Find of the day

I found this painting at an antique mart today. It is painted on velvet the seller said she bought in Europe long ago. I am going to put it in the babies room, I think it has a fairy tale aura. Although I haven't decided which fairy tale it reminds me of. Hansel and Gretel perhaps?

for the new year

My sister pointed me in the direction of Clean Mama blog. Cleaning in not my forte, I hate it but this new approach as seen on Clean Mama may work for me. You have four chores you do everyday and you add one extra chore each day. You also choose one thing or area in your house to organize for the week. The everyday chores are sweep, one load of laundry (all the way through), wipe counters and clear clutter. Then the rotational chore changes everyday, for example today was wash the floors and yesterday was vacuum. I am a week in and it is going well so far, my sister has been doing it longer and swears by the clean a little every day method. My question is, can it last? I hope so, because my house has been way cleaner all week.

Nursery

Here is the current state of the nursery. We have barely done anything to it. I think the bookshelf will be moving to a different corner of the room. I am planning to put the cribs on either side of the small white dresser, which my husband will be sad to hear may or may not remain white.

This week we added the glider and moved the antique rocker to our bedroom.

These are the inspirations. A colorful dresser turned changing table (I am thinking red) and two white cribs coming out from the wall. I am going on the search for the dresser this week. Wish me luck.

Versatility

I love salads. I love that salad recipes are more of a guideline. That being said here is a delicious winter salad that includes a previously hated fruit of mine, grapefruit.

1 grapefruit
Handful of dried cherries or craisins
Spinach or other greens
Pomegranate seeds
1 cup or so of crumbled feta or Gorgonzola

Dressing:
1 cup sugar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2 cups vegetable oil
1 tbl poppy seeds

I made a small salad so I bottled most of the dressing to use for future salads.

How pinterest has changed my life

Seeing a variety of nicely packaged gifts inspired me to get past my deep seeded aversion to wrapping and actually wrap presents this year. These are banana bread loafs for my husbands co-workers. By the way, did you know tape will not stick to parchment paper? Glue doesn't work either. I am going to have to try using it when I bake!

a return

Over the past two years I have done very little projecting or crafting. Now that I have graduated I am enjoying a vast amount of free time and thus the projecting has begun again!

,

My Mom made the base for this advent calendar 20+ years ago. She gave it to me so I could create a similar advent to the one my husband had in his house growing up. I made the ornaments from felt. My sister-in-law has been experimenting with painting the back of an advent with magnetic paint to avoid having to put velcro all over an advent and it worked! I still need to add magnets to the ornaments, paint the back of the tree with magnetic paint and put numbers on the pockets, but getting the ornaments made felt like a big hurdle passed.

This project took 10 minutes. Inspired by how my sister-in-law hangs her Christmas cards, I bought a bunch of clothes pins for $2, cut some red ribbon from my stash and put no fray on the edges and voila!

Now I just need to finish all the other million projects that I put aside for grad school.

here and there

Boxwood wreaths and morse code greeting cards? I love it all.

via High Fives for Everyone and Under the Sycamore

holly jolly wreath

I think this qualifies as one of the best Christmas wreaths I have ever seen!
via the diary of dave's wife