Vinyl Special FREE SHIPPING :o)

We are having a Special this week on our Welcome door sign. We are having FREE SHIPPING! This is a great gift for Secret Santa or that one person who has everything. This would be great to have on hand for when you're invited somewhere and you don't have time to pick something up. Also great for hostess gifts, teachers, bus drivers, babysitters or even that special someone who takes care of your animals when your away. Just that little something that lets someone know you thought of them. Comes in a variety of colors.

This is an example of what it might look like on a red door. I just love it and I think the bird is that little something extra. If this goes good then perhaps we will have a Special every week.
Have a great weekend and Happy Halloween.

P.S. Granite is in and will have pictures soon!

THE STRIKE IS OVER!

Our local high school has been on strike for 3 weeks and 3 days! There were times when the school board and the teachers were to meet from 2:00 till 6:00 and the board would just walk out early. Let's just say it hasn't been pretty. The biggest thing was the teachers weren't happy with the health insurance that the board insisted on. I don't know the details of the settlement yet. While we didn't get our usual call around 5:00 last night saying school was canceled, we also didn't know they were even meeting. The last we knew, the board wasn't budging and said they wouldn't meet until the teachers took their offer, period. My daughter came into our bedroom after 12:00 last night to say she heard the strike was over. It will be tough getting them up this morning.
Now the football season is lost as well as tennis for my daughter and her team. They were doing very well this year. I don't understand why they can't keep the extras like sports and band going despite a strike. Now the Christmas break will be shortened up and I don't think they get a Spring break at all...it's like parents divorcing with the kids stuck in the middle and they are the ones that suffer for it. Something needs to change.

And their off...

My (Fran) daughter and her husband ran their first marathon in Detroit last weekend to raise money for leukemia/lymphoma. A total of 26 miles! The two of them have been working hard all summer to raise money for their run. They raised THOUSANDS!! I'm so proud of them.
Missy was running for her dad. He was diagnosed in 2007 with lymphoma.
They don't look too bad after running for over 5 hours. It would have taken me days.
You two deserve these!

Note to son in law: Would you have ever guessed when you gave up the single life~you know, babes and booze~you would be trading it in for a health conscious marathon runner? It gives new meaning to the saying~ If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It truly must be love!

CHOCOLATE CREAM PIE WITH A PECAN CRUST

Party at Rhoda's!
This pie is SOOO yummy! Now if you're not a chocolate lover, you can do a BANANA CREAM version. Just use vanilla pudding and you can add sliced bananas on the top of the pudding before putting on the cool whip.

This is what the pecan crust looks like right out of the oven.

Then add your cream cheese, powdered sugar, cool whip mixture.

The pudding goes on next.

Cool whip and garnish either with extra pecans or you could do some chocolate curls.

You will need:

1 cup all-puropse flour

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup finely chopped pecans

1 pkg. (8 ounces) cream cheese softened

1 cup confectioners' sugar

1 carton (8 ounces) frozen whipped topping, thawed and divided

1 pkg. (3.4 ounces) instant chocolate pudding

1-1/3 cups cold milk

Additional pecans, optional

Combine flour, butter and pecans. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a greased 9-inch pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Cool completely. In a mixing bowl beat cream cheese and sugar. Fold in 1 cup of whipped topping. Spread over crust. In a bowl, whisk pudding mix and milk. Pour over cream cheese mixture. Top with remaining whipped topping. Garnish with pecans if desired. Refrigerate until serving. Yield: 6-8 servings.

THE GRANITE IS COMING :o)

EDIT: My cabinets looked white so here's a close up. They are pearl with brown glaze.

The granite is suppose to be put in next Sat. I can't wait! Upper cabinets are not installed yet. Cabinets are pearl with a brown glaze. Will take close ups later. My husband has done everything. We took down all the walls and ceilings to make this living room/ dining room/ kitchen all one. Our house is small and we think we did a great job with the area. We added a ton of storage. As you can see we are still in the remodeling stage. My husband built the island. The only thing my husband will not be doing is the granite. Our island is going to be cherry wood with brandy wine stain.

The island is going to get black pearl granite. This will seat 5 people. We have added a ton of new lighting.

Where the new butler's pantry is now use to be part of our living room. We wanted to incorporate it into the kitchen so we decided to do a butler's pantry. I love it. We have a window seat that will get granite. Lots of storage.

We got the counter depth fridge. I think the family is getting very spoiled with the ice and water dispenser.

This is a picture of the sink area. To the right is my new dishwasher. My hubby rigged it up a couple of weeks ago so I could start using it. I have been with out a kitchen longer than I wish to admit and the one thing I missed the most was my DISHWASHER!! Yeah! No more doing the dishes in a tub in the tub!! The new dishwasher so far is a dream come true. The dishes sparkle they are so happy :o) We put little drawers all around the sink so we wouldn't have any empty space.

Great lazy susan in the middle cabinet. Very big and deep. We have lots of trim work and crown yet to do.

Here is my HUGE oven. It is 36 inch oven. I remember with the old kitchen I went and got a turkey for Thanksgiving and my oven was too small!! I could probably put double that in this one and we're only a family of 3! Thank goodness we have lots of family and friends to help eat all the goodies I plan to bake in this oven. The cabinet drawers on the left of the oven are huge and I think I will be putting pots and pans in them. Above the stove is a huge hood and on the sides will be pull out spice racks. The oven and sink cabinets are bump outs.

This is a picture of our island cabinets. We went with a microwave drawer that will be in the island and I also got two huge drawers with pegs that will hold our dishes. We will be installing the upper cabinets after the granite is in.
We have ceramic in the kitchen/butler's pantry and hubby is installing our wood floors for the living room and dining room right now!

I will share more next week after the granite gets installed.

It's A P-A-R-T-Y

We're joining in at Kelly's Korner who is promoting home based businesses. Twin and I started our vinyl business, Twice As Nice Lettering about a year ago. We brainstormed trying to come up with something we would like to do when I mentioned how I love Uppercase Living. Twin said LET'S DO IT!! I thought she had lost her mind but she said she would look into the vinyl machine and all that we would need and before I knew it we were in business. We started out at a local craft mall and only dabbled a bit on Etsy but now we are changing our Etsy site and are hoping to add new things all the time. There is a lot more to this business than meets the eye but we are learning thru trial and error and truly enjoy it.

A lot of the things you will see are our own creation. If you don't see what you want in our shop, odds are we can make it for you. The possibilities are endless.

What you see on this wall isn't really vinyl. You incorporate your image onto a picture so you can see what it would look like. It's actually so much better when it arrives at your home.

The same with this picture. We try to size it as realistic as possible but you always have to check the size in the description to get the correct size of the piece. I've seen plenty of pictures of vinyl on line that look very large but when you read the size, it is a lot smaller so be careful of that.

Now this picture here is actual vinyl on a wall. It's in my main floor bathroom. It is actually a bit larger than it looks. Vinyl is art work for you walls and very easy to apply. If you want to remove it, you simply peel it off. You do need to put it on a smooth surface. You can put it on a wall, a mirror, the back of a car window, etc. It's the latest and hottest thing in decor. If you have any questions you can e-mail us. We do custom and personalized orders. Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

How I spent my Saturday and we have a winner!

Sorry, I forgot to have Twin upload a before picture. Some where on this blog I'm sure I have pictures of my dining room but don't go hunting for them 'cause they aren't worth all that trouble! HA. Just picture out dated. This is the 4th room I have painted in about 3 months. Can anyone stop at just one room? Whenever I decide to paint it ends up being multiple rooms for some reason. Next it's on to the living room. I think choosing a color is the hardest part. I was looking for a color that was a blend of a green and blue. I've seen so many beautiful robins egg blue colored dining rooms and as much as I love them I'm personally not much of a blue girl. I was also afraid it would end up looking like a little boys nursery if I didn't pick out the perfect blue color.

I picked up paint for both the dining room and our new office. Twin and I moved from the bonus room to my sons old room. I painted the office right away so we could move in. Every time I went to the garage and saw the paint can for the dining room sitting there with a smudge of the test color on the lid I thought~ that is not the color I wanted. It looked like a light celery green. Finally Saturday I figured I'd try it and the worst that could happen is I would be repainting and that is something I have done a few times before. Well, I love it. It doesn't show right in these pictures but it is a perfect combination of green and blue. Twin thinks it looks more green than blue and I say more blue than green. It depends on the light at any given time.

I wanted to show you the ferns I got this summer. They look small in the pictures but they are so big. I got both on clearance at Kroger for around $7.00. The planters from Dollar General for $10.00 and spray painted them black. I put them on either side of my garage door. This is a Boston fern and I don't know what kind the other one is. They have different leaves. Where this one grew quite well, the other became massive!

I had to squeeze it in between the china cabinet and the wall. I just hope they can hang on until I can put them back outside in the spring. They are beautiful.

I started painting at 8:00 and was finished with two coats of Behr with primer ( LOVE this paint) by 3:00. Partly because I use a special roller that you put the paint into and it doesn't drip or splatter no matter what so I don't have to use drop cloths or get up and down a ladder 100 times. I'll tell you about it some time. It's wonderful!

I took these pictures real quick that day just to show you the color. I'm not done decorating. I have two black shelves that are going on either side of the french doors and some plates to hang.

Michelle at From House to Home won our give away. Congratulations Michelle. Thank you to everyone that entered. We will be having more give aways so please enter again everyone. Don't feel too bad about not being the winner, Twin and I have NEVER won a give away either!! Maybe next time you'll get lucky.

Give-AWay :o)

TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY!!
Susie Harris is hosting a give away for us tomorrow! We are giving these Halloween vinyl decals away.

Lots and lots of goodies to use! Let your imagination go wild! What fun you can have with these.

Here are a few of the things we did with some of the decals. In order to be able to enter you must:
1) leave us a comment

We would like to know what you think of our etsy shop and what you would like to see us put in it.

2) Go to Susie Harris's blog to enter

We have a lot of ideas and new things in the works. Can't wait to show you!

We had the time of our lives!

Today we're starting off by showing you our suite, and sweet it was! This is what you saw when you first walked in. The colors may be off a bit as the pillows on the couch were more red.

Oh look, they gave us a gift.

To the right of the door was the built in with the t.v., fridge down below, and the coffee station.

This suit was at Harris in the Mardi gras section of the hotel. It had just been remodeled and they went a bit modern with it.

Now going into our bedroom. The drapes were really pretty.

This is was our bedroom t.v. but the coolest t.v. is yet to come...

The vanity/desk was next to the dresser. It was nice to get ready here.

Our bed. The headboard was leather.

The lamps in both the living room and bedroom were so cool but Twin didn't get a close up. The base was a clear glass and the shades were like a resin.

The wallpaper in the bathroom was very modern and I thought it would make a great focal wall in a teens room. I did notice they didn't match it in the corners of the room. I'll bet a man hung it. Ha. That is a jacuzzi tub. I hate to admit it but we never used it. We were SO busy!

Here is the surprise, a t.v. in the mirror! It was a smooth mirror above the double sinks with a black box inside. It was awesome. Wish I had one of these at home!!

Fern went to work a year after our mom died and that is how we met Linda. She has been our God sent and even though she isn't quite old enough to be our mother, she is very motherly to us. I have never met a more giving and selfless person in my life. We will be sharing all the wonderful things we were able to do because of her.