Jewelry Genius!

I have jewelry.  Lots of jewelry.  Obscene amounts of jewelry.

It was taking over the house.  There was jewelry in the dining room.  There was jewelry on the kitchen counter.  There was jewelry in my craft room.  There was jewelry in the hall closet.  There was jewelry in the family room.  You couldn't look at any surface in my house with out seeing a pile of jewelry.

I finally decided to do something about it.  I needed something that would allow me to organize my jewelry so that I could see it all at one time.  Trying to accessorize while digging through pile after pile of jewelry is just no fun.

First I took a couple of spare pieces of wood, marked and drilled some holes in the bottom and hung it on the wall.  I added a couple hooks at the top to hold my rings.  Necklaces and rings done.

I played with some idea on what to do for my bracelets.  I finally cut up another piece of wood and glued the pieces onto the front of the necklace hanger.  Bracelets done.

The last thing I had to worry about is earrings.  I have seen some very cute display ideas.  This one holds a ton but I didn't like the plastic containers...and who has counter/dresser space for all of them?  I found a ton of ideas for hook earrings on Pinterest but only one that would hold post earrings.  I loved the idea but again - I didn't want something that would take up counter/dresser space.

So, I put my crafty hat on and scouted the house for something to transform.  That's when I figured it out...jewelry genius!  I took a large distressed picture frame and stapled screen to it.  Hook earrings done.  Then, I took a smaller frame, added screen to it and attached it to the bigger frame with hinges.  Post earrings done!!

The beauty of the hinges is that I can open the smaller frame and put my post earrings on it.

See, I told you ... GENIUS!!

And now for the big picture:

Now, when I am getting dressed, adding my jewelry is so easy, I can't not do it!!

13 Pounds of Lard

Recently our family decided to make a lifestyle change.  And by our family I mean I declared it and everyone else agreed to follow along.

Well, they agreed in the way that I shop for the food, cook the food and clean up after the food so they really had no choice.

We decided to go Paleo or Caveman.  A friend was telling me all about the benefits so I was intrigued.  I started looking into it.  I started "thinking" healthy.  You know how it goes...you know you need to make some changes and you think about making those changes all the time.  So much so that you convince yourself that you are actually making healthy choices.  I half heartedly started changing a few things about our food.  I stopped eating cheese every day.  I just kinda half-assed it.

And then something happened that completely changed things.  I had a parent teacher conference for one of the boys.  It was his end of year review for his IEP so both his teacher and the counselor were there.  The gist of the conversation went like this:

Counselor:  We believe your son has ADD.
Me:  I think I agree with you.  What can we do.
Counselor:  I think you should have him tested.
Me:  Okay.  And we've been making some changes to our diet ...
Counselor (interrupting me):  This isn't something that will be fixed by a diet change.  He needs meds.
Me:  oh.
Counselor:  He will never get to where he needs to be without meds.  It will make huge changes in him.  You really need to look into getting him on meds.
Me:  Is there anything else we can do in the meantime?
Teacher:  We can try a couple things.
Counselor:  He really needs to be on meds.  Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  (She didn't really blah blah blah but I totally tuned them out for the rest of the conversation)

My friends who know me well laughed when I told them this story because the very FIRST thing I did was to change our diet to Paleo.  I called and scheduled an appt with the Dr. and I started researching and checking out books from the library and talking to friends who have children with ADD.

I won't go into all of the rest of that story except to say that in the last 3 weeks of school my son did start performing better and came home proud of himself for completing all of his work.  Weird...we didn't medicate him and the only change we made to our lives is the diet.

Now, the real reason I'm writing this post is the poundage I've lost.  In 5 weeks I've lost 13 pounds!  I haven't been hungry and I haven't really missed the foods we've given up.  I've cheated a little here and there but I haven't had a hard time getting back into the swing immediately.

There are so many benefits about choosing the Paleo diet.  And by diet I mean lifestyle and not "lose weight fast".  Of course, as I've found out, a benefit is definitely losing weight.  But some of the other benefits are clear mind, better concentration and better sleep.

 My son had a rash that we could not get to go away.  It looked like dry skin.  It was a big patch on his neck.  It's been there for a year.  We tried all kinds of things to get it to go away.  Medicated and natural.  The Dr. didn't know what it was and he said it would probably just go away on it's own.  He was right.  It finally went away when we started Paleo.

Did I mention that I lost 13 pounds?  Without really trying?  Without starving myself?  While cheating a couple times???

Today I decided to see what 13 pounds of lard looks like.  I had to go to the store anyway so I stopped by the baking aisle to take a picture.  Here is what 13 pounds of lard looks like:

I do know that I have not actually lost that much mass.  But, it is crazy to think that I was carrying that much extra weight around with me.  all. the. time!!

I'm still learning the ins and outs of Paleo.  I've made the lifestyle changes in small steps.  I didn't force this radical change on my family all at once - we eased into it over a couple of weeks.  I completely cleared out my pantry of any foods that didn't fit the diet.  My neighbor got a nice big box of all kinds of food!  We are slowly going organic and grass-fed.  We still occasionally have a little dairy.  I don't beat myself up over the non-paleo choices I make and make sure to congratulate myself on all the good choices.

I am excited to see the changes in my boys' attention and their attitudes.  My hubby is telling everyone about it and trying to convince his whole family to make the switch.

This has been amazing for all of us.  I totally recommend you give it a try.

You really can find alternatives to almost anything if you are willing to try.  Once of our favorites is chicken fried rice.  And banana "ice cream".

Here are some resources that I use:
The book:  Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo - she breaks down why Paleo is great for you and how your body processes the things we eat.  It has several different 30-day meal plans.  I leave this book on my counter to reference reguarly.
Website:  http://balancedbites.com/ - Diane's companion website

You can search Pinterest for great recipes.  You can google great recipes.  There are so many resources out there.  Go.  Now.  Check them out and see how easy it could be for you to make the change.

Bad Ass Unicorn Mirror

Unicorns.  They're magical.  And BAD ASS.  And to celebrate the Bad Assness of my friends, I have made them something to always remember how bad ass they are.

It all began with a post by The Bloggess.  She created the Unicorn Success Club.  I can't even begin to explain the awesomeness of this club so you must go read the post.  Go.  Do it now.  I will wait for you.

My friends have all been getting crafty unicorn gifts from me all year.  I can't help it.  It's a gift.

One day, while wasting time that I should have spent cleaning looking for a healthy but delicious recipe on Pinterest for my wonderful family, I found this pin and of course repinned it.  And I've thought of it every time I look in the mirror...well, when I haven't been thinking how bad I need to clean the mirror.

(Thank you Sebastien Millon for your awesome artwork.  You can buy his original piece here.)

This morning I was feeling crafty and got to wondering what I could make.  I am meeting my bad ass friends for an early dinner before we head out to celebrate the New Year so I decided they would have the honor of some surprise awesomeness.

Did I tell you I won a Silhouette Cameo earlier this year?  It's my favorite.  I have made some pretty awesome things with it. And today was no exception.  In fact, today it's pretty Bad Ass!!

See:

I used my cameo software to design a unicorn head.  Then, I told my cameo to cut it out of vinyl.  Then I peeled the vinyl off and stuck it on a mirror.  It was that easy.  Done in 20 minutes.  And it came. out. perfect.

Now, every time they look in their magical mirrors, they will remember how bad ass they are.

And here is a picture of the Bad Asses themselves:

You're welcome.  

Happy New Year!!!  Be safe and have fun!

My Holy Jewelry Organizer

Jewelry.  It's a problem for me.  Well, it's a problem for me if I want an uncluttered house.  See, I sell jewelry with lia sophia.  It's super fun.  I get paid to play with jewelry.  And I get free jewelry... A LOT of free jewelry.  So, it's everywhere.  In the bedroom, dining room and kitchen (don't ask).  It's in my office.  It's on the counter in my bathroom.  Seriously.  It's a problem.

The other day I decided I was going to go ahead and do something about it.  I don't use any of the jewelry boxes/trays/cabinets that I have, so I decided to design something that I would use.  Something that would be a step up from the pushpins in the wall (that tend to be my favorite way to hang my jewelry) but nothing so complicated as to have a lid.

I had 2 wooden wall hanging things that I picked up at Goodwill a few weeks ago.  I had spray paint and I had cup hooks.  I jumped right in to the project.  Did I mention it was before 7am?  Thank you dogs.

These babies were only fifty cents each.  I love Goodwill!

First I wiped them down.  Then I went and grabbed the spray paint. Mod Podge and a ...Bible? (You can read that story at the end of this post)

I picked up a sponge brush and went to work.  I put down a layer of un-underlined pages first.  The book of Joshua was perfect since it's my hubby's name and it will be hanging in his bedroom too.  (And for whatever reason, I've never underlined anything in Joshua)

I started going through the rest of the pages and pasting pieces down as I went, but I realized I needed to be a little more organized:

I stopped Mod Podging and finished tearing all the passages out that I wanted to use.

After a long bit of tearing out a lot of things I had noted, I started Mod Podging again.  When I couldn't fit another verse on the boards, I declared it done...

 and put little purple dots all over it...

and asked the hubby to drill the holes where the purple dots were.

NOTE:  I can use power tools.  I don't like to.  If he's home, I always ask him to do it.  He likes being involved too (in my happy little world).

Then, without me asking him, he went ahead and put the little cup hooks in for me.  He's my hero!!!  The blister he got putting them in would have been so much worse on me.

I reattached the hanger thingies the boards came with and rushed to put it on the wall...I couldn't wait to see how it looked in action:

I LOVE it!!  

(You can see this wall space was previously dedicated to my son's scarecrow masterpiece.)

I collected all the jewelry laying around my house.  This is no where near all my jewelry.  It's just what was laying around.

I gave it all a happy new home on my wall:

What do you think?

Now, let me explain about the Bible.  I have dogs.  Big dogs.  They like to chew things.  Especially MY things.  Princess Leia is particularly sneaky.  She won't come up to my room to sleep at night like the other dogs do.  I think she wants to feel close to me though, because she finds whatever she can of mine and makes it hers.

One morning I woke up to pieces of my Bible all. over. the. backyard.  ALL OVER THE BACK YARD!!!  Do you know how many pages are in the Bible???

I picked up all the pages and stuffed them in a Ziploc baggie so I could underline and highlight my next Bible.

It was a good idea.  It started out well.  I worked on it for hours over the next week...until Princess Leia did it AGAIN!  Really?  2 Bibles in 2 weeks?  The lady at the Christian bookstore thought it was hilarious.  I decided I would just not start over.  I kept the pages from the old Bible but decided to just find new favorite passages.

So, there I was with a partial Bible with all these passages underlines and highlighted that I have spent years reading.

They ended up being a perfect daily reminder on my new jewelry organizer!

Our Christmas Surprise

Have you heard about National Mill Dog Rescue?  They are an incredible organization that rescues Dogs from puppy mills.  You can visit their website here.  Please do.  They are always looking for new homes for the dogs they rescue.

Our love story with NMDR began last December.

We had a German Shepherd named Han who needed someone other than Kitty to play with:

We decided to go look for another GSD.  We picked out the names before we picked the dog.  If we found a girl we liked we would call her Princess Leia and if we found a boy, his name would be Chewbacca.

We fell in love with this girl:

We brought Princess Leia home and she was instantly the darling of the family.  

Kitty and I were happy to add another girl to our ranks!  The poor girl was so scared we had to spend a lot of our time with her just letting her get used to us being in the same room.  You see, she had been treated very poorly at the puppy mill she came from.  They treat dogs like livestock there and she had never been outside of her 4X6 cement cell her entire 2 years of her life...except to be mated.

And then...IT happened.  We took her back to the kennel to get spayed.  We dropped her off and went about our day.  I was in the middle of lunch with my dear friend Julie when I got a call.  I let it go to voicemail.  And then I checked my voicemail.  The message went something like this:

"Uh, hello Jen.  This is Theresa from National Mill Dog Rescue.  Uhm...we have a problem.  We can't spay Leia today.  She has a belly full of babies and is due any day now.  She will have 3, maybe 4 pups in 3-7 days.  Will you please give me a call?"

Well.  Uhm.  Excuse me, but did you examine the right dog?  You see, Leia was so emaciated when they got her they couldn't fix her right away.  She was still excrutiatingly skinny when we got her.  I mean, we could see every. bone. in her body.  There was NO WAY she was carrying babies that were due in 3-7 days!

The folks at NMDR were amazing!  They explained everything we could expect before, during and after the birth.  They gave us everything we would need to help Leia.  We had all the support we could need to help us through this big surprise.  They even offered to take her back if we didn't want to go through all this.  Of course we told them no!  She was a member of our family now and we would help her through it.

We got the whelping area set up, we put down some blankets and we sat back to wait 3-7 days for the 3 or 4 pups to arrive.

HA!  2 days later:

Yep - count 'em.  There are 6!  All. Boys.

Mama was amazing.  She was so gentle with the new babies and had no complications during birth.  She did exactly what she was supposed to do.  Thank goodness!  It was a pretty easy job for my first "Mid Woof" experience.  I will admit I was a little freaked out when she went into labor and had her first one with me the only one home.  

Funny, we had no idea that when we brought Leia home, she was bring Chewbacca with her.  And Darth Vader, and Yoda, and Skywalker, and Jaba, and Obi Won.

We fostered the dear babies until they were 8 weeks old and were able to be adopted out.  Again, NMDR was wonderful.  The handled all the applicants and all we did was pick who the babies went home with.  That was a little tough.  Especially on our youngest son.  He wanted to keep them all.

We decided to keep one of the babies - we kept Vader:

He was justly named.  

We have been a family of 3 boys, 3 GSDs and a cat for a while now.  Life settled into a chaotic routine.  The puppy wakes me up by jumping on me every. morning. an hour and a half before the alarm clock goes off.  Han happily lets him do the dirty work and then barges in for his morning ear scratch.  Leia is still very skittish but she shows how excited she is when I come downstairs by hopping around like a deer and making little squeaky noises.  

I wouldn't trade her for anything.

Confession Time

I have a confession.  It's nothing shocking to my friends and family.  They all know me and love me anyways...bless their hearts!  But, I am a terrible housekeeper.  Horrible, terrible housekeeper.  I always thought I would be good at it...but, nope.  I'm definitely terrible at it.  And, Burger loves me anyways.  Dear, sweet man.

See - here's some proof:

No matter how much I try to control the chaos that is my house, organization eludes me....well, more like kicks the crap out of me and stands above me laughing!

Here's another picture of the disaster I call a family room:

I can honestly say I've half-heartedly tried to decorate.  I've at least attempted to corral the games, books, video games and dvds that were housed in this room.  I even banished all toys to the basement.  All to no avail!  It was always just a disastrous mess.

But, I believe I've found something to help the problem.  It seems, that if I have a project I want to try, I will fix up a room to make the project look better.

For the last few days I have had the crafty bug.  I have started - and finished - several projects that I have been wanting to try.  And, the weirdest thing happened...I loved my projects so much I wanted to fix up the rooms so they could be showcased.  It's proof that internet is a good thing!

True conversation:

Me:  I want that wood from the playset.

Burger:  Why?

Me:  Because I can use it for a craft.

Burger:  We are trying to clean up the backyard - not just move crap around.

Me:  Please!!!!  If I can keep some of it I can make some of the projects I've been wanting to try.

Burger:  You are not allowed on the internet anymore.

1 week later:

Burger:  Hi honey!  I'm home!  How was your day?

Me:  It was great!  I spent all day on this project and I only need you to do 1 thing so I can complete it.

Burger:  You are not allowed on the internet anymore.

2 days later:

Burger:  Hi honey!  I'm home!  How was your day?

Me:  It was great!  I figured out how to do a project and even hung it all by myself.  You don't have to do anything!  Doesn't it look great!

Burger:  That's pretty awesome.  Especially since I don't have to do anything.

Me:  I have another project I want to try tomorrow.  I might need you to move the furniture around just a little.

Burger:  I swear I am going to take your internet privileges away!

Today:

Burger:  Hi honey!  I'm home!...hello?

Me:  I'm in the family room.

Burger:  Wow!  Someone's been busy today!  Is someone tired?

Me:  Yep.  

Burger:  Well, it looks great!  Did you get something for dinner?

Me:  Yep.  And I need you to bring up that chair from the basement so we have a little sitting area in here.

Burger:  Ok.  The room really looks great!

Me:  See - if you took my internet privileges away it would never look this good.

And this is where I gloat because I got some pretty great ideas from and was inspired by the internet.  Except, after all the moving stuff around and placing things just right and then stepping back to see how it looks and then moving them just an inch to the perfect place and then stepping back again...I'm too tired to gloat!  And, don't laugh at me - you know you do it too.  And if you don't step back to see the big picture, then I can guarantee you are missing it.

Over the last week I completed a couple of projects that I already showed you.  Today, I worked on another project and the over all organization of the family room.

Here's a view of the area after:

I will post a more detailed account of what I did later - I just couldn't wait to share with you what I have done so far.  It's truly a useful room now!

Let's look again.  Here's the room before:

And here's the room after:

I celebrated the usefulness of the family room by letting everyone eat in it - I don't know it that was really the best idea but, the boys loved it so I win!

Brothers til the End

I decided to use another piece of the leftover wood from our playsets today.  I just wasn't loving the bridge project as a coat hanger so I decided to make a new project.

The piece I used today was one of the landings on one side of the playset:

Yes, there is a board missing.  I was going to nail it back on but decided I could work with it the way it was (that does not in any way imply I was feeling lazy).  Besides, the 3 pieces sticking out on the bottom were perfect to hang the hooks.

I did not prep the wood.  I just got all crazy and jumped right in to white-washing it.  Or, more acurately, grey-washing it.  I mixed a little bit of "Shark Loop" grey paint and some water and covered the boards.

It really looks like you are painting it white when you first apply the wash.

I only applied 1 coat this time because again I was being lazy I knew it would be perfect.  I made sure to get the edges all around and the hangy down parts where the hooks would go.

And then I waited for it to dry...

While that dried I went inside and used my Cricut to cut out the names of the boys.  And then...I had a brilliant idea.  I wanted to put a great brother quote on the board.  It only took me a minute to find just the right one.  It only took me a minute 2 hours to cut out the letters for the quote.

By the time I was done, the board was dry.  Then, it was time to place the letters... and replace them... and place them again.  FINALLY I was happy with how they were laid out:

(Yep, I had to stand on a stool to take the picture...I'm that short.)

The Mod Podge and water mixture was already mixed up - leftover from my last project.  I grabbed my paintbrush and slathered it on.  I was almost done with the quote and was just getting ready to slather the boys' names when this happened:

(I always work in the garage cause this is not uncommon.)

I dropped the bucket I was using for the Mod Podge and almost all of it splashed out.  As it turns out, I had just enough to finish up!!  

The Mod Podge looks awfully white before it finishes drying...

but, it always dries clear.  Every time.  It's. like. magic!

I put the sign out in the sun to dry 

while I went back in to clean up my tornado of a craft area find the perfect coat hangers.  And that's when I remembered the door knobs I bought from the Re-Store!!!  Yay! No bent nails used as hooks for my boys!  

(And, aren't door knobs the perfect place to hang stuff?)

I also found these

 to use to hang the hanger on the wall.  Yes, I did start the project with absolutely no idea of how I was going to get this thing on the wall.

I was going to let the wood thing (I'm still trying out words to figure out exactly what to call it) lean against the wall until Burger got home so he could hang it.  But then I remembered IamamomandIamawomanandIcandowhateverIsetmymindtoandhearmeroarandallthatstuff that I was pretty handy and could probably get this thing on the wall all by myself.  

And that's just what I did:

(You can't tell but that is actually hanging straight on the wall.)

And here's an action shot:

This turned out to be one of my favorite projects ever.

ps.  Did I mention that when the boys are being snarky and fighty, I am going to make all of them stand in front of it and make them read it together?  I promise to post a picture!

Linking up at:

Savvy Southern Style

The Thrifty Home