Twelve Months of Giving Back: July 2012

This month, we decided to shop for and donate items to the Ronald McDonald House of Kansas City.  The Ronald McDonald House provides accommodations for families seeking medical treatment for their children far away from home.  Here is a statement from their website…

Our Ronald McDonald House program provides a “home-away-from-home” for families so they can stay close by their hospitalized child at little or no cost. Our Houses are built on the simple idea that nothing else should matter when a family is focused on healing their child – not where they can afford to stay, where they will get their next meal or where they will lay their head at night to rest. We believe that when a child is hospitalized the love and support of family is as powerful as the strongest medicine prescribed.

Each RM House has a wishlist of items that they are always in need of.  The KC RM House also had a “Top 10 Wishlist”, so we decided to get a few things from that list…

We plan to drop off these items to the RM House next week!  Please check out their website for further information and to find a chapter near you.  http://rmhc.org/

Have you been doing any giving back lately?  I would love to hear what you are doing!

Framed Calendar Pages

My sister purchased a 2012 calendar with the sole purpose of framing some of the pictures to put in her home.  I have mentioned before that my sister has great taste.  Across the board, anything in my house would fit in her house, and vice versa.  We spend a lot of our time discussing our homes with each other…she loves “doing” and “DIYing” as much as me!  

When I was visiting her last, I asked if she had any extra calendar pages (my downstairs bath could use a pop of colored art).  She had several pages left, and I chose two of my favorites.  Thanks, Sarah!

This is a super simple, and inexpensive project if you are looking to fill a space in your home.  If you can’t find calendar pages you like, try framing scrapbook paper, book pages, fabric, wrapping paper, free printables, or anything else that is important to you or catches your eye!

I decided to use floating frames because these calendar pages were an odd size.  I was able to find these frames for $10 each.  Because the calendar pages were free, I didn’t mind spending $20 on the frames.  Simply use a piece of double sided tape to keep the calendar page in place.

I, unfortunately, could not get any good pictures of them hung in my bathroom.  The bathroom has no natural light and the glare from the frames was really bad. 

I love having something in my home that no one else has…except my sister! :)

Go Team USA!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  See you back here on Monday!

Lego Soap

We have a Lego fanatic in our house.  His name is Drew.  More to come on how we store the seemingly millions of pieces we have acquired, but until then, I made Drew a little surprise for his bathroom a few weeks ago.  I asked him to go wash his hands, and he was shocked at how all those pieces got inside his soap! :)

I saw this idea on Pinterest. Buy some soap, remove all labels, insert Legos.

Speaking of Legos, Kate recently got her own “girly” Legos that are now on the market.  Why didn’t Lego come out with these long ago?  Girls like to build and imagine and create too!

Look at that concentration! 

State Silhouettes, Revisited

Last year I made and framed state silhouettes to be used as art in our last house (to celebrate all of our moves).  You can find the complete post and DIY instructions here.  When we moved into our new house in Kansas, I wanted to change them up a bit, and of course, add KS to the mix!  And, lucky for me, Kansas is about the easiest state to trace and cut!

The changes include new scrapbook paper, more cohesive frames, new mats, and little red hearts have been added to the area of the state in which we lived.  The frames, paper, and mats are from Michael’s (the frames come in a 2-pack and be sure to use your 40% coupon).

The states are hung near our back door, in the kitchen eating area.  I find they are such a conversation piece.  Every person that walks in our door says something about them.  I wanted them to be easily seen, but in a casual space in the house. They are now much more streamlined and clean looking and add a nice little pop of color.

States on our journey: 

Iowa (Iowa City) – Where Steve and I went to college, met, and started dating
Texas (Dallas) - First move right out of college, first real jobs, first real apartment, shortest amount of time spent here
Florida (Orlando) – Got married while living in Florida, lived 2 miles from Universal Studios, enjoyed being newlyweds before kids!
North Carolina (Charlotte) – One of our most favorite cities we have lived.  Bought our first house here.
South Carolina (Columbia) – Longest we have ever lived in any one place (3 years), both kids were born here, made some dear friends here, bought our second house.
Texas (San Antonio) – Bought our third house, loved our neighborhood, only lived there for 16 short months.  A wonderful city!
Kansas (KC) – Bought our fourth house, kids will start school here, trying to settle in and settle down for a little while!  Loving it!

Texas, of course, gets two hearts since we repeated this state!

Time will tell if we ever move again (I stopped trying to predict these things 3 moves ago)!

Because moving has been a large part of of lives, I love having this little reminder of where we have been and how far we have come together.

Linking up with:
http://betweennapsontheporch.net/
http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/
http://www.theshabbycreekcottage.com/
http://www.atthepicketfence.com/
http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com/
http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com
http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com
http://www.houseofhepworths.com/
http://www.tipjunkie.com/
http://www.notjustahousewife.net/
http://shabbynest.blogspot.com/
http://sixsistersstuff.blogspot.com/
http://lollyjaneboutique.blogspot.com
http://lilluna.com/
http://www.somewhatsimple.com/
http://craftionary.blogspot.com/
http://www.remodelaholic.com
http://itsoverflowing.com

Homemade Dog Treats

The kids and I were wanting to try something new, so we whipped up some homemade dog treats for Samson.  Two ingredients, bake, and you are done!

Homemade Dog Treats
2 cups flour
2 (4oz.) jars baby food

Combine, roll out, cut out, bake on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  Store in a paper bag.

We made our first batch of treats with flour and baby food carrots.  I just so happened to have a dog bone cookie cutter in my stash too!

They were a hit with the big guy!

I decided to make another batch with some blueberries that needed used up.  I blended the blueberries and combined with the flour.  Samson liked these just as much.

We ended up with quite a few treats (each batch made about 10 treats), so we made up little bags for our neighbor friends with dogs.

I found the recipe via Pinterest and the original post can be found at http://www.curbly.com/users/capreek/posts/13538-how-to-make-your-own-diy-dog-treats.

Linking up with:
http://betweennapsontheporch.net/
http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/
http://www.theshabbycreekcottage.com/
http://www.atthepicketfence.com/
http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com/
http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com
http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com
http://www.houseofhepworths.com/
http://www.tipjunkie.com/
http://www.notjustahousewife.net/
http://shabbynest.blogspot.com/
http://sixsistersstuff.blogspot.com/
http://lollyjaneboutique.blogspot.com
http://lilluna.com/
http://www.somewhatsimple.com/
http://craftionary.blogspot.com/
http://www.remodelaholic.com
http://itsoverflowing.com

Recent Happenings

We are continuing to enjoy our summer despite the excessive heat warnings and drought conditions.  I have officially given up on my yard…it is fried and crispy, but I am determined to keep my plants and flowers going with lots of hand watering!  My kids don’t start preschool until after Labor Day, so summer is just about half over for us.  We still have a lot more we want to accomplish, but here is a little taste of what we have been up to!

We have had two water balloon fights so far.  Can you guess which bucket is Kate’s? :)

Handwriting practice!

Always planting, watering, and playing in the dirt…

And I have been picking weeds (as that seems to be all that is growing in my yard without the rain)!

We hit up the Farmer’s Market…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Played at Deanna Rose Farm…

A favorite past time…

Went for a convertible ride…

And Steve and I had a chance to see James Taylor in concert last night at an outdoor venue.  So fun!

I hope you are all enjoying your summer and I hope you are getting rain where you live!  Please send it to KS!  I know I have been a blogging slacker lately, but the summer pace is just a little slower and I am going with it.  Lots of projects to share so stay tuned! 

Also, I just joined Instagram!  You can find and follow me at amlarson3.  Cheers!

Giveaway Winner

The winner of the RAMSIGN house number giveaway is…

mindomatter76

Thanks to everyone who entered my first giveaway! 

Heading to my sister’s for a few days and will check back in soon!  Hope you are all having a great week!

xoxo

$2 succulents

I’ve done it again.  I raided the indoor clearance plants at Lowe’s.  Those racks with the yellow mark down stickers just have a way with me. :)  I walked away with 3 indoor house plants and two bowls of succulents for $5.75!  They looked to be in perfectly good shape to me!

Official hoarder of plants…maybe…

Here is my bowl of succulents for $2 (there were two on the rack and of course I bought both).

I wasn’t crazy about the brown bowl that it came in so I did a quick switcheroo with an empty bowl I got on clearance at Homegoods for $2. 

In case you were wondering, the small gold bowl is from West Elm (mom got it on sale for me), and the other small dish is a thrift find for $.99.  Succulents are low maintenance and cheap and are small enough to fit in cute little containers-I highly recommend!

**Don’t forget to enter the RAMSIGN Number Sign Giveaway-they are giving one reader a custom number sign valued at $99  You can quickly enter HERE.**

Ten on Ten: July 2012

Take 10 pictures on the 10th of the month to capture life’s beauty in the day to day. Linking up at A Bit of Sunshine, the original inspiration!

July 10th was a very normal day in the Larson household…

1.  Up at 6:30am.  Blogging about my first giveaway-don’t forget to enter!

2.  Drew is my early riser and is usually up before Kate, so today we practiced writing.  You can tell what he is in to right now…skeleton, fight, ninja, earth, fire…hilarious!

3.  Paint deliberation…my front door is getting a makeover!

4.  A trip to Lowes.  These two could probably find their way around Lowes blindfolded!

5.  These two could probably find their way around every grocery store blindfolded as well!

6.  Afternoon pool time.  Ah, to be young and carefree…love it…

7.  Local sweet corn for dinner…

8.  Someone has decided that she actually might like a vegetable…

9.  Very close to finishing up the process of planting a tree with Daddy.  More to come on this!

10.  Snuggled up after a long day…why are my children going to bed so late this summer?!?!

Hope you had a great 10th!