Change: 4 Frame Re-Dos

I like to fill my guest bedroom with pictures of the smiling faces of my loved ones. So I'm always on the look out for smallish frames. There are a lot of really cute frames out there, but they are often more than I am willing to spend. There are also a lot of really less than cute or boring frames out there, those are the ones in my price rang. So with that in mind I've been collecting some small scale frames that I could easily refinish. Each of my frames cost less than a dollar and I already had everything I used to redo them in my stock of crafty supplies, so the total project cost was only about $3.50!

Frame #1 got a few layers of gray spray paint.

And a picture of my cute niece doing her best to be Fancy (you know, like Nancy)!

For frame #2 I used some enamel paint, in a light pink and gold.

 It got a picture of my little cousin Fiona swinging around like the monkey that she is!

Frame #3 is my favorite, this tiny blue frame was wrapped in some flowery washi tape (am I the only one that reads that word as Wasabi?). This site isn't where I got mine, but they do have the same tape and a lot of other cuties.

An image of Fiona's older brother Ben as a wee lad was tucked in to finish it off.

Finally I decided that I really liked the gold frame just the way it was so I just popped in a picture of Fiona and Ben's younger brother Jo and it was all set.

 So there you have it, four cute and cheap frames and all finished in less than an hour! Have you been doing any quick refinishing projects?

Live: When you take a road trip with your 12 year old sister

A few weekends ago my sister Phoebe and I took a quick little trip to visit our brother and his family in Virginia. Would you like to take a look-see? You would? Great, lets go! To get started, when you take a road trip with your 12 year old sister you must first stop by the library to pick up a few books on tape (we went with a few Princess Diaries books and a couple  by Sarah Vowell, if this trip wasn't kinda last minute I might have also run out to Target and pick up one of those "Now -eight million and twenty-five" cds, those make for great road trippin' music.) You will also want some snacks and your sun glasses, oh and don't forget to grab money for the tolls.

After quickly getting yourselves out of Dodge (read: Michigan), you might end up feeling lost in Ohio, but once you fix the very unhelpful GPS you will finally feel like you are on your way. (Really it took us a million years to make it through, but we did finally wind our way through the night to the 10th colony. Arriving just after dawn at the Marine base Quanico, where we enjoyed spending time with out niece, nephew, brother and sister in-law. Maybe I'll share some of our VA adventuring later.)

When it is time to head home you might choose to do the drive over an afternoon, as it turns our drive home was perfectly timed, no traffic not much construction easy, easy, easy. You might also want to let your sister take over the camera for the drive home, she will try very hard to grab a shot of every state sigh you drive past (and do an okay job even if they are a little blurry), she will also try and take a picture of all the places that you say are a beautiful view even when they all look the same (none of those will turn out, oh well)!

One thing is for sure you will have to stop at Chick-Fil-A before you leave Maryland, because really how can you go to the south and not grab a chicken sandwich with a pickle on it? Plus they have the really good kind of ice!

When you drive through Pennsylvania you will find yourself saying over and over "isn't that beautiful?" and your sister will say yes even though this beautiful place looks just like the last five and they are all just farms nestled in among mountains and nothing all that great.

When there is a farmers market at one of the rest stops you will have to buy a bag of apples and an assortment of jams, fruit butters and relishes to take home with you. If only so you can say while presenting the gift of spicy Chow-Chow to your dad that you just picked it up at a rest stop!

On your drive you might forget all about getting cash for the tolls before you leave town, so your sister will have to pay them. She might take a picture to help you remember you need to pay her back.

As the sunsets and the land you drive through looks more and more like home, you will think that going someplace for the weekend is great, but getting there is half the fun!

 Finally when you go on a road trip with your 12 year old sister you will have to let her DJ from time to time. So I'll leave you with a little playlist she made of Phoebe's road trippin' jams!

P.S. The Princess Diaries books are a little dated I had to explain many references to my sister.

Also a quick google search tells me that there is a Chick-Fil-A in Toledo, Ohio so I guess they have been working their way into the Midwest. 

 

Watch Out For My Roots or Happy Birthday Kelsey!

Today we are going to get a little personal, we are going to talk about one of my favorite people in all the world. Her name is Kelsey. I think we first met in 2007, though it might have been 2008 - that isn't really the point of this story so we aren't going to worry about it. The story I want to tell you begins in March of 2008, I think it was a Tuesday (I think that, because, if memory serves, at that time Tuesdays were cheap days at our local movie theater), but I could be wrong, what I do know is that is was soggy and dark (am I the only one that has a strong memory of weather around events, I think I can tell you what the weather was like on any given day far better than I could tell you what someone was wearing or what we talked about?). This March night Phoebe and I had plans to see a movie we had been waiting for a long time to see. We were really excited to see the film Penelope and when our brothers girlfriend, in town with him on spring break, said she'd like to come we were happy to have the company. I'll have to ask Phoeb about it, but I think that night we both knew. We knew like you know about a song that you will one day love the first time you hear it on the radio, we knew that we loved Kelsey. I think even then as we drove home talking about Penelope's great clothes and the sweet message of like yourself the way you are, we knew that Kelsey was going to be an important person, the kind of person that even when you don't see them for years they will pop into your mind from time to time, the kind that when you get the chance to spend time together the hours can just slip away because you are having such a wonderful time - we knew Kelsey felt a lot like a sister.

Sometime not that long after that visit Sam and Kelsey broke up and we (my sister and I) didn't see her again for a very long time. But you know sometimes those things have a way of working themselves out. About a year later one of our other brothers, Andrew married a great gal (we LOVE Lauren!!!) and the sister side of our family grew. For a girl that never wanted sisters I had been really blessed with one actually factual sister that was, as we like to say in our family: "Just I need" and the perfect sister in-law to counter act a lifetime of brothers. But I'll say this, some of us (me and Phoebs and maybe that brother) never completely got over Kelsey. I'm not sure you will understand this unless you have brothers of marrying age, but there is this odd thing about sisters in-law, for most of us girls we are closer to our sisters than we are to just about any other persons on earth and in a perfect world your sister in-law can feel just as close as a sister that is your flesh and blood.

So when that day came almost three years later when after a reunion Sam asked Kelsey to marry him. There were at least two people who were secretly saying "I knew it!". They were married last September and now Kelsey really is our sister. She is an amazing woman and her love is one of the best things that has ever happened to our brother. Today is her birthday so it seems right and proper to give her her dues.

Happy Birthday Kelsey - I always knew we were meant to be sisters!

P.S. The post title is a little joke for Kelsey, a line from our favorite commercial that come on a lot while we were watching out favorite show (The Voice!).