Front Door Makeover

I love the beginning of a new "holiday" or season because the blog world explodes with home tours to showcase what they've done to make their homes feel festive! I love the ideas that come from these post and get my mind going. I've always wanted to do one of my own, and maybe I'll actually get to in a few weeks but I'm slowly working on projects around the house and things are looking more fall like around here everyday!

Every room in our house doesn't feel complete. Everything is missing something and it's just taking some time to gather things and put items into place.
Anyways, last week I was over on Just a Girl and Her Blog and she was showcasing a Fall home tour by Migonis Home and the home tour included a brief picture of her front porch. Her front door caught my eye, so I went in search of more pictures of her porch and found this.

I fell in love the the number on the door and decided I wanted to do it on ours! I was nervous to paint on the door in case I didn't like it, so I got the idea to use my Silhouette and Vinyl to create the same look. I love how it turned out and also love that I can change it up if I wanted to some day. (Excuse the slightly crocked pictures. They are driving me crazy but I couldn't get them perfectly level so they will have to be imperfect :) )

Here is how I did it. Using my Silhouette Cameo, I created the image using JennifersFont. I "printed it" aka cut it using the Silhouette.

I then removed the outer pieces of vinyl so that all that was remaining was the numbers and letters for the door.

Next, I cut a piece of transfer vinyl to the size of the numbers and laid it on top, pressing down on the image to ensure that it would stick to the transfer vinyl. I then peeled the transfer vinyl away from the backing, taking the numbers and letters with it.

I used a wet rag to clean the door and then a towel to dry it. Then, finding the center on the door, I placed the image where it looked to be centered. Then rubbed the vinyl pieces to make sure they stuck to the door.

Finally, I slowly peeled the transfer vinyl from the door leaving the numbers and letters. The vinyl always needs to help staying where you want it because it likes to stay with the transfer vinyl, so I just helped it to stay put using my fingers.

When the image was in place, I used my finger to press the pieces down, rubbing them so that they would stick more solidly.

I love how it turned out, although I might change the font at another time of year but for fall, I like how rustic the font looks.

 Now someday, I'd love to paint this door a color! Someday.... But what color?

Meal Plan Monday #19

Good morning! I hope you all had a great weekend. Yesterday, I did my meal planning for the whole month and I *hope* to share our method with you later this week.  Here is what we are eating this busy week of football games and practice!

Monday: Oven Baked Chicken
Tuesday: Pollo Asado Tacos- Costco pre-marinaded meat
Wednesday: Noodle Bake
Thursday: Slow Cooker BBQ Country Style Ribs (Didn't get to it last week)
Friday: Teriyaki Chicken
Saturday: Grilled Veggie Burritos

Simply Elegant Fall Wreath {Tutorial}

I am DYING for it to be fall! For the past week, we have been had 100+ degree weather and I am just plain over the heat and mostly the air-conditioning! I was able to open up all the windows in the house this morning to get a little fresh air before the heat of the day struck again. I cannot wait for cool air to be coming through our windows! Anyways, because I am wishing it was fall, I have been in the fall decorating mood. Last week, I made this simple fall wreath and I love how it turned out!

Tutorial

Supplies:

Grapevine wreath

Silk fall leaves

Glittered fall garland or accent

Burlap bow

Hot glue

I used all things I had in my fall decor bin to make this wreath but Michael's has a ton of cute fall silk and plastic decor to make this wreath. I also purchased the bow at the $.99 store. You could make it easily but I liked the look.

The first thing I did was place all the pieces as I thought I'd like it to look. This picture is of just that. Nothing is glued here. 

I then began by removing most of the pieces and slowly started to glue it all down as I went. (Be careful because the hot glue heat does come through the leaves.)

The finished product, ready to be hung on the door!

I used an command hook to hang the wreath on the door. It has worked great!

I'll hopefully be sharing more of our fall front porch soon, after I get it all put back together after Aston's birthday party.

What fall projects are you doing? Does it feel like fall where you live?
Linking up: Just a Girl and Her Blog

Linking up with: Curly Crafty Mom

My Cleaning Schedule

I've talk to quite a few friends lately about what I've been doing to clean my house. I am LOVING the schedule I'm using and am so happy with how clean it is in so little time.

I've been using Clean Mama's plan and it works wonderfully! It takes about 15-20 minutes a day and that is it! I feel accomplished and my house feels clean. I will say it does not look clean all the time, if ever, due to the fact that I have kids living in my house all day, everyday BUT things are clean.

So this is how it works: Every day, there are 4 daily tasks: De Clutter, Wipe Counters, Check Floors for any immediate needs and 1 load of Laundry from start to finish. I'm not always the best with the laundry part, so some days I do two loads and not do any on another day but it's just a general rule. Then I follow this schedule: (This is the original post about each day.)

Clean Mama has great posts about how to best utilizes your time to get the job done as quickly as possible and it has been working very well for me. If you are in need of an easy system to staying on top of cleaning your house, then I would HIGHLY recommend this plan. 

I also have her book, "The Organically Clean Home," and while I don't use all of her recipes, I very often go to this book when I need a random cleaner for a job. I have moved away from all chemical based products and am now using Honest cleaning products for most everything in my house (I'll post more on that soon) but her book is great and everything work very well!

So again, if you are looking for a better way to keep your house clean and in order, I would check out CleanMama.net! Also, if you are on Instagram, she is @cleanmama and is posting the daily activity for each day and I've found it a great reminder!

Meal Plan Monday #19

Good-morning and happy Monday! For us Mondays are now very happy days because they are our "Saturdays" or the first day of our weekend. We are recovering from a nasty chest cold virus around here, so we are taking it easy for our weekend and I am sooooo looking forward to it! Here is what's for dinner this week:

Monday: Cheesy Chicken and Broccoli Casserole
Tuesday: Teriyaki Steak Skewers  (The link from Pinterest is bad but the recipe is in the comments area.)
Wednesday: Pasta Alla Ladd
Thursday: Mexican Taco Braid (I'll post the recipe next week)
Friday: Slow Cooker Country Style Ribs
Saturday: Crock Pot Stew Beef Chili (I have some frozen that I will just defrost and heat up)
Sunday: Sticky Honey Lime Grilled Chicken

High Five For Friday!

We have been sickies in our house this week. We have watch lots of movies and way more tv then I like but none of us have much energy since Wednesday but here are some highlights from our week.

1. My Simplified Planner Weekly Edition arrived on Saturday along with the HomeBase Binder Refill pack. I love them both and how pretty and simple they both are! Love Love Love! Can't wait until 2015 to break it out!

2. On Sunday, we celebrated my baby boy's 3rd birthday with a Construction Birthday. It was HOT but we had a great time celebrating with our friends and family!

3. Tuesday, we escaped part of the heat and took ourselves up to the mountains to pick apples at our favorite apple orchard. They have great apples and get better and better every year! It was a wonderful, windy day and we enjoyed the time together! 

4. Happy Birthday to my boy! Cannot believe it's been 3 years since he stole my heart!

5. While this picture is pathetic, we have had a lot of time to cuddle the last two days since Aston has been sick. He is feeling better and like a caged animal now even though he still has symptoms. Now Leia and I are the next victims. 

Praying for a more healthy weekend and I hope you all have a great one!!

Linking up with Lauren Elizabeth for HF4F

Noodle Bake

A few weeks back, I was scheduled to make dinner for a friend who had just had a baby. I was trying to come up with something from what I had around my house. My friends husband is a big fan of Lasagna, so as I was looking through recipes, this one stood out from Pioneer Woman. I didn't have all the same ingredients and played with it a bit but it turned out great! Maxwell says it tastes even better the next day.

Noodle Bake

adapted from Pioneer Woman

1.5 lb ground beef
2 jars of your favorite pasta sauce (1.5 bottles goes into the dish, save the rest for the side if you want)
1 package of egg noodles
1.5 teaspoons garlic salt (I use Lawry's Roasted Garlic Salt)
1.5 cups sour cream
4 oz of cream cheese
2ish cups shredded cheese, I used colby jack

1. Brown ground beef, season with salt and pepper. Add sauce and allow to simmer. Set aside.
2. Cook egg noodles to the directions on the package, drain but save 1/2 cup of the pasta water. Put the pasta back into pot and add sour cream, cream cheese and garlic salt. If the cheese mixture seems thick, add some pasta water to thin it out a bit. You want it to stick to the noodles but not be too thick.
3. Spray a baking dish with cooking spray. Add half the noodle mixture into the bottom, spreading a layer. Top with meat sauce, then sprinkle with cheese to cover, then repeat.
4. (At this point, you could make two smaller ones and freeze it for another time. It would do really well pulled out and cooked later)
5. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes until all the cheese is melted on top and the mixture looks bubbly.

Enjoy!

Meal Plan Monday #18

Good morning! And happy Monday! I'm running a little behind because we had Aston's birthday party yesterday so I didn't get to write my post or plan my meals until this morning. It's been VERY hot and humid this past weekend and into the week, so I'm using my crock pot a lot so that I don't heat up the house. When it's hot like this, I put my crockpot outside on a table in the shade to cook so I don't heat my house up any more. It works great! Anyways, have a great start to your week and I'll see you tomorrow with a new recipe!

Monday: Taco Salad
Tuesday: Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken
Wednesday: Slow Cooker Roast Chicken
Thursday: Brown Sugar and Balsamic Pork Roast
Friday: Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes
Saturday: Steaks
Sunday: Out

What are you having for dinner this week? I always love new ideas!

House Update: Aston's Room

It's been a little while since I've posted about the house and really I've never posted about the inside of the house yet. So I'm going to start with the first room that was on our project list.

Our moving day did not go as it was supposed to. We didn't have enough movers to take care of the move, so my painting crew(my dad and father-in-law) were sent over to help the movers out. It was an exhausting, overwhelming day but our number 1 priority was to get Aston's room set up and ready for when he got home from spending the day and night at my in-laws house. So after a very long cleaning and moving day, Maxwell and I grabbed the paint and started at it.

Previous Owners Picture

As you can see Aston's room was the brown/tan the rest of the house was/is with a pink wall. We knew we at least needed to get rid of the pink before he got home, so we painted that wall blue first. We used Glidden's ??????? We got the one wall painted by midnight that night and decided to hit it first thing in the morning. We got up bright and early and Max got to it. We painted the rest of the room with Behr's ??????

Before the move, Aston had been very into the Planes movie and all his Planes toys so we decided to go that route for the decorations. We got the bedding from Target, comforter and sheets, with the assumption that it would eventually change over time, so we didn't want to spend a large amount of money.

We purchased this Ikea Kallax unit to hold all of his clothes and some toys. I think we are going to put this one in Leia's room eventually and get Aston the bigger unit because he needs more storage.

As with all the rooms, they are works in progress and keep changing as well realize how we need things to function in the house and we still do not have pictures hung on any of the walls but that too will come. I'll hopefully have another update on his room before Christmas but we shall see which projects before priorities :)

 

Meal Plan Monday #17

It's Monday again! I am all thrown off because today is the first day of our "weekend" at home. My husband, Maxwell, works for a church, and his work days just changed, so he works Wednesday thru Sunday now. It's thrown me off in numerous ways this last week but we will get back into the swing of it.

Here's what we are having for dinner with week:
Monday: Summer "Spaghetti"
Tuesday: chipotle lime butter whole roasted chicken with the easiest black bean + corn salad.
Wednesday: Out
Thursday: Balsamic Steak Skewers
Friday: Whiskey Peach BBQ Chicken (modified from this recipe)
Saturday: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
Sunday: Aston's Birthday Party!!

What is on your menu for the week? I'd love some new ideas!

High Five for Friday...On Saturday

I meant to post this yesterday but my phone didn't cooperate. So here it is on Saturday :)

Its been a long weird week with new schedules and daddy gone 11 hours each day. I've been struggling to find the good in the crazy, exhausting days but this is helping me to see the good. So my top good things this week:

1. My baby boy who is almost 3 started his first full year of preschool this week. He went last year, starting halfway through the year. He was so excited to start school. He missed his friends this summer and was so happy to get back to it. I was so surprised by the tears that came as I walked away. I wasn't prepared for it because this was like old times but man it hit me. My boy is growing up so fast! 

2. I've been in a bit of a cloud this week because I've started re-reading some books that I found while unpacking. They are great Christian romance novels by Lori Wick and I've been really enjoying them. I haven't mentally been with it as much because of it but it's nice to escape reality from time to time. If you are in the market for a good, easy pleasure read, I highly recommend the English Garden series as well as many others of her work. 

3. Sunflowers! These have become some of my favorite flowers and just make me smile! After a hard day yesterday, I bought these to bring some happy into the house. 

4. We finished painting Leia's room last weekend which means we are so close to have the whole house painted! Two bathrooms, the remained of the hallway and the laundry is all that is left!! I took a painting break this week because it's exhausting but I hope by November to be pretty close to done!

5. We are loading up this morning to go to the zoo! I think we are all excited to get out and enjoy the day away today. We will miss daddy but it will help our day move along more quickly! 

Have a great weekend and I'll see you Monday!
Samantha


I'm linking up with Lauren Elizabeth.