Farmer's Market & Thrifting finds

Ive been spending some major QT at our local farmer's market this summer, and I am definitely hooked on the experience Ive had buying local and organic produce and other goods. This week, I scored a huge zucchini, three cabbages, and two spaghetti squash larger than anything Ive probably ever seen in the store. The bonus: they totaled 11.75.

Also a new can't-live-without? These flavored soy nuts. They come in a whole host of flavors, but my favorite is onion & garlic. Hello salads!

Im also loving the plant-life at the farmer's market again this year. This dinnerplate Dahlia is so stunning in size; I can't wait to see how long it lives.

Also, these succulents are just what I was looking for to transform the kitchen window-ledge. Also, their low maintenance will hopefully increase their chances of survival with my less-than-green thumb. Stay tuned to see my plans for re-potting these!

Lastly, farmers market this time of year is extra special because, with fall, comes a PLETHORA of pumpkins, gourds, ect, in colors, shapes, and sizes you can't even begin to explain. Last week, we scored 2 white pumpkins for CHEAP; this week, we found a good price on a handful of medium sized pumpkins and gourds. Oh, the plans I have brewing for these...

It seems like trips to the farmers market lately have also been accompanied by trips to the thrift store. It's just too convenient that there is a large one just down the road from farmers market.

Some of our recent finds:

Which, after cleaning up a bit, and adding a paint chip sample, turned into some much needed gaming cord storage:

And, after finding this vintage grater and oil dressing mixing bottle:

We dressed up the top of our fridge:

AND, found this bright red Swingline travel case which I can't wait to find a home for:

A quick pumpkin diy

While playing Betty Homemaker with my healthy fall recipes (see following two entries), I had time to DIY a little pumpkin given to me by a work friend out of her Garden--thanks Hubbel!! I puffy painted a little fall theme with metallic white paint and it dried in no time! I plan on doing a subway art version on a bigger pumpkin since round one was so easy!

Spaghetti Squash Casserole

This was my first go-round with spaghetti squash, so I was a little nervous. I typically am not the biggest fan of any type of squash, but I pulled the trigger and purchased two spaghetti's at the farmers market this past weekend. Roasting the squash was easy, and took about 45 mins with some EVOO. I sampled it plain, and it tasted amazing! I'll be making "hot naked" with my second of the two squashes, so stay tuned!

For spaghetti squash casserole, I roasted one squash, browned one pound of hamburger with pepper and fresh garlic, and when the meat was done and drained I added a pinch of thyme, oregano, parsley, then mixed in a can of chunky veggie spaghetti sauce, 1 cup frozen corn, 1 block cream cheese, 1 cup parm cheese, some hot peppers straight from the garden (thanks, Hubbel!), red bell pepper, and the squash. I put it all right back in the 9x13 I had roasted the squash in, topped it with cracked pepper and parm cheese and baked till bubbly. Then I topped it with a bag of sharp cheddar and more parm, and broiled it until the cheese browned. I may or may not have had 2 BIG helpings of this, and after husband followed suit, we froze the rest into individual servings for quick meals!

Pumpkin protein muffins

It has just been a pumpkin kind of night at the house with the big orange door... I made these pumpkin muffins PACKED full of protein and good-for-you stuff and they turned out G-reat!! After sampling one------and a half, I stuck the rest in the freezer to pull out for morning breakfasts this fall!

Here's the recipe, adapted from dashingdish.com

1 cup pumpkin
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
3 egg whites
1/2 cup stevia
1 3/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup protein powder( I used choc mocha)
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup golden raisins ( and/or nuts)

Blend all dry ingredients in a blender to form a course powder. Mix in the remaining ingredients and fold in raisins. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. These will come out very moist, so a toothpick may not come out clean.

New.fave.muffin

What I've been loving, Fall Edition

Temperatures are starting to mellow, cooler days sneak in here and there, and here we are in the middle of September. I know its officially Fall because all things pumpkin have been taking over my Pinterest boards. Here are the top 14 Ive been loving this fall!

Thrift-store finds! We got this letter "A" as a gift from my friend, Holly! I bet you can't guess what it stands for! :)

Favorite fall scent, Bath & Body works "Leaves"...

...mixed with a little "Apple Cider" Scentsy!

Lazy Labor Day shopping from the comfort of my own bed

Warm Fall sunlight shining through the blinds

Decorating with Pine Cones!

Fried Green Tomatos!

Fall baking!

Finishing our "old ladder" project! (Just in time to be in the way of the Christmas tree in a few months...great..)

Practicing my VERY lack-luster chalkboard typography skills on this once silver vintage platter

Practice makes perfect!

FINALLY finishing our dining room mini-gallery wall

Dining room complete! 

Enjoying lazy weekends with our Herky-dog

What have you been loving???

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Build your own high-quality photo books at Shutterfly.com.

Thrift store therapy { & a pregnant friend project!}

This weekend allowed for some quality time with one of my favorites digging through other people's junk at a few local thrift stores. Ever hear of "retail therapy"?

Well, my own personal version comes in the form of "Thrift Store Therapy".

Here are my {Fab Four} thrift store finds:

1.

Frames! It seemed like it was Christmas in {August} when it came to finding unique, ornate frames, perfect for spray painting. I am soon to start working on a headboard ledge project (we've scrapped the farm-house door headboard project, as the master bedroom decor seems a bit too modern for such a piece. Let me know if you're interested in an old door!)

We also found several large frames for a project Im working on with my good friend, Debbie, so STAY TUNED for full DIY details on that!

2.

These lamps were U.G.L.Y. They were originally in Mister's bachelor pad, the bases a rusty brown, and the shades, a plastic mosaic tile-work of corresponding poop browns. It was horrible. But, I fell in love with the scrolling legs of the lamp-bases, and don't you know it, I just HAD to turn it into a rehab. After painting the bases a Colonial Red to match our red accent wall, I decided that, in the interest in lighting, the brown plastic shades just could not be salvaged. I figured that somewhere down the line, I'd need to bite the bullet and pay full price for some matching small shades. THEN, these 1.99 Goodwill specials found me. They are in perfect condition, and fit the bases {like.a.glove}. Swear! It was meant to be.  And if you're wondering where the heck these are sitting? Well, for now, it's a secret. Its our current living room make-over project that Im dying to finish, but until it is, these lamps are all you get!

3.

I've found that watering cans are no cheap find, so when I found this big vintage yellow one, for only $3, my heart melted. This old metal can cannot WAIT for me to plant some succulents in it!

4.

Find of the summer! This may not look like much, but oversized pictures with very pronounced frames are hard to find on the cheap, even in thrift-o-land. So when my thrifting companion, Debbie, & I stumbled upon {this} for only 1.99, we were shocked. We actually stood and mulled it over for a minute trying to figure out what on earth we could do to this, both of us coming to the conclusion that we just didn't have any projects for it. Shame..

Enter, our pregnant friend Holly! Why do we love Holly? Holly is already nesting. What does that mean for a good friend who has to always have something to style and/or rehab? Endless projects! {Thank you Holly, you have NO idea what you're doing for my decorating addiction!}After re-arranging Holly's living room, and making re-decorating plans for the rest of her abode, a simple comment was all it took to leave me high-tailing it back to Salvation Army for the 2nd time that day, for this frame.

What did we make this into, you ask!?

Happy 17 Weeks, Holly-pop! I love you!

The Wedding photos {& More!} that you've been waiting for!

We've been in decision mode for the past month or so after receiving our wedding pictures back, on how to share these "en mass" with family & friends. Beyond the immediates, our family is pretty spread out across the US, and unfortunately, we don't get to see them as often as we'd like.

Upon getting our photos back, we had a specific plan of attack.

First, print out photos for our house: check!

Second, take advantage of awesome 4x6 print sale at local drugstore to pass out to local family and friends as desired: check!

Third, make wedding album: CHECK!  {this is a big "check" for us, as it feels like almost every minute of free time has gotten sucked into making a great coffee table book, all 154 8.5x11 pages! Kevin lovingly pointed out the other day that "we don't even have a coffee table, Chelle. Bless him...anyway, we expect our book to arrive in the next 7-10 business days, at which time we will gleefully be running to our respective families' households to show 'er off! Then, we'll post a digital link on our blog so that out-of-towners don't have to miss out on the fun!}

Fourth, compile all wedding photos {all 744 of them!} in one place for easy online viewing: check! Yes, we know there are a million sites out there just ITCHING to gain our online photo-storage/display business, but it was a hard choice trying to figure out just how we wanted to house these online. Enter, Shutterfly. We created a free sharing site, which ended up being crazy user-friendly. So user-friendly, in fact, that we got a little carried away and turned our into a sharing site that houses not only our wedding photos, but all of our engagement photos, bridal shower event photography, "saying yes to the dress" black & white photo-shoot, and more. It's like an entire wedding experience, on one site. It's beautiful. And the best part? You can order prints right from the site! Enjoy!

http://kevinmichellemaywedding.shutterfly.com/

Down the road, we envision creating another one of these, for family photos, ect. We can add family members' email addresses as "members" to our sites, and they get updates whenever we post new photos. Genius, Shutterfly, genius!

Fifth, Decide on Canvas print image: We received a free canvas print from David's bridal, so the next decision is going to be choosing one, just ONE image to "canvasize" (?). Also, we have no idea where we're hanging this, but at this point, we really don't care. :)

Sixth, make engagement photography coffee table book. That's right, not only did we receive a free canvas image from David's bridal, we also received a free, 20 page photo-book from Shutterfly. Size this is a much smaller book, we decided it would be perfect to show-case all of our engagement photos. In the end, this will save our walls the heartache of getting covered in photos when I go overboard and can't decide which ones to choose. {Our wedding photo book is from Picaboo, so we're interested to see which, if either, turns out better}

Seventh, Print out photos for Christmas. Christmas this year is going to be stress free! I am in the process of creating some great photo-gifts for this year's Christmas festivities, along with a few other unmentionables (no spoilers, sorry!)

Thank you for your patience in waiting for these photos, we're excited to finally share them! Feel free to order prints as you like!

Putting those old wine bottles to use

I think we collected about 500 {okay, more like 50} wine bottles for our wedding centerpieces:

Now that the big day has come and passed, we've got several pinterest-inspired DIY crafts around the bend, mainly for holidays and such. One thing, though, that I've been doing in the meantime, is wrap them in yarn. We have 4 on our banister at the top of the stairs, one in each color, and now, we've added one to the downstairs. This wine bottle is very impressive in size, being over 2x as tall as a standard sized wine bottle. It was practically BEGGING me to wrap it in yarn, and well, ask and you shall receive.

I initially planned to put this on top of our movie armoire, here:

{p.s., that super large matted frame, was an old painted image purchased for Goodwill for 1.99! Don't pass these up when you find them people!}

But, I quickly discovered that it's towering heights covered up our wall decal and made the space look too cluttered.

So, it ended up finding a home on the mantle ledge, and we like the height that it creates in that space. Wine bottle, free. Yarn, 2.99. Easy DIY project. DO it! {Also, if you need any free wine bottles, I know where you can get some!! ME!}

I beg  you not to judge my dirty fireplace. :)

I may go around this one more time to make it one layer thicker, because in certain light, you can still see the wine bottle label. That'll teach me to be lazy. oh well. I may just turn it around. The jury is still out on that one. :)

Cupcake Glam

I swoon over the sight of a great swatch of fabric.I got this apron and tea towel set as a gift from Mom-n-law tonight and am instantly in love with this print. It's mod pop of color and retro vibe made me fall HARD. I have a secret love for all things apron and a not so secret love for all things tea towel. The crazy-awesomer the print, the better. I love opening my drawer and seeing tea towel overload in cheery, crazy prints! Call me weird, but if I'm going to spend a reasonable amount of time in my kitchen preparing food, cleaning, washing, repeating, I want to be surrounded by stuff that makes me smile. And an interesting print, my readers, does JUST that. Have you ever tried a tea towel? They are amazing, no print or awesome print. What things are secret must haves in your kitchen?