

My Pinterventures


If you were featured, grab a button!

My Pinterventures

 
 

Party Guidelines

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Friday, March 20, 2015

Cilantro Lime Dressing


Southwest Recipe, Cilantro Lime Dressiing, Salad Dressing, Cilantro Recipe, Sauce Recipe

Food nudity. Just. Not. Cool.  

Dress your food with different sauces and dressings. It's the easy way to make your meals special, and fool your guests into thinking you spent hours prepping. 

This dressing takes about 5 minutes to throw together, and can be drizzled over just about anything for maximum flavor.

Trust me, you need this in your fridge.  You do. 

Cilantro Lime Dressing

1 jalapeno
2-4 cloves fresh garlic (to your taste)
1 cup fresh cilantro
1 lime
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup ranch dressing
1 tsp sea salt

Take the jalapeno and cut off the top with the stem, and slice it in half. Remove the seeds and the ribs, and roughly chop. (I usually keep a few of the seeds to keep the heat.)

Roughly chop the garlic. (see below for a tip)

Cut the lime in half and place both halves in a small bowl.  To get all of the juice out of the lime, microwave on full power for 30 seconds (or longer), until it is soft.  Squeeze all of the juice into the bowl. You might need to use a hot pad if the lime is very hot.

Add all of the ingredients, except the salt, to your blender and blend until well combined. Note - I don't bother to remove the stems from the cilantro. Taste the sauce and add sea salt to your taste. Store in a jar in the fridge.

Southwest Recipe, Cilantro Lime Dressiing, Salad Dressing, Cilantro Recipe, Sauce Recipe



What do you serve it with? Anything! But here are some suggestions:


Grilled Meat/Veggies
Grilled Fish/Seafood
Fish Tacos
Salads
Enchiladas
Nachos
Grilled Chicken or Shrimp Wraps

Want to make it low fat? Just substitute low fat or fat free mayo/sour cream/dressing.

Southwest Recipe, Cilantro Lime Dressiing, Salad Dressing, Cilantro Recipe, Sauce Recipe

If you would like to join in some fun link parties, click HERE


Thursday, March 19, 2015

What Does Your House Really Look Like?

home decor, house cleaning tips, photography

I like to keep my promises. And I promised Tammy at Taylor-Made Ranch that I would share what my house looks like during a week of projects.  I promised her because I featured her blog post The Truth Behind Perfect Facebook Posts at our party HERE.

Featuring her post meant I put an extra large photo of her cluttered busy kitchen counter on the front page of our party. But I liked her message. Blogger's pictures are staged. Some blogger home tours can make you feel like a complete failure as housekeeper, so let's get real.  Most of us are staging our homes and our photos. Behind the scene ~ it's chaos. 

So to make sure Tammy's not going to send a hit out on me for splashing her kitchen photo on my blog, I've posted a few pictures of my own home, in solidarity.

On any given day, my house is in various states of disheveled because of the projects I'm working on.

1. My living room.  It's winter and it's freezing and painting outside is not an options. So there's a giant blue tarp in the middle of my living room so that I can paint this little side table.


2.  My kitchen. My kitchen has it all.  Just look ~ band aids, bills, sunglasses, my wristlet, a car washing rag, paint brushes, and coffee. 


3. My basement. Always a disaster. I currently have 257 different painting projects going on.  Okay, slight exaggeration, but there are several.  My tools are everywhere, and my tool box is 2 sq ft of clutter (kinda like my purse). 


4. Back to the kitchen.  I always have my mop and broom for company. Kids tracking in snow and salt means it's a constant battle with the floors, so why put the mop away? See that cheese board? Was stained and drying in the kitchen for days. 


So Tammy from Taylor-Made Ranch is right.  We all post pictures as if our homes are spotless. (Okay, maybe some bloggers DO have spotless homes, and that's great.)  But for the rest of us, you see a photo of a pretty plant sitting in the kitchen windowsill next to the latest DIY vase, but if the camera was zoomed out, you'd see a sink full of dishes, the baby screaming and the dog throwing up.

Am I right?

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Everyday Wreaths and a Tutorial

I'm participating in the Patience Brewster Everyday Wreath Ideas. Hop over to their site for some serious inspiration and check out their

Do you have a wreath that works every day, not just for holidays? This is my favorite.  Keep reading for a tutorial. 

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath



I learned a couple of things this weekend: I learned not to spit into the wind, and not to pull the mask on the lone ranger... But the main thing I learned was that it takes a reeeealy loooong time to make a coffee filter wreath. 

Like ~ A. Really. Long. Time. 

However, if you have episodes of Nashville and Chicago PD that you need to catch up on, and it's raining, it's something to do. And the silver lining  ~ you don't feel like a lazy slug, sitting around all Sunday watching TV. 

Here's what you need:
  • Wire wreath
  • Burlap, or any fabric
  • Hot Glue Gun
  • Hot Glue Sticks
  • A pencil
  • Coffee Filters (I bought them in brown, 400 of them)
You could use any circle form - I happened to have this wire "wreath", so I covered it in burlap, to give the coffee filters something to stick to. I simply wrapped the wire frame with the burlap, and glued it in place. 

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath

You can see that it doesn't matter how it looks at this point, the fabric won't show through, at all. Ooooh, look, wine is on sale! 

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath

Take a coffee filter and wrap it around the eraser end of the pencil. (Note I was full of vim and vigor going into this project! So easy, and so fun!)

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath

Put a tiny dab of glue on the end of the coffee filter and place it on the wreath, like so:

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath

Continue wrapping the filters on the pencil and placing them about 1/4" apart. After the first couple of hours, you will get to about this stage:

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath

At which time, you carry on for 40 more days and 40 more nights. (I'm starting to run low on vim and vigor after the first couple of hours, and really needed the aforementioned wine. Still easy, but not feeling the "fun" anymore!) 

As the wreath starts to take shape, you can use the pencil to stick the coffee filters down in and fill in any holes. 

(Joking aside, I used about 300 coffee filters and the whole coffee filter gluing took me 4 hours.)

Once I felt most of the holes had been filled in, and had frankly, had enough of gluing coffee filters, I called it a day! 

To hang, I tied it to an old frame, using jute. I toyed with the idea of using ribbon, but I decided that I prefer the simple look. 

Waddaya think? Cute, or does it look like a giant donut? Maybe everything looks like a giant donut with all of this talk of coffee filters. :)

coffee filter craft, coffee filters, coffee filter wreath, wreath


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Merry Monday Link Party #45

Welcome to the Merry Monday Link Party #45


Welcome to Merry Monday.  I can't wait to see what everyone has been up to.  It's been a quiet week here, but I have several projects in the making for next week, so please come back and check them out! Meanwhile, grab a coffee, or a glass of wine (no judgement here!), and check out everyone's hard work from last week. 

Julia

Announcements:
  • It's the last few days of the second in the series of four Spring Craft Blog Hop. This hop is focusing on St. Patrick's Day, April Fool's Day, Upcycled crafts, and general spring crafts. If you have a craft to share, please link-up and be seen on 20 blogs!
  • Feb 18th - March 17th St. Patrick's Day, Palm Sunday, Recycle crafts, and general spring (first day of spring is March 20th). Link-up HERE.
  • March 18th - May 25th general spring, Recycle crafts, Earth Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Teacher's Day, May Day, Earth Day, Cinco De Mayo.
  • May 26th - June 20th - Father's Day crafts, general Summer, July 4th

Merry Monday Link Party, link party, blog party, Diy, Home Decor, Recipes

Meet the hosts of Merry Monday

See what the hosts have been up to...

The Lady Prefers 2 Save
Intelligent Domestications The Kolb Corner
Craving Some Creativity
Happy House and Home


 

Most Popular

MM 45 Most Popular

St. Patrick's Day Mini Gallery Wall @Creative Mama, Messy House

PIN IT!!

DIY Dusting Spray @Frugally Blonde

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Guest Bloggers Wanted @Pastries, Pumps, and Pi

PIN IT!!

 

My Feature Pick(s)

(Visit the other hosts to see their feature pick(s). It could be you!)

Easy Upcycled Clock

Bree at Bumblebreeblog.com upcycled an old clock and made it into something super chic.  This is my feature pick for today, so please show her some love and check out her blog! Click HERE

 

Help grow this party by displaying this button on your sidebar or party page!

My Pinterventures

 

If you were featured, grab a button!

 My Pinterventures
 
 

Party Guidelines



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Thursday, March 12, 2015

Elevated Cheese Board with Bun Feet

cheese board DIY, tray DIY, elevated cheese board

What's everyone been up to this week? I made another Elevated Cheese Board, only this time with Bun Feet.  Like the buns? I think they're so cute.  

If you'd like a tutorial you can click HERE.

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If you would like to join in some fun link parties, 
head on over HERE
So much inspiration!