Giveaway! (And a new job)

Oh my goodness, it's been a long time since I have posted. This is partly due to the fact that I haven't had a chance to do many projects lately. (My FIL and I are currently working on a wooden bench for my front porch that I can't wait to share with you!) I do have some great news though! I have been offered a new position here at the university! Starting June 7th, I will be the new Career Coordinator in our career center. This means I will no longer be traveling! YAY! I've seen some amazing places and met some REALLY great people over the last four years but now it's time for a change. My life isn't the same as it was when I took this job at 22 years old. I was single and hopping a plane to a new city each week was a blast. I am very thankful for the experiences that I had but now with a husband, two dogs and a house, it just isn't as much fun to be gone all of the time. So YAY NEW JOB!!

Also,  I am hoping this means I will have more time for my blog and for my etsy shop since I won't have to work as many nights and weekends. So to kick off this new chapter in my life I am going to host a give-away from my shop. One lucky reader will win a large monogrammed bistro mug from my etsy shop Over The Moon Gifts.

Three letter monogram bistro mug - Start your morning off in style with this personalized bistro coffee mug with your monogram. This mug is the perfect size to fit in a mini keurig. With a large 18 oz capacity and bistro style handle will keep you going all day long.
Monogram available in many colors.

So here's how to enter:
You MUST be a follower of Cupcakes and Corndogs and then all you have to do is leave a comment at the end of this post! Brownie points if you tweet or share this giveaway on facebook, just leave another comment with a link to the post. All other repeat comments will be ignored.

PLEASE make sure I have a way to contact you or your efforts will be  in vain :)

On June 4, I will use random.org to generate a number and then count down to that number to determine the winner. Good luck!!

DIY Faux Stone Planters

I'm finally getting around to uploading my tutorial from my new planters. I have been looking for ways to spruce up our front door area. I've sifted through hundreds of images on pintrest like this one from The Yellow Cape Cod.  If you haven't visited her sight you absolutely should. She has a GREAT 31 Days of Building Character in a builder home that I love! This picture was also the inspiration behind wanting to paint our door red.

As I started shopping for planters I was surprised at how expensive they are. The pretty stone ones are no less than $50 each! I knew I wanted grey stone or a cement look but if I bought two at $50 then I'm already spending $100 on this "small project" so they would have to sit empty! I walked around the store for a while trying to come up with a plan B. Finally I found the plastic terracotta looking  planters that were $8.99 and fairly large. I picked a shape I liked and bought two of them.



Then, I ventured over to the spray paint aisle. I knew they made a stone spray paint. After staring at the spray paint for a good 20 minutes, I finally decided to just go with a textured finish instead of stone. Krylon makes some great textured paints. I picked a dark gray. I primed both pots with a gray primer then gave them both a good spraying with the textured spray.

 Up close they don't really look as much like stone, but again I did just use the textured spray paint, not the actual stone spray paint. From the road they look great! Definitely better than the plastic terracota they were before and much better than paying $100 just for the pots. I picked up these plants for $15 each at a local nursery. I am not sure what they are but he said they will be pretty all year long and they are pretty forgiving
so that makes a winner in my book!

Let me know if you try them yourself! I would love to see your pictures!!!

Linking up to Ideas for Crafting

LA whirlwind

Wow! Time completely ran away from me over the past few weeks. I've had so much going on that I haven't had a free second to blog in a while. First, my husband's grandfather passed away. He had been sick for a while and it was expected, and almost a relief since his quality of life had deminished to little of nothing, but it was still a hard time for all.
Then, I hopped a plane to Los Angeles for work. I was there for three days and actually had a little free time to explore while I was there (this is rare of my work trips because normally I am in high schools during the day). The first day I was there, I took a TMZ tour. It was a blast! My tour guide was great, and come to find out she was from Alabama! What are the odds?!? The tour took us around Hollywood and Beverly Hills to see celebrity hot spots and a few homes. Unfortunately, we didn't see any celebrities while we were out but here are a few cool pictures I was able to take along the way!

The infamous Hollywood Sign

 Capitol Records

 The Rose Bowl - actually in Pasadena, I had to go check it out since I didn't get to make it to see my beloved alma mater win the national championship there in 2009.

 Rodeo Drive

 Chineese Theater

 Venice Beach

 Kodak Theater

 Venice Beach

LA at night

After not seeing a celebrity on my tour, I was a little bummed. However, the next day at my college fair, look who I found!! Justin Chambers (Alex Karev from Grey's Anatomy) He's probably one of the six people I would recognize in Hollywood. Grey's is my absolute favorite show and I haven't missed an episode since the first season. He was at the college fair with his daughter (the oldest of his 5 children) He was very nice and even took a picture with a fellow college rep from a neighboring school for her birthday. (I cut her out here for her privacy)

It was a great trip! My next trip is to Denver, CO in a few weeks. Have any of you readers ever been to Denver? This will be my first time so I would appreciate any tips on great restaurants or must see's!

Red Front Door

I've been admiring all the pretty entryways online for a while now. This week I decided to give ours a little mini makeover. I hate that the builders of our house used a back door as a front door. It looks so out of place. For a while we considered purchasing a new door but it hasn't quite made its way up the priority list yet. I thought maybe if I give it some color that it would look more like a front door.

Here is a picture of our front door. Notice the pretty planters on each side, I'll get to tell you all about those later this week.

So I cleaned the door and had it all ready to paint and begin second guessing myself. I learned while painting our master bath that red is such a hard color to paint with. Also, our shutters are black, isn't your front door supposed to match your shutters? Ah! I don't know why I freak out about these things, the beauty of paint is that if you don't like it you can start over.


So what do I do? Paint the back door! It's not seen nearly as often and it needed a good cleaning anyway. You see the problem with white doors is that they show dirt. Our dogs have gotten the back door so dirty because when they are outside playing and decide they want in, they scratch at the back door. Now I am killing two birds with one stone, practicing for the front door and painting the back door color that won't be quite so unforgiving to dirt.

I didn't prime the doors or anything, just bought a good quality exterior paint and cleaned the door throughly with a magic eraser. I also didn't take a before picture but it is the same door as the front door, just with a different door handle.
First I used a small roller to apply the paint and a small paintbrush to get up close to the trim. I did two coats like this and then noticed some dripping. For the third and final coat, I used the same small paintbrush and brushed the entire area. I also went back with a little bit of white paint to touch up the trim.

I like how it turned out but I am still torn about doing the front door. What do you think? Red? Black? Leave it white?? I would love some input. I am so indecisive!!!

Ice Cream Party

I hope you all had a FANTASTIC Easter! Today, I wanted to share with you the Ice Cream Party I hosted last night for work. I know, I know, you are probably thinking, "You call this work??", why yes I do :)
 By day, I am an Admissions Counselor for a university. That is really just a fancy word for a recruiter. Last night, I hosted an ice cream social for students that have been admitted to our university. This event was sort of a "welcome to the family" party. I had a great time making all the decorations so I thought I would share them with you all.

Our ice cream was catered by Brusters. We had Oreo, Vanilla (dyed Charger Blue which caused a little confusion haha), Chocolate, and Strawberry Sorbet.

Here is a close up of my toppings bar. I made these chevron cards to label the toppings. If you're interested, leave a comment and I will email them to you!

The event was hosted in a flower shop so the
scenery was very pretty.


Welcome sign that I made to keep with the chevron theme. 



We rented a photobooth for the students to take fun pictures with UAH gear. The booth printed out a photo for them to take home as a souvenir.  The students had LOTS of fun with this. We even brought our mascot to take pictures with the students!

We had to have a little fun too....

All in all I think the event was a success. The students that came really seemed to enjoy it and they were able to meet other students from their area.

Thanks for stopping by!

Monogrammed Coffee Mug

Happy Good Friday! I hope you all have a great Easter weekend.

I just wanted share with you all my newest addition to my etsy shop. This mug was actually a request from a customer. I can't believe I hadn't already thought of it! I loved the way it turned out so much that I decided to make it an addition to my shop! 

Monogrammed Bistro Style Coffee Mug

Start your morning off in style with this personalized bistro coffee mug with your monogram. This mug is the perfect size to fit in a mini keurig. With a large 16 oz capacity and bistro style handle will keep you going all day long. 
Monogram available in many colors, convo me with your color request!

Please include the initials in the "Notes to Seller" section in the following format: first, last, middle. For example, Jane Doe Smith would be JSD

16 oz bistro style mug. Fits perfectly in a Keurig.

Freezer Party

My life is a little hectic sometimes. You see, I travel a lot for my day job, sometimes overnight, sometimes just all day long. This means that I don't always get to cook the nice wifey meal for my husband and I that I would like to in the evenings.
Lately I've been reading a lot about freezer parties. Basically, a you grab a few girlfriends and you all pick a meal to make. You purchase the ingredients to make that meal times how ever many people are participating and do all the prep work (brown the meat, boil the noodles, etc) before hand. Then you all assemble and cook together. When the party is done, you all leave with fantastic ready for the oven meals to stock your freezer. You will leave with one of your meals, and one from everyone in the group. This sounded like a great idea for me because while I wouldn't need a ready made meal for every night, it would be nice to have something to fall back on when I am driving in late from a day on the road.

 For our freezer party, we had four ladies. Our menu consisted of: Chicken Casserole, Chicken Spaghetti, Lasagna, and Chicken Teriyaki.

 We set up stations with everything needed to assemble each meal. Each person also brought containers for the dish, measuring spoons, foil, and the recipe.

Once it was all set up, we each started at our own station and assembled our meals. When we were done we all switched!


We continued switching stations until everyone had assembled all four meals.

Here is a picture of our final spread! (Minus me, I'm taking the photo :) )