Cajun Crawfish Etouffee

I really love cajun food. I could eat crab cakes, etouffee, or po' boys every day of the week. For my crawfish etouffee, I mixed several recipes together until I came up with this one. If you like spicy food, you HAVE to try this one out. It will knock your socks off!

 

 

Best Font Lists

I'm a sucker for a good font, especially free ones. There's something about pretty lettering that just makes me giddy inside. Maybe it stems from my teenage years doodling my name in as many ways I can imagine or from my time in Advertising school. I have scoured my favorite blogs and Pinterest looking for the best lists of fonts out there for you to find all in one place. Here are some of my favorites (click on the image to be taken to the original post with font download links):

 







 

 

Chalk Paint Table Redo

Every now and then you run across a deal you just can't pass up. That was the story with this side table that I can across for $5 while on a day trip with my mom and her friend. We were driving down the road and I saw this little guy sitting outside of a Goodwill on the side of the road and I had to stop to see the price tag. When I saw it was only $5, how could I not buy it?? I loaded him up and brought him home with me. This little table doesn't match any of our other furniture and I still haven't quite figured out where to put him but I knew he had potential.

I drug out my trusty chalk paint and gave the base a good healthy 2 coats of off white. (Yes, in the living room, DH was less than thrilled to come home and find me painting on the new flooring)

Then I waxed it with Amber wax and stripped the varnish off of the top.

And sanded...and sanded...and sanded. Titan stood guard.

For the top, I used a minwax stain with the poly built in. I would probably opt for a separate stain and poly next time. It was tough to get an even coat that wasn't sticky.

I hope this piece inspires you to stop next time you see a 90's outdated table on the side of the road. With a little love and some paint, you can give it a whole new life!

Dining Room Tour

I have never really thought of any of my rooms as "complete" so I have yet to do a room tour. If there were one room in my house that I think is close, it would be our dining room. I love some of the architectural elements of our space and we have done quite a bit of work since buying the house.  There are still a few things that I would like to do but over all, this space has really taken shape.

I don't really have a good before photo but we had builder beige carpets and a big brass light fixture. We have replaced both as well as painted.

The artwork on the wall is a tree with thumbprints from our wedding guests. You can read about the window treatments here.

I love this excellent built in china cabinet, it makes for a great decorating space and holds my grandmother's china.

In the future, we plan to add board and batten to the walls from the chair-rail down and to purchase a new rug. This just may end up being our first "finished" room! (Well, until I change my mind ;) )

Flower bed update- Mulching

This week it finally stopped raining long enough for us to put out some mulch in our flowerbeds. As I shared with you in my inspiration post, I really like the look of black mulch.

Here are a few before and afters of our progress so far!

We still have a long way to go with powerwashing, cleaning up and we may even add a few more plants but it's amazing the difference that the mulch made!

Thanks for stopping by!

Mirrored Tray: Shabby Chic Makeover

I think I have a new addiction... Facebook yard sales. Yep, bye bye craigslist, Facebook yard sale sites are SO much better. If you haven't discovered these yet, just do a quick search on facebook for "(your town) yard sale" I'm ashamed to admit I follow 4 yard sale groups in the Huntsville area. It's better than craigslist because you can actually see real people posting what you want to buy.

This week, I bought this mirrored tray off of one of the Huntsville area yard sales for $8.



 

 

I took some left over chalk paint from my cabinet door chalkboard project and painted the frame (Destin Gulf by CeCe Caldwell) turquoise. Then I finished it by applying Amber wax and buffing it to bring out a light shine.

It took a few coats to cover up the gold and I still buffed off a little to let the gold peek through on some of the accents.

Check out the details on the roses!

It makes a perfect home for these little birds.

Thanks for stopping by! If you haven't entered the Kitchen Aid Giveaway, there is still time! It closes the end of May.

 

Handmade Wednesday #9 {Promote Yourself!}

Good morning! Welcome to Handmade Wednesday. Whether it is your first week joining us or if you've been here before, I'm super glad you stopped by. Each week I highlight entries from the week  before so make sure you are choosing your best photo!

Lets take a look some of this week's features:

This Love sign from Lil Red Brick House stole my heart.  It would make a beautiful accent piece for an outdoor wedding.

Can you believe Cher from Designs by Studio C made this bookcase  from an old door?? What a great idea! Better yet, she gives a whole tutorial on her blog.

Operation Curb Appeal Stage #1 - Flowerbeds Part 1

As I shared with you last week, we have decided to add curb appeal to our home as our summer project. Our first project in Operation Curb Appeal is to redo our front flowerbeds. Our landscaping leaves much to be desired. We have flowerbeds that run along 3 sides of the house but they are very standard and a little unkept.

This is a picture of our house on the day we bought it in August of 2011. Unfortunately, we didn't know what we were doing when we were trimming our crape myrtles and we created what is commonly known in the South as "crape murder." If you would like to read an article on how to correctly trim your crape myrtles. check out this article.

It's bad... I know. So our first step was to clean out all of those weeds you see and trim up the shrubs. We also cleaned up the straggly dead limbs on what's left of the crape myrtle.

I picked out a few additions and played around with layouts. I am adding three lime green hostas in front of the crape myrtle and a hydrangea in the empty spot under the garage window.

That's all the progress for this week due to the massive amounts of rain we had this weekend. Check back next week for more progress!

Kitchen Aid Mixer GIVEAWAY!

I LOVE my Kitchen Aid Mixer. Seriously, I use it several times a week. I was super excited when I was invited to team up with several awesome bloggers to sponsor this giveaway for my lovely readers! Not only will the winner receive an awesome Kitchen Aid mixer but also a prize basket with $100 worth of all of our favorite things! This giveaway is up until the end of May so invte your friends! Also, while you're here, be sure to click on the buttons and visit the sweet blogs that made this giveaway possible.

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