New boots!

I am so excited! I was drooling over these dav Victoria Lace-Up rain boots online a few days ago, and my darling husband said, "You have needed boots forever- just get them!" I was thinking, "No, I shouldn't... they are cute.... but $40... " when I abandoned the computer to rescue E1's Polly Pockets from being Godzillaed by E2. When I got back to the computer, R was completing an on-line purchase of said boots. "You wanted them and they aren't that much. I want to do something nice for you," he said. I am so excited to get them in the mail! I am the luckiest!

Winter blues

Man- I totally have the winter blues. Or greys. I just want to hibernate and eat. And surf the Internet mindlessly. I need to get out of this rut and do something. Like clean my house. Or finish the play kitchen I am building or the kissing ball (I now have crepe paper). But I don't feel like doing anything. I am a human slug!

Splurge?

Have you ever really wanted to splurge on something that you know is just not practical? You know you would feel so guilty after for indulging yourself. I know it would be so silly to spend $148 on this Natalie One Piece Swimsuit by Anthropologie... even though it has 121 five star reviews.

I can get another Target swimsuit for a fraction of that.

But would it be as cute? Is it worth paying four times my regular swimsuit price just for cute?

Maybe.

Project: Pantry

I wanted to share our latest project: our pantry. It was a huge thing for us. We had these crazy built in shelves in our garage that were dark, scary and strangely shaped. R built me a nice new pantry by walling off a weird exterior porch on the side of our house, turning it in to an approx. 7 x10 ft. bonus area! Lucky me! We tried some of these pine shelves, but they weren't the most efficient use of space and weren't the most sturdy.

I loved the look of Elfa shelving from the Container Store, but I don't have that kind of budget. So I was thrilled to find Ikea had a comparable product! The Broder system. What I love about it is that we could customize our shelving to fit perfectly into our space. We could adjust the space between shelves. Installation was a breeze- said R. He just screwed the suspension rails into the studs, once he had trimmed them to fit. Then he hung the posts from the suspension rails and added brackets where we wanted them. Then he cut 1x12 pine boards to fit our space, screwed them into the brackets, and presto! A perfect pantry.

R and I went with shorter posts from Ikea so they would fit in our trunk (they have ones for floor to ceiling) which meant we needed twice as many suspension rails, but I think it makes it more sturdy anyway. And we bought the 1 x 12 boards locally so we wouldn't have to haul those bad boys so far. R is finishing the pine shelves with tung oil.

I am still arranging stuff, he helped me get everything put away so it wouldn't be all over our kitchen table. So I didn't have time to think through the ideal placement for everything! I would like to make it cuter with some canisters, baskets, labels, etc. but all in good time! This is a huge start for me.

One Pretty Thing

I am so addicted to the crafting blog One Pretty Thing! I go every day to see the Daily DIY Craft Roundup. I have been known to spend hours going through the site archives, bookmarking different projects I want to complete some day!

One of the Valentine's posts, from Heart-Hands-Home inspired me to make a Valentine's Kissing Ball out of crepe paper. You just rip off a length of streamer- about 24-30 inches, crumple up, uncrumple, and then pinch one end while you twist, fluff and gather, forming individual roses. It takes some practice, my first attempt looked terrible, but my second looked great. You are supposed to use a glue stick on the pinched end to keep the roses from unraveling, but I just dabbed some hot glue on the rolled end when I was finished and they seem to be staying together pretty well. Then, you just hot glue the roses onto a styrofoam ball. Halfway through, after two rolls of streamers, I ran out of materials, so the project is on hold for now until I do my weekly shopping and return with more Dollar Store crepe paper. This is the top half completed. I will post photos of the final product when done.

I don't really decorate for Valentine's Day. Like at all. My family gets some kind of heart shaped food that day. Yay for cookie cutters- magically transforms a sammie from yucky to lucky! I always hope R will bring me some flowers, which will then be our "decor", but I think last year I ended up with See's Candy fruit truffles instead- apple pie, key lime, lemon, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry- I am drooling while typing. (Which were gone much more quickly than they should have been.) Lucky me!

But maybe its time I turn over a new leaf. E1 loves everything fancy and would love pink and lace all over the place. Maybe I'll do an easy-breezy printable banner for now and scour the web for more ideas.