Hold the Sugar Please

I have given myself a challenge. For the next 30 days (Aug. 1 through Aug. 30) I am not going to eat sugar. Yes, I know sugar is in everything (even fruit!) but what I mean by sugar is cakes/cookies/brownies/candy/chocolate/ice cream etc. Basically desserts or treats or whatever you want to call them, I'm not eating them for thirty days.

Why am I doing such a crazy thing? Because I am a sugar addict. I crave sugar like you wouldn't believe. I once put icing on ice cream; yeah I'm that crazy. A couple of years ago I did this shortly after Easter. I had so many Easter treats that I felt that I couldn't taste chocolate anymore it was like my taste-buds got used to the flavor. At that time I gave up all sweets for two weeks. Those two weeks made me more aware of everything I was eating and as a result I dropped 15 pounds in the following months.

Fast forward to today and I've gotten a bit (okay okay, a lot) off track. So in order to get myself back on track I'm giving up the one thing I crave the most, mean ol' mister sugar. Why am I blogging about this? Because putting my challenge online and sharing it with my friend and family gives me more motivation to not cheat myself. I know I can do it, but this provides more accountability.

What about you? Have you ever given yourself a thirty day challenge? Do you have crazy sweet tooth as well?

A Weekend Spent Camping

 Happy Monday everyone! This was my view over the weekend. Yes, I know I am one lucky girl. Let me take a minute to share with you a few photos of the sun going down.

I spent the weekend camping with family. My aunts, uncles and cousins all get together for a weekend camping trip in the summer time. We have had lots of different weather over the years. This year it rained for most of the day but by dinner time it cleared off and we were able to have a nice sunny evening.

My favorite part is spending quality time with people I love. I thoroughly enjoy the conversations everyone gets to have over the campfire while roasting marshmallows and making s'mores. I love that my little cousins enjoy climbing all over my husband and cuddling in his lap. I love playing lawn games with my parents and my uncle. I love conversations with my aunts about vacation planning and kid raising. I love that my sister, Alex, and I tag-teamed on bringing food and for once packed exactly enough food to feed all of us with only a little left over.  I love that my little sister got to hang out with us as well.

All-in-all it was a fantastic weekend. How was yours?

A Lovely Afternoon

Yesterday I spontaneously decided to take the afternoon off. I am so blessed to have a job that allows the flexibility for me to do this from time to time. So what did I do on my free afternoon? Let me show you...

I hung out with the beautiful Ellie, I gave her a good brushing which resulted in the removal of some mattered fur and a cat who was very very upset with me.

 I did a little bit of reading.

 Painted my toes :)

Straighten the pillows. I absolutely love making the family room neat and tidy.

I did a little project I had been wanting to try, dying some t shirts purple!


I also did the following things but spared you a picture.
-the dishes
-vacuuming
-three loads of laundry
-cleaned all the bathrooms

All in all I'd say it was a very productive afternoon. It kind of felt like a snow day, you know when you get an unexpected day off. I love that feeling. 

Stairway Gallery Wall Tips

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Today I'm here to show you how I hung my book page gallery wall in our stairway. First off this post from Young House Love way a huge help. To adapt their method for going up the stairs I first taped up a big sheet of craft paper where I wanted the gallery wall to be.

I got a roll of this paper at the dollar store and it worked out well and it was cheap; two of my favorite things. Next I used a level and a yard stick to draw a grid on the paper.

After my grid was done I took the paper down and laid it on the floor to arrange all of my frames. I used the grid lines as a reference when I was figuring out my arrangement. They helped me keep the frames at the correct angle for going up the stairs.

After I decided on an arrangement I made sure to take a picture with my

phone so I could remember where everything went on the wall. Then I traced around the frames with a washable marker (I didn't trust myself with a permanent marker around my carpet.) Then I measured from the top of each frame to the hook where the nail needed to go and then copied those measurements on my paper and marked where the nail needed to go on the paper.

Then I hung my paper back on the wall and put the nails in the wall where I marked. I hung up all the frames with the paper still on the wall because I was too impatient and wanted to see how it looked. Then I took the frames down, the paper down and then hung all the frames back up in their proper places. (Actually if you're extremely observant then you might notice that I did a little tweaking with the arrangement of the frames.) Overall I'm extrememly happy with the result!

Book Page Gallery Wall

Happy Monday everyone!

I'm here to share what I was hinting about on Wednesday. I made a gallery wall going up our stairs, but instead of photos I framed pages of my favorite books!

 

The books I used are Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Rings. Before anyone freaks out about me cutting up books let me just say, I love these stories and I love that they get to be on display in my home. Also at the time of this writing there are 3,526 used paperback copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for sale on Amazon starting at $0.01 (which is where I bought mine because there was no way I was tearing up my hardcover copy.) Secondly, I actually had two mass market paperback copies of The Fellowship of the Rings so I didn't feel bad about that one either. Moving on...

 

I wanted to frame important pages so here is the very first page of Harry Potter.

This page is my favorite quote by J.R.R. Tolkien, and of course it's also important to the plot of the story.

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king

A map of Middle-Earth anyone?

 

I also framed a few library cards. I lucked out with this one being from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince but I framed a few other cards that were not HP or LOTR related just because I like them and it ties into my library roots.

This page is Harry and Ron's first conversation on the train and the page next to it is when they first meet Hermione. I had a little bit of an accident with this frame . It's the biggest one I have and I er... didn't do a great job of hanging it up... and it fell off it's nail, tumbled down the stairs and the glass shattered into a million little pieces on the floor. After a thorough clean up I hung the now glass-less frame back up and I like it looks fine.

I'm debating about painting the wood frames black so everything matches, but for now I think it looks good. Actually having book pages hanging on my wall makes our "house" feel like our "home" more than any of the other changes I made.

My Photographic Life

I have always enjoyed photography, but lately I haven't been taking many "good" photos. I don't live in the picturesque hills of Tuscany but I do think my little slice of the world can be beautiful. Even truck tires and shoes can be photographed to look artsy (in my eyes at least.) So everyday this week (well starting on Tuesday) I made myself take a photo of something besides my cat. Here's what my week has looked like.

 I feel small sitting next to this big truck. The wheels and my car were the same size.

 It's been so hot out that all of these windows were foggy at 6am!

 Yogurt. And the tip of my finger which accidentally made it into the photo itself. I could crop it out but sometimes I accept these little imperfections as a reminder that the world is not a perfect place.

My shirt. I'm currently wearing it as I type. The only 'new' clothes I had been purchasing were from the thrift store but when my sister and I went shopping I found this gem on the Target clearance rack for $14. I love it so much because I feel like it's exactly my style.

Sometimes You Need a Push

I'm really good at talking myself out of things. Out of buying something, out of going somewhere, out of countless career paths when I was in college.

But sometimes this is a bad thing. Like when I have a project idea but I talk myself into not doing it because I don't want to waste money on the materials and then watch said project fail, I think I don't have enough time, etc. One of the many good things about having friends who know you better than you know yourself is they know exactly how to give you a push to get you started.

This past weekend my best friend came for a visit. It was so nice to see her and just have some girl time. While we were talking about all of the plans I have in the works for my house, she gave me the motivation to get started on some projects. (Really, she pointed out that if I already have all of the supplies I need to complete a project I don't have much of an excuse to not get 'er done.)

Here is a sneak peek at what I've been working on.

She also set me up with a time line so I will have the project done and ready to share with you on Monday!