C'mon Spring!

I don't do cold. Not well anyway. 

Sure I like a little cold weather, maybe even some snow fall around Christmas time. I love the crisp chill in a Fall morning. But after January is over, I'm so ready for Spring! My absolute favorite time of year is Spring. Just when you think the gloom of winter will last forever, the trees begin to bud with tiny green leaves and flowers begin to come alive. It's simply magical. God knew what He was doing when He gave us Spring to revive our spirits and remind us all things can be made anew. 

Another reason why I love Spring is because I love gardening. It is one of my favorite things to do. Give me a sunny Saturday in April and the time and money to spend on buying new plants and working in my garden, and I am one content and happy woman. 

This last Wednesday was really not the best day to be doing garden work. It was a blustery 40 degrees (that is cold in Texas, people!) and the wind was pretty harsh. But I had the day off, it was sunny, and Home Depot was calling to me. I had been wanting to line my flower beds in the front with sandstone to match the ones on our house for quite some time. So I hauled hubby and the 2 youngest kids with me to buy the stones. Home Depot must have known I was coming because right at the entrance were boxes and boxes of flower bulbs, seeds, and vegetable and fruit seeds as well. I immediately started thinking of the fruit and vegetable gardens I want to plant in the backyard. The hubs bought me back to my original task and we went to get the stones and more garden soil to get it all ready for the real planting later on. Of course, I still found 2 Azaleas that I wanted and 1 Tropicana rose. I had been dying for an orange rose, and what southern flower garden is complete without Azaleas?? 

So here is the beginning of my 2014 flower garden in the front. It looks sparse for now, but that's the beauty of Spring... It's only the beginning ;-)

It's a little hard to see and definitely hard to tell from the pic what I planted here, but there's an Autumn Moonlight azalea, a red knockout rose bush, a Tropicana rose, a pink knockout rose bush, a yellow rose, and a purple rose. And the evergreen spiral dwarf tree at the end as well. A little eclectic, but I like it that way. 

Grace standing by the Autumn Amethyst azalea, the purple crepe myrtle tree, and 2 little baby boxwood bushes. There are also red gladiola bulbs in the ground here just waiting to start growing. 

Looking forward to posting new pictures when it all starts blooming! 

Until next time, 

God Bless! 

My Small Bathroom Makeover

I last left you with the promise that I would share how I used crates to make shelves for one of our bathrooms. So here it is, our bathroom remodel, in which we brought character to a small and very plain space. 

To understand how plain, generic, and just all around blah this bathroom was to begin with, I give you the before pictures: 

Blah. 

More blah. 

As you can see, the walls were a drab gray and the cabinets were a builder grade oak. 

What you can't see is that the toilet paper holder had broken and fallen off, there was no hardware on the cabinets, and no towel rack. This bathroom badly needed a makeover. 

We painted. We stained. We installed. 

And in the end we had this...

And this...

Better, right? I think so. It's so much more interesting now! 

We began by painting over the drab gray and repainting the base boards. Then we used stone backsplash tiles to line the mirror. They are stuck on using a silicone adhesive. Next, we got messy with stain. I highly recommend using a gel stain, especially for cabinets. We used the stain for the cabinets and the crates.

Staining is messy! Also, don't hate me for wearing shorts. This was NOT during this absurdly cold winter we've been having. This was sometime in October. 

I am completely in love with the crate shelves. As I have said in a previous post, I have a love for crates. These crates were ordered on homedepot.com for about $12 each. However, sometimes you can get lucky and find them at WalMart, Michaels, or even at Home Depot. But at the time, no one had any in stock so I just ordered them. They work great as storage for the towels and toilet paper. Now the kids and guests no longer have to dig through cabinets or wonder if there's any extra TP. 

We also put up a curved shower curtain rod, a hand towel holder, a bath towel holder with hooks (sooo much better than a towel bar), and installed a new door handle. 

I am extremely pleased with the way it turned out. It's no longer boring and it is much more functional. 

Oh and the best part?

This entire facelift for this bathroom only cost us about $200.

Not bad when we went from this to that

Until next time, 

Be blessed! 

~ Amanda 

Questions or comments? 

Go ahead and ask or post! 

Crate shelves

I have a strange love for crates. You read that right. Crates. Plain pine crates or old fashioned apple crates. I even found old ammunition crates in my husband's grandfather's storage barn. I'm still trying to convince him to let me have them...

Anyhow, about a month ago I was strolling through Wal Mart for something minuscule like milk or toilet paper ( does anyone else go through that as fast as we do???) when what did my eyes fall upon? Crates!! Plain pine crates. My mind was racing for a reason to buy them when I thought of making book shelves for the kids' rooms. They had horrible processed wood shelves that were wobbly and barely still standing from years ago.  

So I bought 6 of them. 

Those were fun taking out to the car. 

I decided that I would make 3 crate shelf units. 

3 of the plain crates. Logan in the background working with his toy tools. 

The first set of 3 I painted white with pretty colors on the back of the inside. They came out beautiful and fun, perfect for the girls' room! 

Hailee and Grace with their new shelves. Yes, Hailee is wearing her rosary. 

The crates are secured in the back with 2 thin strips of wood on either side of the back screwed into them. They are very sturdy and just so darn cute! 

The next set of 3 I decided to stain and put in our room. We secured them the same way and this is how they turned out: 

I love them! They are so me. 

I'll post another time about the crate shelves I put on the walls in the bathroom...

I may have a crate problem. A great crate problem. 

Until next time, 

Be blessed! 

~ Amanda 

Well, hello!

Hi there! Welcome to my new little blog! I've tried blogging before, but really didn't have  a focus point and had trouble sticking to it. I thought about it for awhile and realized I need a blog that doesn't really require one main focus or goal. I needed something that lets me be a little bit of everything! Why? Because I have many things that I like to do and many hats that I wear. Just like everyone, I am a complex person with many interests and responsibilities. 

So who am I? 

I'm a Catholic. Born and raised cradle Catholic here. I love my faith. I am always learning new things about Catholicism and enjoy sharing them, so there may be some of that in this blog. 

I'm a mother. Mother of 3, actually. 2 girls and a boy ages 6, 5, and 3. I absolutely adore those little boogers. So many of my writings will likely be associated with them and my adventures in motherhood. 

I'm a wife. I've been married 7 years to my sweet husband. We've been through tons of life lessons, good times, and bad times together with hopefully many many more to come. I'm sure he'll be mentioned every now and then ;-) 

I am a gardener. I love having my hands in the dirt and working in my flower beds. The best part is seeing the beauty that comes forth when everything blooms. My goal this year is to take on vegetable gardening as well. We'll see how that goes! 

I love home projects and crafts. I don't always have time to do as much as I want, but I love it nonetheless. When I do complete a project, I'm certainly proud of it enough that I'll post it! 

I'm a Registered Nurse (RN). I have been a nurse for 5 years with my most recent 2 years as a Mother/Baby Postpartum nurse. I love my job. I work full time on the night shift, so for 3 nights a week I leave my family to work 12 hours, 7pm to 7am. It can be exhausting on that schedule, but I like what I do and it's worth it. 

I'm a human being. You're thinking "yea... Duh?", but I say this because I am full of emotions, thoughts, and faults. We all are. I will write and post some of who I am for all to read because I want to. I want to share and connect because I enjoy it.  And if you do happen to read this little blog, just remember there is a real person behind this screen. If there's something I post that you don't agree with or don't like, talk with me about it! I love lively discussion! But let's be kind and not hurtful. We're all just people, no more, no less. 

Thanks for joining me! 

      Me with my oldest baby, Grace 

Until next time, 

God bless! 

~ Amanda