Vintage love

Pinterest. It's one of those things you just get hooked on and end up spending hours browzing before you even realize it. Obviously it's much more fun to follow other pinners who have such a keen eye for design too. 

Several years back, April and I embarked on a trip to Canton, Texas (huge market that's only open the weekend of the 1st Monday of each month).  As recommended by several other friends, we stopped by a little home decor store called Laurie Anna's. I fell in love. This is my kind of store. I wanted to pick everything up and just put it in my house because I love a good vintage look. Since then, we've made trips to Texas just to visit this little place. Following Laurie Anna's on Pinterest is almost just as fun as going to her shoppe. I recommend checking her out!

Below are a few shots of this amazing little place from the last time we were there.

A&J

Glow in the Dark Eggs

We had a very relaxing Easter Sunday. Went to church, grabbed some lunch and then came home to relax. We kept busy doing little projects around the house, fishing at the pond, playing kickball with all the neighbor kiddos, and relaxing till dark out on the sidewalk with great neighbors.

As my boys get older (now 7 and to-be 16 this week) coloring eggs and hunting them are not the most exciting activities anymore. I found the idea on Pinterest to do glow in the dark eggs (plastic eggs filled with glow in the dark bracelets) and it was perfect. Why didn't I think of this??

 The boys had a small egg hunt in the house when it was dark. I think they were pretty awesome, myself....

Hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend!

Decorating for Christmas

I love decorating for Christmas. And I love looking around at all the awesome decorating on Pinterest and blogland. So many great ideas!   

Here is a peek into some of my Christmas decorating this year. As you can tell, I love anything that is vintage or has a vintage feel to it. And I love collecting old scales.

And Buddy the Elf even came to see us this year.

I have lots of fun plans for him every night. ;)

I found 101 ideas here.

A&J

Lemonade Stand Lessons...NOT Learned...

It's summertime.  We LOVE summertime around here.  And every summer I make a bucket list of fun things I want to make sure the girls get to experience.  Loved seeing all the little lemonade stands in blogger land and of course immediately put this on my list.  I was even in the process of coming up with my lemonade stand design and thinking how much fun the girls would have helping me make it....until..... I saw this cute cardboard stand come up on Zullily. 

And for a great price......Bam!  Exactly what we needed. I should have realized then that cutting corners wasn't going to give me the homemade lemonade stand experience I thought it was going to be.  I had this vision that the girls would learn a good lesson about hard work and the value of making a dollar.  Here's a rundown of what they really learned.

Lesson # 1.  It takes time and money and some hard work to get started on your business.  Nope.  It really doesn't.  Mom ordered our stand online and she even made our lemonade for us while we danced around and sang, "we get to have a lemonade stand." (Ok, so I went with Strawberry ice tea instead for all you detailed oriented people saying, why is her lemonade so dark)

  Lesson # 2.  It takes a little time to build up a customer base.  We live in a neighborhood that doesn't get much traffic so don't expect to get a ton of customers and not everyone will stop so let's not get our panties in a wad if they don't stop.  Wrong.  You should have seen the masses of people that came out of their houses.  Not to mention, every single person that drove by stopped as well.  This also helped them learn that mom isn't always right.  Geez. 

 Lesson # 3.  It takes thought into how much to charge for your product.  No one will pay $25 for a glass of lemonade (As Brynley suggested)  Nope.  Wrong.  Apparently sweet strangers will gladly give these two Rascals $10 and even $20 for small glasses of not very good Strawberry Iced Tea.  EVEN after I informed them it's not a fundraiser, it's just for fun. 

They made $40 in less than 30 minutes.

Go figure....so the lessons I thought they were going to learn didn't actually pan out the way I thought they would.  No biggy, the girls did thoroughly enjoy it and we even got to meet some very nice neighbors that we had not met yet.  It's still summer fun and that's what's really important.

ps. I just might quit my day job and team up with these two to sale lemonade for a living. :)

A&J

Teacher Appreciation

There are always teachers to thank....

It's so hard coming up with ideas to show how much we appreciate our teachers.  At the girls school, they have several teachers and aides that help in each classroom.  So buying gifts for everyone that helps is quite difficult.  Not to mention each teacher has a different personality so what equally fits everyone?  I have the answer....

Yummy Desserts!!

Angel Food Delight with a cute tag

saying "LCCS Teachers are the sweetest Angels!"

 And my most famous Banana Pudding Trifle.  This recipe is soo super yummy and it was handed down to me by someone that said I was not allowed to give it out.  It's a hit everywhere I take it and it makes me feel like I am the best cook ever. :)

The tag says, "We go Bananas with appreciation for our LCCS Teachers and helpers!"

I took a dessert in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week and the teachers were all very thrilled.  The 3rd dessert was magic bars with a tag saying "LCCS Teachers know how to work that teacher magic!"  I somehow didn't get a picture. :(  I think these would be good for summer camp teachers, sunday school teachers, and even all the other little teachers that help us along the way.

A&J

Where the Wild Things Are...Halter T-Shirt Dress

Thought I would share another cute version of the T shirt Halter dress we've already featured.  This dress pattern from Here is my favorite because there are endless options.  I know I originally said this was so difficult to make because t-shirt material is hard to sew.  But after trying again and reading the helpful hints in the instructions (a little trick called starch), this one went much smoother.  I will definitely be making more!!  Here's a "Where the Wild Things Are" version that I made using a men's T-shirt found at Walmart.  

This little cutie's favorite book is Where the Wild Things Are so her entire birthday party centered around this theme.  I'll have to post the most adorable party favor her mom made for everyone in a later post.

The animal print is from a pair of leggings my daughter grew out of.  I'm pretty sure they were from Target. 

 Here's a closeup of the pocket.  The wording was on the back of the T.  I just hand stitched it on with coordinating yellow thread.

I do have one confession...I love using ruffles at the bottom, but I've never sat down long enough to learn how to make them.  I'm so impatient!!  So, I save outgrown clothing that already have ruffles on them.  Cut the ruffle off and sew on the dress.  It makes this dress so easy and so fast too!  I whipped this one up in less than an hour.  Pretty cool for my limited crafting time.  Love it!!!!

A&J

Vintage Baby Shower

Loved, Loved, Loved this shower!  It was so fun to put together.

Here's the invite....

 The Table...

It's so great to have best buds that have cool stuff you can borrow.  My "partner in crime" and I have the same taste so when I needed stuff for this shower, I was able to raid her stuff so I didn't have to pull everything off my shelves and from around my house.  It worked out MORE than perfect. :)

A&J



Happy Fourth Blogger Friends...

A few days late, but I couldn't help but post this All American adorable pic of our 4th fun to show a collection of bandana dresses/shirts/outfits as featured as a tutorial last year.

As a collection, it's so stinking cute.

Anyway, it makes me smile.  I hope it makes you smile as well.

A&J