presents!

as i mentioned in yesterday's post, austin and i brought some goodies back to tennessee with us. and as promised, i'm back today to share those goodies with you. cause i wouldn't want to break any promises.

first, we brought home a ton of plants to plant in our gardens. we also got a bunch of pink daffodil bulbs and some blackberry lily seeds.

i don't know what's in the water back home, but i need to get some of it because apparently it makes hostas grow to be the size of houses. thanks to tucker for modeling as a size reference here. and also for letting you see how ridiculously hot it was outside.

so as baby hostas have popped up here and there, mom and tim dug them up for transport back to our house in tennessee. they're just little guys right now, but hopefully they'll like their new home around our back patio and grow up to be huge.

not so sure if this guy is going to make it or not, since tucker didn't do his job and keep the deer out of the yard... but we'll give him a shot.

we also brought home quite a few purple coneflower plants.

and although it doesn't look like much right now, they'll eventually have purple flowers and hopefully they'll attract more butterflies than bees...

and for the final item from the plant category, we brought home some sedum.

i believe that these little guys will grow up to look like this:

{image from here}

i can't wait to get all my plants in the ground, but we're actually going to get some more hostas and some cannas from some other friends/family first. anyone else have plants they want to donate to our house? i want my gardens to look like pretty jungles!

the other presents we brought home are for prettying up the inside of the house. in case you didn't know, my momma is a genius scientist smarty-pants and a really crafty artistic person. she makes stained glass art of all kinds and she donated some pieces to our house!

we got this pretty blue flower piece for our living room window. {turns out i'm not so great with the camera and i couldn't quite get a good picture of the whole window without it either being way to dark, way too light, or this kind of blah shade of blah.}

but up close to the glass, you can see how pretty the color is and the details. i literally smile every time i walk into the room and see it hanging over our couch.

and as if that wasn't enough, momma gave us two more pieces! we've got this victorian style flower piece hanging in our kitchen:

and this little green flower hanging in our bathroom.

unfortunately, our stupid windows have stupid little bars dividing them into little sections which are really screwing up the glass. for the one in the kitchen i was at least able to hide them a bit with the edges of the piece, but the one in our bathroom didn't work out that way. eventually, though, and hopefully sooner rather than later, we'll be getting all new windows installed without those dumb little bars.

anyway, so those are the goodies we brought home from virginia. a big thank you to momma and timmy for being willing to share these things with us. i feel like it makes it a little easier to be six hours away from home when i can bring little pieces of home back with me and i get a little reminder of home by just looking around.

new digs.

today, austin and i bought a new comforter set for our bed!

although we really liked the look of our old one {which we haven't even had for a year yet}...

... austin couldn't stand the texture of it. it's made of sorta silky material that had the annoying habit of grabbing your skin. that may not make a whole lot of sense, but it was not a good feeling.

so we finally found a new one!

i think the light color of it is a nice change, yes? it's got a pretty little floral pattern on it, which i thought austin would not like, but he's fine with it! yay!

and pillows. lots and lots of pillows. eleven to be exact. austin, of course, just loves pillows. what guy doesn't love a zillion pillows to have to move every night before he can crawl into bed?

whatevs. it's pretty.i think i shall sleep well tonight.

finally finished something!

it's been quite a while since i've had a finally finished friday. but alas, this week i have actually completed a few things {just a few, don't get too excited}.

finally, i finished my letter cube project for my shelves in the living room. so now where it used to just say "the heards" on the one shelf, it says "est 2010" on the other shelf. yay!

finally, i found {so i finished looking?} a food and water bowl holder for juliet. it's cute and bone shaped.

unfortunately, she's terrified of it. so now she grabs a piece of food and runs away from the bowls to chew it. but that seems about right.

finally, i finished hanging our beautifully framed diplomas.

ok. so they're hanging in the {heinously decorated but not my fault} kitchen.

not really the most normal place for diplomas, i agree. but gloria got them matted and framed and they look so nice. since we don't really have an office there isn't a "normal" place to hang them. so for now, the kitchen will have to do. at least they're on display somewhere, right?

and finally, i finished having to wait for all my daffodils from mom's garden to bloom {it's a stretch for finally finished friday, i know. get over it}. aren't the little ones pretty? and they smell fantastic.

who knows how long it may be until my next finally finished friday, so enjoy it! can i blame the lack of progress in the house on having started "working" again? meh. i'll take it.

established 2010.

{look! a post not about gardening!}

this morning i finished my most recent craft project. it was pretty quick and easy.

i started with some plain wooden blocks bought at hobby lobby {for those of you back home, hobby lobby is kinda like michael's}. i got 12 blocks for about six bucks. i should have printed a coupon, but i'm stupid and didn't. oh well.

i spray painted the blocks brown.

then i busted out these cute little alphabet stickers i've had in my scrapbooking collection for a while now.

i got them on discount at big lots, of all places.

i stuck the stickers on the blocks, sealed them with a coat of mod podge and put 'em up on my shelf to spell out "the heards."

i love. {but please excuse that little nick in the paint on my shelf... grr.}

now, in case you forgot, i was looking for things to put on the lonely shelves, so this has one shelf covered. now i'm trying to decide if i should put some more letter blocks on the second shelf. i was thinking of making some that say "est. 2010." you know, as in "the heards, established 2010." i'm afraid that it will be too much of the blocks. or maybe just too cheesy. thoughts? opinions? anything?

friday, crafts & guests.

whoa. lots of things to post today.

first, it's finally finished friday and here are the things i've finally finished this past week.

finally, i finished finding flowers for the shelf on our wall of frames.

{i felt so accomplished when i got this up on the shelf. but then i realized something, this is only one of the four shelves in my living room that needing something to be put on them... now i still have three shelves to decorate, but with what? i don't think i need a vase of flowers on each shelf. but i have no idea what to put on the shelves!}

finally, i finished the moss topiary i wanted to make.

i started with the white planter from austin and some foam.

and then i began constructing. at this point, it looks like a person's head with hair, so i just thought it was funny.

and the finished product!

what do you think?

and lastly, finally i finished making a kilt.

you might be wondering why i would make a kilt. you also might be wondering why i would make such a tiny kilt.

that brings us to the "guests" part of this post. austin and i had a visitor last night.

this little guy!

i introduce to you paxton jude.

he's a little over a month old and he's pretty darn cute. {and p.s. he's joee's baby, we didn't steal him or anything.}

joe had this little guy to himself last night, so austin and i got to spend a little bit of time with him as well. and, of course, the tiny kilt is for paxton!

now you might be wondering why i would make a tiny kilt for a tiny baby. austin's fraternity, phi delta theta, has a tradition of wearing kilts on the day they get new members {at least their chapter does} and that day was today, so of course paxton needed his own kilt to fit in with all the guys. and his little shirt says "my daddy is a phi." adorable.

even though austin is at work, i took a trip down to campus to give the phi delt guys my support. here's all the guys that were there today in their kilts with the sweethearts, me and kailan. oh and paxton's in there, too!

so that's that. finished things, crafting, and our houseguest!

and lastly, just because someone has been absent from the blog for a while, here's julie-boo!

ayudame, por favor.

{that means "help me, please"}.

i just love austin. i do. recently, i've been looking for milkglass vases to put up on the shelves in our living room and i plan to put faux flowers of some sort in them, i just haven't decided what flowers, yet.

anyway, so when a patient's family brought in one of those fancy fruit edible arrangements things and the container was a cute little white planter type thing, he brought it home to me because he thought it would coordinate with my milkglass. so thoughtful, that one. :)

so the little container looks like the one here.

and it's pretty sturdy, got some cute details to it and it's definitely reusable. so i'm going to get crafty.

i'm thinking moss!

i think i want to make a moss topiary to sit on the bookshelf right inside the front door. but i need help deciding what kind of topiary to make. i've searched around a few blogs online and i see three basic kinds of moss topiary i like.

at first i thought i would just cover a styrofoam ball with moss and set it in the planter like this:

{found this one at the inspired room}

but then i thought i might like to make one up on a stick, like this:

{courtesy of get your martha on}

and of course, i could get really crazy and make one with two moss covered styrofoam balls up on a stick, like this:

{found this one at it's greener over here}

and then i don't know whether to use just one type/shade of moss, or mix a few together for a multi-green look. too many options. i don't like to make decisions, i need help. anyone?

{and of course now i'm just craving some chocolate covered strawberries. i wonder if edible arrangements will overnight....}

framed and hooked.

this finally finished friday, i'm happy to report, i have a few more finally finished things! {i'm really on a roll here lately, aren't i?}

finally, i finished framing the photographs my mom took when she was in college. i've used these pictures in every place i've lived for about the past 7 years, but i've just used them without frames because i didn't think they were regular frame sized. but i'm an idiot. and it turns out that 11x14 frames are actually relatively easy to find. so i bought them. and i framed the pictures. and they continue to look awesome on the shelves in our living room.

finally, i finished our coat hook corner. since we've been in this house, our coats have had to rest on the back of the couch, or on the end table, or even the floor. but not anymore! austin's mom gave us another floating shelf similar to the ones we have throughout our living room, so i painted it black and had austin hang it up high and we then put hooks in the wall below it to hang our coats on. and i put another of mom's pictures on the shelf.

{don't worry about that hole in the wall above the circuit box, you just have to pretend it's not there}

so that's what i've finished this week. now i just need to find a few things to put on the shelves along with the pictures. i feel like they just look a little lonely up there. but i have no idea what kind of things to put on the shelves. suggestions welcomed.

framed and finished.

this finally finished friday, i'm happy to report i have finished more things around the house!

finally, i finished a picture to put in the frame over our bed. for the past six plus months, there has been an empty frame hanging over our bed. now, it has a pretty picture of austin and me on our wedding day, right next to some artwork from my cousin morgan and the red hearts austin bought me in jamaica.

i matted the picture with the same paper we used on our cupcake stand for the reception. so now it has even just the slightest bit more meaning tied to it.

finally, i finished framing our marriage certificate, too!

above the certificate, i put a fun picture of austin and my bridesmaids.

i used the same cupcake stand paper for the certificate.

and below the certificate, a fun picture of me and the groomsmen.

so those are the two things i've finally finished this week. hopefully i can get some stuff done in the upcoming seven days to have more for next finally finished friday.