having fun with photos

Today I took the kids to this awesome turquoise warehouse to take photos. It's only a block from our house. I always thought of it as an eye sore to our neighborhood till I looked at it through a photographers eyes. These photos were so fun to shoot!! I am super happy with how well they turned out! Editing and filtering was almost as fun! More photos here.

new table ware

I just bought these dishes last night at the dollar store. I had never owned water goblets before and I already love them! I was pleasantly surprised that they had such a great selection of table ware there. I found red woven place mats but could only find two so I brought red to the table with apples and roses

What a fun time we have been having beautifying our house for buyers to come and tour this Saturday. We still have touch ups to finish so wish us luck! (For more of our house remodel updates go to our house blog.)

P.S. look at the pretty new dark mahogany stain on the floors!

turquoise chair

Here is a new addition to our living room: a beautiful old turquoise velvet chair. We saw it at

the thrift store the other day, and even though we already had furniture in that room we couldn't resist. Our over-sized couch and chair were way too big for the space anyway, so we were happy to replace the big chair with this lovely one. Just look at all the space there is now! We could never see all the pretty wainscoting because the overstuffed chair covered it all up. We still have the large couch in there but it's gotta go. It's massiveness really dwarfs this chair; they don't look very good together. Eventually we will add other smaller stylish pieces to make the room have the right scale. We find ourselves in that room a lot more lately.

Valentine for my love

This is the valentine I made for my husband. He really loved it. It was fun thinking of creative and silly things to put in it. what did you do for your valentine? :)

garland of hearts

I just made this new garland out of what I had on hand and I love it! I bought the red pigment ink at the dollar store so i guess that wasn't on hand. That old book paper is really a staple at my house now! Take a look at what else I made with it.

These are the valentines that I made for my son's nursery teachers. I love the layers and the way they open at the corner. I also adore the winged envelopes they go in. Hope you have a happy v-day, we're off to a neighbors valentine exchange party!

Valentine chocolate sandwich cookies

I made Valentine treats today. I first tasted chocolate sandwich cookies when a neighbor boy, who was in my husbands Sunday school class, brought them over as a thank you. I thought they were the cutest thing ever! Then I tasted one and was blown away at the light fluffiness of the cookie and the super yummy frosting. I immediately started daydreaming that our neighbors would continue bringing cookies over and that they would always bring these specific ones. Well I eventually had to get the recipe from the neighbors and was pleasantly surprised with the simplicity of it! Here it is-

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cookies-
2 18.25 oz.packages of chocolate cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup of oil

frosting-
1 8 oz. pack of cream cheese (softened)
4th cup of butter (softened)
1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

• Preheat the oven to 350
• Roll out 1 inch balls and place them 2 inches apart on un-greased cookie sheet. (Put cocoa powder on hands to prevent sticky mess.) Makes 6 dozen cookies.
  
• Bake each sheet 8 to 10 min.
• Let cool on cookie sheet 5 min. before removing, cookies will flatten as they cool.
• let cool till room temp. then frost half the cookies and top with other half.

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Super easy!

I, however, made it harder than it should have been by making the cake mix from scratch. What an adventure I had last night!
First I omitted the butter thinking it was not needed since there isn't any butter in the recipe. My first three sheets of cookies turned out like crumbly grainy biscuits. But in normal chocolate cake mix there is shortening, so I really messed things up. Then I added some butter and the rest turned out like crumbly slightly less grainy biscuit/cookies.

I felt disappointed yet determined not let my time and energy be spent in vain. So I proceeded to crumble up the first three sheets of already cooked cookies into the mixing bowl with more eggs (because the original eggs were already cooked) and even more butter. The cookie dough changed dramatically from the first batch of dough and I was unsure if this attempt at rescuing these cookies would work. It was very wet and gooey-- almost the texture of brownie mix. It did roll into balls though when I had cocoa powder on my hands, so I put them in the oven and waited to see the results of my experiment. To my excitement, relief and surprise they turned out GREAT! They flattened like they were supposed to and they were so light and fluffy like I remembered from the neighbors batch. Hooray! The fruits of my labors are so sweet! And I am super happy! What a night!

MORAL: Do NOT to omit the butter when making these from scratch. Maybe never make them from scratch at all! :) Who knows, It all depends on how brave I feel next time I bake.

color quiz

We have been debating on what color to paint our house this spring. I thought it would be good to ask you all for your input, so I put together this collage to visualize all the colors. Please comment and let me know witch one is your favorite and why! ( By the way #1 is the original color.)

Pocket valentines

A while ago I bought these super cute scratch and sniff valentines for my daughter at the Dollar Tree. When I opened the box I was very disappointed to find that each one was only 1.5 x 2 inches big.

I still wanted to use them but wasn't sure how to fix the size problem. They're really just so small!Aren't they just so adorable! Finally a few days a go I thought of a great way to make them a bit more exciting.I sewed paper heart pockets for each valentine.The heart pocket makes the valentines bigger, adds a hand made touch, not to mention it's super cute! What fun!! What 4 year old wouldn't love putting it in and taking it out of the pocket repeatedly! I do!The hearts are made from lunch bags and the back is card stock.

My daughter was so happy with how they turned out! I also made cards for both my kids' Sunday school teachers as well, I'll have to post those tomorrow.

1/2 Birthday

Today is my 1/2 birthday, I am 26 and 1/2! Time to break out the Red Vines and have a party! :) (For some reason Red Vines have been my 1/2 birthday treat since I was in grade school.)

touch ups

I saw the sun shining the other day and tried to take advantage of the reflective light off of the snow... well I guess I did something wrong because the photos turned out all gray and colorless. I really wanted the photos to be intense and bright and I was greatly disappointed. You see the LCD screen on my camera is busted and I can't see how the images are turning out till they're already downloaded. So I decided to play around with them on Photoshop and see what I could do to rescue them. Here is the result.

WOW! I would have never thought I could turn as dingy a picture as this into something so good. I try not to rely too heavily on Photoshop in my photography but I have to say it has it's moments! Actually i love playing around on photoshop but none of them have turned out nearly as good as this! what fun! I am super obsessed with photography right now. Over the last month I have created and filled a file completely devoted to lovely photographers that I have found after browsing the web. Every time I look at their work it makes me hungry to get back behind the camera again and again! I may have to post my favorite work from some really inspiring photographers that I have discovered!!

P.S. I am so obsessed that I even started a photography blog to document my photos! Check it out!