How to make a Magnolia Wreath

I'm excited to share this tutorial on How to make a Magnolia Wreath. If you are a fan of fixer upper like me, you know all about them. When I was browsing The Magnolia Market Shop online (lets be honest, I do this often) I was taken back a bit on the price of the famous magnolia wreath, I just could not justify spending $95. So I decided to make my own, using real Magnolia leaves and it only cost me $34.

You will need:

1. Two bunches of Magnolia Leaves. I ordered these from our local florist and they took only 2 days to arrive. They Cost $12/bunch

2. A grapevine wreath. You can find these at just about any craft store. For convenience, I also grabbed this at the florist when I went to pick up my magnolia. It cost $10. 

3. A pair of hand pruners.  I already had these on hand.

4. Paddle wire. I had this on hand from past wreath making and previously purchased from our local nursery. 

I did not photograph how I made it for lack of extra hands so I will try my best to explain. First you will want to clip excess stem from the magnolia, leaving a a couple inches to be able to attach it to your wreath. After you have done this, wrap the paddle wire around your wreath to attach. Grab your magnolia stem and lay it at a slight angle and wrap with your wire. *make sure you are wrapping tight enough for it to stay in place. Continue to wrap more magnolia stems in a counter clockwise pattern until the wreath is finished. You will place the top leaves over the stem you wrapped to hide it all the way around.  *note that you will not cut the paddle wire until you are completely done and ready and finished. It will be one continuous motion. 

I am super happy with the way it turned out! And for the price, it's just perfect. I love the look of the green and brown leaves! If you want to see a different way to make one, check out this tutorial from Garden Answer. She is just the best!

Dining room facelift

I am constantly doing projects around our home and trying to find my style. My next main focus is our dining room. When we moved into our home, we were gifted a beautiful old vintage Ethan Allen table. It's solid oak and has its fair share of dings and dents but I love it. It's perfect with small children because I don't have to worry about anything. Like most homes, our dining room is also a main focus, so I want to give it a functional facelift and make it feel more cozy and loved.  By the way, like most newlyweds and young couples, we have few furniture pieces that we have purchased on our own. We were given well loved furniture when we first moved in.The dining chairs we currently have are clunky and don't tuck under the table. They take up a lot of space and it already is limited. I'm so excited to be getting new chairs in a few weeks. I'm also hoping that by creating this space that our table doesn't continue to be the catch all spot. We use the dining room doors as our main entrance daily so it tends to get cluttered. I created this inspiration board with a few things I hope to incorporate. I can't wait to share before and after pictures with you.

An open door to walk through

This past week was a whirlwind to say the least. I found out about a job opportunity that I may be interested in applying for. To be honest, I wasn't searching for job at all. In fact it was probably the last thing on my mind but this position sparked a little bit of interest. I had to act fast if I was going to apply because they were quickly beginning interviews and the job posting was only up until the end of the week.

I called a few people that I thought would write me a reference letter and got to work on my resume. This part was so foreign to me. I hadn't made a resume since high school when I barely had anything to put on it. I actually learned that I had more to put on a resume than I gave myself credit for. I had a lot of responsibilities as a manger and years of customer service experience. I surprised myself. I was also showered with love in my reference letters, talk about blessed!

I had only two days to really get everything together and talk about switching gears. I had so many emotions running through my mind. I felt guilty that I wanted this job, which would require finding full time daycare for the boys but I was also excited to have a new opportunity and chance to work somewhere else. I had been at Jolts and Juice for so long and it felt so familiar. I often joked that my days felt like a broken record and I could perform them with my eyes closed (not true) but it's just what happens when you have such a routine and familiarity. I knew that job inside and out and was so comfortable in it. 

I got a call for an interview only 2 days after finding out about the job. I communicated with my 4 year old what I was going to be doing and that I was applying for a job which meant I wasn't going to be staying home with him or his brother if I got it. He repeatedly asked me "Who's going to watch us?" "Where are we going to go?" He has a question for everything and I find that's it's best to communicate with him so he's not caught off guard. 

This was all happening so fast. I didn't have a plan in place for who would watch the boys. I am currently still nursing with out an end in sight and a baby that won't take a bottle real well. I was comforted in the fact that if it was meant to be, it would be and if it wasn't meant to be, it wouldn't. The interview came and went and the next day I got a call that the position had been offered to someone else. 

I can't hide the fact that I was disappointed. I know God opens door for us when we least expect them and this was absolutely one of those times. As quickly as he opens them, they are often slammed shut shortly after. I told my son that I didn't got the job and he got a big smile on his face and said "yes!" I said thanks bud with a puzzled look on my face. I said why are you excited and he gave me a big huge hug and said "because I love you." It was in that moment that I knew God was telling me that I am right where I am supposed to be. I may not be a stay at home mom forever but it was like he whispered in my ear that this is exactly where I'm called to be now.

Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme Baby Shower

Five years ago in February I threw a baby shower for one of my dear co-workers. This is one of my 

favorite parties that I have ever hosted. Can I just say that I LOVE hosting parties, especially one with a theme! I had so much fun with this one and it was close to my heart. When I was younger I just loved Nursery Rhymes and would read out of the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes book with my great Aunt Sandy. I think I knew almost all of the them by heart. It was great refreshing my mind on these and  I picked some of my favorite to pair goodies with. My friend April and I were both pregnant with our first babies and neither of us knew the sex of our babies baby. I was a few months behind her. This was a great gender neutral theme. Everyone had a great time.

I borrowed from these GORGEOUS tea cups from my grandmother. They were passed down to her from her mother. It was such a fun touch. Each cup had it's own matching saucer. These are very special to her and I was blessed she let me borrow them. 

I had cute card stock on hand and found the vintage pictures online. I typed labels for each and assembled them. I hope you enjoy this party idea!

social media

Can we just talk about social media for a minute? There are times when I just love it. I love sharing funny things my kids do, I love sharing a good meal that I made or even a fun project I'm working on. But there are also times that it takes my attention away from what's more important. Isn't it crazy the things that distract us during the day?

If you read my last post or my about me, you know that I worked at a coffee shop for 7 years, managing for 5 of those years. In our manager meetings the one thing that was a consistent topic was cell phones. It was a constant battle to get employees to put them away. There's just no need for it the work place. You are there getting paid to do a job. That is engaging with customers and completing  tasks. Plus lets talk about how dirty they are? These devices get taken EVERYWHERE with us. To the bathroom, they get carried in our pockets, they get set random places. They are covered in germs and it's a customer service job. You are handling peoples food. And as a customer, have you ever gone into a restaurant or a retail place and have seen an employee on their cell phone texting? It's a total turn off. Its rude and you instantly feel like whatever they are doing on it must be more important than you are. 

Now, lets take our jobs as moms. What if we looked at it just like that? Our kids are our jobs. Remember how you felt when you were a customer and walked into a place where you were blatantly ignored? GUITLY. I am totally guilty of putting my kids on the back burner sometimes. I will pick up my phone to check something and get totally sucked into this vortex of social media. 10, 20, 30 minutes will go by and I don't even realize it. Is is that we long for adult interaction during the day? Somedays I totally feel like that way. I feel validated in some weird way by the amount of likes I get on a picture I post. But sometimes I totally let my kids down. I have so many awesome memories as a kid but do you want to know what's not in my memory? My parents sitting on their cellphones. And I don't want that to be my kids memories of me. 

So how do we fix that. My kids are certainly more important to me than social media. Maybe we set hours where we put on away our phones. Where we are totally being intentional with our time as a mom or as parents. Maybe we delete the facebook app or the instagram app on our phone so there isn't that distraction, or just turn the notification off. I'm not saying I have all the answers but when I look back at the time as a manager and I see how much more productive my employees were when they didn't have the distraction it makes me realize how much more productive I could be in my role at home.

A New Year and A Blog

Isn't there just something so great about a new year? It allows us all to reset and hit the refresh button. This year I feel like I have a ton of goals. That's right I'm calling them goals, you want to know why? well here's a simple definition. Goal: the result or achievement toward which effort is directed. Isn't that awesome? I get to decide where I'm directing my effort this year. It won't happen overnight, heck it might take the whole year to achieve some of them but that's okay.

2015 was a great year. Isn't it funny how we remember memories in years? We remember so many monumental events based on the years. History is reflected in years. This last year, we moved our business to a bigger, better retail space in the downtown area. This was so exciting because we had achieved our original goal and that was to grow our business and we had outgrew our original space. ahem (throat clear) my HUSBAND grew our business. He is a one man shop and his knowledge in the bike industry is unmatched in this area. He is so knowledgable. I loving watching him work and interact with customers. But moving meant we had a much larger space to fill and new growth to look forward to. That move took a lot of efforts and we are thankful to our family and friends that helped us with it. I was 7 months pregnant and not a whole lot of help with the big stuff.

2 months after we reopened shop, our sweet Benjamin joined our family. Oh man all the feels of becoming a parent came rushing back this time though, we had a bit of experience and knowledge and it wasn't as scary or unknown as it was the first time around. As the saying goes March is "in like a lion" and we would agree. Benjamin came into the world weighing 10 pounds 5 ounces. Yep. I was just as shocked as the rest of you. And if you're wondering I delivered him, all natural, in a birth center with the help of my husband and our awesome midwives. God must have known that he needed to be big since he had a rowdy big brother waiting for him.

With the birth of our second came big changes for me. A new role I would say. I would no longer be working a full time managing position at the coffee shop that I had worked for 7 years. I would be staying home. For all of you stay at home moms, I APPAULD you because this is the hardest job that I have ever done. There isn't a handbook, there is zero training, and you have no co-workers. haha. I know that sounds so silly but it's the truth. I had to not only adjust to having a newborn at home but I had to adjust to being home with my toddler full time.

This past Summer was full of so many awesome memories. My husband took up a volunteer job doing Mountain Bike Patrol at Brundage Mountain in McCall, Idaho. This meant many Sundays and Mondays spent up in McCall and some of those we got to tag along and stay with our friends, whose grandparents own a family cabin up in McCall. We got to spend time on the lake and our 4 year old got to make new friends (we laugh and say he makes friends wherever we go) But that is a trait of character and I think it's awesome. This year our sons first time in t-ball. One of my best friends husband coached the team and even my husband helped out with a few games. It was a fun experience of "I'm too hot, spinning in center field, tears at bat, slow running, pushing each other down, and when can we have our snack" I was so proud of him for giving it his best though. We got to take a few road trips and got to see my moms side of the family and the beautiful Sisters, Oregon. So gorgeous. If you get a chance to go it's the cutest little towns surrounded by huge amounts of greenery and hundred year old pine trees.

Ending the year, my husbands family lost a great man, his grandfather, Papa Joe and my husbands namesake. He was a very accomplished man and I wish I could have known him in his younger years. He was a man of faith, family and extreme dedication to his career. His accomplishments in his life showed his character and integrity. The world was a better place having him in it and it definitely left his families hearts with sorrow of not having him here any longer but with much anxiousness to greet him in heaven one day again.

Isn't the circle of life a crazy thing. One chapter in our lives began this year with the birth of our son and one ended with the death of my husbands grandfather. It's beautiful and painful all in the same breath.