This past Monday we held our first ever DIY May-nia link-up. The theme was Mother’s Day and all of us hosts picked out our favorite projects out of the bunch. My favorite project from the link up was Katja’s from Shift Ctrl Art. She made this gorgeous butterfly framed art.

I would definitely hang that beauty in my home.

I also want to give a big shout-out to everyone that participated during the Mother’s Day link-up! You guys are awesome. & just a reminder that on Monday we will be linking up our garage and/or thrift store finds.

See you then!

Posted on May 20, 2013 - 5 comments
 Filed Under: Link Party

This is my fourth Pinterest challenge. (Check out my other Pinterest Challenge projects: key rack, beer bottle cap magnets & a wooden sunburst mirror.) And everytime, it always catches me during one of the worst times and completely off guard. I did manage to do something last night though, after my first project was a fail (turning a large t shirt, into a fitted woman’s tee). I made this:

I used an old Texas Pete hot sauce bottle that I had laying around for this project. (It’s totally normal to save random glass bottles in my world. Heck, Travis even knows better. He hovered this bottle of the trash can and asked if I wanted it. I said, “sure”, so he washed it out for me. :) He’s a keeper.)

My original plan was to dye the jar, like a blue mason jar is, that’s why I used the following products… PermEnamel which is meant for glass.

I went about dying the jar the wrong way. So instead, I just poured the Mediterranean Blue paint into the glass. By this time it was ten at night, so I covered as much of the bottle as I could by shaking it around to get the paint moving. I then poured some more paint in and let it even itself out and dry over night.

By morning, I had a nice surprise. The paint was perfectly even.

So before even getting ready for work, I stuck some pink flowers into the vase (I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Travis’ work, because of my Grandmother’s passing.) and had a quick little photo shoot.

I love this one more, than the one I tried last time. The bottle just has a great shape to it.

Check out the hosts for the Pinterest Challenge: Young House Love, Bower Power, Sparkle Meets Pop & Red Bird Blue.

Posted on May 20, 2013 - 16 comments
 Filed Under: Link Party, Projects

Remember this park?

Well, I contacted them back on March 29th and after many conversations, it was determined that I had to meet with the Park & Recreation board. Basically I had to get approval from them, and then they would pass it on to the Supervising board and they had the final say. So, on April 16th I agreed to come to the next board meeting to present my plans, which was being held on May 6th. Sometime after agreeing to come to the board meeting, we ended up finding two more parks, which both had two options for a ceremony space. Because of all of the options, I got a little frustrated. I might have even cried a little because of that frustration. There was no clear winner, they were all tied with each other, and they each had their own set of headaches that came along with them. I decided to give myself some time, and re-visit the parks again before the township meeting took place.

Little did I know that on April 22nd when my Grandma went to the emergency room that morning, that it was not going to be “just another emergency room visit“. Instead, we were told that the cancer spread everywhere and there was nothing they could do, but keep her comfortable. She was given weeks to months to live, but the doctor guesstimated that it would go quickly, and be more like two weeks. She made it six days. Since that emergency room visit, I have not had my head on straight. I did not visit those parks again. I did not even think about those parks. Three days after her funeral, and I was still not prepared, or even excited about going to this township meeting, like I was in the very beginning. I didn’t care if they said yes, or no. I didn’t care if I made a complete full of myself in-front of the board. I was numb.

But I went to the meeting last night, with a handout for the meeting that I made a few weeks ago, which outlined our requests:

• Use of stage for a wedding ceremony on May 31, 2014
• Rental of all pavilions within the park so it provides us with less of a crowd and ample
  parking for our guests.
• Permission to have two campers in the parking lot for the wedding party to get ready in.
  They will stay hooked up to the trucks all day, for easy pull-out after the wedding.
• Permission to use one golf cart in the park, which has insurance, for use in escorting
  elderly guests to the stage area.
• Would like to volunteer the week before the wedding. We would like to stain the stage
  and benches, mulch the flower beds, and plant flowers below the stage.
• The day of ceremony we will have chairs delivered and set-up at the stage area,
  and we will also have ceremony music played by a classical/acoustic guitar.

And you know what… the meeting went well. I didn’t burst out crying, I didn’t throw up. I knew exactly what to say and I was not nervous. I forced myself back into reality, and now I feel like I have my head on straight again. I miss my grandmother terribly, but I can’t let that affect me daily. She wouldn’t want me to sit around, being depressed and not accomplishing any of my goals or dreams. She’d want me to get out there and make things happen.

The board said it could be a few months before I hear a decision, but I’m hoping it happens soon, because I think this park is my favorite. I’m not sure how long I can wait for a decision, since the other two parks have processes of approval and deposits that need submitted, but I will keep you all updated on what happens. :)

Posted on May 20, 2013 - 13 comments
 Filed Under: My Life, Wedding