Little Hands, Little Fingers

Last night I could not sleep, so I decided to take advantage of the peace and quiet.

I have been pregnant ever since we moved to camp and have moved through phases of morning sickness, indigestion, achiness, heartburn and dizzy spells. It's been well worth it, but I have yet to make our little apartment "homey". I keep wanting to paint and fix up Lil' Man's nursery, but I really can't with the cold weather and my current intolerance of paint. I decided I needed some wall art to brighten things up.

I went by the store and picked up 3 cheap canvases and three tubes of that cheap acrylic paint that almost every where seems to carry. I bought a bottle each of chocolate, aqua and pink.

Step 1: Paint a base coat on each canvas, allow to dry and then apply a second coat.

Note the beautiful roses my incredibly sweet husband gave me for St. Valentine's Day.

Ignore the Christmas tablecloth that I have yet to pack away with the Christmas tree that went back into storage LAST WEEK! Yes, I like Christmas to literally last the whole year 'round!

Step 2: After everything has dried completely, I took an assortment of cups and baby bottles and applied paint to the rims to use them as circular stamps.

Step 3: After the circles had dried, I painted my hand and stamped it on the middle of the canvas and repeated the process this morning with Paul and Lil' Man just after breakfast.

Aren't my boys adorable??? 

Step 4: Step back and enjoy getting something other than laundry done! :)

 

Our plan is to do one for each of our children and create a line of them in the nursery. Cute, huh?

 Have any cute and frugal ways of decorating a nursery/kids room that you could share? We'd love any inspirations. I'm also trying to come up with cute ideas for homemade baby stuff (I'll be posting a few projects that my family has helped me with). Any and all ideas are welcome and appreciated!

It's the Holiday Season!

Which means that it is time for me to get my Christmas cards printed and ready to mail out after Thanksgiving! Crazy as it seems Thanksgiving is next week and Advent will soon be upon us! I always try (and rarely succeed) to have all gifts and cards taken care of before Advent begins, so I can focus on what's truly important- preparing my heart and my family to once again to receive Christ and celebrate His sacrifice for us.

This year I am using Shutterfly to print all of my Christmas cards for the first time. I have made a lot of photobooks using Shutterfly and just love how they turned out! I love cards with family picture on them and now that we have an adorable toddler underfoot we seems to have hundreds of precious poses to choose from. The only hard part is limiting the number of pictures to just my favorite "card worthy" ones. The great thing about Shutterfly is that I really don't have to limit the number of picture I can use by many. They have great cards that can have multiple images such as this one:

 

Or this one:

 

You can check out their beautiful photo card collection here: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery

Last year my brother gave my husband and I a canvas print of our wedding picture. It was one of the most special gifts! Consider giving an impossible to shop for Dad a canvas portrait of his family. The ideas are endless!
http://www.shutterfly.com/home-decor/canvas-wall-art
My brother will be getting a family photo calendar from us this year to remind him of his family since he is living far away.
http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars/wall-calendars

And for those bloggers out there, Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly… sign up: http://bit.ly/sfly2010 !!!

Hope you are as inspired as I am!

My Funny Valentine

Recently, my fingers have been itching to do something creative.

The cover of My Life in France inspired me!

I decided to make a St. Valentine's Day pin with Paul and my initals on it.

We have had a slow month of work, so we have been trying to be very careful about our budet.
I looked around Wallyworld and found two sheets of felt for 38 cents each (Each sheet will make at LEAST 10 hearts!), a package of 3 needles and multiple colored thread spools for just under 2 dollars and a package of multi-colored glass seed beads for 1.98. I have pin backs at home.

Not bad, huh?

Here is the finished product. I loved that it only took me minutes to make and cost next to nothing. Big projects overwhelm me sometimes, but this made me feel so good!

My question for you, dear friends, is: do you think that I should add a "C" at the bottom of the heart or would that be overkill?

If so, what color should it be???

TTFN!!!!

Thanksgiving and Christmas have come early!

When I returned to the blogsphere last week I discovered that I had won a free Shutterfly book while visiting http://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com/ a few weeks earlier! I can't tell you how excited I was about this!!! I have wanted to try making a photobook, but honestly, I didn't want to bring up the idea to my hardworking hubby who has been so good about budgeting and saving. We have managed to pay off both of our student loans and credit cards in just over a year. Hubby doesn't have the same love of photographs that I do. He is always happy to make me happy, but as I said, I just hated to ask. Winning this book was a great excuse to get me started and Paul was very encouraging.

Creating my free photobook was so much fun! I was big into scrapbooking as a teen and even up until a few years ago. Sadly, I have less and less time each year to scrapbook and have started joking that I'm really just a scrapbook supply collector at this point! Living in the truck makes it impossible for me to scrapbook. I've been wanting to put our wedding and honeymoon pictures in to a beautiful book to show off and yet have not had a chance during the past year and a half to do so.

I made my free photobook using the pictures from my husband's bachelor party and all his pictures with his groomsmen. Its beautiful! I got so excited about having wedding pictures in a fabulous personalized book that I made more! Shutterfly has a 50% off sale on 7x9 photobooks that ends today (that's $8 for a 20 page book!) and for orders over $30 they have free shipping today. I made 6 books- 5 albums are of honeymoon pictures! I was so excited that this is all I've done for the past few days. It was easy, fun and so much cleaner than scrapbooking. And I made 6 books for a grand total of 43.50! Which is pretty cheap compared to the all the scrapbooking supplies I used to buy to create a book. Plus, I made all 6 books while riding in the truck. It honestly felt like Christmas and Thanksgiving to me.

I can't wait to get home and find my books waitingin the mail for me! Thank you Heavenly Homemakers for giving me a new creative outlet while riding in this Big Rig! I am incredibly grateful to you!

Hope you all find a fun new creative outlet this week. God bless you all!

Fashion Thoughts from a Not-So Fashionable Me

I am sooo not a fashion guru, but I have noticed that the '80's seem to be back. Something I never thought would happen! It is not a trend that I ever wanted to see again. I lived through it once and once was enough!

That said, I will say that I have had a recent interest in clothing trends. Like most women, I enjoy dressing nicely. It is a way of showing my husband that I love him enough not to wear my comfy sweat pants and dress in something a little more feminine. Luckily, my husband thinks sweats are cute and loves me dressed casually. Living in a truck makes casual dress an absolute necessity. Somedays I need to dress up for my own mental well being. I love summer dresses and cute modest clothes that I kind find for a steal.

My favorite places to shop for clothes are the Goodwill, TJ Maxx and Marshalls. A few days ago, while Paul and I were waiting for a load in Laredo TX, I did a little shopping and found 3 cute dresses for fall at Marshalls for $11.00!

My favorite dress is a fitted little blue plaid dress. Its strapless so my next mission is to find a cute little black sweater to top it. I have a great pair of tall black leather boots. I am so anxious to go home and get boots so I can wear this outfit.

I LIKE PLAID AND I LIKE DRESSING LIKE A GIRL!!!!!!!!! : )

Due to my excitement about my new dresses, I noticed some of the trends at the mall Paul and I wandered around later that afternoon (still waiting for a load assignment!). What I was seeing was that plaids seem to be very in right now. They always are in the fall, but there were a lot more bright plaids as well as very cute country girl-meets lumber jack styles (little girl blouse meets big red plaid) . Also, due to the alarming 80's trend, leg warmers are back. I used to like leg warmers...I guess I still do! Not the Jane Fonda look, but cute chunky knits and funky stripes. I like fun styles that aren't too overboard.

I also discovered a website that has a pattern for knitting your own legwarmers. I haven't done any knitting in years (since I discovered crocheting), but this seems like a fun project for me to undertake while riding in the truck. Check it out: www.knitonthenet.com/issue7/patterns/legwarmers/

When I bought my dresses I was thinking how cute they'd be for fall, but it was so hot in Laredo that Fall still seemed far off. We finally recieved a load assignment from our company. We were headed to Tennessee and from there to Denver. Yeah Colorado! We were still driving through Kansas when I noticed how much cooler it was getting with each mile we drove. We are about an hour and a half outside of Denver. The sky is gray and the air is crisp. I am so excited that fall is on its way! I love this weather. I've been snacking on crisp Gala apples dipped in caramel and sipping hot cider.

Enjoy the weather where ever you are and take the time to appreciate the changes in the air (and your wardobe!).

When Pigs Fly...

I dream of being able to be at home to clean and decorate. I've been wanting very much to work with my hands more. My mind is full of sewing projects that I'd love to be working on. A few days ago I found some cute flannel at a Walmart that still had a fabric department and had to buy some. Who knows when I'll have time to use it, but the pieces were so cute and less than $3 a yard!

I just love this "piggy-pattern"!

I want to make a light, double-sided crib blanket/ recieving blanket with these two. I plan on embroidering "Coakley" (our last name) on the pink plaid side and binding the edges in pink satin.

I'm not sure yet what my plan will be for these. So many ideas, so little time! One has pink butterflies and pink ribbons for breast cancer. My cousin just had a bi-lateral masectomy only two months after the birth of her first child- a beautiful little girl! Pretty sure I'll come up with an appropriate project.

I found this pencil case for $1.50. Isn't it cute? Paul tore his belt loop the other day and I hadn't brought any sewing supplies with us this trip, so I picked up a little kit to get the job done and tucked it in the case. Perfect!

I'm sure I'll get around to all my sewing projects eventually- hopefully before pigs fly!

Sweetest Days

"I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string." — L.M. Montgomery

Living in a truck forces me to enjoy quiet thoughts, quiet work and quiet time with my Lord and my husband. Thank you, Lord, for helping me to slow down and declutter my life. Thank you for the time to work with my hands. Blessed Mother, St. Anne be with me now and always.