Five on Friday

Happy Friday Everyone!!! Sorry about the lack of posts this week, our church was having VBS and I had rehearsals as well as some other responsibilities! I hope you all had a great week, and I'm sure you're ready for the weekend!

This past Sunday was my birthday, so as my Five on Friday I'm going to share 5 of my favorite presents! I loved everything I got from very dear friends and family, but there are always those things that you're not sure how you lived without them before! These are in no particular order.

1) Boxwood Wreath - you may remember me mentioning a DIY boxwood wreath here. This was a placeholder while I could find an inexpensive one, or properly make one that would stay preserved. Well my wonderful husband had a crafty friend of ours make this one for me! I love it, it's real boxwood, and it's so full and beautiful!

2) Essie "Haute in the Heat" - a friend got me this in a box of goodies! This is the perfect summer color. Once it's on it is this really deep fuchsia? almost red, but just pink enough!

3) Garden Stool - ok so my brother got me some stuff from Ross with the permission to return it if I wanted something else. So I technically got this myself, but I didn't have to pay for it which is always awesome! I've seen these garden stools at thrift stores for $100+ so I was pretty pumped when this one was there for only $29.99!!!

4) White Bowl - my wonderful husband knows how much I LOVE white dishes! I'm thinking for when I'm not using this to serve I'll get some beautiful hydrangeas to put in it!

5) Gold & Leather Necklace - a friend got me this from Forever 21, and I love it! I probably wouldn't have gotten it for myself, but I think it'll be one of those necklaces you can pair with anything! 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! I am linking up with Lauren Elizabeth, and Meet @ the Barre!

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Five on Friday

Well another week has gone by! I'm so excited about this weekend because this Sunday is my birthday! Unfortunately this is going to be a really busy weekend for us. Our youth group is running a concession stand at a local auction to raise money for summer camp on Saturday, and then afterwards a lot of the teens, and my husband will be running through our VBS skit. Sunday will be decorating day for VBS. You can't really skip any of that that when you're in charge of crafts, and your husband's the VBS director and Youth Pastor! I am so thankful for our church and am at least thankful that I'll be able to spend my birthday surrounded by a loving church family!   Here are some of the highlights from this past week and excitement about what's to come!

1) Father's Day - My parents and grandparents along with my brother were able to come up to my house for Father's Day, we were able to cook for them, and enjoy it at our new dining room table! I hate that we didn't get a picture together, but it was so good to have everyone together!

2) Birthday Shirt - Ok so it's not like every birthday I go out and buy a new outfit or shirt, but it's a good excuse when you see something adorable that you have to have! I had a few returns to make to Marshall's on Wednesday so I just took a quick browse to see if there was anything I couldn't live without. Then I saw this beautiful shirt!! Seriously, it's a button up, has ruffles, there's just enough bling, and it's chambray. What more could you ask for?! Since my birthday is on a Sunday, I don't even need an excuse to dress up. This shirt is going to be adorable tucked into a burgundy pencil skirt I have! Now I just have to decide on which shoes. . .

3) Elderberry's - Every once in a while I get to go pick up brochures when my department orders some. I always love it mainly because I get to leave the office and take an extra long lunch! The print shop is also close to where one of my best friends works and an Elderberry's! If you live in the Roanoke/Blacksburg area of Virginia you should definitely check this place out! Amazing wraps, delicious smoothies, and it's always decorated in bright blues and purples!

4) Birchbox - I got my 2nd Birchbox in and it was pretty good. You can check out my full review here!

5)My Birthday Weekend Begins in about 8 hours!!!

I'm linking up with Lauren Elizabeth and Hello! Happiness!

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Dining Room Chairs

These were a cakewalk compared to the dining room table! Mainly because we used acrylic paint! I decided to skip the priming step with these since they were already a dark wood. 

We have a field right outside our fence so I took the chairs and some cardboard out there to spray paint on, that way I didn't have to worry about it getting on our driveway or on our grass! We used spray paint primer to cut down the painting time, and since it was just primer we could use acrylic over it. After about 4 thin layers of spray paint it only took one coat of the acrylic paint. FYI we used Benjamin Moore's Atrium White on the table, chairs, and bench. Distressing is just sanding and then using a bit of antique glaze which is completely optional! When we took off the beautiful red leather from the seats we found an equally beautiful layer of brown leather. . . ugh! We decided to go with a white and gray damask. It will easily match a number of styles and it wasn't too obnoxious! Recovering the seats was as easy as cutting a square and stapling it to the bottom. Here are a few pictures of the process!

This is what we had to begin with!

Under that red leather was this beautiful brown. . . (read in a sarcastic voice!)

It was so easy to cover though. 

In the process of being spray painted. 

After I brushed a coat of Atrium White on. 

We got the sander out, and distressed them a bit!

Voila! We were done!

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Dining Room Table

Alright! The table is finally making it's way on here! We started this project in the first week of May, and have finished the brunt of it, we still need to distress the bench but honestly I don't even care about that right now! I am so thankful that I can eat dinner at a table! This past Sunday we had my brother, parents, and grandparents over for a Father's Day lunch. I cannot tell you how nice it was to have a big table where everyone can stay after the meal to just sit around and talk! 

This table started out as more of a challenge than we thought. We got the table from a lady, Lori, in our church who found it at Goodwill. She was the biggest help ever! She does this all the time, she either refinishes furniture or she'll paint custom pieces for people. This would have been bad without her!

The Long Road To A Dining Room Table: We brought the table over to our house and set it up in the dining room with the cardboard so we wouldn't have to worry about weather, we thought this project would only take a couple days. Lori came over with primer and paint, we started putting the primer on, but soon realized it wasn't sticking. . . so out came the KILZ. That stuff is intense I'm still not sure what it does, I think it's used when you're painting on a smooth surface and need your paint to stick. After KILZ I put a dark gray primer, then I grab the paint can that I thought Lori brought me. . . wrong! It turns out we had a can of the exact paint that we had used on our cabinets, but ours was oil based, and hers was acrylic. Now I had no earthly idea that would make a difference, so I probably would've used it even if I had seen the one word difference on the paint can. Man was I in for a surprise! FYI once you use oil based paint, you can't use acrylic anything over top of it! What probably made it worse is that we think after I had let a couple coats dry over night, I came back and did a couple layers in acrylic. This was obviously not the finest moment in my extensive furniture painting career! (read that in a sarcastic voice!) I came back and kept thinking "wow this looks terrible, it's a good thing we're distressing it!" So Lori comes over for my distressing lesson, and realizes she should have never left me alone with this table! To make an already long story mildly shorter, we ended up having to sand off the entire top of the table, and paint with only oil-based, which requires 24 hours to dry between each coat. Then we were able to finally distress and antique it! I also used a wax on the top of the table to protect it from spills in the future!

The only before picture I have. Ignore the mess! You can see that it was already a cream, and very dirty!

This is it painted completely white after we had to sand off the paint job I had already done!

I'll be sharing the specifics about the chairs tomorrow! 

Forgive the morning light, we got 4 chairs to go with the table, and Aaron built a bench for me. 

Here is a close up of the distressing we did. We used an electric sander, and then put a very little bit of brown antique glaze. 

Zeke photo bombed while I was taking pictures of the table legs!  

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Another Birchbox

I got my second Birchbox in! It was nice, not as amazing as last months, but still good! It seems like I got repeats of items, another lotion, another perfume, another SPF. I'm sure my profile indicates that those are the things I would be interested in, but I don't think I want those 3 things every month. I'll still probably use all of these things, and a lot of these it's nice to have them in travel sizes!

1. Cool Tinted Matte SPF 30 for Face - I like that this has a tint to it. This will be nice on one of those days I'm going to be outside and don't really want to worry about my make-up. 

2. Gilchrist & Soames London Collection Body Lotion - Another lotion, great to just throw into your purse on hot summer days. . . nobody wants dry legs! It does smell very nice, it doesn't seem as thick as the lotion I got last month from Perlier, but we'll see!

3. Joie Folle de Joie Eau de Parfum - Wow that took some work to type out correctly! This perfume is a little too old for my taste. . . I think maybe it had a little too much rose to the scent? O well!

4. Number 4 Hair Hydrating Shampoo - I'm excited about this, they also sent a conditioner that goes with this. It will be great when we take a quick weekend trip. 

5. Vasanti Cosmetics BrightenUp! Enzymatic Face Rejuvenator - This is supposed to be a "customer fave". It looks like a exfoliating facial scrub, which is always nice in the summer!

Good Birchbox overall. I might go and edit my profile, just to make sure I get a couple of different things this next time!

P.S. see that beautiful table the box is on? I'll finally tell you guys about it tomorrow!

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Five on Friday

1) We've had our first few rehearsals for Oklahoma, and already sounds awesome! This is going to be a great production!

2) I'm in charge of a small group within our Youth Group and this Wednesday our small group went out to a park for a devotional, scavenger hunt, and picnic. It was such beautiful weather and so relaxing! 

3) Our dining room is finally starting to come together! I'm getting an idea for what I want on the table in there and finally have our wreath. I will be so glad when everything is set up and in it's own place at our new house!

4) My husband gave me some "just because" flowers on Wednesday and those are always the best kind!!

5) I get to go down and see my parents & grandparents tonight! We'll be coming back tomorrow afternoon, but it will still be wonderful!!!

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The Easiest Ever Summer Projects

A few weeks ago we moved from an apartment into a rental home near the church my husband works at. We've basically got everything set up how we want, but we've done a few DIY projects to pull things together. I wanted to share a couple that I've done, that really don't even require tutorials! Seriously these are both so easy!

This planter came from Michael's I just grabbed some paint I had laying around. . . I didn't even tape it off when I put the gold paint around, painter's tape would help it look even better! I also painted the inside of the bottom gold for a little extra shimmer! You can get succulents at Lowe's, Home Depot. . . basically anywhere right now, they are so popular. . . not hard to believe since they're so beautiful and easy to take care of. Water them when the soil is dry and make sure they get plenty of sun. I've made 2 other planters 1 for my kitchen, and another for my office, they are the perfect low maintenance plant, and I've heard they purify the air? Not sure about that but it sounds good!

We put our sofa table against one of the walls in our dining room, still trying to decide what all to put up there. We did hang a mirror above it to get some extra light, and I wanted a boxwood wreath to put in front of it. Wow you guys boxwood wreath's are expensive! Even one from Target is $45. I wasn't willing to spend that so I went to Goodwill and found a beautiful. . . not! wreath. After I was done tearing all of the lime green and hot pink roses off I was left with a clean slate to thread my boxwood through! I'm sure many of you have a boxwood bush in your front yard, just go out there and trim off some branches and it's as easy as sticking them in the wreath! 

I kind of like it a little thinner, I love the look of grapevine. You can add as many branches as you want depending on if you want the grapevine to show. I've read that this wreath should last about 1 month before it browns, I'm hoping to find one on sale, or figure out how to preserve the boxwood before it dies!

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Meet Sweet Zeke

Well you guys, some things have come up so I don't have that furniture post I promised! I'm going to put it together for next week. . . but instead I am going to show you some pretty adorable pictures!

Last year for my birthday my husband let me get a puppy! We had been looking for a while, but couldn't decide on what kind of dog to get, whether to adopt or purchase from a breeder, we even had to decide on color(he loves white/blonde dogs and I've always loved black dogs). Finally I saw an ad on Craigslist for cockapoos, they're half cocker spaniel and half poodle. We got a first generation. . . meaning that Zeke parents are a pureblooded cocker spaniel and pure blooded miniature poodle. You can purchase 2nd, 3rd, even 4th generation, which just guarantees you won't get too much poodle or too much cocker spaniel in your cockapoo!

We were so excited to get Zeke! We picked him out when he was I think 3 weeks old, and then went to pick him up when he was almost 8 weeks. He just turned a year on May 26th, and is the size that he will sty at, a whopping 14 pounds!

You'll be seeing a lot of him on the blog, and if you follow on Instagram, you'll see his pictures tagged with #sweetzeke. Here's a little miniature gallery of this cutie!!!

    
 

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A Weekend of Furniture & the Tony's

Wow this weekend has flown by! That's probably because, despite my plans to relax, it was very productive. Friday I got a call from my husband, he was down at the Habitat for Humanity Restore . . . if you are ever in need of furniture, hardware, or cool windows and doors for Pinterest projects, you have to check out the Restore! He sent me this picture of a brand new dresser they had. 

We've been looking for a buffet/long dresser to use as a TV stand. We're currently using a sofa table and it just didn't provide enough storage and wasn't quite sturdy enough for my taste! This piece (I'm not sure if it was originally a dresser or buffet) fit the bill! There is plenty of storage for DVD's, wires, and anything else I want to hide, and it is super sturdy! It isn't real wood, but it is very high quality compressed wood. We'll be painting it, so I didn't care much! 

Since we had a new TV stand we decided to move our sofa table into the dining room. We'll be painting it for a pop of color, and I can't wait to post pics! Saturday was full of painting for me, but thankfully at the end of the day I finally had finished chairs to put with my dining room table! I'll put before and after pics up tomorrow, or Wednesday! 

Sunday's are always very busy for us, my husband is a Youth Pastor, and I help lead the choir, as well as accompany them. That plus some grocery shopping and cleaning made for a busy Sunday! But that night I was so excited because of the Tony's!!! It is seriously one of the best Award shows, they always have amazing musical numbers from the host, as well as many of the nominees! 

I love Hugh Jackman, and whenever he hosts anything, he always makes it enjoyable to watch! A couple of my favorite performances were Idina's Always Starting Over, and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. I was able to see Idina in If/Then and although I don't agree with all of the agenda's in it, it was a beautiful show that really made you think about your life. It also had a lot of heart-wrenching songs, including the one that she sang at the Tony's. Hope you watched the Tony's and if you didn't be sure to check out some of the performance on Youtube, they'll all be showing up over the next couple days!

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Five on Friday

I am so glad that it's already Friday again, I got an extra day and a half on my weekend because of my husband's knee injury, but it still feels like it's been a long week!

1. I have the wonderful opportunity to play Laurey in a local production of Oklahoma! It is one of my favorite musical's so I'm pretty pumped! It definitely makes my summer busier, but it will be so worth it! We had our first read through on Tuesday, and rehearsal's start Monday!

2. I got my first Birchbox, and it was great! I was nervous that I would be disappointed with it, but I'm sure I will use everything that I got in it! If you'd like to read about my first Birchbox head over here!

3. I'm sure most of you don't know what Humble Pie is, but it's an amazing pizza place in Roanoke, VA. Their crust is made with sourdough, and is to die for! I went there for lunch with a friend yesterday, and it always puts me in a good mood! I have a love for all pizza, but Humble Pie is in the top 5!

4. Last night we finished distressing our dining room table! I'm planning on painting, and recovering the chairs this weekend! I will be so glad when this project is over, it has taken a lot more time than I originally thought. Pictures will probably come next week when the whole set is finished!

5. I have nothing to do tomorrow! I guess that would go in next week's top 5, but I'm so excited! My husband is a youth pastor, and between church activities and moving, we haven't had a lazy Saturday in quite a while. There will be sleeping in, morning TV,  maybe a walk, and most importantly no agenda tomorrow, and that definitely deserves a shout out!

Linking up with Carolina Charm and The Lauren Elizabeth!!

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Birchbox

Well. . . I finally bit the bullet and tried out Birchbox. I follow the Small Things Blog, and a couple of other ones that regularly review Birchboxes, and they always seem to get awesome stuff! However, I have a few friends that tried it out, and they weren't that impressed. Some of you may tried it out this past month because Birchbox had a coupon code for a $5 box! I figured this is the best time to try it, there have been plenty of times when I've basically thrown away $5 in the store buying something I never used. If my Birchbox was a fail it wouldn't bother me too much!

Birchbox did not disappoint!! I was so surprised and thoroughly excited about how great my box was. With the exception of the SPF 30 which I should probably use. . . I know I will use all of these items, and some of them I already have!

1. Beauty Protector Protect & Detangle - I currently use a volumizing detangler, and sometimes I use a heat protection spray. . . this stuff will give me the best of both worlds!

2. Cynthia Rowley Beauty Black Eyeliner - I normally wear dark dark brown eyeliner on a daily basis, and save black eyeliner for when I am dressing up. I decided to give this eyeliner a try this morning, and it went on very smoothly!

3. Harvey Prince Hello - I'm a little picky about my perfume. . . so I almost changed my answer when they asked if I would be open to receiving fragrance samples. I'm glad now that I kept that yes! This perfume is very light, and a wonderful summer scent. I put it on this morning and my husband complimented it about 5 seconds later! 

4. Perlier Shea ALmond Body Cream - This is a good travel size lotion, it has a nice scent, and I love things with shea in them. . . they always seem to be super moisturizing! I'll probably throw this in my purse for when I'm traveling and my skin dries out!

5. Supergoop! Everyday SPF 30 - I am so terrible about using sunscreen on a daily basis. . . I'm actually terrible about wearing it anytime! This is a cute little bottle, that I'll probably use on my face when we go to the beach or lake. I think I'll keep my SPF 10 to get those tan arms and legs!

I was very pleased with my Birchbox and will continue my subscription! I do think a major part of why I was so happy with it, is because I took my time on the survey they give you! That determines what you will be getting, and if you kind of blow it off, you can't expect them to match your tastes and interests! I can't wait until next month! If you're interested in Birchbox definitely check it out by clicking the link!

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90 day challenge

I am taking a break from my regular reading, because there is a group in our church doing a 90 reading challenge. This means we are reading the Bible in 90 days. . . it equals out to about 14 chapters a day, which as you can imagine doesn't leave a lot of room for other reading!

I wanted you guys to have access to the chronological plan I am using so it's available below! We began June 1, so we're only a few days in,this challenge has been tough so far, and honestly I'm already behind, but it's been wonderful as well! There are so many stories in the Bible I haven't read in so long, or I have only read the snippets that the Pastor speaks about. As a person who was saved at a young age, I often feel like there isn't anything I haven't already learned about these stories. However, the thing I have caught myself doing the most so far, is just being in awe of God and how so many times in the Bible, it is pointed out that He knew exactly what He was doing. The characters like Noah, Job, Abraham etc. they didn't have the whole story we have now, they simply knew what was happening to them in the moment it happened. That's how we are right now, we can only see what is happening right now. What we can't see is that God is orchestrating this entire season of your life! So feel at peace, because our God is in control, and there is no one else i would rather have in control!

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Weekend Recap

Well this weekend was very busy and very hectic! My husband dislocated his knee cap on Sunday night, so I have been playing nurse the past couple days! We were able to get into the doctor today, and she gave him  knee brace and some exercises. Hopefully the blog post tomorrow will be a little bit more exciting!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and got some rest!

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