Pot Belly Bird has spring fever!!  This "Pretty and Pastel" medley includes these gorgeous colors and flowers that can only make you **think spring**!!

Each card features two birds sitting on a wire and comes with a coordinating envelope featuring a colored accent line.

I hope you found some inspiration in my first post about handmade home decor!  If you missed it, check it out here.

After decorating our master bathroom with four pieces of homemade artwork, the embarrassingly blank walls of our other bathroom have been really bothering me, so I finally took care of that a couple weeks ago with some fun artwork that really pops against the white and gray color scheme.

This coordinating pair uses some lovely patterned and textured papers for birds on a wire in gray frames.

​To create a third framed piece in the bathroom, another dictionary page formed the background (and yes, choosing which page was half the fun).  I used a simple mason jar rubber stamp and then cut flowers from colorful textured Japanese paper.

​Lastly, I created a wood block sign because I've been so inspired by all the wood signs I see on Pinterest and Instagram and at craft and art shows.  My husband used screws to artfully create a square out of two rectangles of scrap wood, then I painted around the state of Washington and got to practice hand lettering (um, my new obsession) the word "home."  This brightens a dark stairwell and makes me smile when I walk past it several times each day.

Thanks for checking out my latest handmade home decor!  Hope you found some inspiration in these photos!

There's something about decorating your home with artwork you create yourself that makes it feel more like, well, home.  Plus, you get to create exactly what you want and have the joy and self-satisfaction of creating something you get to admire every day.

In this 2-part series of posts, I'm going to share some of my latest homemade artwork that adorns the walls of our home.  First is our master bathroom, that we recently had remodeled and that I designed in shades of whites and grays.  So of course, I had to do some birds-on-a-wire art to tie it all together.  

I used dictionary pages as the background paper in two frames and for the birds and wire in another frame (inspired by vintage art I keep seeing in shops).  The fun part was choosing which dictionary pages to use.

A coordinating piece also hanging in the bathroom features the bicycle rubber stamp I used when I made my wedding thank-you cards.  Not surprisingly, I used the dictionary page with "love" for the background, and the torn edges give it a vintage feel.

Stay tuned for Part 2 and more homemade art!  

In our latest woodworking DIY endeavor, no, we did not perform any Macgyver-like stunts.

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​We did, however, use the jigsaw that we bought for this very same project 3 years ago. 

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See, we made one of these hanging DIY planters awhile ago when I first saw something like this at a stand at a craft fair and thought (as I usually do), "I could totally make that myself!"  So I went home and scoured the internet and found a tutorial on a blog that I printed that was about 10 pages long.  Soon after, we became the pround owners of a jigsaw.

Then we moved and decided the hanging planter would make a lovely farewell present to some friends, making it easier for us to not pack the planter and move it and also to give us a future project to make a new planter for ourselves.  

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​Well, here's our new planter!  Before-and-after photos are my favorite!

Now, you could probably google a tutorial that exists somewhere on the internet, or you could look at our photos and realize this project is quite simple and very customizable.  You cut some squares, you cut some circles, you drill 4 holes in each square.  Sounds easy peasy, right?
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We knotted our rope to an O-ring, then hung that from an S-hook which is dangling from an eye hook screwed into the ceiling (a task which required my husband to walk across the rafters of our attic for reasons I still don't understand).  Then you thread the rope through the holes in the wood squares, knot it underneath, and voila! 

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Plus, the variations are endless.  You want 4 or 5 planters instead of 3?  Do it.  Want to use mini pots instead?  Great.  Want to paint your pots the same exact same color as the accent wall below your chair rail?  Done.

Two quick things about the pots.  I put about an inch of river rock in the bottom of each rock, partly for weight but mostly so the dirt wouldn't fall out the drainage hole.  Also, I like to put some type of cactus or succulent in the bottom pot so it doesn't require much water and you don't have to worry about water leaking out.

Happy weekend woodworking!!!

I spend a lot of time on Pinterest.  An embarrassing amount of time.  I usually get fixated on particular ideas and search for them over and over and over (and over) until I decide exactly what new DIY project I need in my life (the current topic that I research at least once a day: "bullet journal," which I didn't even know was a thing before last week.  Before that, I obsessively searched for "outdoor holiday decor" and "DIY dog treats" and "DIY dog toys"--more on those another day).  

But I digress.  In this case, I decided our puppy needed (yes, needed) a cool wooden dog bowl stand, I showed my husband a photo from Pinterest, and voila!!

​Now I must admit being a bit underwhelmed when I searched "dog bowl stand DIY" on Pinterest...

​There were a few nuggets of inspiration here and there, but so many of them doubled as dog food storage and I don't know about your puppy, but ours can barely handle being on the same level of our house as her dog food let alone in the same room in the basement where it's stored.  So keeping the dog food under her actual bowl was a definite no-go.

​So after weeks (yes, weeks) of scouring Pinterest, letting the project percolate, and reaching the appropriate level of inspiration saturation, I showed a photo to my husband and announced to him that I'd like him to build a dog bowl stand.  Well, actually, I purchased the dog bowls for said stand first, then presented them to my husband as a nudge to, you know, actually make this project happen.

​Anyways, if I do say so myself, I am SUPER impressed by the finished project.  You could probably google some complicated instructions for something like this, or you could look at a photo like my husband did and just figure it out: some circles, some legs, some supporting crossbars, you get the jist. And possibly the best part was that there was some definite father-in-law/son-in-law garage bonding time over Thanksgiving weekend as they figured out how to make the stand.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

The holidays are around the corner!  Sending holiday cards is a timeless and thoughtful tradition that I just love.  Inspired by my mother, I have a particular box packed away with our holiday decorations that I love to unearth each year. . . in it, I've saved particular memories of Christmases past including previous holiday photos and cards that I've sent, plus every list of holiday card recipients that I've written to dating back to 2008.  I send about 30 Christmas cards every year, and every single one is handwritten, a long and newsy 'year-in-review' update about our lives.  A handful of cards go overseas--one to my husband's grandmother whom I've never met as well as several to friends in Japan from when I lived there a decade ago.  College friends, old co-workers, relatives close and far, I cherish the opportunity at this festive time of year to reconnect with loved  ones.

You know how some girls dream about their future wedding day and dress?  I'm not one of those girls.  Because I had neither a wedding dress nor a wedding day.  

​I'm the girl who dreamed about having a craft room when she grows up.  And sometimes dreams come true.

Hi there, it's me again!  I know, I know. . . it's been 28 days since my last blog post, and that's just totally lame.  But, well, life has been a little crazy lately.  Let me fill you in.

So, first things first: I picked up and moved.  From California to this relatively unknown but totally awesome gem of a place in what's called the Inland Northwest: Spokane, Washington.  The car was pretty much full to bursting on the approximately 1,035-mile journey. Yep, that's a tree in the front seat.  My ficus, to be exact.  It's a tree I've known longer than my husband, so naturally it took up some prime real estate in the cargo space.

​My mom and I LOVE to cook, and even more so, we love to cook together.  We're like a well-oiled machine in the kitchen: reading each other's minds, staying out of each other's ways, and more often than not, I'm the one making a mess and she's washing my dishes along the way (moms are the best!).  

So when my mom came to visit last weekend, we had a blast creating two delicious and easy dinners together.  The first was Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Cabbage from Real Simple.  It was one of those amazing one-roasting-pan dinners in which the meat and veggies cook together in the oven, and if you line the pan with foil, then clean-up is an absolute breeze.