A Bowl of Manliness

I'm not sure if pine cones qualify as "manly", but the deer antlers certainly do. Amidst all my flowers and pillows and frills around the house, I wanted to incorporate something rugged and masculine for the sake of my husband, the hunter/gatherer of the household.

I really like the earthy textures of the antlers and pine cones, and Jesse just loves the fact that there's a bowl of deer antlers on the coffee table. Something we can both agree on... duh, winning.

Reality Check

Tomorrow may be the first day of April...

...but it's still Ohio. Not really what I wanted to see outside my window this morning, but beautiful nonetheless.

Got Pillows?

I have more pillows than any one person (or even two) would ever need. Yet, here I am buying another one; and a big one at that. But I just can't help myself! I think it's a compulsion... someday you'll see me on that show, Hoarding: Buried Alive, only it will be a special called Hoarding: Buried Under Pillows. Actually, that show gives me the heebie-jeebies and will absolutely never be me. Anyways, where was I? Oh yes, a new pillow!

 

I found this king-sized pillow sham at T.J.Maxx for $12.99 and was drawn to the oversized print. Big patterns usually tend to scare me off a bit, but because this was a neutral color it worked. And it's nice to cuddle up to a pillow as big as me. :)

Oh, and when I say I have lots of pillows... I mean it. Exhibit A:

This doesn't even include the pillows we actually sleep on, or the stash I have waiting to be sold on a garage sale. Yes, I am crazy.

Grocery List

I'm a visual person, so this little trick is a big help when it comes to getting groceries for me and my husband. I don't know how many times I've made a trip to the grocery store only to come home without the item I went there for in the first place. Once I hit the cereal aisle (a serious weakness of mine- we usually have about 7 or 8 different kinds in our cupboard at once), I'll completely forget that I haven't been able to do laundry for the past week and a half because I've been out of laundry detergent. Duh. So I slapped a chalkboard on the kitchen wall so as soon we run out of something, we can write it down. It hangs right beside the fridge, a place where I'll see it numerous times a day, over and over. So by the time I run out for groceries, the words "toilet paper" are burned inside my brain and I will not forget.

Don't be fooled, this is a bogus grocery list. On a normal day the list would be something more like Coco Puffs, Vanilla Coke, tampons, pop-tarts, and milk. You know, the bare essentials.

Have a happy weekend!

Spring-ish

According to the calendar, spring has officially sprung. Yay! But if you look outside, you're gonna get some mixed results. There's budding trees and baby flowers poking their way out from the underground world, yet it's a bitter 30 degrees and there's even snow in the forecast. Fail. But living in Ohio, you learn to expect the unexpected... 70 degrees in March or snow in May, it doesn't phase us.

What I'm not used to is having a garden of my own. The house we moved to this past winter has the cutest little brick and stone patio surrounded by flower beds. Because we've only lived here in the winter months, I'm really excited to see what our new home will look like all spruced up for spring and summer. These little guys popped up recently:

 

I'm not sure what they are... daffodils maybe? Time will tell! There's also some of these, which my mom says are tulips. Wa-hoo! I love tulips!

 

And we have a couple of these bushes with little bright green buds. Anyone know what these could be? I'm clueless when it comes to flowers and plants.

 

 But what I'm most excited for is this:

Hydrangeas!! They don't look like much right now, but they will be beautiful. (I hope.) My mom has a monster of a hydrangea bush at her house and I've always loved it. Now I have not one, but three hydrangea bushes of my own! I suppose technically they belong to our landlord, but we still get to enjoy them.

And of course I couldn't visit and photograph my new gardens without paying a visit to Allie and Tippy, Jesse's hunting dogs who also live outside. This is Allie, who doesn't believe in holding still for a second. It's almost impossible to get a picture of her that's not a complete blur. I've never met such a wiggly and bouncy dog!

 

She's a total phsyco. But we love her!