flavored salts

I put together some homemade flavored salts for Christmas. I am quite excited about these.

The original recipe was for chile-lime-pimentón salt but I could not find dried lime zest. I didn't have the time to search multiple stores so I just omitted the lime. I think this is going to be amazing without the lime, though if the lime does need adding then a bit of lime juice can be added to the food directly.

I have to admit that the citrus-rosemary salt is the one I am the most excited for. Plus, it looks Christmas-y. It has orange and lemon zest. The recipe can be found here. 

I really hope that the person receiving this gift is up for a little spicy flavor. The sriracha salt was the simplest recipe. 

I am pretty impressed at how easy these were to make. The recipes do mention letting the salts sit for a day to really let the flavors set properly. This isn't a problem for me since they'll spend time being mailed across country and sitting under a tree until Christmas morning. 

Have you made flavored salts before? What are your go-to recipes?

embroidered tea towels

I had some tea towels stashed away and used them to make a coordinating man & woman's set.

I found the awesome Mollie at Wild Olive. I used her amazing designs to embroider onto the tea towels.

And, seriously, they turned out so cute.

painted wallpaper

Because I can. And because there are so many other things that I need to be doing.

I found a stag template on this post. I printed it on card stock and used my x-acto knife to cut out the shape. After doing a few though, the wet paint warps the paper. 

So, in the morning, I'm off to find plastic to make my own stencil that won't warp. 

By the way, I'm doing this in my downstair's half bath. And I'm loving it. It's so much fun.

Large Dreamcatcher Tutorial

I wanted to make an extra large dream catcher and so I started out with the inside circle of a large embroidery hoop.

and some basic twine from any home improvement store.

Then wrap the embroidery hoop with twine, hot glueing along the way to keep the twine tight. 

Be forewarned, it takes quite awhile to get all the way around the hoop.

Also, try to make sure that you'll have enough twine of the same brand to wrap the whole way around the hoop or you might have to deal with different shades of the twine.

Like me:

Then take the twine and tie it at random intervals around the hoop and then keep going around in levels, continuing tying the twine until you get to the center. Tie your final knot and cut the twine.

I ended up with a nice star design.

I think the tiny star in the center is particularly fun.

Don't forget to loop your twine at whatever spot you want to have as the top of your dream catcher. I secured it by hot glueing the twine around the hoop, then making a loop, hot glueing that, and then hot glueing the twine around the hoop once more.

Then comes the fun part.

Embellishment. 

I added 3 lengths of twine on the bottom of the dreamcatcher. On the bottom of the twine, I added a couple of beads and then some large black feathers for character.

I added a few more feathers to the dream catcher and even hot glued a tiny dream catcher in the center that we picked up at the South Carolina State Fair two years ago.

Pretty much, add whatever suits your fancy.

Then hang it up on your wall and step back and admire your work! 

I just really like how it looks in the dude's room.

more painting

Recently I painted the hallway upstairs. It had a builder's flat white paint on it before. You know, the kind where it's touched once and then there's a nasty smudge on the wall.

Here is a good view of some of the doors that I painted black. I really like the black doors. Guess which one is the girl's room?

We painted the upstairs hallway and the stairwell the same color since the color flowed better that way. 

This is all of the art from my stairwell. It's quite a lot. Most are thrift store/flea market pieces not more than $8 each and generally cheaper than that. I, also, have other pieces that were either painted by my Grandpa, cross stitched by my Mom, embroidered by a friend, or something special. 

It was quite nerve wracking painting up SO high. I'm glad that I don't have to do it again. We purposefully picked a classic neutral but modern color so that we won't ever have to do it again.

It was so nice to put the art back up. I have the put up in a way that it wraps around and up the stairwell with you as you walk up it.

Alice's doll quilt

When we went to Myrtle Beach for our family vacation last month, Josh drove and so I needed to have something to do with my hands. 

Hours of just sitting there? Ok. Occasionally, handing things back to the kids, but otherwise needing something to do with my hands.

So, I grabbed a stash of fabrics that looked like they would go well together and my sewing essentials. 

I snipped and stitched and felt like I was playing a form of fabric tetras. 

And, of course, loved every minute of it.

This is the finished quilt top.

The backing.

I didn't add any batting. I just quilted the 2 pieces together. I cut a skinny length of fabric to help guide my quilting lines.

I eyed the width for the batting. And counted my blessings for randomly having a safety pin with me.

The binding fabric and the little square on the bottom left {also the middle fabric on the backing} is some that I bought from PurlSOHO back in the Spring.

And despite all of the fabrics being pretty mismatched, I think they all ended up working really well together.

I LOVE hand quilting!

...and a perfect fit for her pirate doll!

starry sky

It took me a bit to post about these stars because I kept trying to figure out how to take a good picture of the ceiling. Then, I decided that there was no way to take a good picture of the ceiling. So, I just went with the best picture I could get.

You can't see it very well in this picture but the stars are a pretty shiny gold vinyl. My friend, Amy, cute them out for me. Thanks Amy!

The stars are randomly placed about the ceiling. I love how they look, but most importantly, the girls love them.

my light fixture

After making the pink chandelier and putting it in the girl's room, I was still in need of a light fixture for Josh's & my bedroom. I picked up another brass light fixture {this one was $20} from Habitat for Humanity.

I primed it and then spray painted it a glossy white. Then I had Josh use his smarts and hang it up in our bedroom for me. 

I swapped out the light bulbs for round ones. I love how it puts the chandelier over the top. It looks so elegant and, yet, simple with the grey walls in my bedroom.

It's so nice to be able to flip a switch now and have a main light come on. 

Plus, it's pretty. 

bow holder

An awesome had a bow holder that wasn't working out for her. She gave it to me months ago and I just finally got to it. I painted it black {Surprise!}. 

This was me waiting for it to dry in between painting my doors black and blogging. 

I used sparkly gold trim to clip the bows to. I just used hot glue. So simple. 

Let me tell you, I am loving having a place to put the girl's bows. What you see here are only some of them. But it's nice to not have them stuffed in the girl's bathroom drawer.

Do you have any good hair accessory storage ideas?  

raised garden bed

I had been wanting a garden for our family since we moved into our house last year. Last year I told myself to wait until this year since I had too much going on at the time, new house and new baby. So, this year, I was determined. I waited awhile for Josh to build it for me, but I finally realized that the poor guy just didn't have time to do things around the house and if I wanted something done then it was going to have to be me.

Not that I really mind. I like doing things myself. It's always fun figuring things out as I go. I borrowed a power drill from a friend and built the frame in 2 hours. Not too bad since I had a couple of little girl helpers.

I bought 6 2x6x8 and had two of them cut in 1/2 for the ends. 

It was quite simple to do. Just a bit heavy for little me.

I also picked up some scrap wood at the store to secure the top frame to the bottom frame. I then covered the grass with lots of newspaper and filled in the dirt, which, by the way, is VERY HEAVY. After I filled in all dirt I had I realized that I needed 8 more bags of dirt. But thankfully Josh was home and dumped that 400 lbs in the garden for me. 

As soon as the garden was filled with dirt, Todd and Kate wanted nothing other than to play in it. Which, I loved! 

I bought plants at the local store instead of doing seeds since I started my garden so late in the season.

One thing, though, I'm not used to black dirt. So, I couldn't tell when the garden needed watering and we lost all of our squash. But just a couple of days ago we went out and bought more squash to put in. And now I'm watering the garden everyday, too! I don't really know what I'm doing but I'm figuring it out as I go. :)

Also, our blackberries are producing this year! They are transplants from my Mom. By the way, they are thornless blackberries, which are the best kind ever for kids. 

And our blueberry plants have produced pretty well for being 2 year old plants. Every few days Todd will say that he thinks that the blueberries need to be picked and comes in with about 10 each time.