Majorly cute tote bag (and no-sew!)

I hadn't planned on this project but when I was at Michaels I thought that this would be a good way to use some fabric I bought a couple weeks ago that I looove! Though I didn't use very much of it at all so I'm still looking for ideas.

I can't sew.

I can sew squares.

If I can figure out how to re-thread my machine and the bobbin.

So I wanted to make a no-sew tote bag. I bought the tote bag, some white fabric and some fabri-tac.

I cut and folded the fabric that I had bought a couple weeks ago (from Hancock Fabrics) and glued it down except for at the bottom. Then I folded the sides of the white fabric and kind of stuffed it in underneath the patterned fabric. Going back...I prooooobably should have put the white down first, but eh it turned out okay.--

Then I made the flower by cutting circles of some black fabric I had and some black tulle. Chance burnt the ends of the tulle for me (very carefully, this was a little hard!). Then I hot glued the layers and then hot glued some rhinestones that I had on top.

It still didn't look right, the white fabric just didn't look very good so luckily I remembered I had some lace in a bin and it was perfect. I glued it on and all done!

It's soooooooo far from perfect but it's cute and I think I had the right idea...and as long as it stays together, it's fine by me! :)

Best. Glue. Gun. Ever.

Best.Glue.Gun.Ever.

Why you ask?

Is it the best working glue gun ever? Probably not...

Does it do anything fancy....no

But it does look like this....

Look at it here in action....

Sigh.....it's the best.

Michaels has this one and other fun styles (like pink leopard! Oh that was a hard decision for me) for only $4.99!!! I did not need another hot glue gun but I did need a pink and zebra hot glue gun :)

Key project

I went to Michaels today and got a bunch of things and all I could think was hurrying up and doing the fun project so I could post the blog! :)

Since we moved in, okay before we moved in I had wanted to do a project with our keys from our apartment, townhouse and now house! All of the places that we've lived together! Of course all of the locks have been changed and I'm not displaying a working key to my house! :)

I've been trying to find the perfect frame but I couldn't find one. Chance suggested a shadowbox but I didn't want anything too big. When I went to Michaels they had the perfect shadowbox frame for 6.99! Woo. So I got the frame and this burlap roll to do the project.

I wanted to paint the keys black because one key was all old and messed up and the other was gold and one was silver so I wanted them to look good. I spray painted the keys with the paint that we had here. Cut some scrapbook paper the size of the frame insert and covered that with the burlap then hot glued some ribbon on the side. Then when the keys were done drying, I hot glued them onto the burlap.

I love it! It's cute and it's special to be able to use our keys in this way instead of being put in a drawer somewhere!

An apple a day....

I don't think they intended this phrase to be interpreted to 'an apple a day with sugary goodness and whipped cream' keeps the doctor away.....because I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

I bought a huge bag of apples at Butlers when we went like two weeks ago. First I made a pie, soooo goooooooooooood. I love making apple pie.

Then I tried a new recipe and made apple crisp. Yum!

I still have enough to make something else apple-y but I think I may just do another pie because it is SO good. And easy....just messy :)

Bathroom Light (finally!)

We only bought a new bathroom light.... ummm the first week we were here! Which I realized today is the two month mark! Can't believe it! 9 weeks ago today we closed on our first house and spent the last night in our townhouse! Time flies and we wore ourselves out trying to do everything at once. So we are just getting around to wanting to do more things now...slowly. :) I bought the light for the bathroom that first week and it's been sitting! Though Chance installed it two weeks ago I forgot to take a picture and post! I lost all of my stuff on my old computer so I don't have a picture of the before!! I purposely didn't show the ugly 'hollywood like' light when I posted pictures of our bathroom before so oh well....hopefully chance will be able to get some of that stuff back. But I can show you what the new light looks like!

It's a little less bright than the other light but much prettier. I'm very excited that the ugliness is gone.

Now that pretty much everything matches in the bathroom, all that's left is the faucet....it sticks out to me a little now. And the shower/tub faucet I would like to get the dark bronzy finish too.

p.s. do you see my little fake plant on the sink?! I got it the other night from BBB...loveeee it!

Oh I love this

So excited....I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and got this for $39.99...woo hoo...well I had a coupon too...it unfortunately is cheapo plastic but it doesn't look like it...I'm trying to find pictures for it now. I think I have to get more printed in different sizes. I'm so excited. I think I'll hang it over the TV but not in this same set up, I'm not sure yet. Yay....as soon as I get the pictures and hang it up...I'll post pictures!

p.s. I was also very excited to see that BBB had the wallflowers that you've always seen all over YHL! They bought a different brand (not sure if these are magnetic) but it's close enough for me! Hmmm maybe these need to exist in my craft room?

*****Update: turns out, I don't love this.....didn't work like I had hoped for the wall at all....oh well....I'm using bits of pieces of it around the house, lol

I love picnik!

I'm finally trying to do something with the downstairs bathroom. We really need to redo the entire thing but I'm not concerned with that right now. I'm just concerned that someone is at least able to use it. I went out today and got a cheapo shower rod and an awesome trash can (will show a picture later). I still need to go get a towel bar, a toilet paper holder and all of that. But of course, I'm more concerned about how to decorate the 'eventually going to rip apart but want to look decent for mostly men guests but still want it to be something i love' bathroom.

I have a few frames that have some art in them that I don't plan on keeping or using so I thought this would be a perfect thing to use those for! I just wasn't sure what to put in them.....I thought about subway art....I just couldn't find something that didn't seem cheesey. But I did think of something and thanks to picnik's pencil sketch feature....this is what I'll do......

I'm going to order these from snapfish in (8x10) I think because I need other things from snapfish, and I'm pretty sure I saw a 'free shipping' email from them today. So in the meantime I'll paint my frames and get ready for the pictures to come in! I'm glad I can meet chance's requests with it being "not girly" and use some of our honeymoon pictures in a fun way! :) Here are the original pictures....

We took the one as we were about to go under the bay bridge on the way to bermuda on our honeymoon cruise. And the other one I got up suuuuper early by myself our second to last day there and took pictures of the sunrise and got this awesome one as it was hitting the houses :)

Stuffed Pepper Casserole...nom

This stuff is so good! I had made stuffed peppers a lot before I found this recipe. I actually was searching for "newlywed" recipes (haha) sometime last year because I wanted EASY and quick recipes. I came across this recipe and it was actually called Newlywed Casserole but it's basically a stuffed pepper casserole.

You'll need:

1 large onion, diced (or sliced just depends on what you prefer)

3 regular green peppers, diced (or sliced...)

4 cups cooked rice (I just use two boil in the bag, bags)

29 oz can Hunt's Tomato Sauce (really the best kind to use)

1lb ground beef

1 packet of shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat the oven to 350. You want to cook the rice, brown the beef and soften the onions and green peppers (in olive oil) all at the same time. They all take about the same time for me anyway. Once everything is cooked, I mix 3/4 of the can of sauce with the rice and ground beef in a 13x9 baking dish. Then I add the onion and green pepper. Make sure it's all mixed together then top with the mozzarella. Stick it in the oven just long enough for the mozzarella to melt, should just take a couple minutes.

Annnd that's it. So yum.....just make sure those veggies are soft enough, that definitely makes a difference!

Headbands?

I've had a couple headbands but they've never really worked. But apparently ones with little ribbons or flowers do. So cute. I went shopping with my mother in law yesterday and got two of them. One was just plain black. I wore it today. Not the best picture but I still had to share. Love it! I might try and make a cute one of my own since I'm looking for any excuse to make fabric flowers and the smaller they are, the easier!

I love this bag.

I just had to share because...I love this bag. I think it's so cute.

The seller is 'The Carpenters Wife' on Etsy. It's only $33, free shipping. Sigh...I might buy it because it's just adorable.

Some fall fun!

I was hoooooping to make it out to Harpers Ferry this weekend but Chance had some things he needed to do so it looks like we'll have to reschedule that! So instead we (well okay, mostly I) still wanted to do something fun and "fall-ish" so we decided to go to Butlers Orchard since it's pretty close to our house. We usually go to Larriland but thats just too far away now! We were going to pick apples but it was just so windy Saturday so we picked up a huge bag of apples in the store they had there instead. I think I'll make a pie and an apple crisp later this week. We also got two packets of this dill mix (and made a dip with it last night, yum!) and we also got a peach crumb pie.

We were going to go pick pumpkins but apparently they do this festival thing where you pay $10 and you get to do a hay ride, you get a pumpkin, during the week you get two apples, and you get to do other stuff too. Though it seemed like it was mostly for kids so we didn't really want to do that. Luckily they had a little set up next to their store with a bunch of pumpkins. They even had a different kinds of pumpkins I had never even seen before, they were pretty cool but we just wanted the regular orange kind! :) Even though it wasn't a big field to pick them from, it was still kind of fun.

It was a fun way to spend a Saturday morning! :)

Bummer....

Sooooo my awesome giant scissors broke. :( Apparently gorilla glue isn't as awesome as it's supposed to be if you don't let it dry for a long time.

I used gorilla glue to glue on the little teeth thing and then hung up a picture hanger on the wall. I let it try for about an hour and a half (Full disclosure I tried this a little earlier in the day but only let it dry for like 45 minutes and it fell but it didn't break the first time. So I let it dry for a little longer).

It stayed on the wall all night and then at 2am I heard a crash. I didn't think it was broken until I found it in the morning on the floor :(

I could go buy another.....but I think I may attempt to glue this one back first....then figure out a better way to hang this....or just get better gorilla glue and let it dry for much longer this time....

I'm very sad about this!

No recipe, but yumminess

I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting tonight....so yum. Wish I could say I didn't have the help of Betty & Duncan but that would be false....either way they look yum and they were, I thought I'd share.

Oh yea, diet....hmmm maybe tomorrow.

Craft Room!!

Oh it is so so nice to have this space finally set up. I feel like I could live in this room, all the time. For the last 6 weeks it's been boxed up. And at the townhouse I had a room but I never really felt like going all out because I knew we wouldn't be there forever....but finally I have a room that I can decorate, I have all to myself, it can be girly, oh it's just fantastic.

I picked a neutral color because I have no idea, and I still have no idea what colors I want to decorate with....though it's turning out to be pink and that's okay. I just didn't want to paint the walls blue and have to stick with decorations that matched blue. Or something else.

I'm really glad it's all set up, but I'm far from done. My hubby built me this wonderfully huge table exactly the way I wanted but I need other bookcases and storage for the rest of the room. I'm thinking of getting the same cabinet I used for our kitchen "pantry" and use one down here. I also would loooove a cute girly arm chair down here too, maybe I can read in the corner, haha I have big plans :) But first, I need an arm chair upstairs for the living room! I also would like to get a new rug, I couldn't resist using my super cute rug from ikea in the room. It doesn't look horrible but it doesn't really match either. I keep seeing a brown zebra rug in here :) haha we'll see. And then a wall to ceiling cube storage on the newly built wall...hmmm something.

I need more in this room, but it's a start, a BIG start, and I'm so so excited. I love my new room!