Awesome Altus

Sometimes I like to whine about the town we live in. But they just ask for it sometimes!! Here's a pic from a few months back:

Can't Make this stuff up!!!

I've been having small town fever this week- gotta get out of here! What are your plans for the weekend?

Scrap-Tastic!

This past weekend I finally made it back to the wood shop after a several week absence. It's been tough getting over there with a new baby and their new limited hours. But this weekend the Hubs volunteered his time and I took advantage.

I mainly went to continue work on our dining table. It's been slow going but I finally made some visible progress. If you follow me on Twitter you would have seen this picture:

That my friends would be a nails removed, sanded down, glued up panel basketball flooring that will soon be one section of my future dining table! Yay!!

While I was at the wood shop I noticed in the scrap pile some pieces of wood that were of interest to me.

I liked how the wood is already cut down into strips and thought I could glue it up in a similar fashion to my dining table top. My specific idea is to make a cutting board. Similar to this one:

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And while I was digging through the scrap pile I decided that there is no such thing as scrap wood. You can pretty much always use leftover pieces to create something. So here's a little round up of fun scrap wood projects:

Make some fun and unique napkin rings:

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IPhone Holder anyone?

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The ever popular and easy Tea Light Holder:

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And you may need to save up your scraps for a while or score a really big haul for this one but wow- this bed would be cool to make!

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Again can we say "Wow!"? This would be one awesome dining table.

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And this is an interesting application for scrap wood. Here is it used on a desk front but it would be cool on a wall as well!

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So now that your wheels are turning with all the cool stuff you can do with leftover wood let's get scrappin!!

Childs Play: An Easy Update

Picture this: Your slowly but surely designing and decorating your living room. It's starting to come together, things are happening and you're feeling pretty good. 

But- you have kids who like to play in said living room and their toys have taken up permanent residence. You don't have an extra play room to keep all their things in, the living room is where the family spends the most time so the living room is where the toys end up. And I think we all know kids toys kind of stand out in adult decor- not the most beautiful.

The Culprit

Sound familiar? Its the issue I've been having. I've been wanting to do something about Con-Man's toy box for a while now. It needs to stay in the room so we have a place to store his toys but the bright red and blue kind of clash with my neutral color scheme. 

In addition to the red toy box I bought this Fleur De Lis basket at Ross (love that place!) for a little bit of extra storage. Clearly the two do not mix.

(I love Fleur De Lis!)

Solution: I went to my local hardware store and picked up some of this Krylon Spray paint specially made for plastic and spray painted the heck out of his toy box.

Now, I did discuss this change with The Con-Man just in case he had an issue with his red toy box being painted white. He was cool with it and seemed excited about the whole thing. 

After 3 cans of spray paint and some drying time the toy box was finished.

Both together:

Much better in my opinion and Con-Man doesn't seem to miss his big red monstrosity so far. Let's hope he doesn't ask me to paint it back to red later down the road!

What do you do about your children's toys in your home? Would you take the liberty of changing up some of their things to fit your decor?

Sawyer's 2 Month Photo

Here is Sawyer all grown up at 2 months old!

I completely forgot to take a 1 month photo but will continue to do this once a month as Sawyer grows up. (I wish I had done it with the Con-Man.)

But not to be outdone Con-Man wanted in on the action as well.

Hittin the Road

I've been wanting to do something a little special for the Con-Man lately. He has a new baby brother who's commanding a lot of my time and he's been handling it really well. He loves being a big brother and has been helping me out a lot but I know he misses being the center of attention. 

We've established that Con-Man loves cars. His room had a transportation theme, everything he got for his birthday was car related, and he has more MatchBox cars than he knows what to do with.

An Appealing Appliance

One thing I miss about living in a big city is Craigslist. I used to find all kinds of deals in San Antonio. My only saving grace has been our AFB classifieds on Facebook, and last week I scored an such an awesome deal I have to brag about it a little.

I bought an old school Oster Stand Up Mixer for $30! 

For the longest time I've been debating whether or not we should purchase a KitchenAid Standing Mixer. I wasn't sure if I would use it enough to justify the cost. I thought buying the Oster Mixer (from 1983!) would be a good test.

The cool thing is all the attachments it came with.

Ice Cream Maker

Blender, Meat Grinder, and Slicer

And that's not all!! (I feel like an infomercial)

I also got several cook books to go with it:

And several ice cream packets!

Score!!

I've already used the mixer to make Cooking Light's Lemon Pound Cake (forgot to take picture) and Paleo Blueberry Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Chips!

Yum!

So far my favorite feature is the ice cream attachment which could end up being a problem for those last few pounds of baby weight I'm trying to get rid of.

What's your favorite Craigslist or online buy recently?

Apps to Help You Get Your Design On

So I hear that Apple is announcing the new IPhone 5 today. In celebration of this I thought a round up of cool Design Apps would be appropriate. I first saw some of these here and thought I would share them with you.

1. Houzz

I've blogged about this cool site before. Now you can get the free app on your phone and have design inspiration at your fingertips! It's called the "Wikipedia of interior and exterior design" by CNN. It has the largest database of home design ideas on the web. You can search by style, room, and location and save them to a virtual idea book. I find lots of design inspiration and ideas here.

2. Cardmunch

If you're on LinkedIn this free app could be for you. It allows you to access your business cards faster and easier. You can snap a photo of a business card and this app will file it away for you. A great way to network!

3. Mark On Call: for Iphone

This App costs $2.99 but if you do a lot of measuring of rooms it might be worth it. Similar to the Magic App I blogged about a while back this App allows you to snap measurements of rooms with your phone to make sure your design will fit accordingly. Its a great space planning tool and you can email your inventory list of furniture, fixtures, and equipment.

4. Benjamin Moore Color Capture & Sherwin Williams Color Snap

Ever wonder what color that is painted on the wall of a restaurant or friends house? Both of these paint manufacturers have come up with free Apps to allow you to find out! Just take a picture of the painted wall in question and they will give you the closest color match. Pretty cool!

5. ILevel

I'm all ready to hang my picture. Oh wait! I left my level out in the garage, Ugh! Hold on- I have my Iphone with my ILevel App! With this 99 cent App you can align and hang pictures with ease. It works just like a real level. And it's not just for picture hanging either, use if for any of the following and more:

"You can use iLevel Tool for:
- Home tool, photo picture alignment
- Measure pitch or grade of a slope or mountain
- Measure the horizontality of a floor
- Measure the verticality of a wall or furniture
- Measuring the banking of a boat, aircraft, car
- Calculation of roof pitch
- And endless more possibilities... "

6. Cool Hunting

Looking for inspiration? Look no further than Cool Hunting. This free app for iPad will keep you up to date with trends in the design community. It provides daily updates and documentaries for your design enjoyment.

Happy Designing Everyone!!

Fall Wreath My Way

It's Fall!! Here in Oklahoma we actually had temperatures below 100 degrees!! The highs have been in the 80's. I feel like I'm freezing and I'm loving it. 

Also, as mentioned before I love Fall because Fall means Football. And just because we live in Oklahoma now doesn't mean I can't show my Louisiana Pride. 

And to show that pride to all my neighbors (mostly OU fans) I made an LSU and Saints Wreath! 

I started with foam letters from the craft store. They were less expensive than the wooden ones and cuter I thought.

All they needed was a little paint.

I added some ribbon like my Christmas and Mardi Gras Wreaths, glued the letters on and was ready to hang.

So when our friends came over to watch the LSU Game we were ready. My Tigers won but sadly my Saints lost. But overall I had a good football weekend because I won my Fantasy Game as well! Woo!

Linking to The CSI Project!

Tis The Season

Do you know what season it is? Not Fall... Football Season!!

I'm so glad football is back on TV. I love watching my Saints and LSU Tigers play. 

Saturdays and Sundays just aren't the same without some football to watch. We love having people over and cooking some Louisiana fare for the LSU games. And it's fun on Sundays to go somewhere and watch the game with friends.

This season I took an extra step and invited some friends to join a girls only Fantasy Football League. We had a draft and everything. Our League name is "A League of Our Own." Hee Hee- cheesy I know but whatever. My team's name is Grid Iron Red. Check out my profile pic:

My first match up is this weekend! I hope I win! 

I'm trying to come up with a fun trophy for the winner at the end of the season. The girls requested that the trophy include the following:

1. Glitter
2. Rainbows
3. Chocolate

Should be an interesting trophy.

Are you excited for football season?

Small Steps toward a Big Change & A Winner!!

Tell me if this has ever happened to you; you want to add or change one element in a room and you end up feeling like you have to change and update everything in the whole room? 

That's kind of the predicament I'm in now. 

A week or so ago I was super excited to find out I had won a roll of wall paper from 2Modern. Score!

Last Friday my wallpaper arrived!

I've spent some time researching ideas of what to do with it. I can't do anything permanent since we're renting but there's lots of other things you can do with wallpaper besides glue it on the wall.

Use it to update the look of your furniture:

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Update the look of cabinets:

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Create a unique unexpected nook:

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Get functional and use wallpaper to cover a cork board for a one of a kind look:

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And my personal favorite faming wallpaper as artwork:

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I'm really leaning towards the idea of framing a large section of my wallpaper behind our bed in the master bedroom since our bedroom could use some pizazz.

Which leads me back to my original issue. If I add this one large focal point to our room I feel like I need to change almost everything else.

The wallpaper is really modern, our bed leans more to traditional styling. I'd love to update our bedding- we've had it forever! I'd love to have a king size bed anyway.

I've touched switching up our bedroom some before. I even threw together a Pinterest Board of some dream items. So could this be the time for a big change? Hmmm... seriously considering it. There are two main things that have been holding me back though.

1. $$ Money $$

2. Time- We're hoping to PCS on out of Altus in the next year. We'll find out whether this is an option or not in October. Crossing our fingers and saying our prayers!!!

And don't worry I didn't forget about the winner of the Coupon Cabin Gift Card Giveaway. Thank you to everyone who entered. The lucky winner is-

Drawing #11,541 PRIVATE

Home Depot Giveaway 10th drawing held by Rachelle Falcon 21 entrants, 1 winner

Winners (1)

 1st: 4

That would be Tam who said:

Tam said... 4

We are in need of some new bathroom towels so I plan on using that Macy's coupon!

Congratulations Tam!!! I've sent you an email. Enjoy your Home Depot Gift Card!!

Thanks again everyone and have a great day!