New Stuff

Sorry I'm not very original with my post titles. So...I woke up today feeling very inspired, and the next thing I know, I had come up with tons of cute designs for personal stationery cards for my Etsy shop! Basically ever since I opened my shop, I've been trying to decide what audience and style to focus in on (hello, marketing classes). I love to play with a ton of styles (modern, classic, simple, girly...) but I need to stick with just one of two if I want to be successful. I also decided to narrow down the type of stationery I want to sell. After today's design extravaganza, I think I have it all figured out.

From now on, I will only be selling personal stationery. I really love wedding related stationery, but I tend to get stuck and frustrated....so I'm hoping this new direction works well!

Here are just a few of the card designs I came up with today....

I became obsessed with ticking stripe a few weeks ago, hence the next two cards...

AND I just orded cardstock to print these on--linen textured. They will look amazing.

P.S. Yardwork sucks. And also you should go download the new Eli Young Band song "Crazy Girl" and "7 & 7" by Turnpike Troubadours. SO so good. Ok...I am leaving this computer! I haven't showered yet and all I've eaten today is a cupcake. I know, TMI.

Spring Break

Happy St. Patricks Day! I hope you wear some green!
We made it back from Colorado yesterday afternoon and Bryan had just enough time to install our new TV before heading off to baseball practice.

Before the switch:

And after! It looks like I need to rearrange the wall decor now...

Oh and in case you're wondering, the old TV is going in our bedroom. Looks like we won't have to fight over who gets control of the TV now!

Today is the first day of yard work....I'm kind of dreading the whole sweating/hard work part, but can't wait to see it all finished!

You can see more of the designs my mom made for our yard HERE.

The current plan is to get all the basics installed along with a few plants and then add more overtime. So it definitely won't look like the pictures above right away, but it sure will look a lot better than it does now!

Home.

I love Lubbock. Like, really. I love the people, my job, our house, the warm (not windy) weather, and all of the many friends we've made. But can I just say, that I LOVE being back in Colorado. There's just something about being in the same place where you grew up that you just can't get anywhere else. And the shopping is good too.

Oh, and you also get to wake up to this:

Yes, you get to enjoy the prettiness in the morning, AND it melts by the afternoon!

These past few days have been much needed, and I wish we weren't about to leave! We have been hanging out for the last time at the Roberts' house before they make the big move to Louisiana. It makes me so sad to think that I will never drive through Daniel's Park (the place where we had our first kiss when we were 16 and where Bryan proposed when we were 20) to get to their house again. I have so many memories of our time spent here, from youth group Christmas Parties to family dinners after Bryan's baseball games back in high school. This is the place where I met most all of my in-laws and where we went to celebrate after we got engaged. I've had so much fun here, and will miss it a lot, but can't wait to see what God has in store for this great family in LA. I'm sure He won't disappoint :).

The Laundry Room

Hi everyone!

I just got back from a very fun trip to Ruby Tequila's (mexican food....yum) with my two friends, Kaitlin and Jessica.  We have had a very busy week and it will only get busier when we head home to Colorado tomorrow! One of the reasons our week was so hectic is due to the fact that we finished our laundry room.

I am in LOVE with this room, even though it is only a 5'x5' box. As I've stated before, we decided to paint the stripes that I have been obsessed with for quite some time. Bryan and I also completely repainted all of the trim, doors, and cabinets to make it look and feel brand new. I added some pattern, baskets, and a couple of framed prints to top the whole thing off. We were on a very strict budget for this, and I am happy to say that I only spent about $40 for the whole thing! It's not much, but it makes me a heck of lot happier when I have to do laundry now!

Here is the "before":

And the "after":

Love those stripes!

I made this curtain to hide the ugly drying rack in about 10 minutes with iron-on hem (aka my best friend). I love the fabric, I got it for like $4 at JoAnn's.

These prints are from TJMaxx. $10. Boom.

I also recieved this nice suprise in the mail today...

It's the Garden Issue! And guess what's next in our plans....that's right, our garden! Thank you, BHG, for making this girl's day.

Yay, love it!! Happy Spring Break!

Between Naps on the Porch

Link Parties:

Think Pink Sundays
Whatcha Got Weekend
Amaze Me Mondays
Just Something I Whipped Up
Market Yourself Mondays
DIY Showoff Project Parade
Thrifty Decor Chick
Take a Look Tuesday
Show and Tell Wednesday
House of Hepworths
Show and Share Day
Fun to Craft
Weekend Wrap Up Party
The Shabby Nest
Remodelaholic
Furniture Feature Friday

Beginnings of Spring and Favorite Things

I love love love when spring starts to make an appearance after a long winter. A warm day lifts my spirits and makes me so excited for the months to come!

(I've been obsessively checking the redbud tree in our front yard for blooms for a while now, and today they finally  showed up!)

The weather here in Lubbock has been really great these past few weeks, but I am so nervous that another cold front is going to blow in and ruin my good mood. I do my best to ignore the fact that winter will probably show it's ugly face one more time by making some spring-themed sugar cookies.

Of course, when I make anything from scratch there is automatically a huge explosion in our kitchen that usually consists of flour, baking pans, egg yolk, and melted butter residue. (I don't know about you, but my flour refuses to stay inside the bowl when I'm stirring)

Case in point:

All of this "spring fever" has put me in such a good mood that I decided to blog a little about myself!

I've been noticing that people put their "interests and activities" on their blogs, so I thought I might do the same. Get excited.

My 25 most favorite things (in no particular order):

1. Reading
2. Shopping
3. Dr. Pepper
4. Etsy.com
5. Happy Tears
6. Blogs
7. Decorating
8. Photography
9. Christmas
10. Clean Houses
11. Target
12. Girls Nights
13. Skinny Jeans
14. Summertime
15. Mexican Food
16. Genuine People
17. The Color Green
18. Weddings
19.  Playing board/card games with my family
20. Anthropologie Candles (Blue Volcano and Voluspa Baltic Amber, FYI)
21. Sleeping In
22. Good Movies (Pride and Prejudice is my fave)
23. Good Music (too many favorites to name...)
24. The feeling after you work out (but not during...that sucks)
25. Feeling at Home

I don't think I need to mention that Bryan, my family, my friends, my faith, my job, and of course, Louie obviously top the list...but I guess I just did!

Spring Break is next week! Yay for working at a university---there are definitely perks to my job!

Laundry Room Redo

Hi everyone!

This weekend has been a busy but FUN one and we even managed to halfway finish redoing the laundry room. Bryan had baseball all weekend and I managed to make it out to Ralls, TX (yes, it is as small as it sounds) to watch a game. They lost...of course. For those of you who don't know, I'm a bad luck charm when it comes to baseball. Like so bad that I haven't seen Bryan hit a home run since high school. And he hit many when he was in college, like enough to get a record for the most home runs in a single inning. But no, I wasn't there. In fact, on two seperate occasions, I had actually left the game for a brief period of time to 1) go get a blanket from my apartment and 2) get a sonic drink. And sure enough, when I came back, I had once again missed everything...both times.

Sorry about the random tangent, I'm a little bitter about that.

Anyway, I've been seeing this stripe trend in small rooms for a while now, and I'm in love with it. Here is an example from The Lettered Cottage:

And another from Young House Love:

Cute, right?

So, I decided to try this in our teeny-tiny laundry room:



(Please excuse our obviously attention deprived dog)

And this is what we have so far!

The laundry room is pretty far away from any of the windows in our house, so I had to open the garage door just to get some light in, so excuse the weird pictures. I know I could have turned on the light, but the yellowness made it hard to see the stripes in pictures haha.

We also touched up the trim paint while we were doing this. Now we need to move the washer and dryer back in, touch up the cabinet paint, hang up some decorations, and hang a little curtain in front of that clothing rod by the cabinet. We are hoping to finish this sometime this week!

I also wanted to mention that we went to our first bible class and small group in like 3 years on Sunday--it was a lot of fun and we are excited to keep going!

Happy Monday!

Random Happenings

I've been a bad blogger this week! Sorry. I will get better about that starting...now.

Ok, the past couple of days were VERY busy but a lot of fun! As I mentioned in my last post, my sister Julie came to stay with us all week and it was so great getting to see her! We talked a lot, ate, went to the movies, ate, went shopping, ate, and went to the Etiquette Dinner that I helped with on Tuesday night. Oh yeah, and we ate some more. It was amazing.

My friend Whitney, who is the Career Services Coordinator in our office, was in charge of this event and she did a wonderful job! The Etiquette Dinner was a first for LCU, and we had no clue how it would turn out, but it was very successful and I look forward to helping with more of them in the future. Whitney hired a speaker who teaches etiquette dinners professionally to lead ours. We had about 100 upperclassmen come, and we all learned so many table manners that I had never even heard of before!

I was in charge of flowers and basically just helped Whitney out with whatever she needed before and during the event. We chose to do blue and white hydrangeas (my favorite) with white roses and tulips for the centerpieces. We were on a super strict budget, so I was very happy when they came out at about $5.50 each!

This lady was amazing! She literally went over every aspect of a formal dinner and how to handle each situation. Our students really loved it.

After the dinner, Julie and I went home and tried to teach Louie some new tricks...

But we didn't have much luck haha.

We also went and saw "The King's Speech" last night which was SO great. Bryan and I went to an Oscar Party with some friends on Sunday, so I was very anxious to see if it really deserved Best Picture...it did.

Sadly, Julie had to head back to CO today, but I really am so happy that she was able to stay with us. It was great to catch up--I love when people come visit!

And just to end this post on a pretty note, I will leave you with more pictures of our pretty flowers that I look at work today:

I'm  pretty sure we'll be tackling more house projects this weekend! Get excited!