Front Porch

Even though it is 95 degrees outside it is chilly fall weather in my mind......ahh the sounds of leaves crunching under my feet on a brisk fall morning....oh wait I live in Houston....nevermind!  But my porch is cute so it helps it feel a little more like fall around here!

Painting

A while back I was floating through blogging land and came across a painting of a white barn with a green back drop.(I wish that I could find the site that I found it on but I have lost it :( in cyberspace)  I instantly fell in love!  I have to say if I was rich and famous I would have immediately purchased this painting!  It was not.....in my price range.  So I thought  I should paint myself one.  Yes!  Brilliant!  So I did.  It is not as beautiful as the one I saw but I love it.  I am not a painter by nature so it is a simple, folky looking painting.  It now proudly hangs above my couch in my living room!

Cheating....Procrastinators welcome!

If you are anything like me then you know what it is like to go through a day and get to the point where you were suppose to have something completed and you have not even started it!  Well I am a fan of taking short cuts but not on the things that matter.  With that in mind I have a secret or two to confess..........but that's gonna have to wait a few minutes!

I have a few friends who like for me to make their birthday cakes for their birthdays or their kids.  I have a method of making cakes at the last minute that I think could prove useful to anyone really.  Now before I tell you don't get me wrong.....I love a good homemade, made from scratch cake BUT there is not always time for that so here is my solution.

When in a pinch I purchase a white cake with plain white icing from the bakery at my grocery store......eeeek my secret is out!  Then I make a batch of marshmallow fondant (which I will put the recipe up soon) and put a lot of love into the decorating of a cake!  Most of the time the cakes that I get asked to make are at the last second so our only option would have been to go the grocery store and pick one up anyway.  This is a fun and easy solution!  I did it recently for a friend so I thought I would share some pictures to help you see that it can be pretty and easy!

Hope you all find this "procrastinator" method easy and helpful!  - Johnna

Homeschooling! Ready, set, here we go!

 Ok wow it has been WAY to long since my last post!  I guess all the fun of summer has finally come to an end.  As sad as this is for some it is a happy time for me!  I love the anticipation of fall and all that comes with it.  Seriously, is everyone as excited as I am about the aroma of cinnamon and freshly sharpened pencils?  I turn into a complete dork just thinking about it!

Well with the end of summer marks the beginning of a new adventure for our family.  We have never ventured into the homeschooling world and honestly never really knew if we would.  Well, ready, set, here we go!  It was a big decision and was not taken lightly.  I am not a homeschooler-for-life-die-hard.  I have friends who are and are really good at it.  I am not one of them, mainly meaning I feel completely inadequate to take on this monster of a task but again, ready, set, here we go!

I have had so much fun setting up the kids "homeschool".  We have a tiny little living space (think of the genie living inside of the magic lamp and then your really close, kidding but not by much) so it was a challenge.  I am pretty happy with what I have so far I am sure as the days go by I am going to adjust where needed.  For now here is what I have.

          

Let's hope this makes for some happy hearts and heads this school year!

Johnna

Alice in Wonderland

This was a little girls 5th birthday and, oh was it whimsical!  Some of the details are ridiculous! We had a bunny for all of the kids to pet and a candy table as the favors.  We had the queen of hearts doing face painting.  Check out the cute details.

My Etsy Shop

      So you remember, oh I don't know, a couple of posts back when I said that I was going to have an etsy shop up and going middle of June?  Well lets just say that my eyes were bigger than my stomach!  Ok so starting an etsy shop is suppose to be like some sort of fantasy right?  I mean I thought I would make a couple of things and post it onto etsy and boom done I can quit my day job.........wow that was a bit of a stretch but not by that much.  Starting an etsy shop is so much more time consuming that I thought it would be.  I am learning so much through the process.  I am such an ADD crafter.  When I craft it looks like a Hobby Lobby run by monkeys on crack!  And I am pretty much ALWAYS crafting something sooooo you do the math on the condition of my house at any given moment...yikes.  Anyway it is not going to be the middle of June but it will be as soon as I can figure it all out.   I am currently trying to figure out exactly which products I am going to make, what the cost is, the shipping, how much time it takes to make, etc.  But for now I love stationary so I have been trying out all the styles in my head.  So here are some ones I have come up with lately.

Can anyone guess what the silhouette is on the card above???  

Please tell me what you think!  

A Lamp Redo

I had such a fun weekend with my family!  We went "thrifting" on Saturday and found some really cheap  but perfect items for repurposing or refinishing.  I can't wait to see how it all turns out!  Last week I got a boring circa 1970's brass lamp that I was determined to update and hope to sell in my Etsy shop.  Here it is I would love to hear from about what you think! I also am putting up some other pictures to show you how I got from A - Z.

Before

After

  Here was my process - 

I spray painted the lamp a chocolate brown (what mess in the background??  What are you talking about??) :)

Then I took joint compound and painted it on with a paintbrush.

I sanded out the rough edges and put a coat of cream colored paint on and then distressed it with a fine grit sandpaper.  I really love the texture that it gives, you can see it in this picture pretty well.  It looks like an aged piece of pottery.  

I recovered the lamp shade in burlap and ruffles and.............finished!  It is actually bigger than it looks. It measures 31 inches tall and 17 inches at the widest part of the shade.  

I am pretty happy with it.  Let me know what you think!