Getting a bit campy

So I'm super excited about this weekend because not only is it Easter which I love, love, LOVE, but we're also taking advantage of the awesome weather to go camping!!! I'm hoping our experience is as beautiful and magical as some of these images from weheartit.com.








Lots of nature, lots of hiking, lots of time outside with the pups should work up a wonderful appetite so we can have a delicious meal like this for Easter :-)

Easter basket sugar cookies

In case you can't tell, I absolutely adore Easter and all that comes with it. Not only is it an important day for me as a Christain but it also has always been an important day of family, fun and of course food!

This is a cute, little kitchen craft that I read about in my email this morning and I just had to share. Easter baskets made out of sugar cookies...how cool!


To get the directions just go to the Betty Crocker website. Also if you are gluten free like some of the folks in my family, don't count yourself out. I found a great recipe for gluten free sugar cookies by searching the web. My biggest suggestion is to check the recipe ratings and read the reviews. Betty crocker does have a number of gluten free dessert boxes but unfotunately they haven't gotten to sugar cookies yet.

Anthro inspired top

Check out this quick and easy DIY top. I was flipping through the latest Anthro catalog when I saw the Climbing cowl neck and thought that I could do something very similar.

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I found an old t-shirt that wasn't getting much use and used fabric shears to make a scoop neck and shorter sleeve.

Next I used pins to get the shape I wanted. First on one side and next on the other. I didn't want this to look too matchy matchy so I used different amounts of stitches on each side.




Finally I used my sewing machine to stitch everything up and hand sewed a couple stitches to hold the neck in the way I wanted it. I'm pretty happy with the result. Not bad for my first try and it does look awful close to the anthro top. Forgive the horrible picture of me. I'm wearing another tank top under this shirt and it makes me look like I have eight stomachs :-(

Peeps

Well Easter is only a few days away and you know what that means...peeps! I'm not a huge peeps fan, actually that's not true. I'm a HUGE peeps fan! I think they are adorable, I just don't really care for eating them, until now. Check out what I found while surfing the web: Easter Peeps in a Jar!

If you do a simple google search of "Easter Peeps in a Jar" you'll find tons of examples. This is basically a really cute DIY Easter gift that you can give to friends and family. You can use the adorable jar as decor during the holiday and when Easter is over you can use the contents in the jar to make a delicious graham cracker and chocolate treat!

Here are some examples and variations that I found online.

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And here's a Halloween version of the craft.

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Some pics from our weekend

Well Beau and I had a wonderful weekend! It was so nice to have nice weather for a change even if it was very short-lived (yesterday was rainy and we woke up this morning to flurries). We had fun trying out the geocach thing but were not very successful...oh well, there's always next weekend. In any case here are some pictures from our hiking with the pups.

Plans for today

Today is beautiful! I'm so excited to have a wonderful weekend day for a change. Since we haven't had one of these in awhile and tomorrow is supposed to be rainy (plus it's the ING so we'll be out cheering on the Team In Training marathoners and half marathoners all day), Beau and I plan to make the most of the day.

Here are a couple of our fun plans for the day and weekend:

1) Run 6 miles-This is what Beau needs to do to stay on track for his half marathon training. If you haven't donated yet, feel free to do so here.

2)Take the dogs out for some exercise while trying something fun and new-We're going backpacking in a few weeks so both the pups as well as Beau and I could really use the training hike. We're going to try out something new though by going geocaching! We've been wanting to try this out for awhile to make our hiking more like treasure-hunting so we're excited to finally have some decent weather today!

3) Some spring cleaning...yuck! We'll try to save this one for tomorrow. We'll be moving in a couple months so it's time to give everything the once over and start packing the things we won't need for awhile.

Hopefully we'll have lots of fun pictures to post soon!

Well these are cool!

Check out this super creative earring DIY I found...I might have to try these out!

Old favorite/Old favorite

So I know that there are lots of Tim Burton's Alice fans out there and I respect your opinions but after watching the movie this past weekend I have to say that it is not my favorite Alice remake. My favorite Alice remake has always been and will continue to be the 1985 "Alice In Wonderland" with Natalie Gregory as Alice. I haven't seen it in forever but this particular remake has always been my favorite because it's the closest to the book and it is just the right amount of creepy.

I realize that Tim Burton's Alice was meant to be Alice's return to Wonderland as a twenty-year-old woman and that's fine. But why couldn't they have called it just that? There is no doubt that Tim Burton's version was visually spectacular but the story left a little bit to be desired. Maybe it was because it felt like several of my favorite fairy tales all mashed together. There were plenty of "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" moments in there. I just felt a bit slighted. Lewis Carroll did such an amazing job of creating a unique world with an equally eccentric cast of characters. I just hated that I kept going "wait, that's just like such and such".

The other thing that bugged me about this movie was the White Queen. Anne Hathaway is an amazing actress but I just didn't love her in this role. I felt like she either needed to tone it up or tone it down. The way she moved her fingers especially. In the 1985 Alice, the White Queen was extremely creepy but you still really liked her. This White Queen just annoyed me.

One thing I will say is that Johnny Depp is no doubt my favorite Mad Hatter ever. In fact, I'll go even further to say that I think Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter is the best I've ever seen him!

All in all, it wasn't a horrible movie. It was quite good really but I just didn't feel that the movie lived up to all the hype. I'm sorry. I know that there are a lot of people out there in cyber space that will be upset by that but it's my opinion and I felt like I just had to share it. So for me my old favorite Alice is still my favorite Alice.

All images from WeHeartIt.com

Great scarf DIY

So the dogs woke me up early and to try and keep them from waking Beau up I decided to get up with them and go in the other room. We're trying to get Rocky used to sleeping later than 5am but the closest we've gotten so far is about 6:30am. Thank goodness we prefer mornings to nights.


I signed on my email this morning and found a really nice comment from a new blog friend Lola's Girl. Check out her blog if you haven't done so already. She has a blog post this week all about fun, spring scarves and one of them reminded me of a fun project I found over at another great blog called Pretty Ditty.

Scarf from Rouche


Scarf from Pretty Ditty

I actually found this project last fall but it is definitely more a spring scarf so I hadn't posted it yet. I made one of these for my sister in law Lauren and she really liked it. It's super easy and relatively quick too. The toughest part for me was finding fabric because I was looking last fall but you should have no problems now that spring is on it's way.


I apologize but I didn't take pictures because it was a rush birthday gift but I definitely plan on making another one soon so I'll be sure to take pictures of that one.

Quick Craft: Rope jewlery

Check out this total awesome DIY from ...Love Maegan. It is so quick, cheap and easy that you could easily recreate this cute look in just an hour or so. It just uses curtain ties and some ribbon. How cool is that?

I'm always looking for new, fun blogs to be inspired by and I'm totally digging ...Love Maegan so be sure to check out her blog whether you like the craft or not. And because I love how you can totally start out on one person's blog and end up at a blog you've never visited before, here is the 6 Degrees of Separation (more like three I guess) for how I got to ...Love Maegan.

Divine Chaos>One Pearl Button>...Love Maegan

Happy Weekend! We're planning on spending as much time outside as possible so hopefully I'll have lots of fun pictures to post soon!

Some things I'm really loving

I just watched the end of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day and I loved it just as much today as I did the first time. If you haven't checked this one out do yourself a favor and rent it! It's such a wonderful story of love and loss and self discovery. Plus spoiler alert it has a happy ending and who can argue with that.

Source: Wikipedia and EW.com


The second thing I'm LOVING right now is The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb. We just read this for book club and it is amazing! It's a story of a woman who's life has reached a breaking point in her life. She's realized that the life that she's been living has been a lie and this is the story of her hysterical journey back to the truth which includes pancakes, finger-painting, germs, a naked run along the river and yet again another happy ending.


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One thing I've learned is that it may not be hip and it may not be artsy but a happy ending beats a sad ending any day. Call it romantic comedy or chick lit but I call the belief that everything is going to turn out okay therapeutic and wonderful. So for those of you out there that love a happy ending please consider checking these two out.

I love to make this guy laugh...

I fall more in love with Beau every day for a million different reasons. One of my favorite things about Beau is his laugh especially if I'm the one making him laugh. Every once in awhile when we're joking around I happen upon an accent or impression that he cannot help but laugh at and I absolutely adore it.

Sorry for the sappiness but I just had to share :-)

Spring is nearly here!

I love love love Spring and cannot wait for March 20 to get here. Not only because that is the first official day of Spring but also because that's the day that Beauseph proposed. We're considering making proposal day like our own personal Valentine's day...how fun is that?


We are supposed to have some great weather this weekend and thank goodness; we deserve it! Alice in Wonderland comes out this weekend and we're super psyched about that. I don't think we'll go tonight because it will be too crazy but we'll definitley be checking it out sometime soon. This weekend Beau and I are also going to look at houses. Our lease is up in a couple months and it's time to figure out where we want to land.


In honor of Spring starting to peek out from behind Winter, here are some pictures of one of the first good weekends of last Spring.

One of the first signs of the beauty to come.

The Lord works in mysterious ways

Beau found out today that a friend has passed. As many of you know Beau was injured in a car accident at 17 and fought back through cardiac arrests, a coma and a severe brain injury. Earlier this year Beau's aunt asked that he get in touch with a friend of hers whose daughter was going through a similar injury as the result of a car accident.


Beau reached out to the family and visited several times. He didn't know Candice prior to her injury but felt instantly connected because of having been through the same thing. Last week Candice had become more responsive and was even able to mouth some words. She asked her parents to bring someone in to help her do a bible study of Ecclesiastes 3. Later that day she slipped into a coma and passed away on Saturday. May God bless her family in this time of need.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Candice loved butterflies so here are some butterfly images from weheartit.com. We know she is with her Father in heaven but she will be missed here on earth. Enjoy your wings Candice!