08-05-2015

Tennessee so Far

I love taking trips to Tennessee in the summer but it is never a vacation. I try to jam pack as much into a week as I possibly can. When I get back to Texas I am utterly exhausted! I work in the office during the week so I only have nights and weekends as well. Lots to fit in!

Of course this weekend was spent at the pool. I am so thankful that there was beautiful weather!

The American Girl Doll store is now opened up and my sister and I took a trip. (Pardon the selfies). The dolls are even cooler than when we had them

I went out to lunch with my Mom and my sister.

Sunday we had brunch at a local Pancake place where you have the griddle on your table and make your own.

Monday night I stopped by a house of a family I used to babysit. This little one is now 9 (!!) and I watched her when she was a newborn. I loved catching up with them!

Here sister is now 13 (!!) and I watched her starting when she was 2. It is crazy how they all grow up!

I am still enjoying Tennessee and lots more to do and see!

Filed Under: Home, Me Tagged With: home, tennessee

06-25-2015

We got Carpet!!

Sorry for my lack of posting recently. We have been super busy with the house! We started moving in last night and we are hoping we can get the majority of everything else moved tonight! Fingers crossed! The big news is WE HAVE CARPET!

The installer man installing the upgraded pad. It is weird how when you are an adult you get excited about stuff like this.

Look how pretty it is with the new paint color!! Now I am going to give you some before photos and some after ones.

Master Bedroom Before:

Master Bedroom After:

Stairs Before:

Stairs After:

Did I tell you how much I love the new carpet? In addition to the paint in the house. You can’t tell how incredibly horrible the other paint was in photos but the walls & ceilings were all painted that peach. Yuck!

Filed Under: Home, Me Tagged With: carpet, house

08-22-2014

Evernote for Organization

I have mentioned how I use Evernote For Blogging in the past and I finally finished (or am at least up to date) on using Evernote to organize all my articles. I am sure a lot of you are like me and you rip out articles and ideas from magazines. I used to have large binders storing all of this information in plastic sleeves. It worked but 1. took up a lot of room and 2. I had to look to find what I was looking for. Enter Evernote. I can scan in my articles using my printer and then put them into Evernote. Evernote converts them into searchable PDF’s. This is my favorite part. I can put the article in and then I can search in Evernote to find them!

These are only some of the articles I was scanning in. It took me forever. I started back in April and took a long break and finally finished up the other day. Some of these articles I had been saving for years. This was good as I was able to get rid of some of them that didn’t matter and put the recipes in my recipe binder.

Once you have everything scanned in you can go ahead and make a new Notebook. I titled mine Home, Crafts, Articles/Tips, and then Clothes/Health (basically general Me). You can always add more notebooks and change them as you scan articles in but since you can search for everything I find it a lot easier to have less notebooks and make use of searching and tags. For the one above you can see I added the tags: bedroom & Kid’s. I also have added the magazine it came from on some of them. This way I can search the tag Bedroom and all of the bedrooms will come up.

This is what it looks like when you are searching. I searched just in this folder and it was able to find the text from the picture of the article and bring it up for me. It makes it so much easier to search for things.

I even use it for some craft ideas. Granted, I have lots of different places with craft ideas and should use Evernote more to store them but when I am out and about and find something I want to recreate it is super easy to place it in Evernote. Evernote has a mobile app where I can make notes on the go.

Evernote has so many uses, blogging and organizing articles are really just the beginning. How do you use Evernote?

Filed Under: Home, Me, Organizing Tagged With: evernote, organization

04-03-2014

Simple Accent Topiaries

I have a small side table next to the chaise in the living room. For Valentine’s day I had some little trees on it but recently it has been pretty plain. Cue the topiaries for spring. Now, I could have easily purchased them (well, maybe not so easily as I live in the country and getting to the shops isn’t always the easiest) but I like to try to make things for less money.

Supplies Needed: Terracotta pots, Styrofoam balls, dried moss, wooden dowel, glue, glue gun and a piece of styrofoam.

First step involved messily hot gluing the moss to the balls. Be prepared to have your vacuum ready after you are done with this step. I did the first ball without having the dowel in it first and the second one I did with the dowel in it. I am still not sure which way is easier.

When I was done with my tops, I traced the pots around this piece of Styrofoam. This is what I was using to stick the dowel in.

I then shoved the Styrofoam into the pots. I had to trim it a little bit more. In hind site I would have put rocks or dirt or something under the Styrofoam to hold the dowel a little bit better. I put glue in there and held it until I felt it as secure but I still would have stuck it in better.

And ta-da! They are done and sitting on my table. The only thing I think they are missing is some ribbon around the pots. Maybe I can pick that up next time I am in town!

Filed Under: Crafts, Home, Home Tagged With: diy, home, topiaries