Pumpkin Painting Time

The other day, Finn got to let his creativity loose. Well in reality, he got to squish some paint in his hand while his mama placed his paint-covered hand on the pumpkin. 

I found this idea on Pinterest, we just used blue painter's tape and taped an "F" on his pumpkin and some washable paint. The intention to remove the tape after the pumpkin had been covered in paint. 

Here he is dipping his fingers in. I was a lil worried the first thing he'd do is put it right to his mouth, but the goopy texture was too interesting that it kept that hands-in-the-mouth business at bay. :)

He then started getting all Picasso on me and dipped his hand in a blue then mixed it in a purple...such a pro. ;)

I look like I'm not enjoying this at all, eh? :) And then there's Finn with his deep concentration.

All done!

I waited a little too long to pull off the blue tape and it ended up peeling some of the dried paint off when I removed it. My type A was coming out and I was thinking about fixing it, and then I told myself, "Lisa Marie, it does not need to be perfect." And then I listened.

I think it's so sweet, and it was a sweet memory that's for sure. Too bad I can't keep his first creation for life. Well maybe if I freeze the thing, hah, just a lil tempting.......

Mood Boards Schmood Boards

I just felt like typing schmood. It felt good.

Well we're all gearing up for Halloween in our household. Tonight we're gonna attempt to let Finn get his creativity on and paint a little pumpkin. I'm curious how that'll go, but I'm pretty sure we'll do it outside in case things get crazy. :) His costume is 80% done and I'm pretty happy with it, can't wait to put it on the little guy. I'm actually taking off work tomorrow so we can spend the day together since Rob won't be able to be there in the evening. So looking forward to some family time. Yes indeed. Oh and you know I'll take a bajillion photos.

But anywaysss...(I wish you could hear how much many of the things I say are actually said in Nacho Libre's voice) so on to the topic of mood boards. What's a mood board? Just a compilation of items to present a design direction for a particular room.

Here's the one that I created for Finn's room...

Personally I love doing mood boards. I don't use a fancy program or anything, just regular publisher to paste all the images in. But I like how it gives you a glimpse into the room before actually diving in. I like how I can see from a bird's eye view from the future of what the room would need. Yeah, that sentence was weird, but what I mean is it's nice to have a plan before buying a bunch of random stuff that don't end up meshing well together.

On the side I offer design services and mood boards (I need to create a page with that detail - soon!). My last challenge was a blank slate of a living room. Orange and greens were the preferred accent colors with neutral gray/beige as the dominant color. She loved geometric design patterns and they also toyed with the idea of putting a stone facade on their back wall. The layout in this pic isn't how it would be (obviously not functional to have a tv behind the couch) but I set it this way so you could see all the items on one page.

1. West Elm Curtains - I saw these and instantly liked the subtle geometric pattern and in a neutral color. I also like that it's not too busy so that it doesn't compete with the other patterns in the room.
2. Stone Facade - I love the cozy feel and texture that this stone facade lends to the room.
3. Rooms To Go Couch and Chair - Although the client had already chosen this couch and chair, I'm a big fan of Cindy Crawford's furniture line for Rooms To Go. Love the clean lines and the quality of this furniture.
4. World Market Lamp - I liked bringing in the splash of color with this lamp base. They have an open concept kitchen/living space so there are some other green accents sprinkled throughout. 
5. World Market Art - Although hard to tell from this pic, that picture is quite big, 3' square. I love the clean sophisticated feel along with the fun splashes of color.
6. West Elm Rug - A neutral jute rug for durability and comfort - it's also very soft jute, not rough like I would've imagined. 
7. Crate and Barrel Throw - Mm, a good chunky throw in a beautiful orange color, and only $30 at C&B.

So there's a little mood board for you, as I create more I'll try to share on here.  I'll also be setting up a page soon on here for info if you're interested in me creating a mood board for room(s) in your house.

Happy Halloween eve to you all! Hope you have a safe and spooktacular time!

Fall Family Photos

This past weekend I finally dusted off the tripod and got us out in our backyard to take some fall pics...

Originally I planned on getting us out to a pumpkin patch and taking the classic pumpkin patch picture, but we didn't make it out to one. So even though in the above pic you can't see it, I pulled out some of our fall decor and made a little "set" in a few minutes and thankfully we got some good ones.

Minus the fact that Finn was just not having it...(and yes, Rob and I look like parents of the year in this pic)

Let me paint the picture to this photo shoot. Let's see...we just got home from being out and walking around for hours. We were tired, cranky, and hungry, but I look outside and what do I see? Good lighting. Perfect time for a photo, right? Hah.

So within a few minutes I pull this together and we sit ourselves down and I hear myself saying to Rob "okay, really try to smile...let's act happy". So we started out really faking it and then as Finn started to get fussy and squirm I started narrating saying things like "isn't life just perfect?" and "we get so much sleep nowadays" and "we're just so happy all the time, aren't we?". This loosened us up and got us both laughing as Finn eventually got distracted enough in these other pics.

Photo shoots can be fun, gotta find the bright side to the craziness of life. Anyone else attempting some family photos?

Happy fall!!

Three Years

October is a particularly harder month. As shared in this post from last year, my friend was a victim of domestic violence and her life was taken in October 2010. October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

In 2010, Larsen's parents made a brave decision to share their story with the news in hopes to raise awareness. There was one particular statement that Larsen's dad made that has stuck with me over these years in regards to domestic violence. And that is the shame that she felt from it. It breaks my heart when I think about it. I can only imagine the internal struggle of breaking the silence of a situation like that. So much so that a victim isn't able to make a move and get out of it. However, I feel like I should clarify that my friend did make the move. She was very brave.

My heart will always hurt and long for my dear friend, and it hurts for her son, her family and friends. And when I think of the victims of domestic violence and those that may be living in dangerous situations but feeling trapped by fear or embarrassment, it hurts. I always wish there was more I could do, but I know that having the awareness in my day-to-day life and sharing the message to raise awareness is something.

If you are interested in getting more info for yourself or a loved one, there are soooo many resources out there. Too many to list off here (and a lot of them are local to your city) but there's shelters, legal assistance, advice on how to get out and much more if you search for it.

And if you are interested in supporting Larsen's parents in raising her beautiful son who was diagnosed with autism, please visit www.larsenslegacy.com. Below is a recent note from her amazing parents...

I recorded this song two years ago, a favorite worship song of Lar's. The song has been a huge blessing to me and it will always be near and dear to my heart. I'm sharing it here as it may be a blessing to you as well.

Love you, Lar. Always.

October Shenanigans

It's bizarre to me that Halloween is next week already. Meaning that November is almost here. I can't believe it. For some reason it always feels like someone presses the fast-forward button during these last few months.

Well this month our weekends have been pretty busy with weddings and other good stuff...this past weekend we had a wedding for some dear friends of ours. Before getting ready and going out there, our morning included Finn feeding me some of his puffs. A new trick of his...I know he's not a dog, but we get excited about every new thing he does, and I tend to call them tricks. :)

It's kinda funny cause now once he drops the puff in my mouth, he then digs to find it and take it back.

This wedding was at a beautiful location in central Florida, a house that made me feel like I was in an old countryside village in Europe somewhere. 

Rob expressed how cool it would be to have a tower like that one day...not sure how feasible that will be but I can only imagine him hunkered down there with a book and a pipe to chew on. Maybe even a typewriter. With a little round cutout window for him to stick his head out of. Now that I think of it, it's something I would like too. I was that hideout/fort/clubhouse loving girl. 

Funny-maybe-only-to-me-story...when I was little and we were visiting my grandparents new house for the first time, I was told they had a clubhouse there. The whole ride over there I was imagining this huge wooden tree house or something really cool with little hideouts everywhere, I was so excited. Was I deflated when I found out that the clubhouse was just a regular old building with some lame pool tables and a space for tables and chairs? Oh yes, little Lisa's dreams were crushed. But there was a swimming pool and tennis court. That helped ease the pain. Oh how I would love to have an amazing fort or tree house even now. I hope Finn will be into it as well. I'm not sure if there's a kid who isn't into forts. 

We were so happy to be a part of their beautiful day and also received these adorable little jars for wedding favors. Filled with spices to heat up and serve in drinks. I might just heat it up for the yummy smell since I rarely drink hot drinks. I was pretty excited we got to claim three of these babies. :)

I thought it was such a sweet and creative favor.

We gotta visit a pumpkin patch this weekend before it's all gone. Gotta get some pics of the little one and maybe get his first pumpkin. Halloween is almost a week away! Okay, for real, I'm gonna start working on Finn's costume tonight.

Any festive things that you're doing lately? Pumpkin patches, apple picking (I don't think that's really done here in FL), hayrides, or just pulling things together for Halloween? Man, I wish kids came down our street.  

Happy Wednesday!

Some Stripe Love

Last week I made it a point to go to our local craft store and buy some canvases or some heavy duty paper for me to make some art for our bathroom. Ever since doing some fall crafts, I've been itching to get painting again.

So let me back up to my birthday real quick. I promise I'm not being completely random and this has something to do with this post. Well, I received some lovely gifts and gift cards. And here's my little spiel about gift cards. I love them. And my problem is that I feel like I have to buy the absolutely best item(s) possible with it. Should I wait for sales? Should I use it all for one item or buy a bunch of little things? I know, not a real life-altering problem, but sometimes it takes me a while to buy anything. Like my birthday was over three months ago and I'm still waiting to use my gift cards at my beloved Gap. I say all this because the other day I was browsing through their tops and found this one and it served as inspiration for this art piece. 

I liked the stripes and I really liked the heavier metallic stripe. And then an idea for art was born. So for this easy project I used Martha Stewart's Brushed Pewter metallic paint, black paint, and painter's tape.  

Once I painted these in, I realized it wasn't enough stripes so after they dried, I used my painters tape again and added more stripes. And topped it off with a little sailboat. I liked the idea of seeing the stripes as water. 

For some reason in these photos the metallic stripe is coming out dull and rough looking...I think maybe because of the frame or the lighting (yeah, I wish I had natural light at this time but I'm impatient and shot these at night) Here's a better shot I took earlier of it with my phone (go figure) outside of the frame. Much smoother and crisp looking than those pics above.

Overall I like it. I know we can be our own worst critics, but although not perfect, I'm happy with it. And I know for bathroom art it's good to consider the humidity from the shower affecting it, but I'm not too concerned. We have an exhaust fan in our bathroom and really if this pic gets ruined in years to come, it was handmade so I could make another. lol

We had a good and busy weekend. A beautiful wedding for our friends on Saturday and then hung around the house on Sunday. We had intentions to go out, but besides a quick trip to Ikea and the grocery store we stayed indoors. Watched the weeks episode of Parenthood and then later watched probably the scariest most suspenseful movie I've ever seen...maybe I'm being dramatic, but we watched World War Z finally. All while Finn was sleeping of course. But goodness, I definitely needed Rob to read to me last night before going to sleep to get those super fast creepy zombies out of my head. Craziness. But it was good, hah. :)

And what's a post without our little Finn in it? He still lights up when presented with the opportunity to play the piano. Here's a shot I got of him and his daddy...and it shows how Jack is rarely ever far away from wherever we're at in the house.

In my opinion, baby feet are the only feet permissible to play the piano...lol. Sweet boys.

Well happy new week to you all! Will be hopefully sharing an update to our kitchen soon. An easy one, but hopefully a good looking one. 

A Series of Unfortunate Winnings...

Lately Rob has been the one who gets our mail. I stopped getting it the day a roach palmetto bug was nestled between the stack of envelopes. Yep, I certainly threw everything in the air that day, left it there on the ground, and asked Rob to get it. 

I have bug issues. 

This is also the same reason why I can't take out our recycle. I would say I need bug therapy, but I don't wanna talk about it. lol...

Anyway, Rob's been getting our mail lately. We get tons of junk/flyers and typically I would've thrown the junk in the trash in a split second, but Rob was captivated by this piece of mail that had a plastic-y type digital box on it. It said to pull the tab and if you had one of the three numbers listed you won either A: $15,000, B: 2 iPad minis, C: $300 gift card or D: $100 cash. 

Well he pulled the tab and the number matched one of the numbers. Still skeptical, he called the car dealership (that's where the flyer came from, I know what you're thinking...) and asked the lady if it was something where everyone won something and if they were gonna force him to purchase something first and she told him flatly that no, not everyone wins and he wouldn't have to buy anything. So he hung up and planned on driving to the place to claim his prize. We told ourselves, the worst we would get out of it was $100. Not bad, not bad. 

But we were wrong. 

I was watching Finn while Rob drove out to the place and I was eagerly waiting for his call. Well first I got a text that said "I hate car dealerships", I encouraged him to stay strong and waited to hear the news. He then called a few minutes or so later and said we got the $300 gift card. Cool, but then he said it's like an online store that we would purchase the items from. Finn was down for his nap so I quickly googled the name of the site and the first things that appeared in google were the dreaded words..."scam".

Apparently the biggest complaints are that the items (that ranged from various electronics to clothing to luggage) was that you had to pay beaucoup dollars in shipping and handling and apparently the items were said to not be worth as much as they were going for. And then I went to the actual site. Lol, oh my poor man, I felt bad to deliver the news that the items on there looked like they were dug up from someones garage. The CD/DVD section contained 4 choices. Two of which were pilates workouts, the other was the classic Christmas Carol or something like that. We laughed, oh we laughed, but there was a tinge of disappointment...okay, maybe a little more than a tinge on Rob's part.

So Rob gets home and I'm sitting on the couch. He walks in half playfully with his head down in disappointment, then other half laughing at the situation. I couldn't stop laughing and feeling bad all at the same time. He also was missing a lens in his sunglasses. When I gathered enough strength to stop laughing and ask him what happened, he said they dropped out of his pocket in the dealership parking lot and the frames brokes and lens popped out. The playful shame on his face was killing me...he then showed me the gift card and through shaking laughter I managed to get this fuzzy shot of him with my phone. A little paint/photoshop action was done on this one to keep this blog G rated, lol. 

Well, before he got home, I wanted to do something to cheer him up, so I set up the computer in front of the couch, brought up his favorite online store, Amazon, and wrote up a note on the computer...

In the parentheses it says "to make up for your disappointing "winnings"....love you!". Even though I know $25 of free spending may seem like nothing, we don't really buy much stuff for ourselves...so this is like Christmas for Rob. Guilt-free spending on whatever you could wish for.

This whole thing just reminded me of the other time Rob had a disappointing winning. Hence calling this post a series...not hoping for more disappointing winnings in our future, but they are kinda hilarious to us.

So a book and a knife have been ordered (much less than $25), and the disappointing winnings are in the past. There's no way we'll spend that "gift card"...nothing looked appealing enough to spend $20 bucks on shipping and handling. Rob never even looked at the site, lol.

Ah, twas entertaining though. I laughed so hard today I cried. Ah, funny simple moments to remember.

Hope you got a laugh out of this! Happy Thursday!

Fall Craftiness

An evening with some chili, a fall scented candle, the ac turned down, a cinnamon broom, some delicious treats, and most importantly some crafting.

My friend is an awesome baker and makes some a-mazing cupcakes...these were pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting along with some Oreo truffles. Yumzahs.

The set up was pretty simple. Just added an extra table in front of our sectional in addition to our dining table. I just pulled out any supplies I could dig up to share.

Lots of fun projects created in the room...

Such good looking projects, right?

Lol, love this pic...funny girls :)

My project was a simple one, just wanted to paint some letters on these craft pumpkins, inspired by this. I again used a paper stencil just printed off the computer, and then cut out and taped on the pumpkin. After stenciling it on with a pencil, I filled in the first letter with black paint. I then realized a sharpie would be SO much easier and better coverage. (the paint was kinda going on uneven)

And here they are on our mantel...

Definitely happy with it. I like that I'll be able to keep these up till Thanksgiving. Even if it doesn't feel like fall (however a break from humidity in FL is greatly appreciated by myself) these pumpkins serve as a reminder.

Any fall crafting going on for you? There's so much inspiration out there on Pinterest. I look forward to the day when Finn can join me...such fun projects to do with kids around the holidays. Eek, I just realized I only have a few weeks to make his costume, gotta get on that. Oh and our master bath? I need to get on that too...waah!