Valentine Decor For Your Home

Do you decorate your home for Valentine's Day? Have you ever wondered why people decorate for Halloween using skulls, spiders, ghosts, scary stuff,etc, but most do not decorate for Valentine's Day? When Valentine's Day celebrates Love shouldn't that be just as big as a decorating holiday as Halloween is?? Actually I think it should be BIGGER! After all the #1 commandment is to love one another!

So upon thinking of how to decorate the home for Valentine's Day I turned to etsy to check out what handmade goodness I could find.

How about these vintage Valentine's cards...how cute would these be framed?? I'll answer for you...it would be amazing!

You can find the vintage valentine cards here...

Who said you can't add some love to the bathroom? Not me! These heart shaped soaps would be terrific in a bathroom. By the sink or by the bathtub.

You can find the heart soaps here...

How cool would it be to write a love note and have it made into a pillow? It would be So Cool!



You can order the postcard pillow here...

State your love on pillows!

I love this one below!

You can order these pillows here...

Ok and upon searching etsy I realized I had something on my etsy site that could be used as Valentine's Day Decor. So here is my offering and my shameless plug.

Hope I inspired you to decorate for Valentine's Day! Now head on over to etsy and see what you can find.

Darlene

To Match Or Not To Match??

I am trying to find 2 night stands for our master bedroom and really fighting the urge to make all the furniture match my new mahogany chest of drawers I got last week. (Click Here to See)

I have had a tendency in the past to make everything very symetrical and very matchy matchy. That's boring so I'm trying to break out of my normal tendency to match everything.

I just don't know if I like 2 unmatching/unsymetrical night stands. Maybe this is too much of a stretch for me at this point, not sure.

(update 1/20/2010 ): sorry I didn't mention it before, but this is not my bedroom...just one I found to look at to see if I liked the unmatching/unsymetrical night stands & to get your opinions.

What do ya think?
Do your night stands match??

Darlene

Are you BUSY??

Hi friends!

Sorry I haven't posted much this week.

I have been working on expanding our rug business and great news...just got a new retailer to market our rugs...yippee!

The goal is to build the business enough so that hubby can quit his day job!

I'm also working on not being so BUSY this year. This video was a big wake up call for me. Watch it and let me know what you think.

Homemade Birthday Pizza

I made a homemade pizza for my daughter, Callie's 13th birthday last week and it was so good I had to share the recipe with you. I even remembered to take photos of the all the steps. I even got to try out the new pizza stone that hubby bought me for Christmas.

The World's Best Bread Machine Pizza Dough
Recipe Makes 2 Pizza Crusts
· 1 1/3 cups water (Or 1 Cup Water and 1/3 Cup Flat Beer for better flavor)
·2 tablespoons olive oil· 1 teaspoon sugar

· 1 teaspoon honey
· 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
· 2 tablespoons cornmeal
· 3 1/2 cups flour
· 1 teaspoon baking powder
· 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
· 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
· 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
· 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
Add ingredients to machine in order listed.Set to “Dough” mode.Once completed, place in greased pan (2 - 9x13 inch or round pizza pans).Let dough rest on pans for 10-15 minutesSpread dough out in pan.
Add light layer of sauce and pre-bake at 400 degrees for 5-7 minutes.Remove from oven and add toppings of your choice.Bake in oven at 400 degrees until done (approx 17 - 20 min, depending upon topping thickness).

PIZZA SAUCE

Ingredients
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 (6 oz) can tomato paste

2/3 cup water

2 tablespoons red wine

2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

3 tablespoons parmesan cheese

salt

pepper

Preparation
1. Prep all the ingredients first and have them sitting ready to go. The recipe cooks fast, so this step is important.
2. In a medium saucepan, sauté garlic in oil until golden. Watch it closely as the garlic can go from golden to burned in a nanosecond.
3. Add tomato paste, water, wine, sugar, oregano, basil, and cheese.
4. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Add mozzerella cheese, cheddar cheese or just buy one of those prepackaged/grated Pizza Blend cheese packages.


Add whatever toppings you want...we added pepperoni



Then we had cheesecake for dessert with strawberries & chocolate chips...just what Callie requested for her 13th birthday...yummy! I decided to just buy this at Sam's Club instead of making it from scratch. It was made by Cheesecake Factory. It was heaven in a box!







And here is Callie and her sister playing jer new keyboard that we got her for her birthday.

Look What I SCORED on CRAIGSLIST!!!!!

One of my goals for this year is to redo our master bedroom. Bring it out of the 90's and into 2010!

Right now we have golden oak bedroom furniture...yuck!!! It's the last room in the house that hasn't been madeover.

So I thought I would just take a look on craigslist to see if there was any bedroom furniture for sale that I liked. WOW, all I can say is PERFECT TIMING!!!

I got this GORGEOUS mahogany bombe' style chest of drawers made by Vineyard. It is in PERFECT condition! This piece is such great quality!

I don't know what it went for brand new, but I'm sure it was in the $1500-$3000 ballpark and guess what I paid for it?????

Any idea??

Well, I got it for a mere $200....SCORE!!!!!

Thank you Jesus!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to fill up my drawers!

Darlene

Make a Candy Bar Card

Just thought I would share a candy bar card that I made for my daughter, Callie for her birthday.

In case you can't read it, here is what it says:

Dear Callie,
I had 100 GRAND to spend for your birthday but I couldn't get to 5TH AVENUE to shop because of all the snow.
So I decided to give you some words of wisdom instead.

1. Keeping the Commandments will bring a big PAYDAY NOW & LATER!

2. Watch out for girls/guys that are AIRHEADS. They can be MOUNDS of trouble.

3. Be wise as a serpent and gentle as a DOVE.

4. Always try your best to SKOR high grades.

5. Be careful so nobody plays TWIX on you.

6. Oh, and stay away from boys...because they're all NERDS!!! (except dad, of course)

Don't SNICKER

We Love You to RIESES PIECES!!!!!!!!

Mom & Dad

It's a Special Day Over at Our Home

It's time to Celebrate!

Throw a Party!

Eat Cake!!

Are you wondering why??

Well,

it's our youngest daughter, Callie's
13th birthday!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CALLIE!!!!

Do you remember when you turned 13?
I remember being so excited to finally be a "teenager"

Tonight we are celebrating with a family dinner of her favorite...pizza!

Dessert will be cheesecake with strawberries and chocolate chips...her special request.

So you know me...I had to decorate!

We decided on a aqua/brown/white crown theme. Not princess...that would be too juvenile. So we call it crown party!

Aubrie, the big sis made these adorable crown sugar cookies for Callie and she helped me with all the decorations

Matching Gift Wrap

Streamers, pearls, garlands oh my!


How do you like the brown jeweled crown I found at Hobby Lobby??
I think it's perfect for the theme!

We added brown feathers around the stems of the glasses.
We even have a special aqua colored drink to put in the glasses.

I wish I would have had brown or silver chargers..oh well.

And here's my sweet baby Callie!
Callie, can I still call you my baby even though your now a TEEN??

We Love You Callie!

This post is part of Tablescape Thursday. So to see more fabulous tablescapes be sure to go on over to Between Naps On The Porch.

Top Projects of 2009

Did you get alot of projects completed in 2009?
Do you have alot of projects planned for 2010? I do!
Rhoda from Southern Hospitality is letting us all showcase our top projects for 2009.
I'm sure by looking at what others completed it will inspire us for our own projects this year!

2009 was filled with a finishing a project that we started in 2008, a few other smaller projects and some unexpected projects. Have any clue what I'm talking about?

The project that we FINALLY completed in 2009 that was started in 2008 was our kitchen.
Here is the before:

And after many months of us working on it off & on...the after:

If you would like to see the whole story on the kitchen makeover, click Here

I wanted a large chalkboard for one of the walls in my kitchen, so I went searching the thrift stores & garage sales for the perfect piece I could transform and this is what I found.

After some handy dandy spray paint and taking the mirror out, replacing it with mdf painted with chalkboard paint...it went from YUCK to this.......






After all our hard work on our kitchen, we left for a 1 week vacation to Myrtle Beach,SC. Guess what we returned home to??? Well, it wasn't a "welcome home" sign..unfortunately. It was a flooded house and mainly the NEW kitchen. Only 1 month after we finished the kitchen..insert tears!





Not only was the kitchen damaged, but the whole house other than the upstairs had to be gutted. We ended up having $20,000 worth of water damage all because a pipe fitting for the kitchen faucet broke. Lesson: DO NOT USE PLASTIC FITTINGS AND TURN OFF YOUR MAIN WATER WHEN GOING ON VACATION!

So we had to move out for 2 months while house was fixed. This allowed us to make a few upgrades, ah some more projects.....
Awe pretty new hardwood floors...a blessing out of the flood.

Oh and we decided that since the house was torn up that it was the perfect time to have the popcorn (acoustic) stuff scraped off the ceilings. Yeah to no more popcorn ceilings!
We also updated a few paint colors and replaced bath/shower unit while we were at it. I won't bore you with photos of our ceilings and paint colors.

So hmmm, I thought what can I do while moved out of my home for 2 months?? I know, I can refinish our oak dining room table. I always liked the table, but really didn't like the golden country oak color. Oh and I bought new chairs.

Ok so that was the big projects that we did in 2009. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get busy on the projects for 2010. Wanna come help?

Darlene