Words for Monday

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Reflect

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He is my Rock!

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Always 

Kids Design

I'm back in Cali! 

Spent the whole day alternating between un-packing everything and re-enacting Rapunzel with Carys.  (Side note: its just a tad disconcerting pretending to kidnap your own "baby" out of her bed and lock her away in a tower. Love the movie, but man what a creepy story!) So anyway, everyone is asleep and I feel like watching gymnastics and looking at kids design. 

Why not?

I have a slight obsession with teepees. 

I'd like a large adult one in my backyard and one in the girls room please. 

Love how this one from Apartment Therapy has a little book organizer and sheepskin!

Source: lonnymag.com via Lonny on Pinterest

Bunting is such a cute touch to any kids room, and anyone with scissors and a string could do one!

Source: lonnymag.com via Kathy on Pinterest

Also from Lonny Mag, you can't go wrong with a big map in a boys room, period.

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Striped ceiling, for the win!

Love  the idea of blowing up an old photo for the nursery, from Me Oh My!

I have plans to make a DIY canopy like this one, except maybe with more gauzy fabric. 

This one featured on Babble is so cute though, along with a tutorial on how to make it.

I'm participating in the Casual Friday Link Up on

Grandma Barbie's Monkey Bread

So blogging from the middle of our Idaho adventure was a little more challenging than I thought. Considering I had no cell service or a computer I can see how it became a problem, hmm weird. Well I am still up here but back to my in-law's house in Rathdrum.
Gotta love a long vacation like this!

There are a few things that are a given in life for me. Seinfeld will never get old...when Eye of the Tiger is playing, I need to shadow box....and when we come to visit my in-laws in Idaho, Grandma Barbie makes monkey bread for breakfast. I've noticed that they do sell monkey bread already made in the frozen section, and to that I say shame!

This is a great dish to make when you have company since it feeds a lot. She always serves it with scrambled eggs and sausage. But do whatever you like, get crazy people!

Monkey Bread

Rhodes Dinner Rolls (frozen) 36 count

1/2 cup Brown Sugar

Cinnamon

1 packet butterscotch pudding mix

1 stick of butter

Pam spray

First spray a 9x13 baking dish and arrange the rolls like this.

Then sprinkle on enough cinnamon to cover the rolls (but not too much!), followed by the pudding mix. 

Melt 1 stick of butter and dissolve the brown sugar, creating a mixture. 

Spread that on top also, and it will look like this...

You'll need to let it sit out on the counter overnight, covered with a dish towel to let it rise. So basically assemble this before you go to bed. In the morning it should look like this...

Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes. And when it comes out, turn the pan upside down and empty the bread onto some foil.

 Its got all this gooey, brown sugary wonderful-ness

I prefer the pieces in the middle that are all doughy, but others might like the more well done outside. Eat up! And then run 5 miles in the afternoon...

And here is a pic of our Charlie from the trip. More to come soon of our latest adventure!

Pins of the Week

Source: mimosasnthemorning.com via Kathy on Pinterest

I'm going to frame this in my girls room or bathroom. Love everything about it! 

You can get an 8x10 print of this sign on Etsy, here.

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Color inspiration

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Summer into Fall outfit

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I see brass pieces like this all the time at the thrift store, 

how pretty it looks with bright flowers!


My family and I are going to visit family in Idaho this weekend, for 10 days. I can't wait to go and spend time with them and my hard-working husband. So thankful! I probably won't have time to blog much while I'm gone, but I'm going to try. I'll have a smore for ya! Or two...or three...

Get Inked

I love the idea of using a rubber stamp for return address labels. 

Remember when people used to actually write letters to one another? 

At least people still send Christmas cards! So once a year you can bust out your address labels.

And don't forget birthday cards.... 

Of course Etsy has tons of options for doing your own personalized address stamps. 

I love this particular shop called Sweet Papery because of her clean style and pretty fonts. 

It will run you about 20 bucks for one stamp which saves you having to write out your address or peel a sticker label (oh the horror!), plus you cannot deny that its just fun to stamp something!

We chose this one:

This one was cool too...

Or you could pay a little more and get self-inking stamp.

This shop StampOutOnline as a whole bunch of options:

 Vintage Western

 Mason Jar Chic

The family that plays Scrabble together, stays together....or something

Happy Stamping!

Artichoke Crusted Chicken

Now doesn't that sound fancy? 

This is something you can do with chicken that mixes it up a bit and is easy to do. If you like artichokes that is...and I do, so lucky for me!

Basically you salt and pepper your chicken breasts and saute them on the stove until done. 

Finish it off with this cheesy artichoke mixture by melting it under the broiler. 

And then it looks all fancy pants on the table! 

My 1 year old also loves this chicken, unlike my 4 year old who is too aware and looks right at things like artichokes, determining they are gross. I used to be like that too, until I was like 20, and discovered the goodness of other "gross" foods like mushrooms and avocados.
Ha! How wrong I was...

I always try to flatten my chicken so its even. I cover it with a big piece of plastic wrap and then just pound it with the bottom of my frying pan. Works great, then I don't have to do one at a time.

 Trader Joe's (if you live by one) has cheaper artichoke hearts than the regular grocery store,

in my experience.

For the topping mixture on 4 breasts I used:

1/2 cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts

1/2 cup shredded white cheese (i used monterey jack)

1/4-1/2 cup mayonnaise

Spoon it on top of your cooked chicken and

broil for a few minutes in the oven to melt the cheese, making sure not to burn it!

Mmmhmmm.

I'm thinking next time I will try this with some spinach mixed in!

I found this on Sugarlaws, you can click here for the original recipe.

Open it Up

When we moved into this house, where my grandparents lived for 40+ years, let's see, how do I put this....everything was blue! It was my grandma's favorite color, and coming over here every time, it never seemed weird to me. It looked good actually, it went with their style. 

But as my family and I have had the privilege to live here, we have changed things up quite a bit. I look forward to sharing more of our projects here on this blog, but this is the first one. We don't have thousands (or even hundreds) of dollars to spend on a kitchen re-do, and I don't really have the time to loiter around Lowe's hoping for the Kitchen Crashers to come and find me. So the other option was to do some affordable projects to mix things up a bit to make it more our style!

The cabinet doors on this section of cabinet were chipping on the bottom, so we had the idea to just take them off instead of replacing them. I also had to get some new dishes for this endeavor because for some reason, when we got married in 2007 I registered for mustard yellow dishes and chocolate brown bowls. 

What, was I going through some kind of Under the Tuscan Sun phase? 

I just know if I could rewind, I would have registered for all white dishes, because since then my taste has become way more modern, and plus they are timeless. 

The initial background color was of course, blue! We decided to paint it black to make the dishes pop. I had some glossy black paint already, but this was just too shiny for the job. We ended up using Valspar's Very Black, which is kind of a softer black in a satin finish. I love how it turned out!

This is the only cabinet we opened up. Now my husband wants to do them all, but hello, then where would I put  all my kitchen "unmentionables"? The chalkboard was another DIY that my husband made with chalkboard paint and some plyboard. I added an Ikea Deka curtain wire to display my daughter's artwork with.

I found a white dish set by Canopy for only 35 bucks for a 16 piece set,

and the quality is really amazing for the price.

Fist bump to you Walmart!

I wish I would have gotten a better before pic, that would have showcased how cluttered this cabinet was, full of spices/medicines/forgotten sippy cups, etc. (Can't forget to do a before pic next time, hello!)

It felt good to get a rid of a bunch of that stuff that was not needed anymore.

So all of the stuff that I still used was moved to a closed cabinet, and my new pretty white dishes, and other pieces that worked are on display here. 

What do you think? This was super easy to do, and it makes me happy every time I walk by!