Two on Friday?

It's been the craziest, longest week ever but I'm SO glad it's Friday!!! That being said, I have to narrow down my Five on Friday to a Two on Friday, but maybe I'll make it up to you next week with an Eight on Friday...sounds good to me!

linking up with April as usual!

-one-

My coworker and friend Rachel told me she went by this place today and upon checking out their website, this is what I had to say:

I was yelling and excited. That and CAD are the only reasons to type in CAPS! Yummm so good!

-two-

I'm jetting off to this place straight after work today:

I'm excited to do some of this:

and hopefully a little of this:

and a LOT of this:

I grew up camping and it has always been so much fun and a great way to get away and refresh. I'm really looking forward to this time with friends!

See y'all on Monday!

Thursday photo dump and Favorite things!

I've been running close to empty on blog material lately and I realized that even more when I looked at my photos on my phone from the last two days:

(I take a lot of photos for work...hence the multiple shots of leather)

And this amazing collection of grumpy cat, late night traffic and cat photoshoots.

I did manage to find these photos from Sunday when Mark and I were looking at trees for our yard. As I mentioned in my fall bucket list, I want to plant a tree in our yard! Mark gifted me with a "good for one tree" note for or anniversary so we've just got to decide on one and get it in the ground!

We really liked the red maple and the autumn blaze maple. We want something that changes colors in the fall and both of those seem to fit the bill!

I also snapped these photos from my desk in the guest room. We moved the shelf the previous owners left to the other side of the room and I'm loving it! 

I also noticed how much I like the mix of the soft grey in the hall (dolphin fin by Behr-love it!!!!) and the minty green in the guest room. Don't mind the dog toy. ;)

One more thing, I dyed my hair! It typically gets a little unintentionally ombré in the summer so I just grabbed a medium brown box dye and went for it!

(Before)

(After)

It's not much darker, but it's all one color! The roots turned out a bit ginger if I say so myself but it's subtle and I kind of like it. Shhhhh...

Well that's it for my photo dump. One more thing, though! I'm linking up with my sister-in-law Andrea and her friend Erika for favorite things.

The instructions were to post our favorite thing under $10, so I've got to share this Essie nail polish with you:

I've never been great at painting my nails just because I can't still long enough for them to dry. I've tried other rapid dry polishes with no luck. About two years ago I 'splurged' and bought this $8 Essie "good to go" top coat and I LOVE it! It literally dries in about 30 seconds and leaves your nails looking shiny and wet. It's totally worth the splurge, you won't regret it!

Go get this polish and have a great Thursday!

blocks and bricks

Here's some insider info:

Mark and I have purchased countertops, backsplash, lighting, and a sink for our kitchen. This may be the best week of my life for that reason. I am SO excited about our kitchen reno so I've been all over the Internet finding even more inspiration. Take a look!

How cool is the cutting board integrated into this countertop? And the lighting?! And the glass front cabinets at the top?!?

via

This butcher block is such a warm color and the kitchen is happy in general. Don't you love the darker lower cabinets and light uppers?

via 

I love the bay of windows behind this sink. Wish we could do a farmhouse sink like the rest of these inspirations!

via

I love how crisp and feminine yet modern this kitchen is.

via

Dying over this plank ceiling. Love the counters, too!

via 

This is what I'd love to do with our subway tile. Just white, white, white!

via

Such a happy wall with the crisp tile and wood shelves. Love the open shelving!

via

Ditto!

via

A special five on Friday

This is my five on Friday this week:

-one-

One year ago, I was anxiously waiting for our rehearsal dinner to start and to finally walk down the aisle as a bride!

-two- 

one year ago, I was trying to breathe and make sure I had all of my ducks in a row for the upcoming BIG DAY!

-three-

one year ago, I woke up bright and early to start the day getting ready for the biggest event of my life to date.

-four-

one year ago, I laughed with friends and family all in one place and got to enjoy their support and love.

-five-

one year ago, I set off on a new adventure with my best friend and love of my life.

So happy to be called Mrs. Buchanan for a whole year. Happy Anniversary (on Sunday) to my love! I love you, Mark!

linking up here for this special five on Friday!

Foodie blog : Shady's Restaurant

Mark and I stopped by a local place on Sunday for lunch after church. I had seen this place driving by a few times as it's on the street that our street intersects with, but i had no idea what kind of place it was. I couldn't remember the name but I told Mark that we should try it for lunch! I knew it had a patio and it was such a nice day that we wanted to sit outside, so off we went to eat at Shady's.

When we walked in we realized it was an order at the counter type of burger place, which worked for us!

Mark had the Shady burger with a fried egg and no sides and I ordered the chicken tenders. They were $6 on the menu with no sides but the cashier asked if I wanted the kids meal which came with fries, a drink, and a cookie for $5 so I went for it!

Our food was REALLY good and the kids meal turned out to be plenty of food for both of us! The service was fast and we didn't have to tip anyone since we ordered at the counter.

It has almost two levels of patio and the second level was closed in. It also has lawn-type games and a full bar so customers are inclined to stick around.

I managed to find their facebook page and also an article about the restaurant opening, which happened in April.

If you're in the area and want to have a cheap meal in a cool place, I suggest you try Shady's!

Trim progress

One thing I love about a low-key weekend is how much I'm able to get accomplished if I put my mind to it. One thing that I've had on my list for the last 4 months was to paint the shutters at the front of the house. 

I had planned on doing this over the last month or so, but every chance I had was foiled by rain or humidity. On Sunday, I made good use of the beautiful weather, grabbed my paint can and headed for the front.

Like I mentioned in this post, the previous owners painted the exterior trim and doors prior to putting the house on the market. From day one of seeing the house I've wanted to change the trim color. Like the trim around the garage, these shutters started out a dull, horrible brown color. 

I'll call this my "Touched by an Angel" photo...hehe

This is an accurate photo showing the color of the shutters.

They aren't operable and the owners did a good job of covering up the screws, so I opted to paint them while they were still on the house.

As you can see, I went with the same jet black as I did for the front door, back door, and garage trim. (Don't mind the paint on the brick, I wiped that off!). The photo above is showing one coat of paint on the left shutter and the original brown on the right shutter.

It only took me about 30 minutes to slap some paint on those bad boys, and here is the result!

I am loving the change!

If you're not from Texas, this is what November 3rd looks like...68 degrees, sunny, and green grass and leaves still on the trees!

I'm so glad to have all of the trim transformed in the front of the house. What do you think?

Oh, deer!

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Mark and I had another much appreciated low-key weekend, which meant I was able to get things done AND blog about it!

If you follow me on Pinterest, you can tell that I'm crazy and pin way too many things. I do try to stay realistic and pin things that I would someday like to try. I knew when I pinned this image that I would be adding it to my project list:

It's the Blooming Reindeer Pillow that was previously sold for $88 at Anthropologie. 

If you look closely, the deer is actually comprised of needlepoint, but I wasn't going for an exact copy, just something similar because I liked the look. 

This was the site that the image was pinned from...

...And this was their final product:

Like the bad student I am, I didn't even bother reading the 'how-to' on the site where I found this and instead I just used the Anthropologie pillow as inspiration and I started off on my own. 

I'm always checking out Ikea's pillow section and I picked up two grey and white striped pillow covers ($3 each, I believe) about a year ago for our house. You know I love stripes, so I found it was easy to work them into our decor. 

I then purchased two different fabric patterns at JoAnn about two months ago intending to use them to make a valance in my bathroom. Since then, plans have changed so I had some extra fabric laying around. Once I got to thinking, I realized I could use a striped pillow cover and the fabric I already had to make this pillow.

I neglected to take photos of the process, but basically I purchased some double sided fusing cloth from Hobby Lobby in the fabric section. Then I free handed the deer silhouette from the photo on my phone. If you read the original blog post, they link to a print out so you can easily transfer it to your fabric. I like to make things more difficult than they have to be, apparently! I cut out the pattern from the fabric and then traced and cut out the fusing cloth to match. I followed the instructions that came with the fusing cloth and ironed it to the striped pillow cover. Wherever there was overlap, I used my sharp sewing shears sort of like an exacto knife and carefully removed the fusing cloth that was showing. Then I used some thread I had on hand to stitch the edges for some extra detail. Ta-da, that's it!

In one day for relatively no cost I went from this:

To this:

Mark is still undecided about my deer-head pillow, but I love it! It was a relatively easy project and it was even better since I had almost everything on hand. 

If you're interested in something like this or similar, message me and I'd be happy to talk details! :)

Have a great week!

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One more thing! Please be sure to check out my Etsy shop! I've added lots of things, tweaked some things, and lowered prices on many of my handmade custom items. I hope you can find something you like and I always welcome your feedback. Thanks so much!!!