Cheaply unique

I'm itching to start decorating for Christmas this year! And in anticipation of it, I bought my first new ornaments of the year.



I love the intricate cut-out design and the sparkle the glitter gives these red hot mamas. But the best part? A set of 6 cost me all of $4 from Big Lots!

Happy Easter...

from our painstakingly arranged table and centerpiece to yours! ;)




Here' hoping Petter Cotton tail hopped his way along the bunny trail, and left you lots of yummy Easter toys for you and your little girls and boys. Our little girl will be dressed in her little Easter dress today too!


(debuting the new dress at home depot)

Happy Easter!!

St. Patrick's Day recap

I was going to wait to do this at the end of the month like all my other 1/12 recaps, but figured it would be silly to wait so long to revisit something that happened in the middle of the month. So if you'll remember, my resolution for this month was to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in an authentic Irish way. My menu included (vegetarian) Irish stew and Irish soda bread. I didn't end up making dessert but it was okay because dinner was so filling. If you follow the recipe I linked to, I highly recommend adding an extra cup of water to the mix (otherwise I think it would have been way too dry). Also, if for some reason your crock pot fails to get plugged in--ahem!--you can also cook the stew on high for 4 hours and have all the veggies cook up just right. But enough blarney ;) let's get with the pictures!



my simple irish table set-up.



i snipped the shamrocks off the plants i found
at our commissary for only $3!



i went for a very classic and minimalist look.
everyday white dishes from bb&b, thrift store crystal
candle sticks, linen-look napkins from pier one, and
cafe glasses from ikea.



making the irish soda bread.
super easy, and suuuuuper delicious.





it was a little squishy in the middle still.


Overall, I am very pleased with how everything turned out. The stew was utterly amazing, and I will make it again (talk about comfort food). And filling! I could go on and on about it, but you'll just have to try it for yourself.

Hope you had a safe (and savory!) St. Patrick's Day too!

St. Patrick's Day: the food

Just reading the directions for these dishes is making my mouth water. The stew sounds hearty and like Irish soul food. I'm think I may add a splash of Guinness to give a bit of a stout taste and provide more broth for bread dipping.

The Main Dish
Slow-Cooker Vegetarian Irish Stew
Irish Soda Bread

Dessert
Irish Whiskey Cake
Irish tea

In other St. Patrick's Day news, the table is very slowly coming together! One of my favorite inspirational photos is this one right here. For some reason this captures the feeling I'm going for all in this one tiny shot--well, minus the green oatmeal!


The natural colored linen napkins, and table cloth, classic white dishes, the old silverware bundled with a bit of twine, and a little shamrock to finish it off. And I knew exactly where to find those napkins.


Pottery Barn's Hemstitch linen napkins. Everything about them is perfect. Except the price. A set of six was going to set me back $56 (no matter what the table is set for, I always buy things in a set of six because that's how many people our table can actually hold). I was bumming hard. Over $9 per napkin?! There was no way I could justify it even if they came out every holiday because I'd constantly be worried about people actually using them. And what's the point in that? But then I found these.




(this is a better representation of their color.
can you tell i was trying to be all pottery barn-like when i took this shot??)
Hemstitch napkins from Pier One for only $4 per napkin! Their color and texture are perfect. The biggest difference between mine and the Pottery Barn ones? Mine are made of cotton. Which I am 100% okay with because they're actually cotton and not a polyester blend. Easily washable and maintainable. And at $24 for a set of six I was doing a little (Irish) jig as I carried them up to the register.

Now I just have to decide what to do about a table cloth...

March's 1/12, St. Patrick's Day

I have one goal, and one goal only for March: celebrate St. Patrick's Day in an authentic Irish way (and I don't mean getting hammered on green beer at the local pub). For years Jason and I have wanted to do up a traditional holiday meal, and listen to music, and just enjoy this seemingly random holiday. But most years he's either just been deployed, or returns from a deployment a week later, or we've just gone vegetarian and don't know how to cook up a variation of corned beef.

But it's not just going to be about the food--ambiance is also important in Irish homes, especially when it comes to meals. And if you think I'm going to bedeck our house in glittery shamrocks and plastic leprechauns you've lost your mind Jack! Here's what (I'm hoping) our St. Patrick's Day decor will look like.


Think lots of natural elements--potted clovers, moss, maybe some wooden mushrooms for a touch of whimsy, nubby linens in warm hues, and possibly even a few paper bag lanterns. I want it all to feel very warm, inviting, and simple.

For the meal, if I can find a vegetarian version of corned beef and cabbage, I'll try to make it. If not, I'll do a fish and cabbage (supposedly, corned beef and cabbage is actually an Americanized dish) or maybe a stew. Irish soda bread will absolutely be on the menu and for dessert possibly a Barnbrack with Irish tea. And of course, there will be potatoes a-plenty.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have exactly 16 days to complete this 1/12! Stay tuned because it's going to get very busy around here!

2011 resolutions

Normally I'm the first one to throw my hands in the air and proclaim, "I'm not making any because I never keep them!" But then I realized that just wasn't going to fly every New Year's Day and I'd love to get through at least one of my adult years having made a resolution (and kept it)! I will say this for my accomplishments in 2010, even though I didn't make resolutions:

1. I got most of our house in order. It didn't stay that way for long, but our house is almost completely furnished and looks cohesive.

2. I lost weight. Like, a lot of it. I started 2010 weighing in at 132-pounds¹ and creeping my way into a size 8 and 10² in my pants size. I ended 2010 weighing 112-pounds wearing (and fitting into) a size 2.



on the left is me in las vegas, february; on the right, all of us going out for my sister's birthday two weeks ago
3. I went to the gym consistently, cut out a lot a junk food, and managed to continue not biting my nails.

This year, I'm giving myself a 1/12 resolution: Make (and do) 1 resolution for each of the 12 months of 2011. I don't have to choose all 12 resolutions today--just as long as I have one by the beginning of each month.

So...without further ado, I introduce to you January's 1/12 Resolution: Get our budget, bill paying, and finances back in order.

More on Tuesday! :) But how about you, readers? What's on your list of resolutions this year? Or are you eschewing tradition and just celebrating 2011 for what it's worth?

---

^{1 & 2} I am in no way shape or form declaring that these sizes and/or this number on the scale are bad things. For me and my body size (and according to all that stuff the food pyramid, the BMI, and the rest of them say) it was bordering on unhealthy and "obese" for my height and body type.

The gap

No, not The Gap. I mean the 25-day gap in my blogging. Ever since I've started this little journey, I don't think I've ever gone that long without a post! This year the holiday just really brought me down. I know some of you were a little worried (thanks for your comments and e-mails!) and some of you are probably curious as to what the heck I was doing with all that time away from the computer. So, in the interest of full disclosure, nosiness, and just so you understand me a little better here's what went on:

- One grandpa passed away (we laid him to rest the day before Thanksgiving, so that just got the whole holiday season off in a funk).
- My remaining grandparents both wound up in the hospital at the same time for different reasons.
- Jason and I tackled a bout of pneumonia/bronchitis that knocked us out for nearly 3 weeks.
- Friends. Drama. Lots.
- In an attempt to make myself into a non-baby-making-machine, I had an IUD placed and my body rejected it. Medicinal heroine followed.

Aside from those events, Christmas just always reminds me of the douche bag who decided to break up with me and kick me out of our apartment. On Christmas day. So it hasn't been one of my favorite holidays for some time now, and this year the memory reared its ugly head to kick me while I was down (literally).

But rest assured I've pulled myself out of the little hole I dug for my pity party and I'm back to face the world again. Or at least the blogosphere. I am woman. Hear me roar. ;)

From spooky to frosty

I was browsing through some old blog posts at The Inspired Room, and came across one Melissa had done on unique decorating ideas for Christmas. It had different types of ideas for trees--small ones, odd shaped ones, or ideas for foregoing a tree all together. When I saw this one, I loved the idea of using twigs as a snowy ethereal tribute to a traditional Christmas tree. However, since our yard is pretty much devoid of trees I had to figure out a way to recreate this look in another way.


I remembered I had these laying around from Halloween in my "tribute-to-Edgar-Allen-Poe" themed porch decor.


But I didn't want to leave them black--they were just too creepy to be pretty. All it took to freshen them up was a little primer and white glossy Rust-Oleum spray paint. I put them into a little glass pitcher filled with Epsom salts to simulate snow and I had a wintery themed centerpiece!




And come next Halloween, I'll spray paint them black again!

Christmas decorating for $3.99

I don't remember what I was shopping for when I visited Target's website and saw these "economy packs" of pillows. I'm pretty sure the ribbon is actually meant to show how the two pack of pillows is delivered, but the minute I saw it I thought: Christmas pillows!



So I grabbed some red pillow covers I had lying around (from when I was going through my aqua and red phase), and used some white grosgrain ribbon from Michaels to make my own Christmas pillows!


And there you go! I'm debating on trying to find a way to Christmas-up my bird pillows... Hmm...

I'm linking up to:
DIY Project Parade @ The DIY Show Off

Happy Halloween!

Whatever you do tonight, please be safe and have fun. We'll be handing out candy for the first time since we've lived here (we were in Oregon last Halloween), so I'm very excited to see how many kids we get! (Although I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm worried we may have over bought--again--on our candy and we'll be eating leftovers until New Year's!)

And although it's super late to be showing off Halloween decor, I did want to show you what I made for our front yard. I'd purchased a few things from Target to "spook up" our little walk way. A graveyard sign and a Styrofoam tombstone, but I quickly realized one sign and one tombstone does not a graveyard make.




So, after one too many viewings of Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow," I came up with these: homemade tombstones.


Okay, so maybe three tombstones do not a graveyard make either but still...can't have a whole host of ghosts chillin' in our front yard. ;) I used some scrap plywood leftover from when I made our headboard and traced one of my neighbor's store-bought tombstones for a template (thanks neighbors!). Using my hand-me-down jigsaw, I cut 'em out, sanded down the edges, and mixed up some black and yellow paint to make grey (apparently any light color paint with black makes grey! good to know.)


For the writing, I had been planning on either using modge podge or making a stencil, but in the end I freehanded it with a big fat sharpie marker. I just printed out what I wanted each headstone to say and did my best not to mess it up!


I hot glued some moss onto each one, painted a few cracks onto the "stone," and buried them in the ground about an inch or two deep. We've had some pretty serious winds around here lately and these babies haven't budged!




I also tucked in a few pumpkins just to give it more of a harvest-y feel (although the pretty striped guy is actually called Tiger Squash). The daisies I planted over the summer have shot up in random patches, and I can't let you go on your merry way without pointing out that my dearly departed are in fact "pushing up daisies." (yuk yuk yuk!)

Total cost for the whole shebang: $0! I had everything on hand. Next year I think I'd like to make some that are a little more complicated. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the classic shape of an arched grave marker.

Happy spooking!