Simple Home and Happiness

Booyah! Homemade stockings hung by the fireplace? Check! I am so thrilled to have completed these! You have no idea! Let me preface this by stating I am not a 'sewer', hmmm I think that is sewer like where your toilet water goes, and I mean sewer as in 'one who sews'. Ok, you get the idea. I did sew for 4-H growing up, but otherwise I really just bust it out only when circumstances call for it, such as these stockings. So now that we have covered the fact that I am admittedly not going to call myself a seamstress, that's a better word, here's how I made these babies! I have a general sense of what sewing is. I do not do the whole, buy a pattern and pin it together and mark where to tuck and etc etc. No, I'm to impatient for all of that. I am more of a trial and error kind of gal. And I have to say there was very little error on these stockings. In fact my first one turned out the best. Probably because I took my time and was careful. Also plaid is my new f...

It's the Christmas season, so let's get in the spirit by taking a little peak. Ok, really it's just a preview of the stocking project that I am finally getting to. I wanted to let you know that I haven't been sitting by the fire eating Christmas Crackers and drinking Holiday Slush. Yesssss, I have been doing that too, but I am also going to check off one of the projects on my list before Christmas, and I'd say I am about half way there. So I thought it was time to let you take a little peak and get you all excited. Or at least throw it out there, cuz I'm super excited about how these are turning out and all I've done so far is cut out the pattern and thrown some scrap fabric on top! Here's my inspiration photo... ( Again I apologize I don't have a source .) And here's where I am at now... I've got a ways to go, but I think I'm going to love them! Plus throwing this out there now gives me the incentive to get on it! You all need t...

One of my favorite stores, West Elm, has now opened a special section called The Market. It specializes in kitchen, garden and personal care. Lets just say I am in love. If I had unlimited resources to spend in one store to do a total overhaul on my house, it would be West Elm, and now with the new Market, I am in lust too. So here are a few of my favorites. Check it out and maybe you'll get some great Christmas ideas for someone on your list. Or maybe my hubby will see this and get a great idea for me! Hint, hint! Enjoy! Incredibly large, amazing cutting board . I've seen these boards doubling as art hanging on the wall, then they take up no storage space! Cast iron Dutch oven . Great for one-pot meals. These glass jars come in varying sizes. I'm thinking they would work well for brown sugar with that rubber seal. I would definitely get plenty of use out of a cheese knife set during the holidays and all year round. Copper measuring spoons . Seriously? Fantastic...

ROUS is a familiar term around our home. For those of you who do not know sweet Westley, Princess Buttercup and the nasty creatures from the Fire Swamp, I highly recommended renting The Princess Bride immediately! ROUS or Rodents Of Unusual Size, have from time to time popped into my home to say hello. In case you've forgotten, this lovely place I call home is a seventies modular home that has seen better days. Let me give you a little glimpse into what I'm dealing with here. When the wind blows, which being from South Dakota is an everyday occurrence, my indoor curtains honest to goodness blow too. The majority of the windows are cracked and or gapping around the frames, so many of the windows are covered in plastic to keep out the cold and the bugs. The cracks in the siding on the outside of our house tend to let in little and not so little creatures of all kinds. As a result the outside of the house will soon be held together more by the sealant I spray into the crack...

Things have been a little crazy around here the last week or so. Ok, who am I kidding, things are ALWAYS crazy around here. But house things have been buzzing this week, or should I say 'church' things? On Halloween night my father-in-law showed me an awesome find in a farm newspaper. It is an amaaaazing church for sale; dirt cheap. The only catch is that it is nearly two hundred miles from where we live. It didn't deter me, seriously it takes a lot to deter me! With the help of my sister, we found the church's pictures online bright and early on Thursday morning and so the phone calls began... I left voicemails on each of the phone numbers listed and even e-mailed the address that I scrounged up on the Internet. A looooong day proceeded waiting to hear a reply. When the phone rang, I nearly threw the baby 'Hail Mary' style to my husband. A short conversation later with the owner and I had learned that the church was built in 1889 and had been empty for ten year...

We worked cattle earlier this week. Here's the truth about that. I like to imagine waking up before dawn to work cattle looking like this. But in reality it felt like this... For those without first hand experience of working cattle, it is nothing like the romanticized ideal that we see in movies or read in heaving bosom books. At least not in my twenty seven years of experience. For me it always involves swearing, a lot of it. Somebody almost always ends up crying. Me. There is yelling and dust and dirt and tension. You can cut the tension with a knife. There are moments where you hold your breath, and you pray to God very sincerely that the cattle just do as they are suppose to the. first. time. Then they do! And you inwardly do a happy dance, thank you Lord Jesus dance. Then the next moment comes and again you hold your breath and pray fervently. This continues for the rest of the day until the last calf is loaded and the gates to the pasture closed tight. This is how wo...

I was outside with the kiddos the other day, following a huge wind storm. We were picking up fallen branches, and I got to thinking some of them would work really well for a project I had in mind. The twig got pushed aside for a couple of days and then I'm watching the Today show and lo and behold, Ms. Martha Stewart had the same stinkin' idea. Ok, it wasn't like it was rocket science, but just for the record I had it first! It's pretty simple and straightforward but I like it. I took a hurricane lamp and filled it with rock filler. I placed a battery operated candle inside and placed the twig behind it. Now, Ms. Martha spray painted her twig black, which would be a nice touch. I'm just not patient enough, plus I kind of like the natural look, so in the twig went. Next I cut out various shapes from construction paper. Bats, stars, moon, cats, you get the idea. Then my daughter got in on the action and we too black thread and threaded it through holes we made in t...