Resourceful: art

I love so many art prints on Etsy, but in reality I can't go and buy them all at once. I could buy a little bit here or there, or figure out other ways to fill my frames until I can buy something new. I have mentioned here before, awhile ago, how I used scrapbooking paper and a tea towel to frame for the living room.

In this house, I recently played around with these six frames, changing them around so many times until I stuck with this grouping! This is in the living room behind a sofa.

The fox at the water print is a page from a calendar, it was for January which was over, so I ripped it out to frame. The elephant paragliding was from the back of the previous year's calendar by the same artist, Sadlyharmless, and on the left, the elk in falling leaves was a freebie postcard from the same artist. In the top middle frame are the postcards I got in Oregon last July. The numbers print is just scrapbook paper, and I will probably replace that with something else. I don't purposely have the numbers sideways, but I liked the frame sideways better.Oh- the middle bottom triple frame just has a stock photo in it still, from Target. I will fill those with family pictures. I ordered a few photo prints from Walmart that are ready now, I just need to get them.

This is where the frames are above the couch. As you can see, it's a high wall so more will need to be added. I am not yet sure what it will be, though!

Antique store/mall buys!

I have been keeping an eye out for pieces for our new house since we had purged a lot when we moved out of Florida in October. We needed a few more storage items. We lived without them at our rental house, but there were built in shelves there that helped a lot! So now we needed to replace that missing storage solution in order to unpack more boxes!

Last Wednesday me and Kavi drove up to my mom's town to hang out. We decided to look at two vintage/antique/secondhand stores in another town nearby. We love these two shops a lot, even when we don't buy, they are fun to walk through. What makes it more interesting is that the shops are next door to each other and one is owned by mother and one by daughter. They both have excellent taste in displays and change them every season. You never know what will be there or how it will be cutely decorated each time.

In the mother's shop on Wednesday, I fell in love with a yellow vanity desk that had a fold down mirror. It was freshly painted and newly on display. I felt it was very unique, I never saw something exactly like it before. And yellow! I wanted yellow accents in our bedroom. The price didn't seem too bad. I thought about it, asked my husband his opinion, my mom and dad were both there, and we all liked it. We offered a little less but just got $5 off. Still ok! And I love it! My dad brought it here yesterday in his truck, so it's now in my bedroom! Annoyingly hard to get the color edited accurately. It's a creamy yellow. 

mirror down

mirror up! and storage under it

There was a kitchen hutch I really liked at the same shop where I bought the vanity, but I hesitated. I felt like I should wait to decide. And it turned out to be a good idea, because we found one on Saturday at a local antique mall near our house for $20 less! We also found the side table and bench, plus a simple shelf(not pictured, oops).

the hutch!! in our house, against the walls that are supposed to look grey but just look white

side table we bought for the living room, on display in antique mall

awesome telephone bench for the side of living room/near stair rails on display

So at home I also put up a lot of wall decor finally! There is still a lot to do though. To add to my collection, my mom made this awesome piece!

My mother's creation! I have a few moose pieces, which all started from a cute tea towel I framed.

My mom drew the moose, scanned it, printed for decoupage and painted the canvas. Cute huh?!

Pining for Prints

Some artwork I'd love to have in my living room or dining room:

Flourish print from box64studios
Top owl print from TevaGallery
Cup of love print from sadeeschillingstudio
Owl with flower word bubble print from TheBlackSheepStudio

Strawberry Cupcakes

For Valentine's Day I decided to make strawberry cupcakes. I already had adorable strawberry printed cupcake liners from Michael's that I got for $1. I also had fresh strawberries. I decided to use pinterest to find a recipe since I like seeing the cupcakes and reading a small description before clicking. I found one and clicked through to the blogged recipe at Cooking with Amy! I had all the ingredients I needed, including the low fat vanilla yogurt!But I was missing an ounce or two of yogurt, so I just added a little milk to the batter while mixing. It was a firmer batter than usual cake batter, so if you attempt these, don't let that scare you. You might have to 'plop' the batter into each cupcake liner in the pan.

There is also a homemade strawberry frosting recipe under the cupcake recipe(on the link). It's simple, but so tasty! I made everything last night and kept the cupcakes and frosting, separate, overnight in the fridge. I frosted them this morning.

Yum, fresh diced strawberries inside the cupcakes. And smashed strawberries with confectioner's sugar and a little butter in the frosting. It became pink just from mixing it all together.

I also got some roses on Valentine's Day!

Settling in

We have settled into our new house a lot. There are still some boxes in closets and in the spare bedroom/office that I hope to empty out sometime soon! I really want to paint soon too. Maybe this weekend? At least in the living room/dining and kitchen.

I am going with greys for the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Pale grey for the larger space, and a shade or two darker for the kitchen. I liked the color of the kitchen at our recent rental house, a warm grey. Seen above to the right (blurry)! But I had taken that picture at some point in the rental.I liked the way red and white looked against it. I need to pull out my cute squirrel towel too, it's somewhere around here!

No walls in the house are decorated yet because I wanted to wait until we painted. I can't wait to bring all the wall frames, shelves, and decor back out! I'm loving the look of this:

Source: reallyquitelucky.blogspot.com via Christina on Pinterest

I already have a few framed pieces that could be used in a similar fashion. I like the white frames against the grey.

The move into this house 3 1/2 weeks ago feels longer ago than that to me! Life has been so fast moving in the past 4 months that I still can't believe sometimes what has happened. I hope to write more about life in our new neighborhood and the Birmingham area as we explore! I had visited the area so many times in previous years that I had familiarity with certain sections. Now it's been fun to find new places. So far our favorite new find is an Indian restaurant in downtown near UAB. It's delicious!!! We had been to another Indian restaurant we liked many times, but it's good to have options.

Birthday Party

Kavi's 4th birthday party was yesterday!

 Disney's Cars theme. Vroooom.

Oh! I had made these the night before, plus several more. Choc covered pretzel rods, using a cool mold!

 Since we are still new here, we don't have new friends for Kavi yet. But we have some lovely old friends that live in my parents' town who were able to come. So it was a fun party!

 Kavi needed help opening those presents! (hehe) Boy did he get a lot of fun things!

I made the cupcakes. Box cake mixes, but homemade white cheese cake frosting
and chocolate cheesecake frosting! MMMmmm. My mom and sister helped with a lot of the decorating. There was even some face paint! Kavi had a thoroughly fun 4+ hours! Today we are all tired out from the prep work and fun of yesterday.

House views

 We got a new "pub height" round table for our kitchen. It's petite but very functional. It has the shelf area underneath and a large drawer for storage. The sides fold down as well. It's been fun to sit there with coffee, tea, or even a meal and look out of the window into the woods.

morning coffee

 Even though it looks like there is nothing around back there in the woods, you can actually see the back of some neighbors' houses on the left(that angle not pictured). So we don't feel isolated. But we have a large patch of woods for lots of privacy still! The woods are outside of our property, owned by someone else. But we get to admire the view!

Me on the wood deck

our deck that you can access from the living room

How our living room looked the first morning we lived here. Things have progressed more since then but I don't have the pictures ready yet!

Just a view near our neighborhood, near lots of stores, and pretty views.