Gorgeous Spaces {Washington DC}

Hey guys! Sorry for the absence of Friday Favs last week.  Work and life just kind of got in the way of getting it posted by Friday morning, and while I meant to catch up and post it on Saturday, that didn't work out either....

Such is life. Friday Favs will be back, well...on Friday!

As I mentioned last week, I recently chaperoned a field trip to Washington D.C.   I've gone on this trip many times before, and every time I find myself in awe of the gorgeous spaces we are able to visit.

 I snapped as many pics as I could while keeping up with the kids in my group, and while I could inundate you with shots from every monument on the National Mall, I'm assuming that you've seen pictures of those places before.  Not that you shouldn't visit them.  You totally should.  Pictures just don't do them justice.  

But instead, I thought I'd share with you some of the stunning architecture that lies inside some of the buildings.  Seeing these awe-inspiring buildings is always the highlight of my trip.  I hope you like them too!

The U.S. Capitol Rotunda is undergoing construction at the moment, so unfortunately our views were obstructed by scaffolding and a plastic ring that covered most of the dome, but luckily I have a shot of the inside of the dome from last years' trip...

We took the free tour of the Capitol, which is just amazing.  The tour guides are incredibly knowledgeable and are able to provide such interesting details about the architecture and the artwork.  If you ever make the trip, I highly recommend it!

The Rotunda was very crowded, so it was difficult to get unobstructed pics of the artwork that lines that the walls, but I did get a shot of the painting that was closest to us.

Obviously I liked the gold Greek key frame...

 Once we left the rotunda, we traveled into the National Statuary Hall, which used to house the U.S. House of Representatives, but now holds statues of prominent Americans.  The room is flanked by two statues representing History and Liberty...

History

Liberty

....although obviously my favorite part was the ceiling.

...which I took about a million pictures of. 

Next we walked to the Library of Congress, which was my favorite building of the whole trip.  The outside has very cool, detailed stonework... 

....but the ceilings inside took the cake!

The shot below depicts the ceiling in the room that houses Thomas Jefferson's personal library.  The shelves were set up in a circle in the center of this amazing room.  It was so cool.

 We spent most of the rest of our day in museums and outside at the monuments.  It was a fantastic day!  I'm always amazed at how much there is to see, do, and learn for free in our nation's capitol. You could easily spend several days just exploring all of the free museums, monuments and historical sites, which is why I'm happy to chaperon the same trip over and over again.  If you've never made the trip, I highly recommend it!  

Have a great week!

April '14 Recap

Hallelujah, May has arrived!!  6 more weeks until ....summer vacation!  I can smell the suntan lotion now...

On a side note, I'm traveling with 110 seventh graders to Washington D.C. today.....fingers crossed for no drama, no lost kids, and a fun time for all!

I will be SO tired tomorrow :)

Here's a look back at what went down in April...

-I shared baby shower gift baskets and shabby flowered headbands for my triplet nieces and nephew....

- Shared a decadent recipe for Oreo Truffles....

-Upcycled a mystery object from Goodwill into a succulent planter...

-Showed off my Easter tablescape...

-Opened up about our battle with infertility for National Infertility Awareness Week....

-Made some wood shim artwork...

-And created some wood burned spoons.

Wood Burned Spoons

I had a deliciously unexpected day home from work last week, and since the weather was cold and rainy, it was a perfect day to chill inside. I adore days that I can just do whatever I want around the house, and this was a pretty good one! I used leftover Easter ham to make some homemade ham and bean soup and broke out my wood burning tool to work on a project that I've had on my mind for months....

I actually tried these out right after I got my wood burner for Christmas, but I hadn't quite gotten the hang of the tool yet, and that batch didn't turn out to be as pretty as I had hoped.  Still, I'll admit that even my less-than-perfect spoons jazz up our utensil drawer nicely and I tend to reach for them far more often than the plain spoons beside them.  

I guess they make me feel fancy :)

But this batch turned out to be much better than my first.  Here are some of my favorites....

Wouldn't these make a fun little gift?  Especially tucked into a fun dishtowel and tied them up with a bright  ribbon.

I'm thinking they'd be a great housewarming or hostess gift....

...now who wants to throw a party so I can bring you some?!

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Friday Favs 40

Hey hey hey!  It's my favorite day once again!

I'm incredibly lucky to have both an amazing mother AND a wonderful mother-in-law, so the approach of Mother's Day has been on my mind lately, and I thought I'd use this week's Friday Favs to share some of my favorite Mother's Day gift ideas...

Fav #1

I haven't shared my love of Sequin bangles in quite some time,  but I continue to adore them!  These colorful, affordable bangles would make a great gift for any accessory-loving mom.  Plus, a ton of styles are now 30% off!  Find them here.

Fav #2

I'm kind of in love with all of the amazing wall art prints available from Minted, and think that a gift certificate would allow almost any Mom to find a piece of art that she loves.  Hurry if you agree, they are offering 10% off Mother's Day gifts through 5/5 with the coupon code MOMDAY14.

Fav #3

What mom wouldn't love a necklace with their kid's name, in their kid's handwriting?!  I think these Acrylic Signature Nameplate necklaces from BaubleBar are so cute!  They come in a ton of colors, including silver and gold, and orders placed by April 30th should arrive in time for Mother's Day.  And if a name isn't your thing, you could have a necklace created with some other meaningful word written in a loved one's handwriting.  So cute!

Have a fab weekend!

Wood Shim Art

Thanks so much for all of your kind comments and words of encouragement on yesterday's post.  It meant the world to me.

So I've been talking about transitioning our family room to a more spring-like color palette for weeks now, and while I'm not ready to call it done yet, I am ready to share another piece of Project Family Room with you!

You may remember that almost all of the walls in our family room are either windows or stone, which leave very little wall space for artwork.  The one piece of art that we do have just doesn't fit with the cooler accents that I'm trying to bring in for Spring and Summer, so I decided to DIY something new to fit the frame.  I didn't want to ruin the print, since I might want to use it again, so I just removed the cardboard backing that was keeping the artwork in the frame and stored the print in our attic for now.

Confession:  I'm not really feeling the red in here anymore.  I'm not sure what color I wish the walls were, but I have a feeling that the red may fall victim to a repainting mission that I'm pretty sure I'll feel compelled to complete during my upcoming 2 months of summer vaca.  Or maybe its just finally time to replace the window shades (which came with the house and we never got around to replacing because those things cause a fortune).  If I do paint, Mr. M. is going to want to kill me....he's not amused by my decorating ADD.

The closest thing I have to a 'before' pic.

So, back to the art project. I've seen some cool art being created using wood shims lately, and decided to create my own.  Most of the wood shim art that I have seen has used a herringbone pattern, but since I had just done that in my DIY Herringbone Art for the bathroom, I decided to lay my wood shims a little differently.  

But first, I had to paint my wood shims, which I picked up at the hardware store for about 12 bucks.  Since I'm trying to bring some blue into the family room, I decided to use the same Country Chic paint that I used on my Upcycled Succulent Planter.  For a metallic accent, I decided to stray a little from my love affair with gold (don't tell), and go for some Rustoleum copper spray paint.  And to keep things light and bright, I painted 1/3 of my wood shims white.  Since I had all the paint that I needed on-hand, all that I had to buy for this project were the wood shims. 

Deciding how to lay my wood shims gave me some trouble.  I really toyed around with the idea of laying the shims randomly, at irregular intervals and without a using a color pattern.  But in the end, I was afraid that my randomness would read as messiness, and that I'd end up tearing the whole thing apart.  So I decided to create a more measured, regular design.

After measuring the frame, I used my questionable math skills to figure out that I could fit four shims in each row, if I laid a new shim every 5 and 3/8th inches and that 18 rows would fit perfectly into the frame.  I also knew that I wanted to lay each row in alternating directions, in order to create some texture. 

To get started, I laid out my rows of shims in the color pattern in which I planned to glue them.  Once I was sure that I liked the way it looked, I cut a template shim exactly 5 and 3/8 inches long, and used it to guide me as I wood-glued each row of shims to each other, each 5 and 3/8 inches apart.  

As you can see, the shims are not yet evenly spaced in this pic.

After waiting several hours for the glue to dry, I stacked each of the 18 rows behind the glass of the frame...only all 18 rows didn't quite fit.  Which is when I realized that my math worked in theory, but because wood shims are not perfectly identical to each other, nor are they perfectly square, that my rows had not stacked as perfectly as I had expected them to....

...Leaving me with the dilemma that 17 rows left me with a gap at the top of my picture frame, while 18 rows just wouldn't fit into the frame.  

So, I used my Mr. M.'s Dremmel Multi-Pro (I love how I'm calling the tools mine now, as if I don't need his assistance pretty much every time I use one) to sand down the width of the 18th row by half an inch or so, and positioned the unfinished edge under the frame, so that it would not be visible from the front....

...and then I just put the original cardboard backing back in place, duct taped it to the back of the frame (why not?!) and hung that baby up on the wall.

It's a little hard to photograph due to the windows directly opposite the wall on which it hangs and the reflective surface of the glass.  I considered leaving the glass out of the frame, but I'm concerned that the shims may not stay in place without the glass there to hold them.

Plus, how would I dust all of those nooks and crannies??

I like how it's bringing some more of the robin's egg blue into the room.  Compared to the oranges, reds and golds in the previous piece of art, it's feeling much more seasonally appropriate.  

I'm kind of considering trying out some brick hanging clips to see if I could hang it on the wall to the right of the window into the kitchen, which would free up this wall space once again.  

Mini gallery wall, perhaps??

We'll see!  For now, it's staying right where it is!

What color would you paint this room??  With all of the windows and stonework, there's not a lot of wall space.  The adjoining room is gray, but it too is set for a repainting (the gray has much more blue in it than I initially realized).

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I'm the 1 in 8...

I've been writing and re-writing this post in my head for months now. But every time I go to type it, I get blocked, or chicken out, or change my mind.  

'Cause blogging can be kind of scary, you know?

But I keep coming back to it....which should tell me something.  Either that I'm a chronic over-sharer, or that I feel the need to share my story in the hope that it helps someone else who's going through it.... 

Today is Day 3 of National Infertility Awareness Week. It's also the 1,394th day that Mr. M. and I have been waiting for our baby, putting us among the 1 in 8 couples who have difficulty conceiving.

Which freaking sucks.

 And while I've alluded to infertility on the blog before, this is really my first time discussing the issue head on. I'm not opening up about this in order to gain pity, although I do welcome your prayers. The thing is, infertility can be a really lonely struggle. And I really feel like the only good thing that can come out of this crappy situation is that talking about it will somehow help someone else on the journey feel a little bit less alone.  Because even though infertility is a lonely journey sometimes...

  

You are not alone.

I am here with you.

Are you humming Michael Jackson now?  We're totally friends.

And neither am I, thank goodness. Mr. M is awesome, and I really don't know what I'd do without the camaraderie, advice and hope that comes from those in my life who've been there and especially you fantastic ladies who open up about this infertility BS on your blogs. Your words make me laugh, give me support, and (kind of) keep me from turning into a crazy, obsessed person. 

So to those of you who are in it....hang in there.  Drop me a email, let me know about your blog...I want to connect with you. You people are the ones keeping me sane, after all.

And to those of you who aren't personally affected by infertility....you probably know someone who is.  Be kind to them.  They're fighting a battle every day, just like you are.

I'll be back to the usual decorating/DIY/random thoughts tomorrow!  Only now that I've started this conversation, expect the occasional update tossed in here and there.  I think there's going to be a lot to share in the coming months :)

Easter Tablescape

Happy Easter guys!  Hope you're having a great holiday, and remembering the reason we celebrate it :)

We are hosting Easter dinner, so I thought I'd pop in quickly while my ham is busy cooking away to show you my Easter tablescape.

As I've mentioned before, I don't go too crazy with holiday decorating.  I'd rather spend my limited time and money on decor that can be used longer than the few weeks leading up to a holiday.  I am branching out and adding some holiday items here and there, but I don't have any Easter decor.  However, you know I love a pretty table, so my goal was to create one with things that I had on hand.  Since the table is black and I have plenty of gold, I thought I'd put together a fun black, white and gold table.

Which reminds me.......remember a few months ago on Instagram when I asked you guys whether I should buy the gorgeous Nate Berkus black or gold tray that I found at Goodwill?

The correct answer was both, people!  

I would have loved to have that gold tray in my tablescape....I'm so sad I didn't bring it home.

What, you don't follow me on Instagram yet?!  

Please do, I obviously need your help.

Now on to the rest of the eye candy...

Happy Easter!

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