Spring Break

This title feels like such a fraud! lol We are indeed on spring break here at the Davis household, but it's 40 something degrees and the snow just melted yesterday. blah!  Mind you, I am definitely one of those people who totally appreciates the beauty of fresh fallen snow, but we've had more than our fair share this year and I'm really, really ready for spring like weather.

I told Richard that next year, we will at minimum escape to Louisiana to visit family during spring break next year!


On Thursday, the Fed Ex man showed up with a fresh box of GCD Studios goodies!!  Oh my, lots of fun in that box.

Once I recovered from my cold that had turned into bronchitis, I got busy scrapping with the new Fun House line.  I can't share the layout I created yet, so you'll just have to wait!! ;)

I have a few graphic design projects to finish today, but hoping to enjoy the rest of the break week with the family and maybe some more scrapbooking. ;)

Progress

I'm veering away from the Wordless Wednesday posting for today because it's hard to be wordless when you've got something to say and didn't post the day before :)

I thought I'd share photos of the end results of the projects I've shared recently.

First up, the new bookshelf on the end of the counter.  Here is the before. Some people would call this a wine rack, but I called it the dusty pit. There was no easy way to keep this clean and it was a very tedious place to dust.

Here's the after!

Did I tell you before, that in the houses we built or remodeled I had this added to the end of the islands?  Once it was done and I got to appreciate it for an hour or so,  I told Richard, "Now this feels like home."

Not only do I like the look of it better, having my cookbooks here frees up a ton of counter space and allows me to move my junk pile, which is semi-corralled in a wire basket, further back on the side of the fridge. I can also move my "big Bertha" food processor to that side of the kitchen, a much less noticeable area.

Getting the pine shelves to match the existing cabinet was harder than I thought.  I started with staining with a poly shades but then realized that in order to get it dark enough, it was also going to be too glossy.  So I sanded most of that off and tried just staining it.   I ended up using a glaze on top to get it dark enough. Even after leaving it overnight it still hadn't dried, I  moved it out of the garage to dry on a table in the backand it rained while I was gone. I had to remove the glaze entirely and start over. :( I finished it off with a spray matte finish to protect the glaze.

Next up is another look at my photo gallery wall.  After I had finished and saw the photos on the blog,  I thought it needed to go a little further out. It wasn't hard for me to find more favorite photos to add. ;)

The signs of spring are progressing around here as well.  Not that it feels like spring today with a high of only 46 degrees, but we have had some nice weather lately.

Some of my daffodils are up and blooming.

And the crab apple tree is sprouting leaves, the blossoms will come along shortly.

While we were outside enjoying the warm weather on Monday, I got a nice photo of Emily in her new glasses. (This is for you, mom!)

This afternoon, I'm going to do something I hardly ever do.  I scheduled an appointment for a haircut and a pedicure! Looking forward to some pampering and getting my toes ready for sandal weather even though today is not at all a sandal day. :)

weekend recap

Friday night was pretty quiet night at home. Frozen pizza night, which got no complaints at all because our local famous pizza joint sells their pizzas in the grocery store. (Yes, they are that good.)  Miles was at the tail end of his cold so he just chilled on the sofa and watched the basketball tournament with Richard.

Saturday was Emily's last basketball game.  It was a good win and a really great season.  I took lots of blurry photos of Emily. :)  I did get some outstanding shots of her team mates.  I must have moved under a light or something because they were really sharp and bright. Not like this one. :(

After basketball we were busy getting the house ready for some really fun guests.  Our church was hosting the Johnson's Bible College Tour Choir.  We offered to open our home to two of the members. It was great to get to meet them and  share lively conversation with such nice young men.  They were both friendly, funny guys with so much talent and love for the Lord.

For dinner, I made my specialty, spaghetti and meatballs, which turned out especially good, along with bread, salad and green beans.  For dessert I made a chocolate silk pie posted recently at Annie Eats.  The pie was an absolute hit!! 

In his parting words Sunday morning, Max said, "I'll always remember that pie!"  lol I think that means it was good.

Unfortunately, Sunday morning I realized I was under the grips of the cold Miles had last week. Not fun.  After church, I went back to bed and pretty much walked around in a fog all day missing the gorgeous weather outside entirely.

Today, I'm still foggy and drinking lots of hot tea to combat the post nasal drip.  I have to venture out soon and take a photo of the leaf buds I saw this morning. Very happy to see more signs of spring. :)

Making progress-Project Life

I have a few more pages for Project Life to share today.  Happy to say I'm finding a rhythm. Preprinting photos doesn't work for me at all.  I pretty much have to look at the photos for the week and print them for specific locations.  This might be a "duh?" kind of moment for those who are doing Project Life, but I printed almost all the photos up to this point in advance and found myself reprinting almost all of them to get them to work. Mildly frustrating to say the least.

As you can see, this is a double "B Design" page. I love having the verticals large, but not sure I like these pages as well as the "A Design" because all the small elements are at the bottom.  I would have made them with the verticals in the middle. ;)
Here are close ups.

Here's a tip I can share today about StazOn ink.  See that Friday photo above?  It totally didn't stamp right the first time. Very nervously used StazOn remover on the photo and restamped.  It worked perfectly. No damage to the photo at all.  The photo was gloss, which I usually don't order, but I had free photos from where ever this came from. 

Looking forward to a beautiful St. Patrick's Day today!  Sunny and a high of 69 degrees. Yippee!! Only problem, I don't wear green.  I think I'll have to change to a green purse today. :)

Wordless Wednesday (mostly)

Friday-Running on the trail with my sweetheart.

Saturday - In your face!

Monday- Spring is coming. Really?

A new look. She's happy to be seeing clearly.

New faces and prizes

So today was the big announcement for the new design team members for GCD Studios!!  I am looking forward to meeting these new ladies.  It was fun to see some faces I recognize from the Studio Calico message board!!  Congrats to you all!!

Be sure to pop over to the GCD Studios blog and get yourself entered in some fabulous giveaways celebrating the new team.

There was also a new contest revealed today. So be sure to check that out as well.

After a snow filled day yesterday, it's so nice to see the sun shining and the snow melting.  I'm off to do some spray painting.  I've got more frames to pain to expand my photo wall!!

Project Life Update

I'm very happy to finally share my progress, slow as it may be, on Project Life.  Admittedly, I joined the band wagon late, so I started out "behind".  It has also taken me a while to figure out what my design approach was going to be and finding my way in this process.

Here's the first page. It's kind of a title page and the first couple days of the month.

When I took the plunge for Project Life, the kit was sold out, so I just ordered the page protectors and the journaling cards. Then I had to decide on elements and color palette I was going to work with, having no kit.  I'm sure it will evolve, but I wanted consistency through the pages by repeating elements.

Another thing delaying my progress is I'm refusing to use my color printer on this project.  It's such an ink hog.  I've been printing my photos at various places, depending on who had prints on sale.  I think if I'm going to be successful with this project, I'm going to need to pick a day of the week to upload my photos, print them and then get busy with that week. It's a learn as you go kind of thing. :)

 In the above pages you can see that I'm also using the "Design B" page protectors.  I ordered them on a whim knowing how many photos I take vertically.  I'm not sure I like this layout as well, but I'll keep working with it.

I have a few more page spreads started, but I need to reprint some of the photos smaller so that I can fit them in the little rectangles.

Ramblings & Making me happy...

So this poor neglected blog... well, it's fallen victim to the "just not enough time in the day" excuse, as well as, a little case of the winter blues. I find myself watching a bit more TV than I have in many years. I think it's a combination of being tired from all the day to day things I've got going on right now and being motivated to update my home decor.

What's the perfect remedy for these miladies? The HGTv channel, of course! I'm especially fond of Candice Olson's new show,  Color Splash and Dear Genevieve.

When we moved here I decorated this house by shuffling around objects and furniture I already had, plopping them where they seemed to fit and called it done. Recently, it has been feeling kind of tired and boring. I had a professional decorator friend come in and give me some advice. (I have a dear friend who used to live in the same town as me and we would re-decorate each other's houses constantly and how I miss having her near me. I'm certain that not having her around to share the joy I had in decorating with was a big factor in my complacency.)

One of the things the decorator suggested was that I needed to edit some of my tabletop frames. She validated what I had realized just recently, that I had way too many frames.   On nearly every surface in my house there were photos in frames. (I'm sure you're not surprised.)

My solution (because there was no way I was getting rid of my photos) was to create a photo gallery wall. I've actually been wanting to do this for quite some time, but was not committed to investing that much time to doing it if we were going to be moving.

Since clearly we're still here after almost 4 years, it is time for me to think more permanently about where we live and how the house is decorated. I must say the process of creating the photo wall was just as challenging as I predicted, but extremely satisfying. (I did use the paper template suggestion I've seen floating around the internet and it's good for figuring out placement, but it's not very realistic on where to put the nails.  There may be a few extra holes behind these photos.)  ;)

I have a few changes to make in the actual photos you see here, but every time I get a glimpse of this wall, I smile. :) Almost all the frames were ones I had either in a closet waiting for me to do something with or a few of them where tabletop varieties that I converted to wall mount. Other than a can of spray paint and the cost of the prints,  I didn't spend more than $10 on the wall. (Well, that's not entirely true, because I did purchase the lamps, so that they would be small enough to fit under the frames.) Seeing this photo now is making me think I could keep going a few more frames, what do you think?

Here are a few other things making me happy.  This Saturday Richard demolished the wine rack at the end of our island.  It was completely useless to me, other than being a great dust bunny trap.  I'm not really keen on storing wine in a rack and I know I would much rather have shelves to fill with my collection of cookbooks.  So with jigsaw in hand, out it went!!

I went to a local hardware store to have some wood cut to fit the shelves perfectly and wouldn't you know that I got home and one of them was cut so crooked it didn't fit.  So that project is on hold until I can make it back to the store to have them cut it straight.

After church on Sunday, Richard and I worked on the wing back chair project for Emily's room. (This is why I've held out on sharing photos of her room re-do.)  I needed an extra pair of hands to stretch the jute webbing to reinforce the sagging seat. Yeah for power tools!!!

I'm hoping that the rest of this project will go smoothly.  I feel certain that I can finish the rest on my own now,  if we can just have some warmer weather.  (It was really still too cold for working in the garage even this weekend.  Our fingers were frozen by the time we finished the top and bottom of the chair.)

All this progress on my projects is making me happy.  I just got to keep the ball rolling.