enJOY it

november : currently.

November 20, 2013

sharing a link to this article with all my new-mama-to-be friends.

appreciating our oddly warm November weather.

eating Summer's fantastic chicken chili recipe.

watching the stack of books on my nightstand grow thanks to your recommendations.

loving season nine of How I Met Your Mother – they seem to be going out in high-style.

planning our Thanksgiving meal.

still searching for the perfect dessert recipe.

walking on our new office floor (update coming soon!).

enjoying this "everyday icons" interview series.

ordering our Christmas cards.

wanting bake some of my favorite breads.

buying apples by the bushel.

playing on the ground with Ellerie.

drinking tea again – hooray!

marveling at the crazy arm workout that comes with carrying a kiddo around.

shopping for hanging planters for the office.

working on my lesson plan for the Big Picture Play! event.

clearing my closet down to the bare bones.

looking forward to a visit from my dad next weekend – we've got office storage to build.

celebrating five months of Ellerie today.

wishing you a happy Wednesday.
five minute project / message on a mirror.

November 19, 2013

A tiled floor that says "you look good" has been making the rounds on Pinterest lately. It's rad and reminds me of a hotel we stayed at once in San Francisco that had the same message on the bathroom mirrors. I wish I could do that, I thought and then realized that I totally could in a much less permanent and inexpensive way.

Letter stickers on a mirror! So simple! So unoriginal! But also so easy and fun.

I used Kelly Purkey for Simon Stamp white letter stickers and wrote one of my favorite phrases that I repeat at least 15 times a day to Ellerie. I stuck it on the mirror of her room at her height. She can't read it (obviously) but I can and someday she'll get it.

This is seriously the easiest project ever. Three minutes, tops. The trick is figuring out what you want to say (and cleaning your mirror first – a step I clearly skipped).

See the first five minute project here and I promise I have not forgotten about this feature. I have just realized you can't go to the five minute projects. You have to wait for them to come to you.
i love november.

November 18, 2013

west elm bentwood pendant lamps (I still love ours so much and they're on sale through the end of today!), anthropologie felted garland (sold out…and worth a DIY attempt for sure), fab.com rectangle pillow, tieks ballet flats (curious if these are worth the investment), three potato four wooden us sign, nate berkus for target mirror.

'Tis nearly the season for holiday shopping which somehow always makes my wishlist grow longer. We're currently figuring out lighting for the office and while on the hunt I saw that my bentwood pendant lamp is 20% off. I seriously love this lamp and am tempted to just buy another (I won't though). Also, that garland is perfection. I know this will be a reasonable DIY, I just need the felt and to figure out if the base should be wire or string. I'll keep you posted
project life 2013 : week 43.

November 17, 2013

It's week forty-three and I am behind on spreads AND behind on sharing, but I'm going to finish up the year.

click the photos to enlarge for a somewhat clearer image.

Week of : October 21 – October 27.

What happened this week? We were home and then Ellerie and I flew up to Sacramento for a few days and I attended a wedding in Napa.

Anything special in the spread? Once again I tucked a wedding invitation into a 5×7 spread (and added our photobooth strip too).

Techniques this week : I continue to play with color schemes…black, white and gray this week. The 3×4 cards came from the Sunshine and Midnight kits plus Meredith Carty and my 2014 calendar.

Overall thoughts : Once my office is put back together I am going to crank out the past few weeks and then finish up 2013…and then figure out what I want to do to properly document 2014. I'll keep you posted.

Ratio of iPhone photos to "real camera" photos : 5 to 4.

Ratio of photos taken by Elise to photos taken by Paul : 6 to 1 to 2 by other folks.

Supplies used : Seafoam core kit, Midnight core kit, Sunshine Core kit, Kelly Purkey (letter stickers), Meredith Carty (adventure card) Elise Joy stamps, Elise Joy photo calendar, Scrapbook and More flair badge.

Tools used : Design A pocket pages, Fiskars corner rounder, Zig Millenium pen, Rotatrim paper trimmer, Office Depot date stamp, staz-on ink. All photos were printed at home on my HP Photosmart 2575 printer on Office Depot semi-gloss photo paper.

Project Life is a memory-keeping system created by Becky Higgins. I use photos, text and stuff to document our life weekly. You can see all the posts from 2012 here and 2013 here. Do you have a question about how I am tackling this project (including anything about the photos)? Check here.
around here.

November 15, 2013

It was a good week. Thanks to Paul having Monday off, it seemed to fly. (We’re paying for it though – he’s working all day tomorrow.) If all goes as planned, office floor installation wraps up today. We ended up going with travertine instead of wood because a) it matches the rest of the house and b) I was having serious anxiety about finding a wood floor that didn’t compete with the wood ceiling. I think this is going to be a good fit and will help keep the space light and fresh. I can’t wait to get re-situated and make this office work both in form and function. Having my stuff spread throughout the house is not ideal.

Fun news: I am going to be a monthly contributor on the new Daily Epiphanie blog. I’ll be sharing DIY photo projects and the first one – modern silhouettes – went live yesterday. I can already tell this is going to be a fun and challenging gig.

Next for me is another 600 or 700 rounds of re-stacking Ellerie’s rainbow tower, getting the office put back together and quilting up a Christmas tree skirt. We’ve had a tree 5 out of the last 6 years and have never had a tree skirt. It’s time to get with the program.

Have a great weekend.
DIY wooden candle holder.

November 13, 2013

So remember when I shared this awesome candle holder from A Subtle Revelry?

I finally made my own version. I'm a little annoyed at myself that it took so long, this was easier than I thought it would be. My "challenge" was that I wanted the candles to be a bit larger than normal birthday candles and I wasn't sure where to find them…until Target got their holiday stuff out. They're selling multi-colored Menorah candles this year that were exactly the size I envisioned.

I found a 3×3 by 36 inch piece of poplar at Lowe's that worked perfectly for our long table. I drilled into it with the largest drill bit we had and then stained it. My candles are a bit bigger than the holes I created, but since they're soft wax, it wasn't that hard to twist them into place.

What will I do with this candle holder, you ask? My plan is to bring it out with multi-colored candles for birthday dinners (I love that I get to make up all sorts of things now and Ellerie will just think they're tradition – done this way since the beginning of time) and maybe stick some white candles in there for holiday feasts.

I have no idea why I was so obsessed with completing this project, but I just love it.

And again… project inspiration came from this awesome post on A Subtle Revelry.
your story retreat reminder.

November 12, 2013

I mentioned this briefly last week, but I am so excited to be teaching with Liz Lamoreux and Kelly Barton at the Your Story Retreat up in Gearhart, Oregon on March 26-30. You can read more about the retreat here. This is something Liz and I have talked about for awhile and I am truly looking forward to joining this team and sharing in the experience. Sign ups will open on this page at 7am PST tomorrow morning (Wednesday 11/13).
autumn book report.

November 12, 2013

It's finally time. I have gotten enough books read this season that I am able to share the best of them here.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed – this one I saw getting mentioned over and over on the blogs and IG (do you notice books tend to do that? Like Night Circus and Gone Girl? And of course Bossypants.). It took me awhile to get in to, but once I was in, I was so in. For me, it's hard to not draw the comparison between this book and Eat, Pray, Love (which I tremendously enjoyed my first year out of college). Both are told by women who experienced loss and heartbreak, decided to ambitiously travel and met crazy characters along the way. This was gritty at some times and sweet at others and honestly funny. I laughed at the author's ability to laugh at herself. And this book really, really, really made me want to go hiking.

Still Life by Louise Penny – an enjoyable fiction mystery. Sometimes, I forget that I really love mystery books. I think this got added to my queue because the author recently published another and it's on the bestseller list (therefore there is a long wait) and so I decided to read something else from her. The characters were fun and the story was well organized. I didn't know "whodunit" until it was revealed, and it made sense when it was. I'll probably read a few more of these from her (it seems they all feature the same detective).

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver – sometimes you read the right book at the right time and everything clicks. This was that book for me. I loved it. It's on my top five chart of books, I think (though just thinking about having to pick a top five list makes me anxious). I'm a big Kingsolver fan (not from high school when we had to read Pigs in Heaven but from last year when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle). I like how she weaves her real life with her fiction (although presumably many authors do this, I just don't read their fiction and their memoirs). It's told from the point of view of three characters in the same small farm town and the way their stories were interwoven was creative and (for me) unexpected. I don't know, it took me a bit to get into it, but I just loved this book. I was sad when it ended.

I Feel Bad about My Neck by Nora Ephron – I've been hearing good things about this short (very short – I devoured it in an evening) memoir. Then I saw it on this list of laugh out loud books and had to add it to my library queue. It was so good. Easy to read (again – devoured in a night) and lighthearted, but also incredibly smart. I didn't actually emit laughter out loud. But my face broke into a grin at least six times. I made Paul listen to paragraphs at least twice. Every chapter was on point but her thoughts on parenting and reading really nailed it for me. My favorite quote relates to reading a great book… "Days pass as I savor every word. Each minute I spend away from the book pretending to be interested in everyday life is a misery."

I'm currently reading Pilgrims, short stories by Elizabeth Gilbert and then I think next for me is The Woman in White, recommended by Nora herself and a free download for the kindle or kindle app. For past book reports from me check here, here, and here.

What's on your nightstand? I would love to hear. (And be sure to check back on this post, the comments section is always full of outstanding book recommendations.)

*links throughout are affiliate, though I highly recommend checking these out at your local library. I am the biggest library convert there ever was.
joy woven wall hanging.

November 11, 2013

Yes. I know.

It's a little early to start blogging Christmas projects. Please know that I have no plans to bypass Thanksgiving (it's my favorite holiday!), but the thing about DIY Christmas projects is that if I wait until December to share them, there's a good chance they are not actually helpful to try for the upcoming season.

Plus, I figure this same project could work with any short word – it certainly doesn't have to be holiday-themed.

I have really wanted to experiment more with woven projects since I have been following @houseofmaryanne on Instagram. She does phenomenal things with her weaving and I am obsessed with her work. I noticed that she does a lot of shape pieces instead of just weaving a row at a time (like I did for this project).

I figured if you could weave shapes, you could weave letters and ta-da…the JOY idea was born. Last time I tried weaving, I built my own "loom" out of scrap wood and nails (and then took it apart before we moved). I assumed I would have to do the same thing until I found this loom kit while wandering Jo-anns with Ellerie (a favorite past-time for us both). I felt a little bit like Gob in Arrested Development – "I didn't know this sort of technology existed!" – and purchased right away.

I strung the loom with bakers twine and then worked my way down.

I wove the letters one at a time with white chunky yarn and then built the red portion around each letter.

Keeping the letters nice and bold was key for this project (as was letting go of "perfection").

Mindless projects where you quickly see your progress are my absolute favorite and I am so happy with how this turned out. Sometimes I make holiday crafts and know while they are fun, they probably will not be around in a few years. This one (much like my autumn wreath and the table runner I made for the quilt eCourse) I know I will be thrilled to pull out again and again.
project life 2013 : week 42.

November 10, 2013

It's week forty-two and I'm running out of steam, but I still love this project.

click the photo to enlarge for a somewhat clearer image.

Week of : October 14 – October 20.

What happened this week? We were home. Ellerie turned four months old.

Anything special in the spread? I painted E's foot with craft paint and stamped it on a card to show her stats from her 4 month appointment.

Techniques this week : I stamped the same stamp over and over again to create a pattern. That's not new, but I always like the affect.

Overall thoughts : My copy of the Sunshine kit came and I love how Seafoam, Midnight and Sunshine all fit together so well.

Ratio of iPhone photos to "real camera" photos : 3 to 7.

Ratio of photos taken by Elise to photos taken by Paul : 9 to 1.

Supplies used : Seafoam core kit, Midnight core kit, Sunshine Core kit, Freckled Fawn wood chip arrow, Kelly Purkey Project Life kit (stickers), Elise Joy stamp, Scrapbook and More flair badge.

Tools used : Design A pocket pages, Fiskars corner rounder, Zig Millenium pen, Rotatrim paper trimmer, Office Depot date stamp, staz-on ink. All photos were printed at home on my HP Photosmart 2575 printer on Office Depot semi-gloss photo paper.

Project Life is a memory-keeping system created by Becky Higgins. I use photos, text and stuff to document our life weekly. You can see all the posts from 2012 here and 2013 here. Do you have a question about how I am tackling this project (including anything about the photos)? Check here.