The Paper Cafe is back with this weekend’s wonderful giveaway!  There’s a new Custom Stamp Gift Set available from Three Designing Women, and they graciously sent me one of these delightful sets to try it out.

These are absolutely lovely.  They come with 20 stylish note cards and envelopes, two coordinating ink pads, one personalized self inking stamper of choice, all beautifully packaged in a chocolate brown box with robins egg blue band.  The ink cartridges fit right into your stamper, making them self inking and therefore mess and worry free.

Here’s a few more examples of the gift sets available:

Read the rest of this entry »

Because we live to make our friends and family laugh.

And because we’re strange and fun.

And because you need a giggle this Friday.

Meet our front porch pumpkins, representin’ the CG household, yo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday mornings I get up early before church, make a big pot of coffee, and go blog hopping, often visiting sites that I haven’t had time to visit during the week, or blogs that are new to me.  It’s my own ‘choose your own adventure’ excursion, and I just let links take me boldly where I’ve never been before.

Often I stumble upon the most delightful images that inspire me to remodel, revamp, rethink, or just simply dream.  Here are some of the images I’ve savored in the last month, with corresponding random thoughts:

Someday soon I shall rent a buff floor sander to remove the varnish on my natural oak floors so that I can stain them darker so they look just like this.

   via Simply Seleta

If only my pantry looked like this and not the exact opposite.

Flickr

Read the rest of this entry »

Halloween has never been the holiday where I care to decorate all over the house ~ I prefer to save my energy for Christmas!  However, my kids are at an age where Halloween is thrilling and chilling, so this year I’m living their excitement too and getting into the fun, at least on the living room mantel.

I decided to spook up the mantel while they were at school and then tell them our house was haunted with a ghost.  They totally bought it.  Meet our latest visitor ~ this mysterious spirit that now dwells among us.

Making a ghost on the mirror is created with inexpensive washable tempera paint available at any craft store.  It will wipe right off with a wet rag when we decide to exorcise our home.  Great for adding haunted friends to either mirrors or windows this time of year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hiya! I hope you had a lovely weekend!  As gorgeous as the blue skies were around here, I confess I spent little time outdoors.  Shame on me, wasting a perfectly fine October weekend indoors.  Well I didn’t completely waste it.  I just ignored those beckoning blue skies because there is some major fall housekeeping going on around these parts.   Plenty of filing kept me occupied.  Approximately 93 lonely socks found their mate, and my closet transitioned from blue sky to gray sky weather. Out came the sweaters and scarves and boots, and away went the flip flops, tank tops and swim suits.  They live to unflatter another day.

Thankfully my fabric from Tonic Living arrived last week, and I was able to work up a little office chair revamp.  I’ve been wanting a swivel chair for some time, and also to add another fun fabric to the space.

I found this dated swivel chair at the thrift store for $5 bucks!  I stripped it, painted it, and reupholstered it with a P. Kauffman ‘Soho’ graphic fabric in deep espresso.  I was really close to choosing a glossy white crocodile fabric, but with all the white furniture in the room I thought that might be overkill, so I opted for the fun punchy pattern in chocolate and cream.

Read the rest of this entry »