Good Friends, Good Times

I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with a few of my favorite girls last weekend on a mini vacation. When I say “mini”, I really mean “mini”. My very dear friend

Stacy was in town visiting family so four of us girlies decided last minute to go away for an overnight stay at a quaint little town nearby called Granbury. We didn’t arrive at the hotel until about 1 a.m. even though we were only 45 minutes away. You may be thinking, “Why did y’all even bother going?” Well, I guess you could say we had the desperate housewives syndrome at the time and we really needed to get away even if just for a few hours. Lol. Actually the main reason is Stacy is very dear to us and she doesn’t plan on visiting again this year so we we wanted to take advantage of our time together.

Back to the trip details. There was an indoor pool at the hotel and the front desk clerk was kind enough to open it back up so we could jump in for a short while. We went up to our room & decided to go all out and stay up all night as if we were teenagers again. We put on a chic-flick, one straightened another's’ hair, while I opted for giving myself a pedi. We caught a few zzzs and woke up just in time for a delicious complimentary hot breakfast.

Granbury is known for it’s cute little bed and breakfast inns and the many antique shops they have. We spent the afternoon going antiquing and had a delicious , hearty late lunch before heading back home.

Here we are enjoying the summer breeze after eating a hefty country style lunch at Babe's.
  From left: Lisa (my sis-in-law), Belky, Stacy, and myself.

 

 
Here are some random shots from a few of the different shops we visited.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Granbury's version of a boardwalk. It was cute and had plenty of bench seating with a lakeside view but just not what comes to mind when I hear the word 'boardwalk'. We had fun nonetheless snapping photos and getting our feet wet in the nearby man-made beach.

Just when I was having fun shooting, my battery died. :( On the upside, I enjoyed the place so much I plan to go back soon with the hubby.

Thinking of the trip and the time spent with the girls, the sweet song from Toy Story comes to mind:

You've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

When the road looks rough ahead

And you're miles and miles

From your nice warm bed

Just remember what your old pal said

Boy, Girl, you've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

You've got troubles, well I've got 'em too

There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you

We stick together and we see it through

You've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

Some other folks might be

A little bit smarter than I am

Bigger and stronger too

Maybe

But none of them will ever love you the way I do

It's me and you

And as the years go by

Boys, Girls, our friendship will never die

You're gonna see

It's our destiny

You've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

You've got a friend in me

Good friends are hard to come by and I’ve been fortunate to have not just one but three amazing and inspiring girls to call friends. I’m so blessed to have these wonderful girls in my life!

Western Themed Shower

I just shared the cute invites for my sister-in-law's shower, now I'm sharing the highlights of the decor.  This theme is a timeless classic and I don't think it will ever go out of 'style'.  I can't take all the credit, my sister-in-law helped a lot even though she was the guest of honor--she couldn't resist :), along with our dear friend Stacy, and a few others who helped with the food.

Boots are ceramic and we just added some fresh flowers. The little red bandana printed cups have peanuts in them.

As you can see, we used mason jars for the drinks and we added straws with homemade tags that read, "HOWDY" on them. For the tags we printed "HOWDY!" in two columns and cut in strips (each strip has howdy twice). Then we just fold it in half and glued it together, leaving a small opening at the center for the straw to slide through. Cuteness!

This was a "mommy advice" book we made at the last minute. We used chipboard for the front and back covers and wrapped them in card stock. We included several sheets of white card stock inside for the guests to write their advice and tips for the new mommy.

Very simple but yummy cupcakes made by the other sister-in-law. The boot toppers were from Hobby Lobby.

This was above the cupcakes. We printed out each letter and cut the paper down to size to fit on the printed card stock background. Simple but very cute.

We had a traditional western themed menu: Brisket, chili with biscuits (baked muffin size for individual serving size), bread, beans, potato salad, broccoli rice casserole, sweet tea, and punch. My mouth is getting watery as I write this. :)

So there you have it folks! This could easily be used for any kind of party. I would have loved to have bales of hay for the seating but it was winter and indoors so we couldn't get too messy. We still loved it as it was. :)

Western Invites

Howdy y'all! Just wanted to share this cute baby shower invite that I made sometime ago for my dear sister-in-law when she was preggo with her first baby. 

To make these, I had some help from my hubby who happens to be a graphics pro. I found some western invites that I really liked and he recreated the hat, boots and blocks design for me. I did all the text. For the text, I found western fonts for free and downloaded them. Once that part was done, I printed these out and was ready to move on to the fun stuff.

I used this craft hole punch to create the little circles.

Next, I rolled the edges along the ink pad to give it a little color so it would pop. You can angle it a less or more for thin or thick effect.

I wanted it to be subtle but enough to see the color and this is what I ended up with.

 To size my brown card stock, I measured the printed sheet and added enough extra to allow for the folded flap. I had to use the little circle cut-outs to measure the flap. Once I folded the card stock, using the circle, I made a hole punch above and below the circle to run my ribbon through.

I wrapped the longer side from the top of the card stock around the back and back over to the front.

This is how it looks right before I tied my knot to finish off the ribbon.

Lastly, I added the cute little circle and with a glue dot, I added these cute little boots which I found at Hobby Lobby. It was night time when I took these and the lighting was really bad. The colors are a little more vibrant in person but you get the overall idea of the invite. My sister-in-law loved them! She's my partner in crime when it comes to creating invites so I'm glad I was able to impress her with these.

Thanks for visiting. Y'all come back now, Ya Hear! :)

...check out pics from the shower here

Finishing Touches to the Master Bedroom

I'm done with the major aspects of the room: painting, hanging curtains, bedding, and a few accent pieces. I'm now trying to decide on what to do with the wall above my bed. I've seen some cute ideas that people have done with scrapbooking paper and being the scrapbooker that I am, this idea appeals to me a lot. Here are a few I like:

I like the simplicity and modern feel of this one by Sherry & John at Young House Love

 

I also came across this cute idea. She used foam board & scrapbook paper on this one. 

You can find out how do this yourself at  Queen of DIY

And here's yet another one using foam board that I liked from 

Kathryn at I Can Find the Time

So after looking at these among others that I forgot to bookmark, I tried my hand at coming up with an idea. I am planning to go buy some frames tomorrow but in the meantime, I came up with a rough draft of sorts to get an idea of what I want. Here is what I came up with:

I used acrylic paint and a foam brush to make this design on the smaller scrap paper just to get an idea. I'm thinking if I go with this idea, I want to do the entire sheet with this design. I thought this design would compliment the print on the lampshades that I already have. 

So what do you think? Too simple? Too much? I'd love to get your input. Oh, and just in case you're wondering, I'm going to get black frames for these.

Restroom Tile

I am no expert when it comes to home remodeling but I I'm not afraid to venture out of my comfort zone and attempt to learn something new.This new braveness came upon me within the last year or so due to the long list of "to-do" projects we have for the house. Every time I try something new, it encourages me to push the envelope just a little more next time around. So far, I haven't caused too much damage and the results of all my efforts have been successful for the most part.

Since we started working on our restroom, I kept debating my choices for floor options. My first choice of course was ceramic tile but neither my hubby or myself had any experience in laying tile plus since there is just a small floor space, we didn't want to spend a lot of money of materials. We made a trip to Home Depot and I decided I'd just lay the laminate floor tiles as a temporary solution because we needed this project to be done ASAP. To my surprise, they had on display laminate floor tiles using grout in between, just like ceramic! They also had a simple step-by-step guide to show how to achieve this look under the display. It looked simple enough so I thought it was worth giving a try. I have to say, the floor looks really good and in our opinion, you cannot tell it's not ceramic. A good friend of ours who has experience in flooring couldn't believe it was laminate when he came to visit. Of course, that made me all sorts of happy knowing I could fool someone like him.

I thought I'd share with you all just how I did it in case you ever want to do this yourself. I had to get ghetto use a few 'unconventional methods' for a few steps but whatever gets the job done, right?

UPDATE (5/30/11):
I just found these before pictures and decided to add them on here. I think you can appreciate the "after" much more if you see how bad it was before. It was bad and it was sad.

 If you look closely at the bottom left you can see where paint stripper dripped on the floor when I stripped and repainted the cabinet a few months ago. Silly me, I didn't cover the floor before I started working that day. Oh well, that's in the past.

1. We had to level the floor first because there was cement tile underneath the old laminate flooring (there was no easy way to remove this) that had a few very slight uneven and cracked areas. We used something called 'floorboard' which runs about $8 or so per panel at any home improvement store.Since we couldn't drill screws into the cement, we used liquid nails to adhere the board to the cement floor.  We found a bunch of heavy stuff all around the house to use to as weight and left it to dry overnight.


This is the tile we chose. You can kind of see in this picture that the tile curves down around the edges which makes it look a little more like ceramic. Not all laminate square tiles are like this so I don't know how it would look with a flat option.

2. Once floorboard was ready, I was able to start laying the tile. I used spacers, just as you would for ceramic tile to leave a gap in between tiles, leaving space for the grout.

3. The tile around the tub was kinda tricky because the tub is not straight lined, it has some curves. Being the creative and crafty person that I am, I came up with an  easy solution. I got an unwanted 12x12 scrapbook sheet and cut it down to the same size as the tile-about 11 1/2 by 11 1/2. Next, I put it where the tile should go and used a pencil to draw a line where I'd need to cut. I have a heavy duty paper cutter and used it to cut down tile squares. Another unconventional method. Lol

4. Once I laid all the tile, I was ready to grout. I bought a small can of premixed grout which was $8.97 and probably only used a third of it. All I did was, I used a small spatula and worked it into the grooves in between the tiles. I let it dry for about four hours and then went back and cleaned up the excess grout with a sponge.

This is how it looked when I was done.

Here's the breakdown on cost:
*Floorboard: $16
*Liquid Nails: $6
*Tile: $25
*Grout: $9
*Sponge:$0--we had
*Spatula: $0--we had
Total Cost: $56!!!!

This option might not be for everyone but we're certainly happy with the result! The three main reasons we chose this option: easy to install, quick (once we applied the tile to the floor, we were ready to move forward to the next step), and easy clean-up (not very messy).
 
Almost done with the room, more details coming soon!

Oh, and I'm joining in on the blog party fun for the first time! I'm having so much fun blogging and meeting fellow bloggers. :)

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