Better Homes and Gardens, You Say?!

I finally won a giveaway!!  What is it you ask?  A ONE-YEAR subscription to Better Homes and Gardens!!  My dream!! =)  I always eyeball the magazines at the store but always try to be good and not buy them!  So now I can get a whole years worth!!

Thanks Vanessa and Heather @ At The Picket Fence.  They just launched their new blog together and had a very successful first week!  They were also kind enough to feature my Mom's barstools!

So thanks Ladies for the feature and giveaway, and congratulations to a very successful first week!!

Cheers!

Dreaming of Teal...

Today when I was browsing "The Walton's = Maggie + Griffin + Baird" I came across her post about painting her front door a bold color.  I then asked the hubby what he thought about painting our front door, to which he quickly replied "no."  Ok, that was expected.  So I made him come over and look at the type of color I had in mind.

That'd still be a no.  "Maybe in the next house," he said.

This is a very poor picture of the front of our house.  I stole it off of Realtracs when we were looking at the house.  We have since planted some flowers and laid some decorative stones.  We moved  in during October so we didn't have time to establish grass or flowers before the cold weather hit.  I'll be posting some photos once we get it all pretty!

The hubby is terrified of color.  I always tell him he is so boring.  You can almost always guarantee his car will be silver.  I about fell out of my chair when he came home with a dark green SUV.

Anyhow, the sun finally came out for a little bit today and got me dreaming of these:

I would LOVE to have a garden or a back porch like the first two pictures one day!!  But for now, I just can't wait to have flowers and grass!

Remember this cute little chair I found at the antique store:

I put it on a high ledge in my living room, but I don't really like it there.  So I want to paint it to look like this:

        

...and put it on my front porch. 

I have an old coal bucket from my father-in-law that I'm going to fill with colorful flowers and put at the base of the chair.

I also have a pair of white adirondack chairs on my back porch that took quite a beating during the upstate NY winter.  During Easter break I want to sand them down and paint them to look like this:

And lastly, I have two old iron chairs that need to be refinished.  One is from the father-in-law, and one the sister-in-law pulled out of a dumpster for me (that's love)! They look similar to this minus the heart design:

I want to paint them white, then put a bright patterned fabric on the seat, maybe something like this:

Man, I have ALOT of work to do!  I'm finding myself getting very burnt out at school, so I'm ready for the day when I can start showing you pictures of MY furniture again, instead of pictures off the internet!

The sunny weather just had me excited for Spring, and I thought I would share some eyecandy!

Cheers!!

I Found My Twin!

Ok, well not MY twin, but my big purple dresser's twin!

Remember this pretty lady?

I was perusing Craigslist today (instead of studying like I should be) and came across this:

WHAT!  That's my dresser!!  I forgot to take a before of mine, so now I finally have one!  Minus the black top and bottom.  Mine was all wood when I bought it.  And the drawer handles were all falling off! Lol!  I had completely forgotten about the awful embellishments on the corner of the drawers!

Price tag on this bad boy? $200!  I wish it was more affordable, I would totally buy it and refinish another one!

I just thought this was cute.  It's not like I thought Bassett only made one of my dresser, I just didn't think I would come across another one!

I've been studying like mad the past few weeks and can't wait to get back into painting! Come on Spring Break!

Cheers!!

Me?! A Stylish Blogger!!

WOW!! You can imagine my surprise (and giddy excitement) when I found out The Sweet Paper House had nominated me for The Stylish Blogger Award!!  It was definately a great way to start off what was going to be a ROUGH week!!  Katie's passion is definately for creating through paper!  She has done some invitations that are PHENOMENAL!!  Like, the kind you buy for your wedding, phenomenal!  Look at the amazing stuff she did for her daughter's first birthday a few months ago:

She created a pretty stinking cute little girl too!! Here is one of the invitations she made for a baby shower!

Not only does she do some awesome things, she also posts TONS of inspirational ideas and photos! So GO CHECK HER OUT!!

So here is the fun part.  I get to tell you seven crazy things about myself, then tell you about 15 of my favorite blogs!!  I'm going to cheat like The Sweet Paper House did too, and pick ten!

1.  I eat my hotdogs with mayonaise, ketchup, crunched up doritos and cheese! Try it! I've converted disbelievers before!

2.  My favorite number is eight!  When I was eight years old, my softball jersey number was eight.  We went undefeated that year! Oh yeah, we were called The Diamond Girls!  I still have my jersey! You can't get better than that!

3.  If I won the lottery tomorrow I would open up a cute little store and just work on crafts all the time!

4.  My favorite part of Spring and Fall is being able to sit on the porch with my hubby for morning coffee!  Between my school and his work our time alone has been sparse lately, so I treasure these moments!

5.  I play Call of Duty on PS3.  Like hardcore.  I like it more than my husband and on most days now I'm better than him!!

6.  For the longest time I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist.  I have helped excavate the remains of three murder victims (I know, a weird thing to get excited about).  Now when I walk in woody or bushy areas I subconsciously look for dead bodies.  Hmmm.

7.  My first car was a Volvo named Ruby.  She was maroon and had big, plush seats.  One of the wires was held together by electric tape, and when that tape would slip off my car would turn off! Haha! Good thing that car was a tank!  I hit one of the concrete blocks next to the gas pump when I was 16 and it didn't even dent my car.  Good times!

Ok, onto the part you've all been waiting for!!!

A Glimpse Inside

Allison has some of the cutest ideas for easy, but awesome home decor!  And we found out that her parents live in the same town as me!!

Paisley Passions

Lori over at Paisley Passions has some awesome linky parties!  This is where I get a TON of eye candy!!

Chrissies Collections

Chrissie has some of the most exciting furniture colors!!  I can't wait to see what old piece she has spruced up next!!

Holly Do.

Holly does it all!  She paints, she sews, she CREATES! What does this girl not do?!

Freckled Laundry

Jami is a bottle full of inspiration for me! She makes some of the cutest things!!

Junque

Brecken gives furniture facelifts like nobody's business!!  I have definately used her pieces as inspiration more than once!

Oops! redone

Melanie keeps my eye-candy jar full!  She has all sorts of fantastic furniture projects, and more!

Second Time Furniture

I LOVE Kim's furniture projects!! She has a knack for choosing great colors and always does a phenomanal job!

The Magic Brush, Inc.

Jennifer was born to paint!  If it is paintable, she'll do it!  She even did work for Extreme Makeover, Home Edition! Wow!  She is basically the reason I decided to start painting furniture!

The Speckled Dog

Kristi can make any little knick-knack look spectacular!  I want to buy all of her stuff to put in my kitchen!  Her colors are all so bright and happy!

PHEW!!  That was a lot!  I hope you all get a chance to check out the lovely ladies mentioned above! They are faboo!

Cheers!

Pookie!!

Pookie would be cookie pie! Mmm!  I found the recipe on A Whisk and A Prayer's  blog and I wanted to make it immediately.  I'll let you refer to her blog for the recipe. Check out the rest of her stuff too.  It all looks scrumptious!

Here is all the stuff I used to make mine:

Glass of Moscato is optional!

Here is the crust all patted down in the pan.  I was a little hesitant about mixing the ingredients directly in the pan.  I was also concerned about the ingredients sticking to the bottom.  Don't worry about either.  It all turned out fine.

Here is the part where you can get creative.  I used white chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, butterscotch and walnuts.  Rather than putting in one cup of two ingredients, I put in 1/2 cup of four ingredients.

Here it is all mixed up and then poured on top of the crust.

After cleaning up my mess...

I spent the next 40 minutes studying this...

And then I was ready for this:

Before I flipped it upside down I went around the edges with a spatula because as you can see, it was pretty sticky.  Mine had a crazy pattern underneath.

And now I'm ready to sample!

I would recommend using a real pie dish.  I don't own one (GASP!) so I had to use a 9x13 dish and it was a little more thin than I wanted.  I also opted not to drizzle melted white chocolate on it because I am chocolate-melting-challenged. 

E-mail me (kharris08@gmail.com) a picture of yours if you decide to make it!! I want to see all the creative pookies!  If I get enough I'll put them all in a post closer to V-day!

I'm being slammed with exams at school for the next two weeks, so my furniture/craft projects are on the backburner.  But I'll be back soon with all kinds of fun stuff!

Cheers!

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