fresh picked whimsy

summer blurrrrrr

Well, that went fast. Summer, what was your hurry? I thought we were having fun and stuff and then you had to go and run off...

there was a brand new firepit to enjoy...

and family fun at an Indians game...

a cousins visit to Indy...

and my first time meeting up with The Peach Truck...

the time we spent under water...

 and by the sea...

and swung by Georgia on our way home for brief, but quality time with my sister and brother in-law and nephews...

stopping to smell the flowers...

and getting up earrrrrrrrrrrly to watch the hot air balloon race out at the State Fair with my Katie...

a friend spied us on someone else's instagram feed {who I don't know!} that day, which was super funny!...

we loved the race so much, we decided to go back that night for the "glow"...

loved watching the balloons and loved watching sweet, young love grow between Riley and his girlfriend, Jen over the summer, too...

 we love you, summer! 

 Why can't winter go by that quickly?

Macaroni and Meatballs

This is the meal that we had every single Sunday night when I was growing up. {minus the wine} Yes, we call it macaroni and meatballs. We call all pasta 'macaroni'. We also call the tomato sauce 'gravy'. Most Italian families are divided on this.  They're either sauce people or gravy people.  And they're adamant about it.  It's not an east coast thing or a New York thing...it's a family thing.  It's how you were raised. And, I was raised on this gravy. And it's amazing.

My Mom is not Italian, but her Italian cooking is perfection.  Truly, everything she cooks is perfection. My grandmother taught her how to cook Italian when she married my Dad. 

I don't love to cook. It's not my favorite thing to do. But, I have always wanted to learn how to make my Mom's gravy.  It's the key to so many of our family favorites like lasagna, chicken parm, stuffed shells, etc...  Truth is I've always been intimidated by this dish, because it's made in a pressure cooker.  I mean, just the name "pressure cooker" makes me nervous.

But, finally, after all these years...I spent the day with my Mom and she taught me her ways.  Sorry, this isn't a DIY, step-by-step recipe blog post...there is NO recipe.  It's a lot of "a little of this" and "a little of that" and "stir it, watch it, taste it". 

She was super patient with me...I wrote everything she said and did down...and took a lot of pictures.  It's a process...a labor of love.  There's a few hours of prep work that goes into this.  She makes her meatballs from scratch first...they're heavenly!

The meatballs, along with sausages are the base of the gravy.

 But the real magic is in my mom. ♥

It was a fun and delicious day.  Then came the real challenge: to make it at my house, by myself, the next week.

I carefully followed all of her directions...

and made a few {okay, a lot} of phone calls to Mom.  I faced my fears of the dreaded pressure cooker...

and, success!

Mangia!

So, I won't be making it every Sunday, but it will definitely be on the menu at least once a month.

Thanks, Mom for helping me continue the tradition!  Love you! 

Vitamin Sea

 It's the fastest week of the year.  We count down the days leading up to it...and they go by at a snail's pace.  And then, BOOM! It's over. Gah! Take me back!!!! 

We spent last week in our happy place, Gulf Shores, Alabama. 

I've blogged about it many times before: like here, here and here.

This year we rented the most adorable beach house...the Lucky Dog

It was a dog-friendly rental and we would give it 2 paws up if you are looking for a place to take your family and pups to the beach!  It was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house and it was perfect!  There was a little fenced in backyard full of fun toys for them and less stress for us having to take them out to potty.

A little inside tour...

We had some stormy weather off and on during the week.  It would be super sunny with blue skies and then all of a sudden a wall of black clouds would swoop in. 

So, we would head back to the house for a little break and hang out on the screened porch and just watch the storm until it passed.  Griffin loved this hanging swing on the porch...

We all worked on this fun jigsaw puzzle and Sudoku, too...

The owners of this house have thought of everything.  There are games, cards, the kitchen is fully equipped with everything you could want and the drawer in the cocktail table in the family room was totally full of tons of issues of eye candy magazines.  I LOVED thumbing through them and daydreaming about our SOMEDAY beach house...

It was our first vacation with our brand new 21 year old.  She played bartender a lot. We brought our Nutri Bullet from home and it made fantastic frozen cocktails...

She was trying to style a pretty photo of her concoction...

I can't tell you how many photobomb shots she got before getting that one above...

Which takes us to the photos...oh, the photos.  We brought a selfie stick with us to GS.  Before we left on vacay, I posted our family beach portrait from our very first year that we stayed in Gulf Shores {2001}.  Griffin was just one year old!

We used the selfie stick and recreated this memorable picture...14 years later:

Of course, I'm trying to get our Christmas card photo and they are all a bunch of goofballs...

Me:  "can I get a nice shot of you kids with Daddy?"...

my turn...and I love it.

 Katie tried to get us to take a special family selfie of a selfie.  It was a #selfiefail...

then she took one with her brothers on the beach and it was awesome...

We loved bringing the dogs down to the beach at the end of the day each night, when it had cooled off and the sand wasn't so hot.  They loved it too...

the ocean turned pink from this delicious sunset...

On Thursday evening, we saw something we had never seen before in all our years going to the beach.

A shark!

He popped up right in front of us...thankfully we were not in the water! He was about 5 feet long and swimming in knee deep water.  KNEE DEEP!  Katie snapped those pictures.  I don't know how she did it...we were all so rattled by it.  Riley ran down the beach to some folks who were in the water in the shark's path to warn them.  The next day was our last beach day and sadly, we stayed out of the water all day.  But, we sure counted our blessings. 

 Yet another fabulous beach week is in the books.  We're already daydreaming about next year!  

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Gosh, i hope you can come! I promise to put you in the holiday spirit with all kinds of holiday goodness and cheer! xo

 

the yummiest

Finally getting around to blogging about our first ever fall open studio... the Whimsy Studios Yummy October Pop Up Shop!  It was amazing!!!

As i told you before, i had some special guests join me for this sale.  We had originally planned to hold this event under white tents in my front yard and then spill into the studio.  Mother Nature had other plans and gave us a rainy, blustery, cold weekend.  So, plan B...we squeezed it all into the studio.  When we first brought it all in to begin staging, we were overwhelmed, but somehow, it just fell into place perfectly and the studio was transformed into this cozy, magical shop. 

Let me show you around...

My friend and neighbor Stacey, of The Rusty Toolbox brought all of the fun vintage stuff and my sister Susan, of The Gingham Chair brought the re-loved painted furniture.  We had so much fun doing this   sale together.  It was sweet having co-workers for a change!

My sweet Katie and her adorable roommates surprised me and drove down from school just for a few hours.  Those crazy kids made my day!

Susan and I really missed our sister Kim, who lives in Georgia.  Couldn't resist taking a family selfie "with her" when my parents stopped by...

These striped monogram pumpkins were the surprise hit of the day for me.  More on those tomorrow...

Thank you, so much to everyone who came out to support us!  I loved meeting so many new people.  It really was a blast! It was a huge success and we will do it again!  Next up for me is my Holiday Open Studio, the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Susan and Stacey will be participating in the Holiday Market on Cherry Tree in Noblesville on November 8th. 

It will be November at the end of this week, so it's time to get crack-a-lackin'!

Thank You, friends!!!!

staying in is the new going out

{print available in the shop}

Maybe I'm showing my age, but i love to stay home.  Yup, that's right, i'm a homebody.  Although i might have to make another print; only this time it would be a wine glass instead of a cocoa mug.  just sayin'...

Tis the season to snuggle, right?  Me and the Mr. are pros.

Snuggle on, my friends.

xo

Drama in the garden

I gave my clay pots a sassy make over...

and now, all the other flowers are green with envy...

who knew flowers could be so cheeky!  Simmer down ladies...

it's all about mom

 i had a lovely Mother's Day, how about you?  i spent the weekend planting flowers and getting our yard all prettied up. 

Everyone pitches in and helps Mom...spreading mulch, cutting in flower beds and power washing the deck and nobody complains...happy Mom's Day to me!  i look forward to this weekend all winter long! 

Katie came home from school.  She's out for summer!  The boys only have 3 weeks of school left and we are gearing up for a graduation party, too.  Lots going on around here!

Aside from the yard work help, my kiddos know the way to my heart is something handmade...

Riley made this sign and set his alarm for super early Sunday morning so he could hang it up on the front porch.  He was so bummed to discover it had rained overnight and everything was wet.  So, he hung it over the fireplace, instead.  ♥

Katie made these cuties...

I made something homemade for my Mama, too.  I was inspired by this on Pinterest. 

Those are all of her grandbabies...

Katie, Riley & Luke

Griffin & Ben

Sam, Megan & Cole

It was a pretty simple DIY

• I searched high and low for flower pots that were smooth without a lip and finally settled on these simple paint cans from Lowe's. I think they were $2.99 each. 
• They were silver metal and i simply spray primed and painted each one. 
• My hubs drilled 3 smallish holes in the bottom of each one for drainage.
• I asked my sisters to send me face pics of the kids and asked them to fill the frame with their faces.  I had the pics printed at CVS and cut them out. 
• I trimmed the top of their heads off below their hairline
• I applied mod podge to the surface to adhere the picture to the pot and allowed it to dry. 
• Then, i covered the picture and entire pot with mod podge, using horizontal strokes around the pot.  Again, allow to dry thoroughly. 
• I sprayed them with an acrylic clear coat.  Dry.
• I filled them with potting soil and succulents. 

My Mom has a VERY green thumb and loved these little additions to her porch and gardens.

Happy Mother's Day to my beautiful mom... (i have always loved this picture of her!)

and to Mark's Mom in heaven...we sure missed celebrating you yesterday.

to mommies everywhere...you are awesome!

My friend shared this with me yesterday.  So cute...and true.

 

tender mercies: feathers

Thank you for your kind messages and prayers for my family.  They have meant so much. 

My faith teaches me that God is always with us.  I believe that with all of my heart.  Throughout this very difficult time for my family, we have also experienced some wonderful things.  These little wonderful moments, which are seemingly to us, magical.  But they are in fact, not magical at all.  I know that they can only be little tender mercies from God.  They have comforted us and given us hope and because of that, i thought i would share them with you. 

Feathers

Our dogs love to sleep on our bed. 

One day in December, i was scratching Sunny's belly while he was lying on our bed.  i must've hit the sweet spot for him because i really got his leg going.  So much so that his paw and nails ripped a hole through the cover of our down comforter.  Feathers were flying everywhere!  Truth be told, the comforter was about 10 years old and had worn pretty thin.  It didn't help that the duvet cover was in the wash and i just had a light blanket over it.  Like i said, feathers everywhere!

Well, in the chaos of the holiday and my mother-in-law's decline, i didn't have time to replace the comforter and because i don't know how to sew, my engineer hubby duct taped the hole.  It was very hillbilly, but we put a cover over it and hoped to just make it through Christmas that way. 

Nevertheless, feathers made their way all over our house.  Little, tiny, fluffy feathers.  I would vacuum and then they were back an hour later.  They were driving me crazy.

And then one day while looking at Pinterest, i saw this quote, which i had never seen before...

 {illustration by Jane Lee Logan}

To be honest, the first time i read it, i didn't give it much thought at all.  Then i saw it a second time later in the day.  It kind of felt like someone hit me over the head.  I felt like it was a message straight from Heaven. 

And it made me so very happy. 

I understand that there is a perfectly logical explaination of why the comforter ripped and why i'm finding feathers all over my house.  It's the timing of it all that seems to be Divine to me.

a little tender mercy when we needed it most.  i'm so thankful for it.

i'll have more to share...soon.

{new print in the shop} 

Secret pumpkins

It's a little fun tradition between myself and three of my friends.  I paint pumpkins and deliver them on their doorsteps "on the down low".  This year i made them for my mom and sister, too. {wish so badly i could've put one on my other sister's porch.  Alas, a 9 hour drive for a secret pumpkin delivery seems a bit extreme :( } 

We live in a town with TONS of roundabouts.  Roundabouts and not secured pumpkins = a big fat mess!  Secure your pumpkins!!!!

One of these friends is a HUGE lover of the color pink...

You can make these, too.  It's simple acrylic paint.  i didn't even mask out the stripes...i think they are cuter with wonky-ish stripes.  if you can't draw the black shape, a simple circle or oval would be equally cute.  i hand lettered the monograms and "boo!", but you could easily stencil them on.  Top it off with a gingham ribbon and a little tag.  Done! 

*keep in mind...These painted pumpkins don't like to get wet or frozen.  You'll want to keep them indoors or on a covered porch.  I bring mine in and out according to the weather.

this was last year's secret pumpkin delivery...

Give it a try! It's easier than you think!