Family Brings Joy - Home Brings Joy

Spring/Easter Mantel & Basket Goodies

March 29, 2012 By Shan 3 Comments

Who else LOVES Spring?

I enjoy seeing the trees budding, the grass becoming green and blooming tulips. ahhhh…sigh…smile.

I kept the mantel simple again.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’m really enjoying the barn door shutters I made.

I found the green basket & chick at Gordman’s. It was my first visit to that store and it is definitely worth checking out if you have one near you…great deals galore there!

I pulled out my book page eggs I made a few years back to place inside the basket to complete the look.

The ‘Spring’ blocks($10) I found in Pagosa Springs, CO {sorry I can’t remember the name of the store. It was a weird name, but a discount store.}

I like the color it added to the mantel.

The GENEROSITY sign {found also at Gordman’s} was so me. I decided to place it up there as well.

Not sure if I have mentioned this on previous posts, but I found the candle holders at Goodwill.

I rarely use them to put candles on, instead I like to use them as pedestals for objects.

I want to thank the good people from Hershey’s for inspiring me to prepare for Easter and celebrate Spring. Good thing, since Easter is only about a week away! April 8, 2012

Visit Celebrate with Hersheys to take a journey on the Hershey’s Bunny Trail and check out the great collection of Easter tips, memories and stories.

My personal favorites are the Mini Reester Bunnies {eating one right now…yum!} They are small enough to fit inside a plastic Easter egg and will sure to be a favorite for everyone who loves these delicious milk chocolate covered peanut butter. {My weakness for sure!}

Tomorrow I have a special blog post about organizing.

Disclaimer: I was not paid to write this post by Gordman’s or Hershey’s. Hershey’s did graciously mail me the Easter basket shown in this post from participating in the Bunny Trail at BlissDom. Thank you Hershey’s. Hopefully, I won’t eat the entire contents myself.

Celebrate Spring,

Family Reunion Activity Ideas

March 21, 2012 By Shan 5 Comments

Here are some other activities {besides skiing} we did during our family ski trip/family reunion:

The package of mustaches came with 6 different ones to choose from. It cost me $1 and they were self adhesive. We used the iPhone app Pop Booth to let the kids take a photo booth strip of themselves. This brought a lot of laughs and fun!

I asked the kids to find some sticks to use for roasting our S mores. This was sneaky on my part because it was an effort to get the kids out of the house and outdoors! It worked though! One of the older boys (15) was nice enough to whittle the sticks for us. I am grateful our rental house had an outdoor fireplace for us to be able to roast S mores. Yummy and fun!

We brought the Wii for the kids to play on, but when they weren’t on it they were playing card games like Go Fish & Uno. They would also play electronic games on the iPad & iPod touch like Air Hockey, Draw Something, Temple Run and many others. Since we did so much skiing during the day, it didn’t bother me for them to have some down time playing on their devices. It’s nice for the grown ups to have the kids quiet for some time. {If you know what I mean } My favorite out of the above was our game of freeze dance. The kids would pick out a song on their iPod. We would all dance until I paused the song. At that time everyone was to FREEZE from dancing. If anyone moved they were out of the game. This gave me a chance to dance too! {Even though my kids hated me dancing…HA!}

We don’t see a lot of snow where we live. This was a perfect opportunity for the kids to have some snow fun. The snow was melting and difficult to make a snow man, but perfect for a snowball ‘fight.’ We gave them a few rules: don’t hit in the face & stay about 10 feet away before throwing the snowball. Fun times!

Check with the chamber of commerce about local parades or events going on. Kids always enjoy parades. We liked attending this St. Patrick’s Day Parade the last full day we were in Pagosa Springs.

Other activities we enjoyed:

Movie nights – The adults watched the movie Grown Ups one night after the kids went to bed…the movie is pretty hysterical! We all laughed until our bellies ached. On another evening we watched Disney’s Tangled and served popcorn.
Hot Tub – We were blessed to have rented a house with an indoor hot tub. It was perfect for soothing aching muscles from skiing. We had a 10pm curfew for the kids to use the hot tub. Our other rule was to have an adult in the hot tub with the kids.
Star Gazing – We saw Venus, Mars & Jupiter among many constellations. The night sky was very dark so we were able to see lots of stars. My Dad used a special star gazing app to identify the planets and constellations. {Sorry, I don’t know what the name of it is, but I can find out if you want to know.} It was gorgeous and educational!
Birthday Party - My Brother-in-Law had a Birthday while we were there. We held a party in his honor. I am writing a post more about this later.

Posts coming up will be about:

How we rented the awesome home we stayed in
Our menu, we ate the majority of our meals at the house
Memory book idea
Family song of the week
Excellent app every family needs to help with communication during the trip/reunion

Family activities bring unity,

Filed Under: Home Brings Joy, Music Brings Joy, MY Family Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

Living Room Gallery Wall Redone {Wordless Wednesday}

February 1, 2012 By Shan 4 Comments

Before

Painted sconces with chalk paint

Painted 'W' & keys with chalk paint

After

Linking Up:

Filed Under: Home Brings Joy, MY Family Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

Love Is Spoken Here

January 25, 2012 By Shan 7 Comments

I’m sharing with you one of my Christmas gifts from my DH today combined with my Valentine’s Day Mantel.

This family photo was my favorite of all the ones taken. My Christmas gift from the hubster included this beautiful canvas. I really wish I could hang the canvas up on the stone centered in between the top of the shutters and the mantel. Problem is, I don’t want to drill 2 holes into the stone for screws in order to hang it up. I contemplated using the command strips, but I really believe the canvas would be too heavy for those. This is my compromise even though I really think the shutters are too tall for the photo. It’s my fault since I made the shutters. You can see how here.

I was completely and utterly thrilled to find the yarn wrapped ‘love’ idea online. It’s super easy. All I did was take my 18″ green floral wire and bent it to create the letters. The ‘L’ took up one wire, ‘ov’ took up another wire, and ‘e’ was about half a wire. Take your yarn and wrap it around, it’s as simple as that…time consuming, but simple. TIP: If I were to go back and make another one, I would wrap the wire FIRST with the yarn and then bend into letters. I did it the other way around and I think it might be easier to do it the opposite. I hot glued the yarn wrapped ‘Love’ onto the shutter. It will be easy to take off in the future and not leave a mess.

“Is Spoken Here” are chip board letters taken out of my scrapbooking stash. It’s funny, I’ve been using my scrapbooking supplies for more non-scrapbooking things than actual making scrapbook pages. I used my trusty re-positionable dot glue to glue them onto the shutters. This way I know they will come off cleanly when I am ready to take them down.

Thanks to Heidi Swapp & My Craft Channel I learned how to make the cute heart garland out of scrapbook paper, maps and book paper. If you want to learn how to make them go here.

You see the shelf over the television? I asked the builder to add that shelf because I like to use all available space if possible. My intention was to display photos there. Problem is, whenever I put photos up there, you can barely see them. It’s kind of hard to explain, but long story short, I have had a heck of a time staging/beautifying {whatever you want to call it} that stinking shelf. So I have seen other people take books and place them in their shelves backwards and I liked the look. I thought, “why not try it?” I went through the house and took all of our hard bound books, took off the covers and shoved them in. I really like it! I decided I like the look of the sizes mismatched throughout too. I think the off white color of the book pages brings continuity from the off white of the shutters. What do you think?

This is what the other side of my living room looks like now. Isn’t it lovely? I have 2 new photos from Christmas I’m adding to this wall so I needed to reconfigure the gallery. Back to the drawing board. This means time to take out the Power Puff Girls Christmas wrapping paper I will never use to wrap gifts with again. I trace the frames onto the wrapping paper {turned it over to the white side, of course} and use the templates to figure out how I want it to look. This will be a week or so long process for me to get it where it looks right. I use paint tape to tape the templates to the wall. It comes off easy and doesn’t hurt the paint for me to rearrange multiple times. The items on the ground are what will be going up there. Yesterday I covered up 26 nail holes from the previous wall gallery. The Nester would be proud of me. Hubby will be proud to know I filled the holes in good and painted over…good as new!

Before I head out for my 3 mile run today {in the rain} I want to again THANK everyone who has generously taken time to complete my short survey. It means a LOT to me. The feedback is highly valuable. It’s not too late to take the survey. I will keep it open for about a week before tabulating the results. It’s completely anonymous and you don’t have to answer every question if you don’t want to. Whatever you can give is very gracious.

Linking Up:

Have a SUPER DAY,

Filed Under: Blogs Bring Joy, Crafts Bring Joy, Friends Bring Joy, Home Brings Joy, Me Time Brings Joy, MY Family Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

Memory Project: Places We’ve Lived Boards

January 17, 2012 By Shan 44 Comments

I’m so excited to share with you a project I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks!

How many places have you lived? Us…in our married life we have lived in 5 places. It’s our family history. Why not memorialize those places, pay tribute, so to speak?

I have a Pinterest Board titled Memory Ideas. I pinned the following idea and fell in love:

Source: manditremayne.blogspot.com via Shan@ on Pinterest

The very funny Mandi {Tidbits from the Tremaynes} reveals she purchased these from L.L.Bean for $34.95 each.

I was up for the challenge to make my own, but as usual tweaked it a bit. I immediately thought of the perfect place for them to go. My entry way needed something special and I’m thrilled with the results.

Want to know how I did it? I was able to use all supplies I currently had on hand, so there weren’t any out of pocket expenses…score!

First, remember the barn door shutters I made?

I had left over board pieces from making the Barn Door Shutters. I pulled those out to begin. They were already painted with my Annie Sloan’s Old White Chalk Paint. This helped me skip the painting step. Next, I decided to add a little black border similar to the L.L.Bean signs.

I used a little pouncer sponge brush to lightly brush the edges with black acrylic paint.

I used QuicKutz’s Revolution to cut out the letters of the city names {12×12 Black Card stock}. The font is Blossom.

I used the Cricut to cut out the state names and numbers. The Cricut cartridge is Plantin SchoolBook. {1 & 1/4″}

I absolutely LOVE re-positionable dot glue. I use it for almost all of my craft projects. I took the letters and added a small amount of glue. I would then get a ruler and position them straight. It takes a lot of moving around to get it just right, but since the glue is re-positionable it doesn’t hurt anything.

Once I had the letters the way I wanted them, I added the Mod Podge. Since the re-positionable glue is mainly for placement, the best way to add the Mod Podge is to take your foam brush {get a pack of these for a $1 at your dollar store} and dab it gently on top of the letter. This will ensure some of the Mod Podge seeps underneath the letter a tad. Once you have dabbed all over the letter with Mod Podge then you can wipe the Mod Podge gently across the letters without the letters wiggling and getting out of place. I’m sure if you are a pro at using the Cricut with vinyl, there is probably a much easier way to do this, maybe without using Mod Podge. I haven’t expanded my knowledge on cutting vinyl yet. Therefore, this is the method I chose to use.

Using Maps for home decor is really popular now and I really like it. I decided to incorporate the map of the city we lived in on the boards. This is how you can take advantage of old maps, now that most of us have GPS. I found it’s a good idea to paint on the Mod Podge before adding the map. I would then take a tool and spread it over the map to get out any bubbles under the map.

I just tore out the page and cut the map in a rectangle around the city. Instead of using Latitude and Longitude I wanted to have the dates from when we lived in the particular cities. Some of the dates were not exactly centered because I didn’t want to cover up the name of the city on the map with the number. Doesn’t bother me to have it that way. Let the Mod Podge dry on the map before adding the numbers. Dab on the Mod Podge over the numbers just like on the letters. Make sure to spread the Mod Podge over the whole sign in the end.

I used Picture & Frame Hanging Command strips to attach the boards to the wall. I LOVE those Command strips. SO much easier than nails…take your level and put it on top of the board and makes for level hanging every time. The last board which represents where we live now was not completed when the photos were taken. I’m adding it to the bottom today. From Pinterest pin to reality. {Doesn’t accomplishment feel GOOD!?}

Here they are in my entry way. Seems like they were meant to be in this space. It was worth the time and effort. What do you think?

Linking Up:

Celebrate where you live,

Filed Under: Blogs Bring Joy, Crafts Bring Joy, Home Brings Joy, Me Time Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy

Parent’s Promise

January 13, 2012 By Shan 6 Comments

24 weeks ago I found this gem:

Parent’s Promise by Graphic Designer Joel Felix.

I wrote Joel and asked him if he was selling this beauty of a graphic.

I really wanted to hang it in my home.

He wrote back and said he was working on preparing {see video at end of post} the silkscreen print and he would let me know when they were available for purchase.

As soon as I received his email I purchased a copy.

It was only $20.

Source: joelfelix.com via Shan@ on Pinterest

Isn’t it awesome!!! It’s so true. I wanted to have it displayed in our home where my kids could be reminded of this on a daily basis. It is in our dining area/breakfast area where we eat the majority of our meals. I remember hearing them read it out loud for the first time after hanging it on the wall. My Son shouts, “You’re going to stalk me?” lol Honestly, they probably won’t really ‘get’ it until they are parents themselves.

Let me give you a heads up…the print size is 23″x6″.

You will not find a frame to fit the print exactly unless you have one custom made. I didn’t want to spend custom made money.

Instead, I went to Hobby Lobby when their frames were 50% off and found this one. It measures 31″x13″. It has a cream mat for three 5×7 photos. At the store, I took out the print and placed it over the 3 matted section and it covered it perfectly. Voila! Framed print for a fraction of what it would have cost me to have it custom framed.