Mother's Day Makeover

On Saturday my Dad took Jeff golfing and then we went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse as a birthday/Mother's Day excuse to dine out. 

 Of course we had to make my Dad ride the saddle.

I informed Jeff earlier in the week that I had instigated a "spending freeze" for us to strictly adhere to through the end of the month. After meal planning on Sunday, I had come up with two weeks' worth of meals, and a lot of them used food in the recipes that would keep through the end of the month (like frozen veggies or canned food). After hearing about a friend who had not used any money for a whole month (other than unavoidable bills and the mortgage payment), I thought it was the perfect chance for us to give it a try.

A mere five days into our spending freeze (that I keep accidentally calling a spending spree), (and I keep accidentally using too many parenthesis,) we were not going to turn down a free meal!

Our spending freeze put Jeff in a bit of a predicament for Mother's Day. My only wish was for him to not spend any money, so he was forced to get creative. He walked upstairs Saturday evening with a can of paint behind his back proclaiming he was going to paint the kitchen for me.

We already had the blue paint because we had painted our other wall the same color with every intention of one day painting the kitchen wall blue as well. I have been heckling Jeff to make my blue kitchen dreams come true at least once a month for the last year, and he seized the perfect opportunity to blue-ify our house.

We didn't have any painter's tape, so I excused Jeff from the spending freeze to go buy some tape. He turned down my offer and instead viewed the tapeless painting as a challenge.

Voila! A beautiful blue kitchen you'd never guess was done without a single inch of tape.

I love it!! Here's a little glimpse at our kitchen transformation over the years.

Our next vision is to get those floors that look like wood but they're not really wood, maybe some sort of backsplash, and in my dreams I imagine granite countertops, but I don't really expect that to happen in this house.

Aesthetics

You know. When I got a marketing degree, I thought my degree would mostly teach me about advertising and even include a few graphic design classes. Unfortunately, my degree included zero graphic design classes and focused more on the process of getting a product into the hands of consumers rather than specifically dissecting the advertising aspect of it all. It wasn't until my senior year that I learned SUU offered an Advertising major. That included graphic design classes.

Seeing as I wasn't about to change my major one semester away from graduating, I took it upon myself to learn what I needed to learn to satisfy my graphic design/advertising cravings. Enter -- curtain business.

I recently changed the name of my Etsy shop! It is now called The Crooked Branch -- inspired by my childhood street name. I have loved rebranding my shop and coming up with cute things to make my company more aesthetically appealing. Here is a card I include when someone requests swatches:

This one is kind of like my business card. It is included in all the packages I send out.

I was really honored a couple months ago when a website contacted me and wanted to feature my curtains on a project they were working on called The House That Etsy Built. They decorated a house with products from almost 100 different Etsy shops. These three pictures are from that project:

Another thing I'm feeling the need to show off is an invitation I made for a Young Women's activity we had recently.

 
I've also slowly been working on making our house more aesthetically appealing. It took me a near 6 months to get both of these curtains finished and to decide on throw pillows for the couch. I am completely loving the way our living room is coming together.

I have serious commitment problems when it comes to fabric. I don't even want to tell you how many hours I spent and how much fabric I bought before deciding this would be perfect.

My dream is to turn the basement living room area into a playroom. This is the first step in that process. Next step is adding shelves for storing the mess of toys we currently have down there.

It is so exciting to me to see design ideas come to life! 

Twenty-Five with Hives

Hola. It's me. I've been MIA. I blame my children.

I had a birthday. Shout, "Hooray!" I had to pluck these pictures out among 300, so be prepared to be hit with a lot of Lucky Number 8 posts.

Let me start by confessing to those I love most -- my blog followers -- that I have ventured out of my comfort zone and made another bold fashion statement. You know. Like scarf wearing. These things are big and blog worthy in my book. I bought red pants folks. And I wore said red pants on my b-day because I love them so much. This is what happens when you get called to work with the Young Women I suppose.

I can tell you now because a year has passed, but last year was probably my worst birthday ever. Eli was a pill the whole day. This year was a different story. The kids were angels. Maybe my red pants mesmerized them into cooperation.

Although the kids were good all day, we aren't the type to risk taking them out in public to test their good behavior. No, we prefer our Olive Garden at home where the kids are free to scream their guts out, thank you very much.

What is this? For me? You shouldn't have.

I kid you not, moments before I opened this gift, I had this conversation with Jeff:

Jeff: I'm so sore! I went to the gym today.

Me: I'm jealous you can be sore. I haven't worked out in forever. This snow is killing me.

Fast forward five minutes -- I'm unwrapping a gym membership! My husband can read my mind.

He also got me (and himself) a water bottle. He was a bit more excited about these than I was. Apparently they are super great for protein shakes which I think are disgusting. We don't have any water bottles though, so I'm happy to finally have some!

Next we moved to the kitchen where my mind-reading husband was finishing up some tasty cupcakes.

Twenty Five. 

I put off curtain orders on my birthday evening so I could cuddle up with Jeff and watch our favorite shows together. I got tired really early and kept complaining about being cold. Then the next morning I was hit with a fever. Let me tell you, it knocked me out for three full days. On the morning of day three, I began to grow concerned when I noticed a rash on my feet, knees, elbows and hands.

Of course I immediately thought I had Scarlett Fever. Then I thought I had Pneumonia. Then I thought I had hand, foot and mouth disease. Then when the rash started itching it was self-diagnosed as Shingles.

Fear not. I am alive. The rash eventually faded with my fever, and the only logical explanation I can come up with is that I got a heat rash from having a fever for so long?? Anyone else have any ideas? 

In other body related weirdness, I have recently sprouted sideburns:

Can someone contact Heidi Klum and tell her to send some sideburns down a runway for me so that I don't have to spearhead this cool trend all by myself?

There are certain things people never tell you about having a baby. This is one of them.

Since there is no hope of my hair being cute any time soon, I've been focusing all my energy on making over my house! Being cooped up all winter has me pacing around thinking of all the darling things I need to get done to spruce the place up. Then this little gem arrived on my birthday and now my mind is really racing:

I am not going to do a big reveal until we get everything done (probably in the summer), but I'll give you a little taste of my latest projects. 

I have been DYING to have big, bold, striped curtains. I finally figured out the perfect spot for them -- on our sliding glass door in the kitchen. I love, love, love them! They add a lot of spunk to the room and look a lot better than what was there before.

This curtain was hard to get a cute picture of. I wanted to add a little more color to our living room. The pop of burgundy on the walls did the trick! The curtains have two vertical ruffles going down.

Pinterest helped me give one of my plain vases some personality with a little twine. Love the way this turned out.

I also made a maxi skirt:

And today the boys blessed me with long naps, so I was able to make 12 freezer to crock-pot meals! Reeeeeeally hoping they turn out.

Yaaay for birthdays and projects. More to come!

Curtain Call Part 2

On Monday, I had my first night of being completely caught up on my orders since I opened my Etsy shop. I thought I'd enjoy the break, kick back and relax for a change. When evening came, I got antsy not being behind my sewing machine. So what did I do? I sewed curtains, of course! Here's the latest addition to Eli's room:

Hello cuteness. Sewing curtains constantly has opened my eyes to how much curtains can add to a room. I used to think my only curtain option was white, or maybe a solid color if I wanted to get crazy. Now I know curtains can be fun and completely liven up a room!

I found the fabric for the curtains online (my first Etsy purchase actually). It was exactly what I was looking for! Love them!

I finished the curtains late at night and couldn't wait to put them up. So yeah. If you look closely, that's Eli sleeping in his bed.

I think that was the absolute last detail of Eli's room that needed to be done. His room is still my favorite in the house. I completely love the way everything has come together!

Curtain Call

Jeff wanted me to make darker curtains for the boys' rooms since their rooms get so hot in the evenings. I'll take any excuse to dust off the old sewing machine so I was up for the challenge!

I saw an idea on Pinterest to make curtains out of $5.00 twin flat sheets from Wal-Mart. Um. Yeah. That sounded like a super idea. Even better -- I happened to find a striped pattern that was very similar to the fabric I used for the chair in Carson's room. I love the way Carson's curtains turned out even if they give his room a red glow in the evenings.

Carson likes them, too.

For the past month I've been working on ruffle curtains for the guest room. Again, these are made out of flat sheets.

I may just be a slow seamstress, but these babies took me about 20 hours to finish. Glad that project's done!

Guest Room Remodel

Through a series of small miracles, we've started putting together our guest bedroom. To be honest, I didn't really think our "guest bedroom" would really ever have more than an air mattress in it. Then my mom happened to be trying to rid her basement of a double bed and with my sister's recent move we also happened to have access to a moving truck to haul the bed up to our house. With a mattress in the room and guests planning on using it over Carson's blessing weekend, I found a super cute bedspread that arrived just in the nick of time. Then as soon as the bedspread was on the bed, my mind started racing with decorating ideas.

So there you have it. The background to our spontaneous remodel. These first two are the befores.

Jeff is so good at capturing my design visions and carrying them out for me. He's quite the handyman.

Jeff was a champ and got this whole project done in one day.

The finished product! I love, love, love it! This room is really small so I had a hard time getting a good picture to capture the beautifulness of it, but here are my attempts:

(We're going to paint the other walls grey. Another project for another day. We're also debating adding a ledge or more of a finish to the top of the white part. Yes? No?)

Jeff's also slowly working on the bathroom attached to this room. Pretty soon we'll be running the Excell Hotel. Hey. That kinda has a ring to it.