Grandma

My grandmother used to collect buttons. I don't know why she did it or how the habit started, but my brother, cousins, and I used to get a kick out of going through her big jar of them, and I have a vivid memory of making a sock puppet with button eyes that I got to pick out of the jar all by myself.

When she passed away, us four grandkids wanted little sentimental things of hers to keep for ourselves. Someone took her binoculars, that we used to pass around watching birds out her window. Someone took her deck of cards with the statue of liberty on them, which were worn and bent at the edges from hours and hours of rummy and kings in the corner. If I tried, I could probably still close my eyes and imagine the way it felt to sit on her bed with my cousins, remember the way the cards smelled, and hear my grandma reminding all of us not to cheat. I took the jar of buttons, which found a place in the trunk I took away to college with me, and still sits there - now in my basement - to this day.

I've never really thought about doing anything with the buttons, because what would I do with a jar full of mismatched buttons anyways? Then today, with half of my department out sick and very little going on, I spent WAY too much time scrolling through the archives of Little Green Notebook - a blog that sparks inspiration and gets my creative wheels turning with nearly every image. Several pages back in the blog (but only about a month ago in real time!) I found the below images, which immediately made me think of my grandma's big jar of buttons, sitting in my basement just waiting for me to do something with them. While I don't recall there being many bright colorful ones in the collection, I'm certain I can find a good bunch to do something with. I'm picturing a funky antique frame, spray painted something bright, with some kind of textured fabric and a bunch of buttons glued to it in a grid. What a great and different little way to showcase one of my fondest childhood memories!

Stress

I think that I need to find somewhere in the house to frame a "Keep Calm & Carry On" print. Besides the fact that I love it, I think it's a daily reminder that I could definitely use when I'm rushing out the door to work.



(Tons of color options found here)

Wholeheartedly

Considering the deep brown accent wall in our bedroom is one of my favorite little statements in the house, you'd think I would be all about showcasing some amazing piece of art or photography on it... but instead it has had 2 sad looking empty picture frames on it for months that I insisted Dan hang for me, and then never bothered putting any actual pictures in. It kind of drives me crazy on a regular basis, but in my own defense - I also spend quite a bit of time wondering just what it is exactly that I want hanging above my bed.

I've heard (read: seen in a magazine) that you are supposed to keep photos of people out of the bedroom, with the exception of photos of those who sleep in it (like a canvas of a favorite wedding photo, oh, love). But, that being said, cutesy pictures of us with our families and friends seem to be better suited to the living room... and I'm not exactly a nature photographer or anything... so what to frame?

I love the idea of skipping photography all together and instead hanging some cheesy line about love above the bed (such as "Always kiss me goodnight", which I've seen on several blogs), but I also love the idea of presenting it in such a way that the cheesy line isn't QUITE so sappy.

Like this:

(Saw it here)

See how the blocky letters on what looks to be painted wood planks kinda makes something cheesy like "You have my whole heart for my whole life" seem more like applicable art? I'm seriously considering copying this pretty closely, although I'd have to track down the letter stamps and maybe change the color scheme around to fit, and the size would have to shrink some seeing as our bed sits on a dormer wall.

Side note: Since I'm practically drooling over this image, I may as well mention that I am obsessed with those lettered pillows as well. And the antique mirror in the corner. And the thought of having a chandelier in my bedroom. The pillows seem like such an easy DIY project, too! As much as I heart Obama the "Yes we can" is a bit too catchphrase for me, but "Hope Believe Dream" is perfectly serene for a bedroom. Since I just scooped up 2 awesome accent pillows on clearance at Target last week, I could easily make-do with just the one little phrase.

Can you tell the typography here is making me giddy? Because it is.

Monkey Bread

There are some recipes that I try out, and like, but will probably never make again for one reason or another. Then there are recipes like this one, which I will probably make far more often than I should, seeing as there are a full TWO sticks of butter in it and as much as I don't care to count calories that is a little extreme.

Apparently I have been hiding under a rock my whole life since I'd never even heard of monkey bread, much less had it. Thankfully, I am now aware of one of the most delicious breakfast treats in all of existence.

When I learned that monkey bread is something quite popular, I immediately headed over to Pioneer Woman to see if she had a version, because just by putting a little PW love into it I knew it would be even more amazing. As usual, PW did not disappoint, and after borrowing my gramma's angel food cake pan I was on my way to making this...

(Image from Pioneer Woman Cooks)

Go ahead, drool. I nearly did.

Here's the insanely simple recipe:

Monkey Bread (from The Pioneer Woman)

3 cans regular biscuits (I used Pillsbury)

1 cup sugar

2-3 teaspoons cinnamon

2 sticks butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a bundt cake pan.

2. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a big ziploc bag and shake to mix.

3. Cut each biscuit into quarters and add to cinnamon sugar in bag. Seal bag and shake to coat all pieces, then spread all of the pieces evenly in your prepared pan.

4. Melt butter with brown sugar in a sauce pan over medium-high heat, stirring to combine. Pour over biscuits.

5. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes until crust is a deep brown color. Let cool 10 minutes before turning pan over onto a plate.

6. Considering this is called monkey bread and it pulls apart wonderfully, don't bother with utensils unless you really want to.

A few things I learned while making this:

1. It's worth spending a few bucks to buy a bundt cake pan for this (which I did today). Although I've read that you can use nearly any cake or loaf pan to make it, my gramma's 2-piece angel food cake pan allowed quite a bit of the melted butter to leak out. Thankfully, we had the pan on a cookie sheet, but we did have to take it out of the oven a couple of times and dump the butter back over the biscuits.

2. This recipe makes much more than the two of us were able to eat for breakfast. But, 20 seconds in the microwave and the leftovers were just as good as the first time around!

3. Thanks to further searching on PW, I just found out about her Monkey Muffins, which I'm thinking will be a great way to have little individual portions of monkey bread any day of the week! I'm thinking about trying them for this week's breakfasts. Here's the link!

NYE @ 906... in pictures

My recipe for a successful party:

Siblings & significant others...

Fun...

Friends...

Banana...

(Click images to see them bigger!)

Sunshiney

Oh, how West Elm tempts me. The image below is a color scheme I've really never been drawn to, but I LOVE it. This just might go in the binder as inspiration for the extra bedroom, you know, one of these days when money starts falling out of the sky. Considering Manda is a regular overnight guest, I think using this image for color guidance would make for a great bright room for her, and it's gender-neutral enough for any other potential guests. The best part? The extra bedroom faces the back of the house and has a little balcony off of it, which allows for tons of natural light in the warmer months - making this sunshiney color palette even more fitting.

The Hutch... Almost

Well, my patience (or lack thereof) is being tested yet again as I am anxiously awaiting a shipment from a random company I found online that sells drawer knob backplates. It always drives me crazy that little tiny things (like these backplates) can hold up a project to no end. But, I digress. The fun part is that as soon as we get the backplates - which I've been told will unfortunately not be for another week at least - we'll be able to screw them on and then the hutch I've been talking about since last year will FINALLY be done! In fact, with the completion of the hutch will come the official completion of the entire dining room, so I'm excited for the opportunity to blog about the whole thing and all of the work we've put into it.

Now, I'm honestly not sure where we even got the idea to do ANYTHING with the hutch, minus fill it up with wine glasses and replace the missing glass on the one door... but somehow in all of the "oohing" and "aahing" and fantasizing about how our little house would turn into our home, we decided to strip off all of the paint and refinish this (now) gorgeous built-in that I've been told just makes the room. (Personally, I think my capiz pendant lamp is what really makes the room unique, but to each his own!)

As a little taste of what's to come, here's a picture of the hutch covered in coats and coats of paint long before we even owned the house -


Unfortunately, some of the original hardware (also painted white) was damaged and tarnished underneath all of the paint, and I decided a long time ago that after putting so much time into this thing the least we could do was put some fun knobs and pulls on the drawers. Well... finding pulls that fit the existing 2 inch holes turned out to be more difficult than I was imagining, so we decided to go with knobs on all of the drawers and put the above mentioned backplates behind them to cover the old holes. I talked Dan into the Granita Knob for the drawers and Ceramic Melon Knob for the doors, both from Anthropologie. Seeing as we've already screwed the knobs into the existing holes so the drawers are at least usable while we wait for the backplates, here's hoping I like them together as much as I think I will.

Here's my quick Photoshop mockup of the two pieces together -


I'll post final pictures of the whole thing once the backplates are here!

De-clutter

Thanks to one of my favorite blog reads - Centsational Girl - I am officially resolving to de-clutter in the new year. In fact, I'm even going to go back after I write up this entry and add it to my little list of resolutions because for some reason, I think that will make it seem more certain. I am vowing to do this, and my 10 followers will now know, which is bound to make me feel more accountable for it.

Centsational Girl wrote this amazing entry about all of the de-cluttering she's been doing, and her story made me picture her whirring through her house like the tazmanian devil, donating old clothes and shredding old papers just like I need to do.

Here's some quick excerpts from her note -

"The Clutter Monster broke into my house sometime last year, and made himself right at home. At first I didn’t mind. He’d leave a pair of socks here, or a few papers there – nothing to get too worked up about. I was so distracted... that I didn’t realize how this new roommate, The Clutter Monster, had really impacted my life."

Um, is she talking about my house?

"I finally realized over the holiday break that any time I was feeling a sense of anxiety in my life, it was because I was overwhelmed with all of the “stuff” in my home that I was forced to take care of. There were many days I would literally throw my hands up in frustration..."

Ummm, is she talking about ME?

Unfortunately, I realized this whole clutter = anxiety thing a long time ago, and pretty much didn't do a single thing about it over my nice long holiday break. Oh well. I DID have one of my little moments of organization and completely cleaned out the pantry on Sunday night, which was still technically holiday break time, so I suppose that counts for something. Better late than never right?

So, with my newly cleaned out and organized pantry and the Centsational Girl to inspire me, I'm on a mission to de-clutter my home, and in turn, my life. Stay tuned.

Another Rug

Apparently I'm on a bit of a rug kick lately... most likely because the hardwood floors at home are FREEZING in this weather, so I'm always looking for a way to warm up the overall feel of the house a bit. Dan did buy me some great moccasin slippers for Christmas to help keep my feet from being numb, but I think I need to rough them up a bit - the bottoms are soft, and therefore slippery, and you'd better believe I took a nice fall down the ENTIRE flight of basement stairs in them the other night. Ridiculous. Thankfully, I walked away with just a couple bumps and bruises, but I clearly need to be a little more cautious when I'm dragging my feet around in my cozy slippers.

So, I'm still planning to snatch up a quirky little rug for the kitchen, and now I've also got my eye on the Andalusia Rug from West Elm. Featured in yellow in one of their latest lineups, I'm thrilled it's also available in brown and therefore the perfect way to compliment my brown accent wall in the bedroom. At $99 for a 3x5, I can't complain about the price, although I'll have to measure and see if that would look too small in the space between the bed and the dresser that I'm looking to cover up. The $229 5x8 is a little pricey for me considering I promised myself that my beloved living room Pottery Barn rug would be my one and only rug splurge, so I'm crossing my fingers on the 3x5. (For the record, I still loooooove my Pottery Barn rug, and I truly think it completed the living room, which is a great feeling!)

Resolutions

I typically don't bother making new years resolutions, because then I'm just disappointed when I don't manage to keep them. This year though, I'm feeling more optimistic and have decided that a few simple resolutions can turn into great changes that will eventually become part of my daily routines... and anyone who knows me well knows how much I appreciate routine when it comes to the everyday things. Here's the little things I'm planning to work on this year, in no particular order:

1. Read one book per month. That's right, a real book. Not a blog, not a magazine - something with chapters and an overall story. For awhile last year I got REALLY into reading again (it's all I did when I was younger), but I ended up back in my little world of more than a dozen magazine subscriptions and way too many blogs on my reader after awhile. So, I've resolved to read a book a month. Now I just need to find one for January.

2. Bring my breakfast AND lunch to work at least three times a week. Fingers crossed, this won't be as difficult as I'm expecting it to be. Hopefully my nifty new lunch bag that was on my Christmas list (which Dan got for me - among several other things to spoil me with) will make this easy! I'm also praying Lauren and/or Jason at work will be anxious to save some dough and join me in for lunches from home more often than we have in the past (hint hint) ;).

3. Take a class. I have no idea what kind of class I want to take, but I'm promising myself I'll take at least one. Some ideas: a cooking class - since I've been anxious to try one for quite some time now, a workout class - because I NEED to get in some kind of shape, or a knife skills class - so I don't cut my fingertips off with my new knife (also from Dan for Christmas and sharper than I knew was possible, yikes).

4. Volunteer more / do more good deeds. Thanks to Dan's job, it's been pretty easy for me to be involved in both my own community (through serving dinner at the PADS shelter) and communities in more unfortunate areas (through the summer service trips we go on). But, a few months ago I was in a bit of an uncomfortable situation at PADS, and I haven't been as anxious to be there each month as I was in the past, so my monthly volunteering - which I really enjoyed - has sort of been pushed aside. I'm always weary of giving money to people on the street (and rarely have any cash on me regardless), but I am often struck by people who ask for help, and look for my own way to brighten their day. Like the time a woman in north Oak Park asked me for food and I rushed home and begged Dan to drive me back up there with a bag of cereal and crackers cleared out of the pantry... only to not find her again after 20 minutes of driving around.

Today, I went to Walmart with Dan to return a bathing suit I bought months ago that didn't fit me and was long forgotten about in the bag waiting to be returned. Knowing I would only get store credit, I figured we'd grab some new socks or something somewhat practical that we needed. Only after I walked away from customer service did I realize I got $26 in store credit, when the suit had only cost me $10 in the first place. Half of me wanted to go tell the girl she gave me too much money back, but the louder half of me told me to forget it because there were big red tags on each piece of the suit that said $5 each and she obviously wasn't paying attention... so off to the socks and underwear we went. While we were looking around, an older woman approached us and asked for some money to get a sandwich, and neither of us had any cash to give her. After grabbing the stuff we actually needed, we were still going to have a good $15 or so left on the card, so I decided that since the money wasn't really mine anyways, I would use it to buy the woman some groceries. After checking out and rushing around the store looking for her, I found her in line counting change out to buy one of those rolls of sausage that looks like a fat Slim Jim. I handed her the bag of food and told her we bought it for her, and her reaction absolutely made my day! She was so excited to keep her money and not have to use it for food, and thanked me over and over. The little random acts of kindness are so emotionally rewarding, and I'm vowing to partake in many more of them this year - with or without the help of a foolish Walmart employee.

5. Run a 5K. Go ahead, gasp. I'm about as shocked on this resolution as anyone else probably is, but I'm still going to give it a shot. I was a runner in high school and despite all of my injuries from it, I LOVED racing and have been telling myself to get back into it for years. Dan and I are getting a little more serious about joining a gym together since a new one opened up in the area that's surprisingly affordable, so here's hoping I manage to find some motivation to give it a fair shot!

6. De-clutter. Out with the massive stacks of papers and credit card bills from 3 years ago. Out with the clothes that have holes in them that I swear I'll take to get mended someday. Out with the 1,437 bottles of scented lotion that I think I'll use someday when I no longer have uber-sensitive skin (note to self - it's never gonna happen, your skin will never change). I am on a mission to simplify my life and my home. Wish me luck.

- - - - - - - -

We had a fun party at the house for New Years again that I'll be posting pictures of soon. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday! Please send good luck my way in the morning as I attempt to get back into the swing of things and wake up before 11am - first day back at work after a generous company holiday break is tomorrow!