Let the Decorating Begin!

I mentioned in my New Year's post that one of my goals for this year is to finally decorate my blah, builder-beige home. Well let the decorating begin! I've been slowly picking up a few small purchases here and there and come next week when I'm on Spring Break, I'll be adding the new stuff to my decor!

Two of the biggest items I've picked up are a solid wood dresser from a local shop here in New Braunfels for my youngest daughter's bedroom, and a great desk and bench I found on Craigslist for $50 for my middle child's room that I plan to use as her sewing table since she wants to be a fashion designer.

The dresser was already painted a lime green color that goes perfectly with my youngest's undersea decor so I just added some cute new knobs from Hobby Lobby. The desk and benc, on the other hand, need work! I'm planning to refinish them next week and I promise to document along the way.

So I have a lot planned for the next week so let's hope I can get at least most of it accomplished while I'm off from work and school.

In the meantime, I thought I'd offer you a discount to one of my favorite sources for home decor.

Overstock.com is a great place to find home decor items at a deep discount. I scour the pages religiously in an effort to achieve my dream decor on a dime.

Here's a few things I've been looking at lately:

Armchairs - I'm particularly drawn to these:

Lummi White Leather High-back Chair

Manchester Club Chair

Area Rugs - I love the Hand-Tufted Metro Flower Rug!




Bookshelves - I think these are so fun:

Unique Red Cocoa Wood Bookcase/Display Cabinet

And let's not forget...

Lighting -

I love the industrial look of this pendant combined with the elegant crystals:

Indoor 3-light Copper/Crystal Pendant Chandelier

And I'd love to replace our standard-issue vanity light fixtures with something like this:

Chrome Bathroom Triple Sconce

So what would you buy?

Here's the discount codes:

121745, good for 10% off Overstock products (excluding movies, books, and electronics).
*This discount code never expires, however, it can only be used once per email address.

202234 - free shipping promo code for electronics.

So go ahead! Get to shoppin'!

Stay Crafty!

All the ideas and opinions expressed are my own. No monetary compensation was received for doing this post, however, I was provided with a discount code.

Roller Queen

My daughter's 10th birthday was a few weeks ago and she requested to go roller skating. I created this invitation for her, and we invited a few of her closest friends, loaded them up in our Yukon, and headed to Playland Skate Center in Austin!


We opted not to buy a party package at the skating rink. Instead we paid for each child to skate for a few hours and then we went to Red Robin for dinner where one kid ate free with each adult meal purchased! It saved us a ton of money and the food was way better than greasy skating rink pizza!

After dinner, we headed back to our house in New Braunfels for cake & ice cream, presents, and a sleepover!

I had baked my daughter's cake that morning. To keep with the black, white, and pink theme, it was a triple tier devil's food cake with vanilla icing and pink rosettes.

I also found these great zebra striped mini takeout boxes at Hobby Lobby that I filled with hot pink tissue paper, small colored picture holder cubes I found in the $1 bin at Michaels, and of course candy.


After cake, the girls took a little break to ogle some eye-candy in New Moon, and then I had prepared a fun roller skating themed craft for them to make during the sleepover.

I had drawn some roller skating images and added quirky sayings. I printed out 2 of each design and cut them apart so each girl could use them as a pattern.


We traced the images onto shrinky dink plastic and colored them in with my Prismacolor pencils. Then I trimmed around all the finished and colored designs, punched a hole at the top, and baked them in the oven.

It took me quite awhile to bake all of them since I could only do it 2 at a time and several pieces curled up on themselves and had to be re-baked.

I also had a minor setback when I reached in to grab the tray of shrinky dinks, the potholder slipped and I grabbed the bare oven rack, burning the crap out of my finger! I may have said a few choice words, but luckily the girls were all upstairs playing Glee Karaoke and Just Dance 2 while I was baking.

Needless to say once they were all baked, I was beat! I had a stiff drink, watched The Runaways and went to bed while the girls watched Season 1 of Glee in the game room.

The next morning I fixed a huge pancake breakfast for the girls. And then I took the shrinky dinks from the night before and added jump rings and colored cords to make them roller skating necklaces to wear home.


It was a very fun and successful party, but it was also exhausting to say the least!

I can't believe my baby girl is 10 already!

CSN Review

A while back I mentioned that I was going to be reviewing a product from CSN Stores where you can find everything from stylish briefcases to the latest in kitchen gadgets to chic home decor!

In exchange for the review I was offered a gift card code for $35 towards the purchase of any item from their 200+ stores.


I chose the Deni Rotating Wine Chiller. It was $42.99 so after applying my $35 gift code + $7.95 for shipping, I ended up paying $15.94 for the chiller. That's quite a steal!

I decided to rev up the chiller for a bottle of Riesling on Superbowl Sunday. I know, no beer during Superbowl, but I was trying to kill 2 birds with one stone.

It comes with 2 bottle holders to accommodate different sized bottles, and uses either four AA batteries or an included AC/DC adapter. I ended up using the adapter.

First thing I did was to take out the 2 removable cups and wash them as recommended.

Once dry, I decided which cup fit the size wine bottle I was chilling. I then placed that cup back into the cooling bucket and snapped it into place.

Next I placed my bottle of wine inside the inner cup.

The directions then told me to fill the cooling bucket up to the fill line with either chilled water or crushed ice. I just used the cold water from my tap since it had been super cold outside anyway, but I think next time I will try the ice.

Then I turned the dial all the way to the right to the 15 minute mark on the timer. The booklet said 15 minutes was the correct time for a large bottle of wine.

And then magic happened, the bottle began to rotate in clockwise and counter-clockwise cycles as the LED illumination gradually changed colors - red, blue, green, purple and yellow. It was so pretty and entertaining.


When the timer dinged at 15 minutes, I uncorked my wine and poured my first glass.

The result was much cooler than the bottle was just sitting in my wine rack, but not ice cold like I expected (perhaps because I just used cold tap water). Next time I'll definitely use ice, but did I still drink it? Heck yeah I did!

So I decided to run the bottle through another 9 minute rotation and so my 2nd glass was much colder.

Well, I finished an entire bottle of Riesling by myself all in the name of science! A woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do, ya know.

I'm very happy with my new wine chiller and I had a great experience working with CSN Stores. I highly recommend them the next time you're shopping online. They have practically everything!

A New Year

Happy New Year Everyone! I feel like I haven't posted in ages, but it's really only been a month if you count our family Christmas card.

I decided that I'm not going to make resolutions this year, knowing full well that they may be impractical to achieve since I am still working full time, going to grad school, and of course bogged down with Mom duties. What I am doing though is making a few achievable goals:

1. FINALLY decorate my house! We've lived in our builder beige home for 3 years now and the starkness and blahness (is that a word? well it is now) are getting to me. I know that it will be a slow process but I plan to do something (no matter how small) every weekend to make my house feel more like a home. The biggest challenge I face is making my home feel more "ME." I realized that nothing in my decor reflects who I am as a designer, artist, or creative person. Right now, most of my furnishings are pretty traditional, which is not me AT ALL. I want to transform my space into a more clean, modern, and fun environment. I've been saving hundreds of images of spaces I am drawn to over the past few months, and they all have a few things in common - color, simplicity, and art graced walls. It's simply not feasible for me to go out and buy all new furnishings so I'm going to make the best out of what I have, even if it means refinishing furniture, repurposing materials, or creating my own decor. I think MODERN ECLECTIC is what I'm going for, which describes me, Multi-Tasking Mama, to a "T."

Here's a few images that I've found as inspiration:

Hillary Thomas Designs via House of Turquoise

House Beautiful

HGTV.com

Little Green Notebook

See Jane Work via Design*Sponge

BHG.com

BHG.com

2. In order to achieve #1, we have to DECLUTTER! I've been purging things around the house left and right trying to achieve a calm balance between what our family needs and all the extra crap. Sometimes when I look around my house I feel like "wiping the slate clean" and starting over. That's totally not realistic, so I'm just aiming to feel relaxed and organized. Which seem like two conflicting terms, but in reality when I know everything is put in it's place and not strewn all over the house it gives me a peace of mind and sense of calm that I've done my job and can now relax. So, I've been moving from room to room and simplifying. Getting rid of toys no longer played with, clothes unworn, boxes of stuff sitting in closets. Even if they're not seen, I know they're there. And that clutters my mind. I've just begun, but I feel lighter already.



3. Spend more quality time with my husband. Here's the deal - we're busy and we're tired. With both of us working full time, me in grad school, 3 kids with huge extracurricular commitments, and a house to take care of, we are EXHAUSTED! So even when we have a rare moment of free time all we want to do is sleep or veg on the sofa. That's all well and good if we want things to remain the same, but who doesn't want to get the most out of their relationship? We're making a promise to spend more time on "us" so we can reconnect and rediscover why we fell in love in the first place. Simple things like having a date night, holding hands, and having conversations not involving the children make a difference. We've been through a lot over the 12 years we've been married (13 we've been together). We are the foundation of our family and we owe it to ourselves and to our kids to keep our relationship as healthy and strong as possible.

So there you have it, not resolutions per se, but simple attainable goals. No resolving to make it to the gym every day when I know that will never happen. No promises to change myself when I'm happy the way I am. Just living life the best I can.

From Our Family to Yours

One-Stop Holiday Shopping

If you are anything like me, you procrastinate on your holiday shopping. Every year I say that I'm going to get ahead and start early, but life gets in the way. Well this year, I'm going to avoid the crowded stores as much as possible and do most of my shopping online. I've been scoping out gift ideas for hard-to-buy-for relatives and friends for a few weeks now, and I think I have found a winner!

CSN Stores has over 200 online stores where you can find everything from stylish briefcases to the latest in kitchen gadgets to chic home decor! You are guaranteed to find gifts for everyone in this one-stop shop!

Check back soon to see what item I will be reviewing from their selection of literally thousands of items! It may just be exactly what you're looking for!

Stay Crafty!

I'm a Bobcat!

I feel guilty for neglecting my blog, but I've been super duper busy lately with an exciting new development...

...I'm going to grad school! Today is my first class and I've got a case of first day jitters! I'm going for a Master of Fine Arts in Communication Design. It's a fairly new program, but has already won high international acclaim. I'm so happy to be a part of it!

So it's official...I am a Texas State Bobcat!

Image from sportslogos.net

Unfortunately, with my new schedule, I do not know when I'll be able to get back to crafting and blogging regularly. I don't want to completely abandon my blog but will not be able to devote the time I want to it either. So, I may take a small break from blogging for a bit. I'll see how it goes once my first semester is in full swing.

I did promise to show you a pic of the Rockabilly tattoo necklace I made for my boudoir photo shoot though.

It's a small pic, but here it is:


It is made from shrink plastic, prismacolor pencils, and jewelry components. I absolutely love the way it turned out and I feel it added so much more to my outfit. Faith made the boudoir photo shoot an amazing experience and I'm so happy with the results.

Oh and I also had my hair done again at Birds Barbershop, but this time I went with a darker red underneath and made the cut a bit edgier with more piecey layers. I love it! And my husband was very quick to point out that it is now "Bobcat colors." Totally not my intention, but awesome just the same! I've got school spirit...Yes I do!

I'll try to check in and update you all soon!

Til then...Stay Crafty!