From The Bar…

I went to a Martini bar a few weeks ago and had the best drink! I’ve been searching for the recipe ever since  so I can make them at home instead of paying $9 a piece. I am so excited I finally found it so I have to share it with everyone!

Pink Lemonade Martini

2 1/2 oz Bacardi Limon

1 oz Cointreau

1/2 oz Freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 oz Cranberry juice

1/2 Lemon slice, for garnish

Granulated sugar to coat rim of glass

Moisten the rim of a cocktail glass with some of the Bacardi Limon; sprinkle lightly but evenly with the sugar.
Fill a large shaker glass 2/3 full of ice cubes.
Add Bacardi Limon, Cointreau, lemon juice and cranberry juice; shake until well-blended and chilled.
Strain into prepared glass; garnish with lemon slice and serve at once.

I’m Back

Hey Everyone! I’m back from Virginia…

The 8 hour car ride was actually 12 with traffic and stopping time. My kids were awesome! My 3 year old didn’t even sleep in the car and still did great.

I would have liked to have a camera with me but here are a couple I took with my phone.

Madison was the flower girl

McKenna, my other princess

The wedding was amazing. 2 Maid of Honors, 2 Best Men, 8 Bridesmaids, 8 Groomsmen. A beautiful church, a gorgeous country club for the reception, surf and turf for dinner (salmon and filet mignon), a beautiful cake, an open bar and a great DJ. The girls were a big hit especially on the dance floor. Madison would not leave willingly even when it was well past her bed time.

Vacation

I’m heading out on an 8 hour car ride to Virginia  for a family wedding with my kids, my mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Wish me luck! I’ll be back next week….

Bowerbird and Friends

This is the second of my new favorite stores. It’s right across the parking lot of Red Chair Antiques in Peterborough, NH. Things were also a little pricey for me but a lot of things were added to my wish list!

Curtains

Errr CURTAINS! I’ve been having such an issue trying to decide on dining room curtains. Since I got new chairs I thought my old curtains didn’t go anymore, the competing patterns were really bothering me. First I bought some plain red panels to try to get more of my red in the room (I’m trying to make each room downstairs flow by putting red in each room) but that looked awful. Then I tried some white tie up shades I had. That didn’t work either so I tried tea staining the fabric. They came out good but still didn’t work. So I decided to make some. I went to Joann’s and looked through pattern books to pick out ones I liked and found some fabric that would coordinate well with the pattern on my new chairs. The pattern also matches a lampshade I have in the room so it all ties together. This is how the turned out…

I like them but I need more curtain for the dining room, a valance just doesn’t cut it. So finally I found these panels at Big Lots for $12 a pair and I’m happy.

I’m going to be changing the shade of the walls soon so the curtains will look even better.

 

Red Chair Antiques

I found two new stores to shop at (see the second next week)… As soon as I walked in this one became one of my favorites.

The only issue is things are a little pricey for me. The only thing I bought was my starfish for my wall art project but I added a lot to my wish list. Check out their website here.

A Tree Has Grown

After looking at kid’s room on HGTV’s Rate My Space I saw quite a few rooms with tree or flower silhouettes on their walls. I really wanted to copy the idea for Madison’s wall  to break up some of the purple. I found a tree picture online, printed it out and sketched it onto the wall in pencil. It took awhile because I kept going back and changing a little here and adding a little there. When I thought I was happy I started painting it in with leftover white paint. Well the idea looked better in my head than it did on the wall. After one coat of paint I wasn’t sure if I wanted add a second probably third coat in hopes it would look better or scrap the whole idea and repaint the purple.

Then I saw this post on It’s the Little Things That Make a House A Home.

LOOK at that tree! The whiteboard idea is great but for my tree I’ll stick with regular white paint since the tree is behind her bed and just for decorate purposes. This would be a much easier idea and much easier to paint. And it was…

I cut leaves and a bird out of leftover fabric from when I made her crib bedding and ragamuffin garland and curtains (which are now in McKenna’s room) then I stiffened them with “Stiffy” and glued them on the wall. I love how it’s 3D (although kinda hard to tell from the picture)

$24 Wall Art

When I saw some starfish in one of my new favorite stores (check that post out later this week) I knew I wanted to use some in my new/future bedroom. They were $1.75 a piece. While I was visiting my parents house I saw a bunch of frames they had bought on clearance at Michael’s. They were just my style, black with a distressed finish so I bought them from her.  The smaller ones (holds an 8x8 piece of paper) were $4.99 and the bigger one (holds an 11x14 piece of paper) was $6.99! So I decided to frame the starfish in them but instead of just using a blank piece of paper I printed out a few of my favorite quotes on cardstock then just cut the paper to size and glued on the starfish.

“Each day when you awake know that you have one more day to make a difference in someone’s life.”

- James Mann

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain."

- Anonymous

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

I have my priorities straight…I made art for a wall in my bedroom before I even started tearing off the wallpaper! So this is the direction I’m going in modern coastal….Is that a style?

Strawberry Season

We went strawberry picking yesterday so I’ve been looking up things to do with them.

Pictures sadly courtesy of my phone

Two of my favorite things are Strawberry Shortcake (I cheat and use Bisquick to make the biscuits) and just plain strawberries sprinkled with sugar. Someone told me this weekend to add a little Sambuca to the sugared strawberries and it’s supposed to be fantastic.

Erin over at Rare and Beautiful Treasures posted this recipe for a cooked Strawberry Pie. I have made it twice since she posted it. Sooo yummy!!

Here are a few others I’ve found on Allrecipes.com. I haven’t tried any of them so if you do let me know how they are.

Strawberries and Cream Cake

Strawberry Pie

Here’s one for the 4th…Wave Your Flag Cheesecake

Strawberry Dream Cake

Strawberry Shake

Strawberry Muffins

Cool ‘N Easy Strawberry Pie

Pretzel Salad

Strawberry Brownie Delight

Strawberry Soup

Strawberry Topping

Strawberry Sauce Chicken

Frozen Strawberry Margarita

Strawberry Vinaigrette

Strawberry Preserves

Nutty Strawberry Salad

Spinach and Strawberry Salad

Grilled Chicken Breasts with Strawberry Salsa

Chicken Strawberry Kabobs

and of course you can’t forget chocolate covered strawberries…I like to use Ghirardelli chocolate. Just melt and dip. Yummy!

Enjoy!

Catalog Shopping

The new Anthropologie catalog came. These two things really caught my eye.

Love this wire shelf but at $168 it’s a little too pricey for me.

This would go very nicely in my kitchen. I’m going to make a trip to the store and pick one up.The website says available July 2nd. Err, I hate waiting. 

I found these Zinc letters while looking on the website. I’ll have to think about where one could go.

Master Bedroom

Here are some before pictures of my bedroom. This is how it looked the day of the home inspection. I didn’t take any pictures after we moved the furniture in.

You can’t get the true effect of the wallpaper unless you touch it…it’s textured people! Other than that it doesn’t look bad in these pictures. It is bad though. I have two dressers that I bought to be painted to match the bed so right now they are still brown with ugly knobs. I bought new nightstands so those are good and the bed is too. I’ll have to try to get my hands on a camera to take some other before pictures.

My Challenge

Ok, so I have a million unfinished projects around here and I’m thinking of starting another….

Our bedroom is the only room we haven’t touched since moving in and it’s been killing me everyday to look at the ugly wallpaper. Hubby is out of town for 4 more weeks so I was thinking about starting AND finishing the bedroom while he’s gone. You think I should take on the task??? It involves taking down the wall paper, patching the walls and sanding, painting the walls and I really want to do the board and batten technique.

Our Suburban Cottage 

Then there is furniture to redo and accessorizing…Hmm, when you put it all out there I’m not so sure 4 weeks is enough time.

 

P.S…Camera update: I tried the troubleshooting I found online and the outcome is I need to send it in to be serviced. :-( Now the question is do I send it in and spend probably at least $200 or buy a new body of an updated version? My rebel is over 4 years old.

I’d Like To Thank…

Megan from Making House A Home for my very first blog award!

Thanks Megan! I’m honored!

I'm Not Happy

New posts will be on hold temporarily. My Rebel is being a rebel so I can't take any new project pictures :-( My instruction book was very helpful...."ERR 99 - an error other than above has occured." Hopefully someone will be able to look at it soon, I'm starting to have withdrawals.

Cheap Finds

I hopped into HomeGoods the other day and came out with a couple good deals from the clearance section.

I found this cute piggy bank for my youngest to replace her other cute one that had a little run in with the floor.

The one is the best deal I’ve ever gotten from HomeGoods…

 

It’s a little (about 16”) metal angel for my oldest’s room and it was…wait…ready…70 cents! Regular price $9.99!

Recycled Decorating

I recently got a few scrabble games at a yard sale for my newest Etsy item but I didn’t want to just throw out the game boards and letter holder things so I searched online for some ideas for how to use them.

For the game board you can glue pictures of family members then glue their names on with scrabble tiles. Or you can glue the letter holder things onto the game board and use it like a picture ledge.

Here’s what I chose to do with some of the letters and the holder thing…

I just glued the letters on and I’m going to give it a coat of Mod Podge. I made two other ones with my kids names on them. They can just sit on any shelf for a little decoration. 

Sand Castle Cake

I meant to post this awhile ago but better late than never right…

I recently helped throw a shower for a friend that’s getting married at the end of this month. The shower was beach themed and I was in charge of the cake. I was almost ready to buy a cake when I found this site. Lots of cake ideas!

This is the one I decided to copy. I thought I would be really cute for a beach themed shower.

Here is my version…

  

I know theirs looks a lot better but I don’t think mine came out too bad. Especially for a last minute decision. I couldn’t find the graham sticks to go around the edges and I had to make it bigger to feed 50 people. Here’s what I did…

I cooked all the cake the night before (3 cake mixes of your choice)

The bottom layer is a regular 9x13 cake.

The next layer is two 8“ rounds one isn’t quite as thick (see below).

For the next two layers I cooked a 9x13 and put a bowl on top and cut around it to get a smaller circle and the top I cut around a wide mouthed glass.

The cone towers I used a little of the cake mix from one of 8” rounds to make cupcakes out of them. (They bake 20 min) frosted them and stuck the other cone on top.

I wrapped my cutting board with foil as the cake base and started the layering the next morning. Frost between each layer to stick them together then frost the outside with white frosting (3 cans total). I bought the graham crackers already crushed up..much easier that way and they were really fine it didn’t use quite 1 box of them. Then stick your cones where you want them.

I got lots of compliments (of course they didn’t see the original) and it tasted yummy too.

Faux Locker Baskets

I’ve been waiting for some locker basket to come my way for the bench in my “mudroom”. I was in Walmart picking up some white spray paint when I saw Hammered Finish spray paint. Hmm…that got me thinking. I had seen plastic baskets before like this….

What if I used the hammered spray paint to make it look like galvanized metal…

$5 for the spray paint and $3.50 for the basket it was worth a try.

Not too bad..I held it up to my real galvanized metal bins and it looks pretty close. Just don’t touch it!

I have these little metal book plate things in my scrapbooking stash. I’m going to print out a number and attach it to the basket.

 

Of course I just won an auction on Ebay for some real locket baskets I had bid on awhile ago, but these will do until they arrive….

Paint Transformations

I got out the can of spray paint again…I had to try out Kimba’s spray painted glass idea. I was too excited to do this project I didn’t stop to take before pictures. So here are the afters….

  

This was a little glass jar I got at a yard sale for 25 cents.

The little jug bottle I got at a yard sale for 25 cents and the other bottle I got a Michael’s it was 99 cents then I used a 50% off coupon. It has a little cork but I forgot to put it in for the picture.

This was an old coffee tin my mom had just gave it a coat of spray paint and used rub on letters to spell out recipes.

Yard Sale Finds

Three apothecary jars. These things are BIG...I’m not sure where I’m going to put them yet but I couldn’t pass up the good deal. One lid had a little incident coming out of the car but I can still use it for a fish bowl or something.

Bottle for bath salts ($1) and not sure what I’m going to do with the red bottle but it was red and only 10 cents.

I got some more glass bottles for 25 cents each and I’ll show you tomorrow what I did with them.

Mini lampshades for one of my chandeliers ($5)

I got this seltzer bottle ($10) on Friday from an antique store my Great Aunt works at. I drive by it all the time and have never been in. It will definitely be one of my regular shops now.