Blue

Howdy gals. It is time for another photo challenge over at i heart faces. This week's challenge is "Blue."

Thing 3's last big surgery left him with two bright blue arm casts. I can tell you right now that he felt mighty "blue" about the whole thing. While we were staying at the hospital, we found a big yellow fish with bright blue hair. This is a pic of Thing 3 and the fish. They were having a very intense pow-wow of some sort.

Skip on over to http://www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com/ to see all of the "blue" entries.

Have a great day. Laura

Fleur De Punkin'

It's Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on The Porch. The mansion is sharing a Pumpkin Metamorphosis.

Skip on over to www.songbirdtiff.blogspot.com to see some Frugal Fall Decor ideas.

Hello ladies... Welcome to the mansion!

OK....all you GRITS (girls raised in the south) out there can feel my pain on this one....if you live down here in the heat and humidity, you can't carve a pumpkin for display until Halloween morning. If you attempt the impossible and carve anyway, your work becomes a big mushy molded mess in a few days. So starts the never ending search for great "carveless" pumpkin decorating ideas.

I saw some neat ideas on BHG this week...

All of these pumpkins involve painting. Very nice, but I am not a great punkin' painter. Then I came across this one... This one is great. Decoupaged leaves. I was inspired!

So...Aunt Kathleen and I got out some black paper napkins, some punkins and some mod podge and got to work...
We cut some fluer de lis shapes out of the black paper napkins. We also cut out a "T."

Then we mod podged the shapes onto the pumkins. This is what we ended up with...

And here is the final resting spot for our carveless punkins... No mush, no mold, no mess, just pretty cajun fleur de lis pumpkins.

Take a quick trip over to http://www.twiceremembered.blogspot.com/ for Make your Monday.

i Heart Faces: completely candid

Hi all. This weeks photo challange over at i heart faces is..."Completely Candid". I am not a photographer, or even a whannabe photographer. I just love photos. Here is my contribution to the challange...

I caught "Thing 1" and "Thing 3" sharing some reading space the other day.

Have a great week.

Groundbreaking Experience

Hello ladies. Welcome to Metamorphosis Monday. For all of the great posts go on over to http://www.betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/

We recently had a groundbreaking metamorphosis of sorts. It was groundbreaking AND back breaking. We did an overhaul of the driveway and the flower beds near the house. We started with a gravel drive and zilch for landscaping. See.....There is the yard. Not a lot going on there. I don't have a before of the gravel drive, but...not a lot to look at either.

First we marked the beds with spray paint. Then, we started digging. We dug out the grass and transplanted it to other areas of the yard. Next came building up with new dirt. We called in the big dirt truck and got a dumper full. Our kids, neighbor kids, and kids we didn't even know all showed up with shovels and gadgets to move dirt from one spot to another. We worked and worked....the pile wasn't getting a lot smaller. So...more neighbors showed up with this... Much faster. While the dirt was going down, the pvc was also going in. Husband and neighbor ran the pipe for the sprinkler system. Gotta love that. Men get really dirty when they are messing with pvc.

Next came the big trip to the Nursery. As one who knows nothing about plants, I had many questions. The nursery man was really nice. We got all the plants and headed home. Then, we had to lay out all of the plants where we wanted them.
Finally we planted and mulched.

Now we have a paved, planted, mulched, watered, landscaped yard. Our groundbreaking metamorphosis is done. We learned a lot in the process and we can't wait to spruce it up some more in the spring.

Thanks for stopping in to see our metamorphosis. Much love, Laura

A Splash On My Back!

Hello ladies. It has been a while, but I am trying to catch up. As most of you know by now, we are in the new military mansion. We have been working and working to get it into tip top shape. Great....but....all of this tip topping has left my piggy bank sounding a bit tapped out.

We finished the bathrooms, the laundry room, and a bunch of other stuff. We were nearing the end of the kitchen and I decided that I needed a tile backsplash. FABULOUS! Major Husband says, "No problem, I will just work a little overtime..." LOL For those of you pounding the military pavement every day, you know how crazy funny that statement really is. 24/7 No overtime...ever...

So, this means that the lady of the mansion and her Aunt don their work clothes and get at it...

Here is a pic of the kitchen before we started any redos.
We left our mark on the wall and started placing tiles with tile adhesive. It went on really easily. We used some little dividers to space the tile just right. We also covered the countertops with brown paper to keep the mess down.
Some of the tiles needed to be cut to fit. No problem. We used a wet tile saw to cut. This was much easier than I thought it would be. We just marked the tile with a wax pencil and went to cutting. After all the tiles were in place...then we grouted with a pre-mixed grout. This is as easy and making mud pies...just real messy!

After intense clean up efforts....we had this....

Not bad. My splash now has a back and my piggy is not much worse for wear. The entire tile job cost about 200.00.

Thanks so much for stopping by today for DIY Thursday. Take a look at all of the wonderful DIY stuff at A Soft Place To Land.

Laura