Sunday Blessings

O how abundant is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for those who fear thee, and wrought for those who take refuge in thee, in the sight of the sons of men!

Psalm 31:19

In Case You Were Wondering....

...just how many shades of gray there are...
...I can assure you that there are plenty to choose from. Thousands in fact.

there is:

gray mist

comfort gray

stormy monday

london fog

cement gray

light french gray

and you can't forget the blue-grays:

blue heather

eminence

misty morn

provence

I should know...

I've. Tried. Them. All.

and I think I've settled on Light French Gray by Behr as seen above.

I'll spare you the TONS of color swaths I've painted all over the walls and just show you this one wall. It shows Stormy Monday by Benjamin Moore, Eminence by Behr and finally, the one I think I may have settled on...Light French Gray.

So here's the deal. We have finished the other half of our basement which will house a gym for my husband and a studio/work/craft room for me. YES!! That's right, my very own space to call my own. Decorated the way that I want. I can sew, paint, create and blog there. And, I don't even have to clean it all up when I'm done (but I probably will ~ I'm kinda orderly like that) Plus, unlike in my current situation, I'll actually be able to find what I'm looking for. I simply cannot wait until it's all finished. Another couple of weeks! So here is part of the room pictured above. The floors arrived last week. They're sitting here waiting for me to pick out a paint color...and then get it up on the walls. Hoping to have that done by Monday and floor down by Wednesday. The ugly light you see there hanging down in the back of the photo ~ that will be a new chandelier full of drippy crystals...mmmmm..I can't wait!

As soon as it's done, I'll be sure to post lots of photos!

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Have a great weekend everyone!

~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

I can do all things in Him who strengthens me

Philippians 4:13

Dollar Store Craft~Candy Dishes

If you're like me, you probably love these!

Funny thing though....I love these little pumpkins, but the candy corns...not so much. I don't know why. Aren't they made of the very same thing? My husband is exactly the opposite, he likes the candy corns but not the pumpkins...oh well, to each his own!

So anyway, I needed a cute place to stash them and I've seen lots of people making the glass vase/candle holders using candle sticks and hurricanes from the dollar store. I thought it was such a great idea so I jumped on the bandwagon and did it too. Only, I put my candy in there instead of a candle. I figure when Christmas comes, I can easily change it out and put something Christmas-y in there instead.

I went to the dollar store {love that place} and picked up some glass hurricanes, candle sticks and crows...can't forget the crows!

and got to work gluing the hurricanes to the candle sticks. What did I do with the crow you ask?

Look at this! I made a countdown to Halloween pumpkin. I put the crow on top along with some black painted and glittered leaves. I tucked in a piece of chalk and voila! Instant cuteness! I cannot take credit for this idea though. I saw it here.

Heather at Paper Princess Chronicles has tons of really cute ideas over on her blog. This was one of them and I couldn't wait to make one of my own. I just sprayed an orange foam pumpkin that I got at Walmart with chalkboard paint and then started counting down the days to trick-or-treat! The kids love it!

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Have a great evening.

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Sunday Blessings

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,
who will judge the living and the dead,
and by his appearing and his kingly power:
proclaim the word;
be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient;
convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching.

2Timothy4:1-2

Ruffles Are a Good Thing!

I am a HUGE sucker for down pillows. They are so cushy, squishy, cozy and just plain wonderful!

So...whenever I see them on sale or they're really, really cheap, I buy them. Even if I already have 10. Seriously, you just can never have enough. I put them on all the beds and I use them as throw pillows on all of the sofa's. They fill every single one of my pillow shams and I have never paid more than $5 or $6 for any of them. Oh wait, I did pay $9 once for a big Euro down pillow but you get my point. I only buy them when they're really inexpensive. I'm kinda cheap that way. So anyway, I was at a bargain store the other day~ Ollie's Bargain Outlet ~ and I found a huge, super cushy king size down pillow. It was $5.99 - yes, you read that right! And yes, I did buy it. This time I had actually been on the lookout for one because I wanted it to use on the loveseat in the family room (I stole the one that was previously there to use it on our bed)

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It needed a cover though.

I went through my fabric stash and found this linen and muslin.


I prepared the muslin to make a ruffle. I wanted to leave the raw edge so I just sewed a straight line down the length of the fabric to avoid complete fraying when I wash it.

Then I just sewed the ruffle to the linen and sewed up the whole thing - pillow case style.

Voila!


One can never have too many pillows. At least that's what I think :)


and then, I got out my glass marbles and sheet music and began to play!

Happy Friday everyone. Enjoy your weekend!
~~
xo and God Bless,
Kathleen

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I'm linking up with Cindy at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday

A Little Halloween Crafting Fun!

We were very busy this weekend making lots of cool stuff for Halloween. I found some really fun ideas for things to make this year. I have finished several of them and I'm still finishing up even more which I will share in the next day or two.

Two ideas that I came across and completed this weekend are this fall crow cloche pictured above which you can find here

and

this very cool pumpkin diorama pictured below. Click here to see the blog where I found it along with her excellent tutorial. My son and I each made one and had such a great time with it! His is pictured below.

He used an orange pumpkin and did such a great job with it. He even glued on what was left of the skeletons we used to embellish the front. So creative...

I used a white pumpkin with mine instead of the orange. We got those foam carvable pumpkins and cut off the fronts of them. Then we spray painted the insides of the pumpkins black and glittered them well! If you go to The Klucking Bear where I found the idea, she included a great tutorial.

Then we created these mini graveyards inside. I usually don't like the scary in Halloween but rather the whimsical and fun. I go for the pumpkins and gourds and other non scary Halloween/Fall decorations. But with this amazing dollar store project I found, I couldn't resist how fun it looked to make. I thought the skeletons looked more cute than scary.

My son decorated his with really thin cobwebs made with the glue gun - very clever I think!

Here is one of our fun little skeletons we used

We put mine on a shelf in the family room with the crow cloche

and my son's sits proudly on the hall table for all to see when they enter.

For tons more creative fall projects, be sure to visit Tatertots and Jello!! You'll be so glad you did. Have a great day!

~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Sunday Blessings

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control; against such there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

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My heart is so full of love and joy at this moment. Love for the good of mankind and joy in my heart because God chose to bestow two things upon me today. One of them was something I really wanted to do but had put out of my mind, because at the time, it just wasn't possible. The second thing was something completely unexpected. Something we never saw coming, but something that demonstrated so completely, the love of Christ. The good of mankind. The fruit of the Spirit. Let me tell you a story.

It all started about three or four weeks ago when I read in our church bulletin that a local priest would be visiting a nearby parish to say Mass and then after Mass he would judge a chili cook-off. Now, this wasn't just any priest, he happens to be Father Leo Patalinghug. You know, the Throwdown with Bobby Flay winner on the Food Network? Yeah, Bobby Flay challenged him to a fajita throwdown and Fr. Leo won! Anyway, besides being a great cook, he also happens to be a wonderful priest and I wanted to go to the Mass to see him. However, my husband was going to have to work that day and I just couldn't see taking all four of the kids by myself to what was going to be a VERY crowded Mass. I pouted for a day or two...yes, sadly I did. Shame on me. But then, I thought I better snap out of it. It just wasn't meant to be. I put it out of my mind and didn't think of it again. Fast forward to Saturday afternoon. Because of hubby's work schedule, we have to attend the Saturday afternoon Mass at the above mentioned church that is near our town. We get there pretty early so we're all sitting in the car in the parking lot enjoying the warm weather. The priest happens to be walking through the parking lot and stops at our car to chat for a few minutes. While we're talking, he mentions that there is going to be a guest priest saying Mass. "Who's saying Mass?" I ask. "Father Leo Patalinghug" he says. "GET OUT!! Really??" I say. I couldn't believe it. As it turns out, all along I thought he came last weekend. But actually, it was this weekend at the Saturday afternoon Mass. He was there and I was in attendance. This brings me to the other part of my story. Because the dinner after church was something that you needed to sign up for in advance, we didn't go to that. Instead we went to Cracker Barrel. As we were sitting outside in those infamous Cracker Barrel rocking chairs, waiting for our table, we started talking to a man and his wife. Their daughter and her date were there for their homecoming dinner and mom and dad came along too. (I thought that in this day and age, it was really nice that mom and dad came along to dinner to chaperone their 15 year old daughter and her date) Anyway, he was talking about how they have three girls and this daughter is their youngest. The others have left the nest and she is the last one at home. They were the nicest people and they really cherished their family. After awhile, their table was available and they left. Later on we were seated and our meal arrived and as we were happily finishing up our dinner, our waitress came over to our table. She told us that someone in the restaurant had paid for our family's meal. She also said that they tipped her so not to worry about that either. Can you imagine? My husband and I were speechless. We asked her to please thank whoever did this from the bottom of our hearts. She said she would and then she left our table. As it turns out, our waitress told us that it was the family we had been talking to. But by the time we knew that, they had already left. They had wanted to do this without us knowing that they had done it. How's that for the fruit of the Spirit? I only pray that God will give us an opportunity to return the favor to someone else and that somehow, the family that did this for us will know the depth of our gratitude. There is so much tremendous good in this world ~ sadly, we just don't hear about it as much. All in all, it was a fabulous day.

Thank you dear Lord, for the goodness you show us, the abundance of grace you provide and for hearing our prayers!

God Bless You All!!

xo,

Kathleen

Paper Cone Wreath

Remember the project I told you I was working on using sheet music? Well, here it is! I saw this for the first time in early spring. Someone found it somewhere else and showcased it on their blog. Unfortunately, for the life of me I can't remember where I saw it first. I did however see another one on another blog here. Anyway, I tucked the image of the wreath away in my memory so that one day, I could try to make one too.
Then, more recently, I saw in Romantic Homes magazine where they published Lidy's directions on how to make a paper wreath. I remembered my desire to try to make one of my own, only I wanted mine to be made out of cones instead of rolled paper - just like the one I first saw.
So, I got to work.

Here is how I made my version of the wreath:

First, you're going to need to gather a few supplies. You'll need the following:

sheet music
ribbon
something decorative for the center medallion
(I just used my paper circle punch to punch out scrapbook paper)

floral pins

styrofoam disc

The first thing you'll do is make lots and lots of paper cones.

Once you've made the cones, start placing them on your styrofoam disc and attach with floral pins.

I started by placing them at the 12, 6, 9 and 3 o'clock positions on the circle

then you begin filling in the empty spaces

keep filling...

and filling. They don't have to be exact or perfect. Just randomly place them wherever you see an empty space.

After you're all finished placing the cones, flip the whole thing over and use a floral pin to attach a ribbon to the back of the foam for hanging

Now, flip it back over the right way and add a medallion to the center. This will cover the area where all of the cones intersect and it will hide all of the pins. I just used a hot glue gun to glue it in place.

Great!!

You're all finished and now you're ready to hang your wreath wherever you desire!

I put mine in front of the antique mirror hanging above our fireplace. It goes nicely with the fall decor and I think it will work with greenery and mercury glass at Christmas too! All I'm missing now is the burlap banner that's in the works. More to come on that later.

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Happy creating ~ I hope you enjoyed this little project!

~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

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I'm linking up with Cindy at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday

and

Kathleen at Faded Charm for White Wednesday

A Little More Fall...And...Starting a New Project!

I did a little more decorating for fall...
Isn't this a neat pumpkin? I saw it for the first time ever here and really wanted to try and find one. Find it I did and I love it. Around here, they call them peanut pumpkins!

I even threw in a little orange too.

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And last but not least, I'm doing a fun project to add to the fall decor.

Here's a little sneak peak...

it has to do with sheet music!

I'll show it to you when it's done (I'm hoping to finish today) and I'll show you how I did it.

Have a happy fall day everyone!

~~

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen