Birthday/Labor Day Weekend

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to celebrate my birthday with family and friends. It was such a wonderful, jam packed, fun filled weekend that left me feeling incredibly blessed and loved! It also included a lot of food, eating out, and cake. Always cake.

On Friday afternoon, a friend called me because they were headed my way for a sno-ball. The days of having a sno-ball from our favorite stand are numbered, so of course I said yes! Knowing I was going to eat cake that evening, I ordered a small. Might not sound logical but made sense in my head. Hah!

It was delicious, too!

That evening, we had a celebratory dinner with my parents. I wanted pizza but couldn't figure out where I wanted to have it from. There's a place in my town called Stonefired Pizza that is similar to the concept of Blaze at Disney Springs, so we went with it. It was delicious, too!

After dinner, we had cake and presents! I've stuck with the same exact cake for the past several years. This year, I changed it up to a strawberry/strawberry/strawberry cake from a local bakery. It was good, but I think I'm going back to my norm next year.

On Saturday morning, Jason made breakfast at home. The Mickey waffle is actually a new recipe for me - it was my first time trying Birch Benders Paleo Pancake mix and it was pretty good!

After breakfast, I met up with my friend Mackenzie for a little Junkin' Gypsies party. This was Kenzie's birthday gift to me and I had so much fun creating our new fall door hangers with her!

Blank Pallet!

Stenciling it up!

Finished product!!

I love Junkin' Gypsies so much! It's an awesome way to have a little homemade piece of art work (that looks amazing) in your home!

On Saturday evening, we had dinner with Jason's family as a two part birthday celebration (for myself and Jason's sister)! It was so much fun and the homemade meal Jason's mom made was delicious!

We also signed the traditional table cloth. After a lot of researching, we discovered that the table cloth goes back to 1995. It disappeared for a little while, then reappeared back in 2005 or 2006! I love fun traditions like that!

On Sunday evening, we didn't have church because of the Labor Day holiday, so we took that time to celebrate with my friends!

We had dinner at Walk On's, then came back to my house for cake and presents.

We might have reused the same cake because it was THAT good (and there was a lot of it)!

Twinning!

As an added side project over Labor Day Weekend, I also decided to spruce up our laundry room. The room felt drab to me and definitely needed a refresher. It was still the same off-white color it had been since we purchased the house and I wanted to change it to a more light and airy feel. I was inspired by our recent stay at the newly renovated rooms of Old Key West, so I went with it!

The color on the left is the cabinet color and the color on the right is the wall color.

Before...

After!

Although it doesn't look like much of a contrast between the wall and the cabinet in the photo, there is a slight one. The baseboards also received a little refresher and wow - the room feels so nice and clean now! I seriously love it!

On Monday, Brayden and I spent the entire day together (minus his nap). We swam, played with water outside, watched a little Mickey Mouse, and overall just had a great day together. During his nap time, I replaced all the doors to the cabinets and refilled them with items then after his nap, we went back outside for more water fun! We really had a great day together. I love soaking up those moments with him. They are passing by so fast, I love to truly live in the moment and enjoy my little guy while he's still little!

How was your Labor Day Weekend? Did you do anything exciting or fun?

Thanksgiving 2018

Well, the holidays have officially kicked off and I'm absolutely in heaven. This is definitely one of my favorite times of the year!

We had a lot of fun over Thanksgiving weekend! This time is so special to me, especially when shared with family and friends!

Jason had to work on Thanksgiving day, but Brayden and I were able to celebrate it with his side of the family. We had a huge luncheon with a ton of family! The food was delicious, too.

On Friday, my usual crew of friends (plus one this year) went Black Friday shopping. We started our morning around 5 a.m. and had a blast checking out the fairly empty stores. Although there were a lot of good deals out this year, none of us really "needed" much, so we didn't purchase as much as we have in years past. We still had a ball, and we've already started brainstorming new shirt ideas for next year!

After a full day of shopping, we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family that evening. Talk about worn out...but we still had a fun time together! 

For our annual Friendsgiving, we started off with part one at a local crafting shop called "Junkin Gypsies". I've been here once before, and that's where my door hanger came from. This time around, the owner offered a 2 hour workshop at different times throughout the day where people could create a choice of five items. Shown here are our works of art and three of the five options that were available that day. This really was a ton of fun! I can't wait to go back to make another!

Last but not least, our friends got together yet again for our Friendsgiving part 2 celebration! At the last minute, we decided to move the shindig to my house so we could watch the LSU game and relax. Although LSU lost, we still had a great time! And yes, those are matching sweaters, because nothing says friends forever like matching sweaters! Amiright?

Also, I decided to do my weekend version of vlogidays once again! I had so much fun doing this the past two years and I've loved being able to look back on our family and how much Brayden has grown and changed over the years.

Here, you'll find weekend number 1 for 2018!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Did you do anything exciting this past weekend?

Junkin Gypsies

I know y'all know I love to craft and make projects! Well, a new-ish "experience" opened up in my area and since I'm all about painting and making things, my sister-in-law talked me into going! This place also used to exist not far from my sister-in-law's home in Texas but recently closed. So, since Kayla (my sister-in-law) is obsessed with this place (she's seriously been like 7 times...maybe 8? and she's going again next weekend...) we decided to give it a try together!

Since I've shared my Painting With a Twist trips with you guys (also here, here, and here), I thought I would share this one as well since I seriously enjoyed this WAY more than Painting With a Twist. Don't get me wrong, I do love Painting With a Twist, but I seriously suck at drawing straight lines and flat out "painting". When I heard that "stencils" of a sort are used with this class, I was all over it!

We signed up for an "open" class, so everyone in the room was designing something different. Both of our ideas came from the Junkin Gypsies facebook, but our instructor said that people send in pinterest ideas all the time as well.

For starters, Kayla was given boards, nails, and a hammer! You seriously do EVERYTHING for this class besides cut out the wood yourself. Mine was just a door hanger, so there weren't many pieces or parts to being with.

We began by staining the wood. Stains were available in several shades of brown as well as blue and grey. I chose a dark brown and wiped it on super thin.

A lot of time in this class was waiting for paint to dry. In the mean time, we ordered Buffalo Wild Wings on Waitr! I also made sure to stain the sides and back of this design as I'm a little OCD in that manner...

We also chose our actual paint colors while waiting for the stain to dry. I chose grey, mint, and turquoise.

The above photo is with just the grey paint and the below photo is with mint paint. As I applied colors, I went behind them and wiped them off with a paper towel. I wanted the colors to be thin so everything would dry faster and I also wanted my design to have a marshy, swampy, Louisiana look to it!

Kayla stained, painted, and sanded her board to give it a rustic look.

We were also given our  "stencils" while we waited for our paint to dry. Kayla's was more elaborate (above) while mine was more on the simple side (below).

These stencils were basically cut out from a silhouette machine onto sticky vinyl.

We arranged our stencils on our boards as we liked, then filled them in with our paint color of choice.

For my door hanger, I chose a fleur-de-lis as well as the word "Bienvenue" which means "Welcome" in french.

Oh yes, and Buffalo Wild Wings arrived just in time! We were starving!!

Instead of painting in the stencils with an actual paint brush, we stamped them in with a sponge brush.

I also chose black for my design so it could be seen from the road.

Filled in, now ready to peel! I thought we would wait for the black paint to dry before peeling up the stencil but she told us no!

Unfortunately,  my under coat paint wasn't dry enough and the vinyl pulled a little bit of paint up from around the stencil site.

With a flat head paint brush, my instructor showed me how to "fix" the error. Thankfully, it worked!

I love love love it!

When I say you get to do everything with this class, I mean it! I even had the chance to use a power tool to cut holes in my board to turn it into a door hanger! We also had a ton of ribbon to choose from to make a bow!

All done!

Kayla and I with our designs! I love them!

The finished product hanging on display!

I absolutely love my new door hanger and the concept behind this class. I left the class with the idea of returning as soon as possible and already decided on my next creation! If you have something similar to this in your area, I highly recommend it. The price is affordable for what you get and it's very simple and easy for anyone to do! I'll definitely be back!