Happy Holidays Everybody :)

Hey everyone!
I hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying the holiday season! It's been quite lovely here recently. Derek and I have been able to mostly relax and spend time together during these few days he has off from work. We didn't get to go back to Indiana, but it sounds like we would have been snowed in back home anyways.

We got to sleep in for a little bit yesterday, then had a big breakfast and exchanged gifts. Zoey pup got so many new toys that she can't figure out what to even do with all of them. I'll probably just keep them in rotation so that she doesn't ruin them all at once, since she started teething. 

Hopefully we will get to go home for a couple weeks in February, which I'm very excited about! I miss all of our friends and family so very much. So thanks for reading this bit of rambling. I apologize for not getting to do much for Christmas tutorials since it's been rather chaotic. I'm very glad that the semester is over and even more happy that I ended up doing better than I had originally expected. 

We should be working on some decent size projects soon, so I will keep you all in the loop! 

love your face and such,

Sara♥

Hello Holidays!

Hey, so sorry that it's been terribly long since I've blogged. I've been swamped with the semester ending and finals coming up. I'm also bummed that I haven't gotten much time to make anything really. That will change over Christmas break, hopefully. 8 more days tops until that! So excited. 

So anyways, Zoey is doing really well. She's growing for sure, and loves to be an adorable, little brat. haha. We've been getting ready for Christmas mostly right now. I promised myself that I wouldn't start decorating until December, so on the 1st, all of the activities began. We decorated the tree and some other parts of the apartment, and it's starting to look pretty good. It's strange to be in our own place for holidays, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We need to experience stuff like that. Thankfully though, we will be able to visit Indiana some at the end of the month. :)

So excited for the holiday season though. We've already made chocolate chip cookies, gotten a gingerbread house kit, started getting gifts, etc. I'm also pretty excited about the military squadron Christmas party. That's in a couple weeks and should be interesting.

I'll try to put more holiday stuff up soon!

Love your face and such,

Sara♥

November already?

Happy November, guys!! I seriously can't believe that it's already this late in the year. Time is certainly flying. Can't believe that I've already been married over four months as well. That just seems super odd to me. Anyways, sorry it's been a little while, but I've just been so forgetful lately as well as busy with classes. I haven't had much of a chance to do anything crafty. I did have a pretty good Halloween though. My hubby and I dressed up as a magician and his assistant for a party we went to on Saturday, so that was pretty fun. It's always a great day when we get to see our friends. :)

Also, I definitely can't forget this. WE GOT A PUPPY!!! We've had her about a week, so that's been a lot of time and effort for that. She is absolutely adorable. Even when she gets herself in trouble, I can't stay mad at her. Her name is Zoey, and she is an Eskimo/ Toy Collie mix. She will be 3 months old on November 5th! :)

 

So yeah, I seriously can't get over how much I love her already. She is such a silly little girl. She already has me wrapped around her little 

finger..., er... paw. ♥ 

It's ridiculous.

Love your face and such,

Sara♥

Pumpkin Patch!

Yesterday we had a wonderful day with some of our friends. We went to a pumpkin farm and picked pumpkins out, went on a little wagon ride, and went through a corn maze. We got some groceries, then came home and grilled some steaks and made a ton of food! It was a really good day with everybody. We also decorated and carved our pumpkins last night. :) I love getting to spend time with everybody, since I do all sorts of class stuff during the week obviously.

It's so much fun to get in the Fall and Halloween spirit. :D

I think that everyone should carve pumpkins. It's such a fantastic tradition to have :)

What are some of the pumpkin ideas you have for this Halloween? Let me know! 

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

Autumn Wreath

Oh, I love fall so much. It's basically my favorite of all the seasons. The thought of hot chocolate, cozy sweaters, colorful leaves, pumpkins everywhere, and the wonderful weather just makes me smile. I can sit out on our balcony reading a book or magazine and not be too hot or cold. I also love autumn crafts. It's so much fun getting to decorate for Halloween and Thanksgiving, even if you see Christmas decorations at the store the entire time, which can be a pain. I recently made a cute, little wreath for our apartment door that I can use for the next month or two. :)

I used a really cheap wreath from the Target dollar section (love that place), a tiny piece of pre-cut fabric, two types of ribbon, and a cheap bouquet of flowers. Since I already had the hot glue gun obviously, this was around a $10 craft. Not too shabby :)

I glued one end of the cream ribbon to the wreath, then wrapped it around. I did the same thing to the orange afterward. Glued the flowers on and cut the bunting triangles (gluing them to a thin ribbon that I attached to the wreath. Put it on the hanger, and it's ready to go. It was such an easy craft! Turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

I'll be putting other autumn stuff on here throughout the month too!

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

Rosie

Hey there. Sorry for the delay, just busy as ever. It's been just non-stop in this home. Derek's at more training right now for the Air Force, so just cleaning and such for me today. Haven't gotten a chance to do anything terribly crafty since I've been doing so much work for all of my online classes.... and I suppose Borderlands 2 for XBox 360 hasn't helped anything either haha. I've been messing around on Photoshop a lot recently to see if I can figure out any pictures to create and print for our room, as well as working on getting stuff started for my Advertising portfolio. Here's one design I did. It turned out pretty well for the most part. Maybe needs tweaked some more. I love vintage designs and of course, Rosie the Riveter as well.

I'm going to try to make a lot more designs too. We also planned to start some stuff for our headboard, but ran into some issues on the bed frame first, so we're getting that taken care of soon. Fingers crossed that we get that situated super quickly.  Hopefully I'll get to post stuff up here more often than every 2+ weeks. Goodness.

Love your face and such,

Sara♥

Dry Erase Board!

Well, we just got back this morning to our little apartment in New Jersey. It was quite an interesting drive for sure. I'm also fighting a cold, but I still managed to make a craft today. :) I got an old frame from  a garage sale back in my hometown during out visit home and loved it. It was still in decent condition, but a gold/bronze colored frame wasn't really what we were wanting. 

For this project, I used:

• An old frame with glass
• Spray paint
• Scrapbook paper
• Paper cutter

I painted the frame with a mint colored spray paint, making sure a tiny bit could show through.  (Make sure you don't paint too closely or it will run.) You can also take a wadded up newspaper to blot the paint for a vintage look. 

While that was drying, I cut the scrapbook paper to the correct size (my frame was for an 8x10 picture). You want to choose a lighter color so that you can easily see the marker on it. I  chose a nice tan so that it works for our bedroom. 

Once the frame is dry, you just put everything back together (including the glass) and test it out! The best thing about this is that you can keep repainting it or switching out the scrapbook paper design for it to work for anything. :)

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

Catching Up Back Home

So hey, it's been an absolutely crazy week back here in Indiana!! We've gotten to see soooo many people that we haven't in a while. We went swing dancing, celebrated my 21st birthday, got to visit with friends and both our families, and we got to go to my sister-in-law's wonderful wedding. It was absolutely lovely and she looked so beautiful! We got to dress up and go to the reception as well. The only downside at the reception for the most part was that it was in the country and I forgot to pack flip flops, so my heels sank in the mud at times. I had such a fun time there.

at the lovely reception

Also, my mother-in-law gave me her Singer sewing machine!! She's only used it a handful of times and thought that I could get better use out of it. That was so nice. She and I also went to a couple antique shops in town, and I got two full jars of buttons (one was a mason jar from 1858!) I also got to see my mom on Thursday and spend a lot of time with her. I really really enjoyed catching up with her. :) We head back to New Jersey in about 5 hours, so we have a lot to get done still haha. I'm not sure how everything will even fit in the car, but we'll make it work! :) Until next time! 

Love your face and such,

Sara♥

Ideas?? :)

So we've been living in our apartment for over a month and a half. That seems crazy to think about, but we love it! We've been getting things situated, but our poor bedroom was basically storage on one side for quite a while, and is now super boring and empty. Once we get that desk in there, it may be better. Our poor bed side also needs some help. It is just a little metal bed frame that we have some temporary boards under. Hopefully we get all this fixed up soon! I've been trying to get some ideas for a headboard that I could make for it as well, so it's not so sad looking. Here are a couple ideas, but I'm not sure yet!

We've been looking at a lot of different ideas, but just aren't set on one yet. I love all of these, especially the light up one (but I'm a cheapskate and can't imagine paying electricity for that all of the time haha.) I'm sure we will get it figured out soon :) If you have any ideas or have seen some headboards that you like (as well as some other bedroom decor) Please let me know on here! I'd love to hear from you for it. Thank you already!

Love your face and such,

Sara♥

A Couple of Simple Crafts

So it's been a few days since I've actually posted anything new (I mean, only a week, but I post stuff up a LOT usually...) Things have been kind of crazy with all my online classes and everything, but all is going well. There has been a lot of work, so I haven't had much time to do anything crafty, sorry. I've also been wanting to do a bigger project, like building a headboard for our bed, which takes a lot of supplies. I obviously don't keep most of that stuff on-hand. I did make these simple, quick crafts last night though.

This is just a little decoration that I made from scrapbooking stuff and stickers to hang on our fridge. Thought it was a nice, quaint design. I want to later on, make something else with our last name for maybe the stairway. So yeah, just something super simple here :)

This is another really simple, cute craft I found that you can do in like... 30 seconds basically. Yay for Pinterest. You just need a cute clear jar (I just love the Ball mason jars), vegetable oil, and your picture. Usually you want to go with a black and white photo or a very unsaturated picture. Once you have everything, make sure the picture is a proper fit for the jar, or trim it up. I used a standard 4x6 photo and just had to trim the top down a tiny bit. Place it so that it's curved against the front of your jar. Add all the oil (make sure you check how many ounces your jar is first!! you want the whole thing full. Mine took 24.) Put on the lid, and Boom. You're done with this craft. 

I added some vanilla scent cubes to it as well. I also added a little understated bow. I may change the color of it, not sure yet. So those are two simple things that you could do. Ours is sitting on our kitchen counter for now. 

Oh, by the way, this is the little sign that it sitting behind that (also, don't mind the paper crane on the right haha). We picked up this little guy on our honeymoon while shopping. Since Derek's in the military, we thought it was wonderful. So there you go! Until next time! :)

Love your face and such,

Sara♥

Thank You!

      Hey guys, just wanted to say thank you for reading my blog :) It's great to have friends message me or tell me that they like what I write for this. It really is wonderful to have such supportive people in my life, even if I'm living far from them right now. (Can't wait to come back in a couple weeks!) They've been just so kind and helpful, giving me tips here and there or giving me some more ideas of what I should do. So if you have any ideas for recipes or anything you would like to see, just let me know :)

     On another note, I just recently started doing some yoga here at the apartment. I throw on yoga music on Spotify and just kinda go for it. I'm just kind of doing whatever, so yeah. It will just be here until I'm brave enough to maybe go find somewhere to do this haha. Need to get the basics down first so I don't look silly if I do try to go somewhere else. So far I really like it though. If anyone has any tips, I'd really appreciate it!

     Online classes from USI are going really well for me too, even though there is a lot of busy work. It's definitely a lot different, but it's nice at the same time because I can do everything on my own schedule. That is definitely a plus since I'm mostly on night schedule because of Derek's work and everything. I really do miss everyone though. Hope all is going well! Just wanted to catch up! :)

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

Another Recipe :)

Oh, I love cooking so much :) We were pondering what to make for dinner earlier, and decided on honey chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes. Wanted that hearty meal like when we were back in Indiana with our families, I guess. Nothing wrong with that at all. :) I never like to do things the simple way, so I told Derek that I wanted to make mashed potatoes homemade, since we already had some whole potatoes. It had been forever since I'd done that and it sounded like fun. It's really basic to do, but I love using a recipe by Julia Child. Amazing chef right there. If any of you don't know who she is, definitely look into that. 

 Here's the link for the recipe :)
(makes about 5 or 6 servings)  

http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/homemade-mashed-potatoes

So I convinced my hubby to peel all the potatoes for me, then I peeled them. As they were boiling, I realized that I had no idea where I put the electric mixer. Silly me. That basically doubled our cooking time, but we had a really fun time taking turns mashing the potatoes and laughing at each other while doing that. We joke around way too much haha. They turned out to be pretty great, and we had them with honey barbecue chicken and whole kernel corn. Delicious. Have a try at the recipe. It's pretty straightforward.

:D

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

Around the Apartment

Hello :) So we've been keeping pretty busy with everything lately, so I haven't had a chance to show a couple things I've been doing around the apartment. I started online classes from my school back in Indiana this week, which has been kind of hectic, but I'd like to think it's in a good way.  Positive thinking, yeah? We're also watching a pretty adorable cat for some friends who are out of the state for a couple weeks. This cat is fantastic, but I swear he's like a ninja. So that's been fun as well. :)

So here are a couple of the little projects that have been going on recently. 

  

These were originally plain wood like on the right >>>

I just wanted to paint and make them a bit more fun.

We also can't paint our walls at our apartment, so I decided to put this together. I painted acrylic paint paper and cut it out for the trunk and leaves. It's not done yet, but it's fun to make so far.for the pictures, I just cut a tiny slit at the top and used some of the background and wove the ribbon through, then used a little metal fastener/brad for it. I think the photos were a nice little addition to it since it just looked a little bare otherwise. P.S. all the scrapbooking stuff and ribbon on this post is from that scrapbook score I made a while back :)

               

It's up in our living room, behind the TV area, leading to the bathroom and bedroom. It's looking pretty autumn like now, so we may do stuff each season for it. We're not sure yet. So yeah, that's what's going on here right now. :)

on our balcony :) 

love your faces and such,

Sara♥

Smoothies :)

So ever since my hubby's mom got me a Ninja blender, I've been obsessed with making smoothies. I just made peanut butter banana ones for us today, which turned out fantastic. They're almost like a dessert smoothie, but are really good for a thick breakfast on the go. Here are some of my favorites that I've made. (p.s. sorry for no pictures. We finished those smoothies so quickly!)


Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

1 banana
1/8 cup peanut butter (or more if you'd like)
1/2 cup milk (soy works really well)
2 tablespoons plain yogurt (optional)
2 tablespoons of honey


Banana Pineapple Smoothie 1 banana
1 cup pineapple juice (frozen)
1/2 cup fat free milk or plain yogurt
1 tablespoon of honey


Strawberry Raspberry Smoothie

1/2 cup strawberries (hulled)
1/2 cup raspberries 
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup plain yogurt (lowfat, natural)
4 ice cubes

Enjoy!

Also, What are some of your favorite smoothies? Comment and share them below. :) 

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

Quick Craft!

So hey, I know that I blog really frequently, but I just get excited to show what all is happening over here :) After our lovely day at the beach yesterday, we just relaxed the whole evening. Today however was the last bit of organizing whatever is left in boxes and putting the rest away. After our big cleaning frenzy at our apartment, I just kind of looked around at everything. This apartment has sooooo much space and potential for DIY! Sadly, we can't paint the walls, but that won't stop us from being creative.  I also had a few minutes after dinner to just do a quick makeover for a lampshade that was just so dull. It was for a cute little lamp that I got at a garage sale before moving, but it needed a little love. I just used a sharpie for it (couldn't find my fabric marker) and drew some quick designs such as Y for Young (our last name obviously) and a fleur de lis. Note that you should probably use a stencil of some sort if you're unsure. I just kind of live on the edge and go for it when making stuff.... not always the best approach, but it usually works for me :)

I should have centered the designs better, but one side of the lampshade was a little flat, so I drew on it versus the lamp looking a little funky shaped on the sides.

Boom. instantly more exciting. It's super simple, but made that bit of difference that we had hoped for.

Love your face and such,
Sara♥

The Beach!...and a Simple summer snack!

Hey there everybody! Today was such a gorgeous day here in New Jersey that we decided to go to the beach! :) It turned out to be such a fun adventure. Especially since we live just an hour away from the shoreline over here. How convenient! It seriously was like the perfect day for the beach, mid-80 degrees and sunshine all over the place. It's been so long since I've been to the ocean, so it was wonderful. It was also fantastic for Derek since it was his First time ever being to the ocean! I'm so excited that I got to share his first trip there with him. We got there a little earlier in the day to lay out and play in the waves, so it wasn't even that busy. We got a huge spot all to ourselves to stretch out and chill. Today was seriously what we've needed, considering the stressful weeks of moving and his work. Just a little mini-vacay for the two of us!

Well, how adorable :)

so peaceful

I also did a super duper easy (I mean seriously simple) tasty snack recipe thing yesterday. I just took a couple cups of Yoplait yogurt and made frozen yogurt dots for simple snackin'. I found the original directions on Pinterest. Here's the original link for her wonderful blog. http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/03/frozen-yogurt-dots.html 

You need:
mug/cup

plastic Ziploc or resealable bag
Yogurt- pick your favorite flavor :)
cookie sheet

and a freezer of course.

You just take a plastic Ziploc bag and open it up over a cup or mug. I chose my festive Christmas poinsettia mug for this. Fancy, huh? You only put one corner down into it and open up the bag over it. Make sure one bottom corner is sticking up out of the mug. Then you put all of the lovely yogurt in the cup, trying to keep it as neat as possible. Once you're done with that (I used two yogurt cups), you just close the bag and make sure you cut a tiny bit of that unused corner so that you can squeeze the yogurt onto a cookie sheet into dots. You're basically just making a little makeshift squeeze tube for the yogurt.

Then make sure to squeeze the yogurt into small dots (most of the dots I made were around one inch in diameter each) and Voila! Just toss them in the freezer for a few hours and you have frozen Yogurt dots. They're super tasty and have close to an ice cream texture when you eat them.

 

                                 

Oh, also to keep from them being frozen too badly, I would use like a newer cookie sheet and/or wax/parchment paper for these :) But the most important thing of all...Enjoy!!

      Love Your Face and such, Sara ♥

Scrapbooking Score/ Recipe

Hey guys! So, I was just browsing my facebook (cause I have such a social life..) and came across something on one of the online yardsale pages for near the Air Force Base. A lady was getting rid of all of this great quality scrapbooking and stamping stuff. Needless to say, this girl jumped on the opportunity for everything. It cost me like $20 and there's easily $100 worth of stuff in here, since a lot is Creative Memories and brands like that.

    I'm pretty pumped that I got it. I mean, there's some baby stuff in here, which Obviously won't be used for myself for a couple years, I'd say. Worth it though. I can make so many fun pages now for me and for others. All I have to really buy is the background paper if the ones I have don't work out. There was a little bit of love and wedding stuff in there, which rocks.

               

Some of my favorite things in this pack were the Vellum quote stacks with inspirations and love quotes. They are extremely cute. I may just make some designs to hang up around the apartment. So yeah, Here are some shots of all of this loveliness that I scored the other day.

I also made the baked potato wedges that I mentioned in an earlier blog. I just opted to go the simple way with seasoning salt instead though (plus I haven't gotten the chance go get more spices yet since we moved.) They turned out pretty well.

Baked Potato Wedges

Ingredients:
5 potatoes

1/4 cup of Olive Oil

1/8 cup of butter, melted

1 tablespoon Seasoning salt

1. Preheat the Oven to 425 degrees.
2. Cut the potatoes length-wise into 6 pieces 

3. Mix the olive oil, butter, and seasoning salt in a bowl.

4. Lightly dip wedges into bowl (make sure they aren't completely dripping afterward), 

    then set them in a single layer on a baking sheet (or two if necessary). 

5. Let bake for 20-25 minutes while sitting on sliced side (ovens may vary), 

    then turn each wedge over to other sliced side and then bake for about 20 more minutes,

    sprinkling more seasoning salt as/if desired. (I added more so they weren't really bland.)
     (make sure to watch them so they don't over bake)
6.Let cool and enjoy! :)

Tip: you can also add a dash of garlic salt or salt with black or cracked pepper too for an extra little taste.

TIp 2: You can also just baste the potatoes versus dipping them in the mix if you don't want  
          quite as crunchy of an outer part

right after being sliced

Yummy!

 Love your face, 

Sara ♥

Finished a Project!

Hey again. So, we've been getting settled in our cozy apartment the past week or so, so it's been crazy. You guys have already seen the kitchen , but I'll show more later on of the dining area and such. Pictures of our room will be up later on since we still have a lot to organize in there haha. I did get the bathroom partially decorated, so it looks pretty cute. 

Our Cute Little mirror and sink

Our Adorable Monogram Towels From
Missy and the gorgeous shower curtain from my mother-in-law.
They're awesome. :)

More Wedding gifts. From Kohl's, I believe.

Still trying to figure out what to put in the
 blank area, but I'll get it figured out. :)

Oh, and I also finally snapped a picture of the new sofa that we got, as well as our adorable itty bitty ottoman that I picked up for one dollar at a garage sale back in Indiana.

Also, Remember this guy?? Well I gave it a little TLC and made it a little more personal for us. Not a huge change, but enough that it works out a bit better.

I sanded down part of it to get rid of all of the chipping parts, and the bit of paint that had bubbled from when the prior owners used it. Then I repainted over the whole thing with a satin finish black paint so that it had a nice, even look. It took me a bit to decide how to paint the doors, but I finally figured it out. 

Also, the poor little handles had seen better days as well. I opted for just a little knob instead of the full handle so that the designs weren't covered up as much. Sorry I didn't get a close up of them. There were way cute little textures on each knob.

Done!

I'm rather pleased with the results. It turned out pretty well, though it wasn't a huge transition. It's a much better fit for our style. :)

Thanks for bearing with me and with all of the pictures that I put up this time.

♥ Sara