i know i'm a little late, but after hearing about it forever, i've finally jumped on the pinterest bandwagon...and it think it is going to change my life!

ok, so maybe that's a little dramatic...but seriously, for me i will say that this could trump facebook.
i know. that's a bold statement. and i've only been on it for 24 hours! :P
but i can already tell you that it's much more my style.

if you haven't heard about pinterest, it's basically a social network that helps you catalog all the things you love...and as a bonus you get to share with friends too.

so this is the story of my life. i stumble across something cool on the web, and it's probably not related to what i'm working on at the moment,  but i decide i must save the image for future reference. so i throw it in a folder on my computer where it (a) never sees the light of day again, or (b) when i do get around to checking it out again, i have no idea where it came from.

the concept behind pinterest is that when you run across something you like, you "pin" it (using a button that gets added to your book mark tool bar), and it goes onto your pinterest 'board'. not only is the image saved, but also the source link is referenced. which means that you can use pinterest for almost anything, from recipes, to diy, to shopping!



when you pin things to your board they also get shared with your friends, and vice versa. which means there is constant inspiration coming from all directions as your friends find stuff as well...which you can then re-pin for yourself! you can also specify your interest by choosing certain boards that you want to follow.

my job often requires a bit of creativity, so God knows i need all the help this little mind can get! (do you like how i'm justifying using this for work? hmmm...)

anyways, it's pretty self explanatory once you get on there. and addictive. beware.

oh, and i've added a link to pinterest on my little ol'blog here, so if you're on pinterest, click the button the side bar to follow my boards!
happy pinning!

so remember our great idea to take a dogcation? (=vacation with our dogs)
well, i still think it was a nice idea, but this year it was kind of a fail.

since it's a million degrees in texas, we decided to drive up to the rocky mountains to beat the heat with the pups a couple weeks ago!

however, word to the wise...make sure you get a vet check up before taking your dog to a high altitude! we almost lost a pup!

poor mowgli. our little old man.
what started off as lethargy turned into a cough and difficulty breathing, until his face turned blue, and we took him to the vet in colorado, who loaded him up with meds and told us to drive back to texas as fast as we could!

apparently our poor momo has congestive heart failure (and possibly a heart tumor, but we're praying it isn't!). the vet said that this is an underlying issue that had been building for awhile (though his annual check ups never picked up on it!), and is common for his age and breed.

the good news, hopefully by taking this trip we caught his heart problems earlier than we would have otherwise. with the right medication we will be treating him sooner, and hopefully still have him around for a good long while. say a prayer for him though!

i'm talking about it nonchalantly now, but this happened a couple weeks ago. i've been too traumatized to share before now. but mowgli is pretty much back to acting like his old self, so i'm able to breathe again!

i guess the vacation wasn't a total fail.
we did have a fantastic time before mowgli decided to almost kick the bucket.


look, the dirt matches my hair! (in route near amarillo)

bindi matches the dirt too. :P (and doesn't she look like she's heckling in this pic?!)


great sand dunes national park, co


yes. it's giant sand dunes randomly in the middle of the rockies!




i think mowgli was still having fun at this point too...


our little mountain retreat! it was a 100+ year old guard station. if you ever want nice and cheap vacation accommodations, be sure to check out the national forest service!






our good friend abhishek met us for a day, and we drove up into the mountains on the back roads with his subaru...and got a little lost too! ;) but hey, we're still alive. navigators extraordinaire.




it looks small from here, but that was a huge waterfall coming off the mountains!






ruins from an ancient city of cliff dwellers in mesa verde national park. definitely go and see this if you ever get the chance.


our cute little dog friendly B&B. this was a historic inn, and we actually stayed in the room that teddy roosevelt supposedly stayed in when he passed through the area!

unfortunately our vacation ended here. telluride and santa fe were still on the agenda, but we had too book it back to texas to get our sweet baby home asap.

but maybe another year. i'm sure there will be other summers that we'll need to escape the texas heat...just maybe not with the pups.

happy independence day everyone!

we enjoyed a hometown parade through our neighborhood this morning, and now we're about to head out to see some fireworks!



so merry 4th of july!
...i sure wish that was a real snowman.

when i was in like first grade, i remember my teacher telling my parents that i might end up being an artist or something, because i was artistically ahead of most of the other kids in my class.

i was also taller than most of the kids my age.

but then they caught up to my height. i think they probably caught up to my artistic ability as well.
while i used to enjoy painting and drawing, that is sadly something that i haven't done in ages. any minor artistic inclinations i have now only get a chance to come out when i'm working on some kind of graphic design, or maybe decorating my house.

but lately i'd been itching to paint something. in fact, i even went out and got a canvas a couple months ago on a day when i was feeling particularly inspired. but then alas...i got busy, and it sat collecting dust in the corner of my office.

the other day though i ran across a picture that totally inspired me, so i determined to make myself sit down at some point this weekend and finally get to painting!

the inspiration:



is that not totally rad?!
it had me at hello.

so anyways, like i said...my artistic skill didn't advance with me too far beyond grade school... but i thought i'd take a stab at ripping off a watercolor world map...and maybe adding a bit of personalization! ;)

i have lots of friends from around the world. and my husband and i are from opposite sides of the globe, so a world map has a nice significance to me. and i thought i'd also add something to mark those places that are special to us.

so how did i make my creation?
i kind of cheated.

i printed out a rough graphic i had of the world. taped all the paged together to make a poster. exactoknifed that baby up. and then laid it over the canvas like a stencil.



if all turned out well, my hope was to hang my new piece of art over our fireplace.

no pressure!

i really needed it to turn out decent though, because my mantle was in need of a serious switcharoo.

when we moved into our house (2 years ago!), i just put up the same stuff that we had over the mantle in our apartment. which was much smaller.



so it looked a little dwarfed above the fireplace, and blended into the wall a little too much...but alas, i hadn't found anything else i really liked, at a price that i liked. :P so there it stayed.

i'm not good with mantles. i wish i was one of those people who changed it out every season...but that's never happened. at best it just gets some stockings added at christmas.

so anyways. enough mantle babble. are you ready for the grand reveal??!

don't get too excited.

seriously.

lower those expectations.

it's not that impressive.

but...it was fun. that's what counts, right?









ummm. yeah.
so it definitely looks better the further away you get! :P
but i don't hate it.

did you like the little hearts on texas and india?!
i thought it was a romantic little touch! ;)

my husband can't get past the fact though that you can't properly distinguish the state of gujarat in india. but hey let's face it. there's a whole lot of stuff that can't be properly distinguished! you get the basic idea though. i would advise you not to try sailing around the world using this map as your guide. let's just call it an artistic interpretation. ;)

not bad though for a grand totally of about $15 and a couple hours time.

if i had it to do over again, i dunno if i've add all the splattering...it didn't quite achieve the whole effect i was going for. and i'd also blow up the map a little bigger so there would be less white space.

but for now. i say good enough.
i guess it will have to wait until i have another wave of artistic inspiration! ;)

as much as i love decorating and updating my house...i also have a hard time getting rid of things.

not so much in the hoarding kind of way...more in the sense that even if i don't love something, but it's still good and functional, i have a hard time justifying replacing it...even with something that i would love.

maybe that just means that i'm cheap. :P

i figure that by the time we pay off our house, then i should have things perfectly how i want them, because by then most everything will have fallen apart and needed replacing at one point or another anyhow.

all this to say, i have never been in love with the light fixtures in our house. but they aren't hideous or anything. they just have no personality.
but oh, i dream about things with character and texture.

in our dining room, i've secretly been lusting after something like this...



or this...




but alas. not a priority.
and like i said. the ones now work fine, look decent, and i'm cheap.

but then the other day the husband and i dropped by the local habitat for humanity restore...and i found this...

vintage capiz light!



for $2!! yes, that's right... $2.00!

oh, and did i mention that i have this other problem? of not being able to resist buying super cheap things...whether i need them or not! :P so home with us it went!

so now i have some decisions to make.
i love the shape and vintage white capiz against the dark wall of our dining room...
but is the fixture too small for that room? you can be honest with me now.


(this pic is just for scale...so try to imagine it actually hanging. :P)

it might work in our eat in table too. but it's not quite so dramatic there to me. maybe because of the proximity to the trash can. :P



i can't help but think that the irony of this is that someone probably ripped this light out of their house, and replaced it with something more like what i currently have.

i dunno why, but i love it.
maybe i was born in the wrong era.

next month we'll have been in our house for 2 years. it's hard to believe!

i love being a home owner. it's so fun to put our stamp on things.
and one area i've really been wanting to do something with is the curb appeal.

our house was just painted by the previous owners before we moved in. well, most of the exterior is brick, so i'm really just talking about the trims and shutters.



i don't hate the colors. but i'm definitely not in love them either. it's just a little blah. but it's still in pretty good shape, so we're just trying to work with what we've got.

however, our doors have seen a big more wear and tear...not to mention a bit of the old green door color peeking out where we changed the locks. it's enough to justify a new paint job.

now i have always been a fan of bright red front doors. they're just so welcoming, and they give a house an extra punch of character...
but our shutters are sort of between a burgundy and a russet color...so i'm not really sure if i'd like the look of it next to a red door.

so i had the crazy idea...
what about painting the door orange?

ok, it sounds kind of crazy and scary when i say it like that, but i can imagine it in my head without it being so scary.
i'm not talking about a bright orange. more of an earthy rusty sort of orange.

after all, i have that color combo all over my house...burgundys and oranges. inside at least it works.



and can't you just imagine how cool the inside of the door might be if it was an earthy orange and tied in with all the decor? :)



but when i googled images of orange front doors online, most of the ones that came up were on houses that were painted gray...and that were an informal style.

i've been told that if your house is symmetrical, then you have to plan your curb appeal more formally. is our house too formal for orange?



or is it something just crazy enough to be awesome??!

so i need your advice!
sometimes i have these great house ideas that just don't seem quite so great after they soak in a bit...
or it could be just the thing to give our house the extra bit of character it needs...which would be a good step in the right direction as far as curb appeal goes!

now, the landscaping is a whole other issue! :)