Family Friday-Dentist

Quick Family Friday Post; We went to the dentist in February and Angel had her very first REAL checkup! Here she is in the purple room with the purple NY Monkey:

 She sure was stylin' with those glasses!

Angel Baby did incredibly well at her checkup. I have no worries that the next checkup will be just as easy. You all have a wonderful Friday!

Thrifty Thursday-Stars

Have I mentioned that I love finding treasures at the Thrift Store? Well, I DO! Here are 2 things I've discovered at work!

 

The big star is not a light fixture, but I put it on the light instead of the regular light cover and it looks FANTASTIC. Here is a close up of the candle holder:

That green glass is so pretty when there is a candle lit behind it. Here is a picture of the whole display:

 To the left of the big star are 2 shadow boxes with keys in them. I love keys. Below that is where I hang my purse and a couple of decorative keys. One of the keys is and antique one that I got in Croatia. Below the big star is a faux wine barrel. My husband got that for me on our 10th wedding anniversary. I can put a 5 Liter box of wine in it to serve my wine in vintage-y style! To the right of that is a blue demijohn. I got that from the same winery the barrel came from. it has several wine corks in it with a cupcake-topped wine cork in the opening. Oh, and there is a cool Sugar Skull bracelet around the neck. I'll have to show you a close-up of those next Thursday. Thanks for stopping by again! 

Tidy Tuesday

Warning. This post is FULL of pictures! Because of the amount of pictures, I'll try to minimize the amount of words. So, after deciding to purge, sort, and store my medicines in a place besides my bathroom (see THIS post if you don't know what I'm talking about) I realized that I needed to purge, sort and restore EVERYTHING in my bathroom. And I did!

I have VERY little storage space in my bathroom, so this is an essential thing to do and maintain on a regular basis. Here is my storage shelf before:

 Above the bathroom mirror vanity before:

 EVERYTHING was taken off the shelves and out of the mirror vanity. Here is all is on my dining room table:

 After I saw all the CRAP that I had, I went through everything and threw away expired stuff and purged useless stuff. This is after the sort:

 Everything was sorted into "like items". Here is my basket of electronics:

 My hair stuff:

 My hair products (yes, I have doubles of things, but they go out of stock so often here that I buy multiples when I can):

 Lotions and body sprays (note: I did NOT buy ANY of these, they were ALL given to me! I haven't purchased a lotion in YEARS, lol!):

 Makeup and nail supplies:

 My "paper" products: 

 Other toiletries:

 Pedicure/Manicure stuff (again, ALL of this was given to me):

 And here is my bathroom storage shelf after!

 And my Vanity Mirror after. The white basket holds my hair products and the other one holds my pedicure stuff. The red thing on the right of the mirror is a heart shaped ramekin that I re-purposed to hold q-tips. I used an empty pesto jar to hold our brushes and combs. (BTW, That white basket is driving me nuts! It's too wide to be up there but I haven't found another basket to replace it):

 Sink After. I didn't get a before pic, but trust me, it wasn't this nice looking. I keep my lotion RIGHT THERE so I have no excuse to not use it. Also, I re-purposed that green mason-like jar for our toothbrushes. I love that it matches my mouthwash! lol!

 Top rack of the storage shelf; NAIL STUFF! And since this pic, I've added at least 4 more nail colors... I may have a problem, lol.

 The second rack has my makeup box and the third rack holds my electronics and hair accessories. They are in that white makeup bag right up front:

 Fourth rack are my "paper" products and some "other" stuff including hair dye, extra toothbrushes, etc.

On the bottom shelf is just extra toilet paper rolls and baby wipes. Yes, Angel Baby is potty trained, but she INSISTS on using wipes instead of toilet paper. She's SUCH a princess! 

That's it for this week's Tidy Tuesday. If you've made it all the way through the post, THANK YOU! Now I need to do some more tidying up for next week! See you on Thursday!

I Made It-4 in 1!

Today I want to show you 4, yes FOUR, different things I've made lately. First up, I colored this little digital image from The Greeting Farm for my friend to hang in her house. I wanted to try a technique where I make the image look like a black and white photo, so I looked up a few tutorials on You Tube and grabbed my copic markers and gave it a shot.

 

 Then I mounted it on some patterned paper. My friend will frame it and hang it in her new house in England. They are in the middle of the move right now :( I'm gonna miss her... ANYWAYS...

In other news, the hubby is deployed to Afghanistan right now and I wanted to countdown the days until he gets home, so I made this paper chain.

We remove a link every night before bed. Some links are made from plain white paper. Those links are for special days like Easter, last day of school, birthdays, etc. This way, we have little happy moments to look forward to as well as David coming home to us.

So, to stay busy while time passes, I've been trying to be more crafty. And this includes FOOD! I made a recipe that I've been meaning (since St. Patty's day) to try. These are chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream frosting!

Yes, there is Guinness Beer in the cake mix, and Bailey's Irish Cream in the Frosting! YUM!

Also, since the cupcakes were NOT made for the kiddos to eat, I made them THIS delicious Strawberry Shortcake!

I didn't make the cake part, but I slopped on the whipped topping and arranged the strawberries all by myself! LOL. It was SO GOOD that it only lasted about 15 minutes. 

So that's it for this post. I hope you liked all 4 of my creations. See you all tomorrow for another Tidy Tuesday post! I'm on a roll! :)

Family Friday with Scenic Sunday

Hey there Friends! I'm combining posts today since I didn't post on Family Friday. Here are some pictures of a little family trip the kids, my friend Devon and I took on Thursday.




You can find more pics over on my Facebook page if you care to check it out. Happy Sunday!

Thrifty Thursday

aI love colors! Bright colors make me happy and so I try to brighten my world with colors all the time. You'll usually see happy colors painted on my nails and if you come to my home you'll see my happy, colorful glass collection in my kitchen. Here it is on my microwave:The turquoise blue tall glass and the green jar are from a store called Mercatoni Uno and the blue scarab was a gift from Egypt that my friend Devon gave me. The lamp, yellow glass, and orange glass are all Thrift Store Finds! Speaking of the lamp, it may not look all that impressive without being lit but once it is lit....It is gorgeous. Oh, this pictures doesn't do it justice at all! This one shows the magnificence a little better:

In real life this lamp will take our breath away! I love it so much that I am going to have to get it rewired when we move back to the States and 110Voltage!

I hope you liked my Thrifty post for this week. See you Domani for Family Friday!

Tidy Tuesday

This is a new type of post that I'll be posting every once in awhile. Spring is in full bloom here in Bella Italia, and the fresh season is making me itch to clean and organize! I was reading on a blog (Simple Mom I think, but I can't find the post now) about storing medicines. SO, since my bathroom organization was getting a little out of hand, I decided to find a solution! The recommendation was to NOT store your medicines in your bathroom. The moisture and temperature changes that occur in your bathroom cause the medicines to lose their effectiveness. It was recommended that medicines should be stored in your kitchen, away from the refridgerator and stove (because of temps again). WELL, that's where I had the problem. My kitchen is VERY limited in space. To show you what I'm talking about, here is the refrigerator side of my kitchen:

And here is the stove/sink/cabinet side of my kitchen:And that's all. There is NO cabinet space away from the fridge or stove! So then I started thinking, what the heck should I do? Well, I came up with an idea, found 2 gorgeous little baskets in the exact sizes I wanted and got to work. First, collect and sort/purge all the medicines in my house:This was AFTER the sort/purge. Then I separated the medicines into an adult basket and a kids basket:
The first aid kit belongs in my truck. I have no idea WHY it's been in my house for so long! I restocked it, made sure nothing was expired, and put it back where it belonged. THEN, I put the new medicine baskets away in their new home:

Yup! The baskets look AWESOME in my entertainment center! You can't even tell what they are really for when you see them. They just look like 2 nice little decorative baskets! I love it. So, while I was doing my medicine sort/purge, I opened up my spice cabinet above my stove and found a couple more medicines! UGH. And then I realized how MESSY that cabinet was! At first, it looked like this:And that is just the left side... imagine a mess on the right side just like that. This is what it looked like after I reorganized and threw away ALOT of crap:
AH! That is so much better! I actually know what I have, and I can FIND it when I need it! Yes, I realize I have a lot of teas, but I love a cup of tea before bed.

So there is my first Tidy Tuesday post! I'm hoping to do more in the future. I know there is ALWAYS something to clean and organize in this house of mine, with our 3 mess monsters living here. What do you all think? Where do you keep your meds? How does your spice cabinet look? Any advice on my cabinet? And Mom, I know you're going to comment on my alcohol bottle collection..... lol!