Anniversary Date Night

  So, I know this is a little late, but better late than never, right?  So, Layton and I made it... One year down.  Though it has been a hard year of trials we have praised God for the fact that we got to go through it all together.
  So to celebrate one wonderful year Layton bought tickets to Bass Hall to see Sister Act.  He had never been to a live performance, much less a musical. :)  I was thankful that he was willing to try something new.  And what do you know... He really liked it.

  At Bass Hall.

After the show we went to P.F. Chang's to eat dinner and then Layton took me to go do a little shopping.  This was when we were getting ready to head home, on top of the parking garage.

  Individual pictures... I had to get a picture of him all dressed up for me. ;)

  One year down, hopefully many, many more to go. :)  Thankful, thankful, thankful!

Study Makeover--Part 3

  Okay, third and last part of our study makeover. :)  It has been done for a while, I just haven't made time to take pictures.
  So, now.... I made curtains, got our bookshelves put together, and hung some things on the walls. :) I'm sure we will do some moving around, but for now I am enjoying a beautiful, tidy study.

  The curtains!  I so enjoyed getting to make them with my sweet mother. :) And I love how they look in the study with my yellow desk. Now Layton wants to paint his desk grey. Hehe...

 My desk with decor in/on it. And the clock That I love!  I originally had this yellow desk in mind For crafting projects, but it has soon become my favorite place in the mornings, with my Bible, journal and iced coffee.  It is a place to put the rest of the world at rest for a few moments.

  Our bookshelves... I finally got them all put together again. I absolutely love our bookshelves.  A family we go to church with was getting rid if them and gave them to us for free. All we had to do was stain them!

  As you can see we don't have a lot of books yet, so they are mostly filled with picture frames. :)  When I was putting the books up this time I decided to try something a little different... I organized our religious books by color instead of author.  I really like how it turned out.  I think it ended up looking a little better since we don't have very many books.

 

  And lastly, the rest of our wall decor that is in the study for now. Both wedding presents... The painting on the right was done by a friend of ours. It has all the meanings of Layton and my's names combined To make the painting. We love it!
  So there you have it. Our study!  The one completed/updated room in our house. :)

~ Have a blessed day!

Study Makeover--Part 2

  Okay... So this next project we did was a really fun one.  I had been looking forward to it ever since we decided to work on the study first.
  Before we get into the beautiful pictures let me give some background.
Last spring, mom, Tori, Rhiannon, Norah and I went up to Kansas to see family. My great-great aunt was getting rid of some furniture and asked if I wanted her desk. This desk had originally been my grandmothers and so I was pretty excited about owning something that had been handed down.
  So we put it in the truck and brought it back to TX with us.
  It was pretty old and needed some help. It was really wobbly. So Layton put a few screws in it and covered a few holes. Then began the days and days of working on it...

  

This is the before picture. We had already started on it so there is no old hardware in this picture. It was falling apart needless to say. ;)

  I know this doesn't seem like it would be important, but it is, trust me. Here is the before picture of the inside.

 This is the after picture. Yellow is of my new favorite accent colors. It turned out really good and looks great with the wall color, don't you think?  We also got some new knobs.  It took for coats of paint/primer to cover this desk... I thought it would never be finished. Haha...

And the after picture of the inside. I love the grey on the yellow and the tile will make for easy craft clean up. :)  And hopefully the yellow will make for many crafty ideas.
  Now I finally have my own space to work instead of the floor or the kitchen table. Hopefully now the kitchen table will stay clean and cleared off.  I have already started to fill the desk with my things and hopefully soon I will have pictures of the study as a whole for you. :)
  ~ Have a blessed day and go do something crafty!

Study Makeover--Part 1

  Okay, so we are in our new house!! It has been absolutely wonderful so far. :) We love it all and we are greatly enjoying being able to be hands on and make this house our own.
  We decided to concur the study first. We already had paint for it (I will explain this later) and it was probably going to be the easiest room in the house.  At least that's what we thought at the time. ;)
  We painted first. I have been wanting to paint since we got married, but our apartment wouldn't let us, so it was a joy to my heart top be able to have some color on the walls.

  

This is the before color. It is all over the house. It's a darker khaki. It is really not a bad color except we hadabout five different shades of khaki all over our apartment before, so w are both a little tired of browns. ;)

  Thus is the after color. It is more blue than the picture shows. I really like how it turned out... Finally some color on the walls. :)

  Next we attempted to switch the ceiling fan... Thus was a little harder changed than we thought. The new fan is up and beautiful, but for some reason the lights won't work, so we are still in the process of trying to figure that out.

  The before fan.... Pretty sure it was original. It definitely needed some replacing. = P

  Our new fan!!! It is so much better and doesn't wobble. I like how it turned out as well. Hopefully soon we will get the lights working. :)

  And last, but definitely not last, we put more shelving in the closet.  It wad just this one shelf and now....

  We have five shelves. It is so much better and going to be a lot easier to store things. 
  That is all for now... We are about to start isbnon one last thing for the study, but it will be a surprise. Hopefully I will be praying about it fairly soon, but it is kind of a big one. :)
  Hope you are all having good Mondays and getting lots done!  I am trying to get out if boxes. ;)

DIY Recipe Box

  So, I thought I should post about the recipe box I did before I get lost in house decorating and remodeling posts. ;) 
  There were a few projects I was pushing to get done before the move and this was one of them.  Since I was to cook from stratch almost all the time an organized recipe box means a lot to me, and a cute one is definitely a perk. :)
  I now have two recipe boxes... one is full of the recipes I love but can no longer eat, and the other is full of the recipes I can eat and some of which I love.

  So here it is. I love how it turned out, though it took me a while to get here through a lot of clumsy mistakes, like spilling super-glue all over my kitchen table. =P

  It was pretty simple... I bought this box at JoAnns. They sell them in the wood section.  Used some leftover paint from another project that had primer in it (cuts out a step!). After the paint had dried I sanded down the edges and some other parts (it takes a little practice because you want to sand enough that it is noticable, but it is easy to do too much).

  Then we move on to the fun part of decorating! :)  I used mostly scrap paper.  I decided not to do an "H" because I have that on my other recipe box, so I got the creative juices flowing.  :)  I'm a huge fan of straight lines, combined with flowers and a little sparkle.  Nothing too fancy.  And then to add a little rustic edge I used stamps to do the title.

  This is the inside... You can do whatever dividers you want.  I go pretty basic. Appetizers--Beverages--Breakfasts--Sauces--Entrees--Pastas--Soups--Sides--and Desserts.  I did patterned papers that coordinated, but I have done just solids before which is really cute too.  I used the same stamps on the inside as on the outside.

  So, proof that you can be practical and organized, while still keeping things cute.  That is how you get to this girls heart.  ;)

  On a slightly different note... I have joined pinterest this week.  I told myself I wouldn't get sucked in, but we don't have internet at our house for now, so I figured I have limited access so I hopefully won't spend hours on end on there. But I have found a lot of great things so far and I am really excited since we are now in a place of our very own.  Lots of great things I look forward to doing.  For now we are working on our study... we picked it first because it should be the shortest and easiest project.  Pictures to come soon hopefully.  :)

~Have a wonderful day and a blessed weekend!

It's the Small Things in Life

  I know, I know... it has been forever.  We have been in the process of buying a house in the last month and with that comes boxing everything up and getting ready to move.  :)

  I'm so excited about living in our new place (we closed last Friday and we get to stay our first night tomorrow), but it has been a lot of work and very stressful at times.  I know it will be great though.

  Layton and I are not big apartment people.... I have many friends and family who are, but when something breaks Layton and I like to fix it.  I love to paint and make a place my own with the tile I like or that specific ceiling fan.  ;)  And since we have been living in this apartment for almost a year now we have not been able to do anything ourselves... and we are definitely ready to.

  But anyway, through all of this crazy process it has definitely been the small things that have made my day... like

A homemade Frappe on a hot, muggy day.  And it had salted caramel on top...  :)

Or a wonderful walk with my husband to get out of our untidy, boxed up, in the process of moving apartment...

Or coming down stairs in the morning to a lot of clean dishes (done by my husband at 5:30 in the morning).

  Through out it all there have been hard days and easy days.  Those good days and the bad, but I praise the Lord that I can always find a reason to smile.  :)  He has blessed us with so much and now we will be completely blessed with a new dwelling place.  We are very much looking forward to having a place of our own.

~God Bless and Enjoy your Memorial Day!

Grilled Burritos and Cookie Cups!!!

  I just found this recently...  It is a post I did quite a while back before Christmas.  We had not yet discovered food allergies or our new diet, but never-the-less I thought I would share this.  They were extremely yummy and totally worth trying!  I'll have to try making some cookie bowls with some gluten-free/sugar-free cookie dough... if it works, I will let you know.  ;)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

   So, a while back I posted about these grilled enchiladas I had made for dinner one night... this is that concept taken a little farther.
   We made grilled burritos smothered in the easiest homemade queso with guacamole and chips on the side.  It was so good!  Then for dessert I made cookie bowls with salted caramel and cappuccino gelato... a-mazing!  I have to tweek the cookie bowls, but they were still really good.

Layton did the grilling once again and they turned out wonderful!

The guacamole and the queso...

My plate... I really can't even begin to tell you how good it was. :)

Our cookie dough waiting to be molded and formed...

but being snacked on in the mean time.  ;)

So easy!

You just take a handful of dough and put them on the bottom of sprayed muffin tins, though I would suggest not going all the way to the bottom like we did because they will grow.

And the finished product...

They were very yummy indeed!

I had cappuccino gelato and Layton had salted caramel.

  ~LOVE~HOPE~BELIEVE~SING~JOYOUS~CELEBRATE~FELLOWSHIP~