I have a slight obsession with Pinterest. Here are some of my favorite recent pins:
DIY Watercolor Mug – Poppytalk
White Bedding With Blue Accents – Heidi Claire
Maya Angelou Quote – Sugarboo & Co.
DIY Confetti Stix – Best Friends For Frosting
Boots – Outfit Ideas
Brownie Cookie Checkerboard – Very Best Baking
Gold Feather Earrings – Etsy
DIY Cactus Pillow – Everything Emily
Gotta love Pinterest. ❤
Yesterday was my 100th post – hard to believe! Since I didn’t do anything to commemorate that yesterday I thought I’d commemorate my 101st post instead by listing a few of the reasons I blog.
1) Creative Outlet – I’ve thought of quiting my blog many times. Not because I don’t enjoy it, but because it’s hard to think of something to write about 3 times a week. But I think of it as a challenge, and it ends up forcing me to be creative.
2) Gives Me Perspective – Writing inspirational posts helps me to refocus my priorities and gives me a positive outlook on life.
3) Documents Life – It’ll be fun to look back at food I made, projects I did, books I enjoyed, etc.
Those are the main reasons I’ve been blogging these last several months. I’m not sure how long I’ll continue blogging, but for now I think I’ll keep it up.
In this day in age simplifying is not “in”. It’s easy to be a sucker to the endless advertising and marketing, but I’m always comforted when I realize I actually feel much better with less. Slow down and read these awesome reminders…
The last one I included because living in a self-centric society can make it hard for me to not fall into selfish tendencies. Ideally if I’m simplifying my life then I am better able to give to others, win-win. 🙂 For another post on simplifying click here.
My top 5 favorite magazines…
Real Simple – I subscribe to this one and it’s great! It has some of the best articles in my opinion.
Better Homes & Garden – I also subscribe to this one. Their recipes are my favorite and they photograph beautiful homes.
People Style Watch – It’s like People but only with fashion. It’s a fun one to flip through poolside.
Shape & Self & Health – There are a ton of fitness magazines, and they are all pretty similar. I like to flip through these three. They actually have good recipes too.
Redbook – I only recently discovered this magazine. I knew it existed, but I didn’t realize how much I’d like it! Thinking I may need to get a subscription to this one.
Sometimes I want a break from reading books and during those times nothing beats a good stack of magazines. 🙂
We made a trip to Homegoods today. Gotta love Homegoods. Here are some of the cool things that we found.
I loved this lamp, loved.
And I loved this lamp. I love lamp.
There were a ton of cute notecards like this…
…and like this.
Thought this was pretty nifty, but what would you use it for? I don’t know.
As far as what we ended up getting…2 pillows (ours are getting flat and I’m not a fan of a flat pillow), a cutting board (our two small ones weren’t cutting it), and this pretty box:
It’d be easy to burn too much money at good ole Homegoods, but we did pretty good. It was hard to leave those lamps behind though, I’m not going to lie. And it was REALLY hard to leave this guy behind:
What’s on the menu for this week…
Slow Cooker Chicken Fajitas – Love Grows Wild
Easy Crockpot Fiesta Chicken – The Girl Who Ate Everything
Chicken Avocado Lime Soup – Hello Homebody
Creamy Spinach Sausage Pasta – Budget Bytes
The soup and fiesta chicken I’ve made before and have been on previous posts, but the other two are new. These posts always make me hungry..
Here are a few of my favorite blogs to peruse from time to time:
Young House Love – DIY/Home Blog
MaskCara – Beauty Blog
Bower Power Blog – DIY/Home Blog
The Small Things Blog – Hairstyling Blog
Vintage Revivals – DIY/Home Blog
Sorry if these blogs cause you to waste a good chunk of your day. 🙂
For my birthday Mike got me a prayer book that I’d been wanting called The Better Part: A Christ Centered Resource for Personal Prayer by John Bartunek.
I ended up liking it so much I thought I’d do a post on what it’s all about. It’s written by a Catholic priest, but any Christian could use it as a daily meditation tool.
Format – The first section is a detailed guide to Christian mediation. Basically a how-to. And it breaks Christain meditation into 4 categories: concentrate, consider, converse, and commit. The second (and main) section is divided up into small units including a passage from the Gospels and a four-part commentary based on the same four themes throughout the book: Christ the Lord, Christ the Teacher, Christ the Friend, and Christ in My Life. It’s easy to commit to reading and meditating on one of these units a day.
Additional Guidance – After each small unit there are also questions if you were to use it in a group setting. There are also suggested Catechism readings after each unit for further examination. Two indexes are included. One list the units in the order in which the Gospel passages appear throughout the liturgical year. The second lists them in relation to virtues of the spiritual life.
This book has a lot to offer. The first section of the book I found to be very beneficial. It’s a great reminder of things to remember while praying to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your prayer time. Think of it as a miniature ‘how to pray better’ boot camp. Having that part to refer back to while reading through the small units will be handy.
So if you’re in the market for a personal prayer resourse, check this one out. 🙂
What’s on the menu for this week…
Slow Cooker Broccoli Cheese Soup – Cooking Classy
Rainbow Roasted Veggies with Quinoa – The Garden Grazer
The Best Breakfast Bagel Sandwich – No Biggie *we’re just putting ours on bread*
Baked Mexican Eggrolls with Enchilada Guacamole – Taste and Tell
I also made some chocolate peanut butter chip cookies using the recipe on the bag of Reese’s peanut butter chips. They were delish.
A couple days ago I was on a mission to mix up our built-in shelves in the kitchen, pictured here:
Although I like the framed Arkansas I thought it’d be cool to switch that up and have something more simple. I’m loving this print from Etsy, so I decided to do a DIY version.
First I did my best to sketch out the letters with pencil onto a piece of white cardstock. I had some shiny gold paint that I began to paint with inside the letters, pictured here:
But I realized quickly that it was going to be tricky and I wasn’t sure if I’d get the result I wanted. So I used pen to outline the letters and painted over the entire page.
The pen allowed me to see through the paint, so that once the paint dried I was able to cut out the letters. Once that was complete I put them on a fresh piece of white cardstock.
And then I used a glue stick to adhere them to the piece of paper.
I also repainted the original frame white. So it went from this:
To this:
It helped to simplify that area some and I thought it turned out pretty cute for a DIY!
Easy peasy. 🙂
fixed on the unseen 