Tishomingo State Park

Easter weekend my husband, our dog, and I went camping at Tishomingo State Park.  It's only a tad over 30 minutes from our house but feels like you've gone somewhere far off.  The weekend before Easter I went scouting for a good tent that was also affordable.  I tried Wal-mart, Target, and finally found one at Dick's Sporting Goods.  The tent I bought was on sale from $199 down to $60 and made by a respectable company.  Matt and I did a test run putting it up in our entry room and it took up the whole space.  The picture below doesn't do it justice.  It's about 9'x11' and tall enough in the middle to stand.

Friday we went for a hike over the swinging bridge and up the hillsides for a few hours with Buck.  It was very beautiful and the weather was perfect.

There were waterfalls all over the place.  I think we saw close to ten if you include all the small ones.  

This tree had an impressive root system that ran all down the side of the hill.

 This is our sweet dog Buck, waiting with me in the truck for Matt.

Matt is an expert fire builder, and outdoorsman, and photographer.  He took this picture of the fire.  Friday night we enjoyed toasting marshmallows and sitting by the fire.  I happened to eat a few to many mallows and ended up feeling sick all night.  Lesson learned... maybe.

I loved these mossy stone stairs.  They almost looked like they were put there by God.

I like these two pictures of Buck.  He was sitting on the center console and I called his name.  The camera distorted the size of his head.  Kind of looks like a bobble-head doll.

We had a lot of fun camping, and hope to go back soon.

Strawberry Fields

I am very excited that next week I'll be starting a work-share with Native Son Farm in Tupelo.  My friend Amanda, from work at the Montessori school, and her husband Will are the owners and founders of Native Son Farm.  They are Tupelo's only "certified naturally grown" farm.  They have a great CSA (community supported agriculture) program that Matt and I want to be a part of next year, but this year I will work on the farm in exchange for picking what I want each week.  I start on Tuesday and depending on how hectic it is, I'll try to take a few pictures to show.  Amanda showed me around the farm a few weeks ago and it is amazing how much they have done the two of them and with the help of a few people and WWOOFers.   Native Son Farm is also on facebook if you want to be updated with news of what's going on.

A picnicing we'll go...

At our wedding nearly 3 years ago, my husband and I got this picnic basket and it was packed full of goodies from the reception, my favorite being chocolate covered strawberries. The basket is really lovely, and it even has an insulated bottom section to keep foods cool, but I just wasn't loving the boring plates, cups, and silverware it came with.

This weekend Matt went fishing with a friend and I went down to Jackson to see my parents and 2 1/2 year old nephew.  While I was there I went to Target (there isn't a Target within 2 hours of where I live).  I found several things I am thrilled with.  A few of which being these plates, cups and napkins.  I'll post about the other purchases later.  I had almost given up hope on finding some melamine plates I liked that also fit in the leather straps of the picnic basket, when low and behold, I walked two aisles away from the melamine plates' section and found another row, containing these little gems.

I love the rainbow burst pattern of the plates, and at first I really wanted all turquoise tumblers, but they only had the one.  Then I had the idea of using four different colors which not only plays off the patterns and colors of the plates, but will also ward off confusion if ever picnicing with four people and we need to know whose cup is whose.

beige boring plates

super awesome rainbow plates

I love the little things in life, like switching out plates and cups in a picnic basket.  It feels much more like me, and hopefully the husband won't mind too much.

Circular Drive

Our house has a circular drive, and in the middle are pine trees, dogwoods, and an open center that once had two benches and two swings.  I've been working on getting it looking nice this week.  This picture is a before picture.  I've been using any extra daylight when I'm not at work to rake the center of the island.  Since our house had no one tending it for around 4 years, there were at least 5 inches of pinestraw over the whole thing.  I did manage to get all the pinestraw into one giant pile, probably 6'x5'x4'.  Two nights ago I started burning it all.  My husband said it would burn super fast, and extremely hot.  I guess that would have been true if most of the pinestraw weren't slightly damp.  I stood outside getting it to burn for about 2 hours, then put it all in the middle and covered the flames till it was only embers burning through.  It worked really well because the next morning, it had burned down to about 1 or 2 inches high, instead of 4 feet.  If you look carefully you can see the red concrete pavers I'm going to put in the center, sittin around the pine trees on the left.  I had them placed in the middle, figuring out how I wanted it to look but had to move them to rake. 

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The pavers are these ones from Lowes.  I originally bought 15 at $1 a piece, on sale.  They were by far the cheapest option and I really do like them in our yard.  The red color looks really good with all the green around.  They are 12"x12" and not too heavy for me to move them by myself. 

We are going to keep the placement for 2 benches and maybe 2 swings.  Might just start out with one swing and see what we need.   Around the trees, we'll plant some green ground cover.  Something that grows really well in shade.  I like how this pathway looks. 

It has a stone border like our driveway, and we will someday get a big truck load of gravel to go on the drive way but that will probably be one of the last things we do.  It's thunderstorming right now so I can't show what the island looks like right now, but I'll keep posting the progress.

Now that's what I call progress

My husband and I have been renovating our house for almost 2 years now.  I'm going to be honest; this process has been rather unpleasant.  I had no idea, I mean, absolutely no clue, how much goes into the building or remodeling of a home.  When we started the process, I was oblivious to the fact that walls went up in different pieces.  I didn't realize what went into mudding and sanding, priming and painting.  I had never layed tile, grouted, torn up brick.  Didn't know what a pain it would be to scrape 3 bedrooms worth of carpet padding and glue off of our concrete floors with a one inch blade.  The hours upon hundreds of hours we have put into this house, doing nearly everything ourselves still kind of blows my mind.  But it is so nice to be able to look at pictures, like the ones below and feel that sense of accomplishment.  I think I forget sometimes how far we have really come, because we've been living in this reno since the get-go.  Anyway, Matt and I are truly blessed to have such a beautiful home now and proud of the work we've put into it.

(This room still isn't finished, but I need the reminder that we're finally getting there so I wanted to post it anyway)

DIY Bench

Right beside our front door is a cedar closet and a coat rack.  I wanted to eventually get or make a bench to go under the coat rack so I could take my shoes off when first coming in the house.  I had looked at options online but everything was far more expensive than I wanted to pay.  I also looked on Pinterest for ideas in case Matt ever felt like building one.  Saturday, we talked about making a bench after dinner, and I remembered that we had the teal painted boards that used to be in our kitchen's pantry.

I picked one that I wanted to be the top piece then tested it out under the coat rack.  Seemed like a good fit so Matt got to building it.

Below is a view of the board I chose.  Yes it has strange stains, but for some reason I felt like that gave it some extra character.

First Matt cut the remaining boards into 3 inch strips for the legs of the bench.  I was able to help some because he'd bought me ear plugs a while ago, and I wore safetly glasses.  Power tools make me insanely nervous.

Next the legs were measured to be 18 inches long.  It takes two pieces to make one leg giving it extra strength and stability.

 After the pieces were all evenly cut, Matt started piecing together the legs.  Finishing nails were used to hold it together.

Here's a view of the underside of the bench.  I like that it still has old floral shelf liner on it.  And this is how Matt put on the lip of the bench.  The two long pieces were nailed on first; then the two end pieces were fitted in between.

Next the legs were screwed into place, completing the bench.

I'm really loving it so far.  I don't know if later I'll do some other treatment on it, like a white wash or using milk paint for a thin over coat.  Until then, I'm just enjoying my robin's egg blue bench.

Here comes Peter Cottontail

All of these beautiful dogwoods are in our yard.  I can't take any credit for them since they were here when we bought the house, but we really have enjoyed them the last two years when they've bloomed.  And yesterday afternoon I saw this rabbit in the backyard, munching on some weeds.  He didn't take much notice of me as I went outside to take his picture.

N 34

Yesterday I went with Amanda, my friend from work, and her friend Elizabeth to City Thrift in Tupelo.  I scored the Lemony Snicket series of books for $1.48 each, a sky blue skirt for $3, and my favorite purchase, coming in at Just 99 cents was this little beauty: 

A bingo rolling cage thingy!  It has wood balls with the letter and numbers carved into them. 

I want to make some really awesome cards for it, using the letters and numbers I actually have, and yes I did sit for a while rolling the cage and writing out what each ball has written on it.  Best 99 cents ever?  It's at least in my top 10.