When it rains, it pours!

That Emily is an amazing chick! Check out her sugar-coated blog Sugar and Meringe here.
These cupcakes are actually some *fake* treats she baked up and are available at her etsy shop.

Thank you Emily for the Tree of Happiness Award. What is the Tree of Happiness Award? Well, Emily said she gave it to me because the things on my blog make her happy! I love blogs, they are the greatest invention!! I still read magazines sometimes, but blogs have taken the place of magazines for me in many ways. There is such a wonderful community of creative women who blog, and it is available 24/7/365...and best of all...it is free. Being able to check in and read the new posts on all of my favorite blogs makes me happy and inspires me to keep being a good homemaker, to keep creating, and provides lots of ideas to do just that! So, I humbly accept the award and am glad to know I am inspiring people out there in this great big world.
I am supposed to share 7 things that make me happy now. Here we go:

1. Family: My kids, my hubby Robbie(love to hang out in jammies with this guy!), my parents, my church family. I love to have a house full of people, laughter, and yummy food.

2. Retro Kitchen items:
I love old, funky red, aqua, and yellow items for the kitchen! Jadite. Red and white milk glass mugs, plates, and bowls. Mixed up pyrex patterns all stacked up together. Tin canisters with fun prints. Old cookie jars. Crocheted pot holders. Vintage salt and pepper shakers. Old figurines. Old cookbooks with great graphics.

3. Vintage Christmas:
My heart beats fast when I walk into an estate sale because I know there may be boxes full of the Christmas whimsies of the past that I love to collect. They are usually not expensive either. I love the old German glass ornaments, Shiny Brite ornaments and their wonderful graphic boxes, old snowmen and other figurines made from styrofoam balls and pipe cleaners, vintage Christmas cards, bottle brush trees, cardboard houses, plastic light-up churches, plastic deer and reindeer figurines, feather trees. I love how it all mixes at Christmas with my house that already has a lot of red in it.
4. Country Roads:
Drives on country roads make me happy. It just helps me to put things in perspective I see the beauty of the country. I remember life is good. I am moving to the country in a few days too, so I will get that every day and I am looking so forward to it!

5. Autumn:
I love the fall...and it is almost here! My absolute favorite season! I have never experienced it on the East Coast, I know I would even love it more there! I love the feeling in the air, the breeze, the smells of fall, pumpkins, comfort foods like soup, muffins, and casseroles, and the festivals small towns have to celebrate fall. I have a few fall boxes I take out to decorate, and to me it is just as fun as Christmas decorating!

6. Junking:
Thrift stores. Garage sales. Estate sales. Antique stores.Things people leave out for the trash truck. (nice things a lot of the time) I am blessed to have a husband that enjoys all of this as much as I do. Oh, and some best friends that love to go with us too!

7. Cooking:
I love to read cookbooks and dream up menus for parties. I love to entertain and feed people! My husband also enjoys cooking too, so we have fun with it! We watch food network so much that my kids have taken to playing iron chef at home and making us taste their dishes. They have been pretty good as long as they don't use a strange secret ingredient.

Thanks Emily! I am passing this on to Teena of Kitschen Pink!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, another birthday has come and gone now, leaving me 38 years old!! As I write this at 12:04 a.m....I look forward to the new year ahead. A new house, loving my family more, laughing hard, and all the blessings and lessons the Lord has for me this year. I spent my birthday in kinda a funny way this year~ packing, sweating, loading, unloading...trying my hardest to make tons of progress with the move. But you know what? It was fun! I had breakfast out with my family this morning, and we ordered pizza this evening with all of our friends who came over to help. I also was treated to a wonderful dinner out by my Mom last night. I'm blessed.

Only a few more days and the moving process will be over, and I'll be nesting at the new place (which is adorable) and sharing fun pictures with everyone. Yay! Love, Kristin

Yay!! I'm a Winner!!

How fun!! I was given these awards by Teena over at Kitschen Pink . She is such a sweetie for thinking of me and my little blog. I love to share my thoughts and the fun things I find with all of you, and blogging is such a great creative outlet.

I am supposed to pass the awards on to 7 bloggers that I *heart*, and the recipients are in no paticuliar order (drumroll please.....) :

1.My friend Rise' over at Giddy Up Pony who specializes in turning old trailers into fantastic retreats for sewing and crafting.

2. Sarah of Vintage Lily , always a beautiful blog to stop by and visit.
3. Emily of Sugar and Meringue, a real sweetie baking up sweets to share will all of us in blog land.
4.Eunice from The Little Things...one of the first people I met online. She makes beautiful things!
5. Happy of Happy Loves Rosie, who I would have to say has the most inspiring home I have ever laid eyes on. (no exageration!)
6.Susie from Susie Scott Studios, where she combines her wonderful, happy, art and crafting.
7.Heidi of Vacuuming in High Heels Wearing Pearls, a like-minded,treasure hunting gal that shares her great finds!

Keep up that great blogging gals!!

Boy, was this fun!!

I had a little bit of fun this morning putting this collage together on polyvore. I learned about this on a wonderful blog called Happy loves Rosie. I chose things that make my world polka-dotted!! It is really fun and easy, I did this in about ten minutes!! There is a clipping function that you can use to get other things off the internet that I hope to play with later. You can type in key words of things you want to include in your collage and they appear. Some of the words I used to find these things included: cupcake, red, aqua, shabby, couch, chair, floral, vintage, and of course, polka dots. They really didn't have enough polka dots, they need to work on that. So, if you get bored, go over there and make a collage for fun!

I couldn't help it.....

When I found out polka dots were a possibility during a pedicure, you know I could not resist!! My toes were longing to match my blog...so I said, "Red with white polka dots,please!". Sorry to scare anyone who can't stand feet, but I had to show you!! Love, Me

I'm with these guys.....

I don't know what the caption at the bottom says, but it might say "moving stinks!! ". Just need to vent for a moment about my aching muscles and feet, my lack of mental clarity, and my desire to have this whole process be over with. Enough of the negative though, there are so many wonderful things to share too. We got the keys to the new place early and are able to take loads over and try to put things away as we go. That has been so nice!
The new house is much older than the house we are living in now and has tons of character, so I am finding out that all of my old stuff looks much cuter in the new house. The red and white kitchen is going to be so fabulous!

This will be me soon! Em (my 8 year old) and I are planning a big project of getting together grocery lists that have all the ingredients for 5 dinners on them. I want to be able to just pick one to print out when I go shopping because I have been failing at planning meals ever since my 4th child was born (7 years ago). I usually stand in the store staring blankly at a shelf, trying to figure out what I am going to make. Maybe I will share with you when we get the project done!

Have a happy, happy Day!! Love, Kristin

Happy Summer...well definitely interesting anyway!!

Aren't these gals the sweetest? I am pretending to be the on all the way to the right...she has dark hair like me and I love those glasses!! I am just amusing myself for a moment with a quick post to distract myself from packing. I need a break! I have packed so many boxes I can't see straight and it is very *HOT* here! (it is probably 90 degrees, but much more humid than normal for Southern California) Shoot a prayer up for me to make it through this gals! Thanks for listening. Love, Me

Thrift Store Finds

Just a few quick thrift store finds to show you!! We are packing to move right now, so everything is upside down around here. Hope everyone is enjoying summer! Love, Kristin