Sunday, October 10, 2010

What to do for two??

In a few short weeks my little baby will be two... I can hardly believe it...

I have been really busy with the Preppie Peonie orders but wanted to show you guys my inspiration for AC's birthday invitation.


Can't wait to show you how they turn out...

With my day off tomorrow I hope to catch up on some blogging, painting the screenporch,
finish out baby's halloween costume, ya know that kinda stuff.

Oh and if you have a free moment... say a prayer for my husband. 

At 8 am he goes to sit for the first portion of the CPA exam.

I am praying he is able to have clarity, and focus, and take each question one at a time.

Hope each of you have a great start to your week!!


Saturday, October 2, 2010

.PreppiePeonie.

Okay..... time for me to reveal what I have been up to lately.....

You all know I have a degree in Fashion Design....

You all know in June I became pre-school teacher/ SAHM....

But, did you know I also began sewing for people... other than just the Greek letter shirts?

well.... after a very busy summer behind a 1990 Bernina, Preppie Peonie has become a full time business venture....

In July I used B's Blog Boutique to help us in our re-branding process.

Here is our new look.
And in August I purchased a gently used INCREDIBLE embroidery machine!!
{can't wait to share those projects with yall}

I have been really busy this week gearing up for our first fall trunk show at the Phi Mu house.

Tomorrow is the big day and I can't wait to share how it goes...

If you visit the Page at the top of the screen you can see some of our previous work!!

We also make earrings, and closer to christmas plan on selling some paintings and wooden signs!!

Hope to host some giveaways in the near future.

On Preppie Peonie's page we have some tutorials we will be sharing, introducing you to some incredible designers, and showing you some great ways of how to "style" your home on little to no budget!!

Follow us on twitter: 
@preppiepeonie

"like" us on facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Preppie-Peonie/131621403258?v=wall&ref=ts

and follow our blog:
http://preppiepeonie.blogspot.com

Want a custom item?? email us... 
@ preppiepeonie@yahoo.com

or you can shop our items on etsy...
http://www.etsy.com/shop/preppiepeonie

Hope you all are having a wonderful weekend. 


Thursday, September 23, 2010

Is it October yet??


First thing first... grab my wreath I purchased last year at a craft show in Birmingham and devise a way to hang it on my new front door.
ok... check..
now to make my ferns look more substantial I purchased two pots from Lowes and placed the ferns on top... and of course I picked up some pumpkins.


My pumpkin on the right was purchased at Bella Vita.

Now... indoors...

Last year I was given a $15.00 budget and free reign to design whatever. 

First thing i did was go to Joann's and buy the cinnamon witches broom and ran over to mom's to raid her ribbon stash. 

All that was done was the hot glue gun was heated up and i looped the ribbon and glued it on...

Easy peasy lemon squeezy....

The circles are just pipe cleaners woven together and intertwined into garland.

I printed label's off of Love Manor's Flickr stream and just Modpodged them onto the jars I bought at Joann's.

Think I like Joann's cause... I DO!!

Oh... and don't forget to decopage the edges!! gives it the authentic look.

Here are the label's used for my Poison jar and the Werewolf's Fur. CLICK HERE.

Then I took some green food coloring, filled the jar with water and stuck some eye ball bubble containers into the jar.
There was a little bit of soap left over from cleaning the jar out last year and the bubbles added just the right amount of spooky effect to make this look like a real poison. haha.



On to the next bit.. I wanted to complete a vignette for our dining room. 

This is what we had to start with....
So I gathered a little of this and a little of that and here is what I came up with for the sterling/silverware cart.



Now.. has anyone ever see the vintage halloween boxes stores have??
They are precious but upwards of $85.00 for a paper mache box and glitter... I think not. 


Used this little guy as my inspiration... bought some 89 c. craft paint and went to town.

this guy was $4.50 at our local Schunck's grocery.



Then I found these 3 boxes out in the guest house.


I used craft paint and painted all components flat black.
Clearly my dots and free handing skills were not so hot so I ran to Michael's for reinforcements. i.e. paint pens and some silver glitter..... Then I found this AHmazing ribbon.....

I completed one box at a time and some looks more modern... That is until I found these incredible images and the vision started to emerge...

Then I downloaded the Circus font from dafont.com
Went into word and spelled out Happy Halloween
used some resume paper I have lying around, cut out and modge podged it on.



In the end a little glitter, and lots of dots later, here is the completed look.... soooo in love with this guy.





And all three layers stacked together....



The table was missing something so, again i headed to google and searched spooky silhouettes...

After what seemed 37 pages of results I found a link to a pdf containing these wonderful silhouettes...





Well the child was by far my favorite so I used an old picture frame and printed her out and added her to my entry table.





Hope each of you are enjoying decorating for fall as much as I have... 

Check back and see what else I do to complete my halloween decor around the home. 

I am linking up to the fall festival at This Blessed Nest

http://thisblessednest.blogspot.com/2010/09/fall-festival-week-4.html

Monday, September 20, 2010

Kitchen Inspiration.

Now the time has come to move on to the next room in the house.

THE KITCHEN!!!
I have been wanting to work on this room since we looked at the home almost 2 years ago!!!

Here is a picture of the main source of inspiration.
We have a single window in the dining area and I have already purchased the fabric for the cafe curtains. 
This is it. 


For the bench it will be white and the fabric for the cushion will be a flax linen.


we will add a heavy coat of scotch guard to ward off little bit's messes.

For the wall most of the bench seating we will do a tufted headboard in a subtle houndstooth.

Now on to some technical aspects....
The light over our table has had an electrical short and desipite our efforts to reconstruct the wiring and rework it about 4 times we have come to the conclusion there is too much voltage being drawn and we need a lower voltage light. 

Here we have decided to use a Ballard pendant light. 


I really like the "French Script" on this shade and we haven't decided yet if it will remain solid linen or possess this script. 

Our countertops are the faux granite in the darker coloring and since its impractical for us to replace countertops; (due to the short amnt of time we actually plan on living here) they will remain. 



The cabinets are already white and will remain so, for the hardware I am wanting either of these



For the backsplash we know we want the white ceramic subway tiles hung borizontally. 
I like this picture for showcasing it with a trim and this is being considered for around the outline of the cooktop to add some visual interest.

For upper cabinets, we are wanting to replace just these (leave the bottom) and put in window cabinets.

Here are several images showcasing this look with the darker countertops.


This image below reminds me most of my kitchen and hopefully with lighter walls and white trim and cabinets we can maintain and light and airy feel.

And for the fridge.....
It's my parents old fridge, we painted it black before we moved in and now i want it to look stainless.
This product looks very promising.... 


I will let you know how it goes. 

And for the artwork over the dining area we are leaning towards a collection of very basic botanical prints.



Okay that is all we have for now. We are toying with some other ideas and would love your feedback and comments. 

Thursday, September 16, 2010

i.love.my.job

howdy folks....

how's the week treated ya??

hopefully not to shabby.....

Have a funny story to share....

It's about one of my kids... 

See back in June i prayed a very very scary prayer with my husband one thursday night. 

I prayed the lord would tell me if i needed to quit my job the next day and where to head to next??

well... the lord answered in a big way, by 4:15 that afternoon i had been laid off (with several others) and little did i know how much of an answered prayer/blessing it would be. 

you see, while i worked there i enjoyed my co-workers, but i LONGED for craft time.

I often went to work exhausted and sleepy because i stayed up late trying to do something.... anything to feed my desire to create.

Well within 2 short weeks of being laid-off, the lord cracked open a creeky small window behind my closed door and began to whisper ever.so.softly his plan for me.

Current plan that is....

{sidenote: I have ALWAYS been a babysitter, my brother and i are 7 yrs. apart and who needed dolls when you had your own baby?? then in highschool i was given the rare and wonderful opportunity to nanny for a family in the summers and almost every weekend. To this day these children have molded me into the person i now am. Those precious brown eyes of 3 little boys and one little girl always full of adventure and memories i now daily reflect on. The oldest, one of the smartest most curious children you will ever meet, with a heart of gold (like his mommy) always wanting to read and absorb as much as he could; and the twins, oh the twins, how they loved their Dora, and turkey and apples baby food. Spending time with them over those years in high school and even college, (when baby sister was born).... i knew i could handle childcare. You see the lord had been preparing me for this, slowly but surely over time. I was being "trained" so to speak to teach preschoolers.}

I went to the school where lil' bit goes to and asked if they needed anyone to sub?? Well they did, AND that 4 of the teachers (who had been there for about 5 yrs.) were all leaving at once. 

Well WHOLY GUACAMOLE!! sounds like the good ole lordy to me....

Here i am now, teaching 3 yr olds..... going into our second month of school I have learned alot.

For example.... did you know if you give ten 3 yr olds too much free time they get unbelievably out of control roudy??

And, if you pull out playdoh they all go into precious little cheribs learning mode and will melt your heart in an instant??

well it happens....

this leads me to wednesday....

it was a normal day, everyone did well, even our non-english speaking vietnemiese child didn't cry and was happy. teacher (me) was happy, teacher anna(other teacher) was happy, we were tired but happy. 

Well 2:15 came around and we were making sure everyone was clean, pottied, etc. before mommies arrived. Our sweet little soft spoken double named child's mommy came, we were talking the usual, "how was she, did she eat lunch, yada yada" Mom opens the half-door for double named cutie to leave and our very precocious full-of-life blonde-headed bowl cut (the cute know it all type) stepped up to the door and said "bye double name" she said good bye as well and began to leave classroom.

boy grabs girl by arm and gives a heart-felt hug, she smiles says good bye again... then boy passionately grabs girl smacks a big ole kiss on her cheek. Teacher (me) gasps, mom gasps, girl blushes and runs out of room... boy starts making the awww shucks face and looks up at me and says....

"what??" in the most innocent honest face you have ever seen.....

That my friends, is why i love teaching three year olds. 

And tomorrow, we will talk about loving our friends.... with boundaries of course...


Then we will make homemade playdough!!

Any pointers?? this is make on the oven kind.. Is there a no bake kind?

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Nurseries

okay okay... don't freak....
NO WE AREN'T EXPECTING.

However, a sweet friend of mine is, and with her in mind i have found some pretty stinkin' cute rooms that have me wanting to decorate for another little one.

in a couple of years that is....


this cross collection is adoreable...


I believe i found these images at decorista, and pink wallpaper. it's been about a month or so that i found these and forgot to list where from. soo sorry

PS. Have you noticed our new look?? I am trying to FINALLY come up with a almost year round cohesive look. Hope you enjoy, and check back i should be adding more new elements in the days to come. 

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Detergent

Here is the link as promised to my previous post on detergent. 

Enjoy!!

And if  you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

22 months.

No one told me how once your child hits 18 months old they start changing 
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY

Lil' bit is now talking up a storm... consisting of but not limited to...

  • i want that
  • uppie ousi (puppy outside?)
  • weeezzzz (please)
  • i need to potty!!( yippee, that happened this weekend, so far so good)
  • calling people by name; jaxsie, gangy (grammy) poppy, dad, nick, still nothing for ainslie yet and haven't heard her say mimi or papaw but we are getting there... oh.. and mommy is a 5,000 an hour word.
  • i can do it
  • where's my baby?
  • watch arnie? (watch barney)
  • gullah gullah (gullah gullah on nick jr)
  • hey there
  • oh dear...
  • lordy
  • buh bye
Here are a few pictures of her this past weekend.
the infamous "oh my" face


cheese!!!
could anything more describe a 22 month old??
this is her questioning face. 
cracks. me. up!!

notice the sneak peek of the screened in porch...
as you can see we have begun painting, filled in hot tub and sanded everything else.

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day.