image via Driven By Decor

image via Nikki Goes A Tumbling

I have always loved these corduroy letters from Anthropologie. Even though I am sure someone has done it, I have to say I am surprised there aren’t more photos of these letters in nurseries on either their website, pinterest, or just around the web. What a cute idea, huh?! And at $14.00 a letter it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to spell out your child’s entire name if you wanted to (depending on the length of the name I guess…). That may seem extravagant, but for Anthropologie it could DEFINITELY be worse! Plus, all of the patterns are so fun and look so great together it would be really hard to buy just one letter. Just a thought to brighten this afternoon a bit. It’s pretty gloomy here and I have been paper writing most of the morning (LAST PAPER EVER!!), so I thought I’d take a small break for breakfast and web browsing. We’ll be leaving for graduation in San Jose on Thursday!! So I definitely have to get this finished. Good thing I’m on a roll at the moment, hoping I can get the majority finished today and tweak the finishing touches (like formatting) tomorrow. Wish me luck! I’ll leave you with some other fun nursery ideas and a suuuuuper cute picture of an ugly doll nursery!

1. Library and Striped Ceiling

image via Made By Girl (Elizabeth Sullivan Designs)

I know I’ve posted this picture here before, but how cute is this!? I’m a reader and definitely want my kids to enjoy reading as much as I do. What better way than to start when they’re born by reading them to sleep? Such a lovely idea!

2. Unique Light Fixture

image via Project Nursery (Trenna Travis Design Studio)

3. RainbowRoom

image via Stella & Henry (photo by L Photographie)

I. LOVE. UGLY. DOLLS. I hate to steal others’ ideas, but (in my defense) this has been looming in the back of my mind for years… an ugly doll nursery! I am so excited to see someone do it. I’ve always been kind of worried though my child would be afraid of them. I hope not because they’re freaking adorable! What I love most about this photo are the vibrant rainbow hues. Multicolored rooms are perfect if you would like to keep the sex of your baby a secret. People say oh, but I don’t want pink or purple in my boy’s room, but when they’re all together it looks so colorful, creative, and fun that it ends up not merely a boy’s room or girl’s room, but an awesome room! Something to chew on :)

Have a great day! My hour breakfast break has lasted two hours too long! Back to work for me.

I love this gal. She has such an eclectic sound. My favorite songs are Boyfriend, Why I Cry (her newest album not released until May 15th, 2012), The End, Our Deal, Crazy For You. With the perfect weather we’ve been having I’ve found pure pleasure in relaxing outside on the patio with the sounds of Best Coast making their way through my headphones. Great summer time music! I’d recommend you have a listen :)

Ok,

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you … but I will anyway. The blog has been on a little necessary hiatus. I’m in my last semester of graduate school and have been buckling down on my culminating experience which is an electronic portfolio of everything I have learned. I’d share it with you but A.) I know you really don’t want to read it and B.) The school requires us to keep them password protected and private.

Anyways, GRRRRREAT news… I’M DONE! I’ve finished my e-portfolio, am waiting on final approval from my advisor and will be officially deemed a master in May! I still have one more course to pass to officially graduate I guess. But I plan on being a horrible graduate student and just coasting through to the end. I’m SO tired! I’m ready for some relaxation and a summer by the pool. That’s right! More good news. We’re putting in a pool!! Actually it’s more than a pool, it’s a complete backyard renovation! I literally can not wait. Sadly we picked the busiest time of year for pool/yard construction. I just hope it’s done in time to enjoy it this summer! We had a designer come out this morning actually to talk about style and placement. It went great and only got me more excited to break ground!

I’m looking forward to a summer full of blogging! We’re going shopping for a dining set this afternoon, that is IF Jar get’s dismissed from Jury Duty and then our home will be officially complete and I can begin our home tour to post here! I’ve been wanting to do it forever, but wanted to wait till we got a new dining table. This has taken WAAAAAAY too long.

I hope you have a happy Tuesday! You’ll be seeing much more of the honeychild, but until next time I leave you with some pool inspiration photos and a ridiculous music video that takes me back to my teendom obsessing over Nsync and The Backstreet Boys. These kids make me feel 12 again (although one of them SERIOUSLY needs a hairbrush). The secret to eternal youth? Catchy boy bands.

It’s official,

The Green Monster Spinach Smoothie I mentioned in my last post is TRULY DELICIOUS. I’m not sure if I added more than I was supposed to… but my tastes like a Peanut Butter Blast from Sonic or something, the spinach is totally not there (at least in regards to taste), minus the intense green color ; )

I didn’t have any sweetened milk like Almond or Soy or Rice or anything, so I just used dairy milk and added a teaspoon of vanilla extract to sweeten it up. It seemed to do the trick. It is a nice THICK smoothie but truly delicious, great nutrition and flavor from minimal ingredients.

Here’s the nutritional information :

Calories : 350   Fiber: 10 g      Protein: 21 g

She did not provide information about carbohydrates on her blog (a necessity for calculating weight watcher points) but if you look at each ingredient individually you can figure it out.

Spinach has about 1 carb per 1 cup. I fit about 4 cups in our blender this morning. So we’ll say 4 carbs for that.

Next we had one cup of Oikos Vanilla Greek Yogurt. This single serve container has 19g total carbohydrate.

Next a tablespoon of JIF Natural Peanut Butter has 4g total carbohydrate (the jar provides nutritional information according to two tablespoon servings so just divide by half).

Then we have one small banana (be sure to watch out for your banana size!) which is approximately 30g carbohydrate

Followed by our 1 cup of 1% milk which has 12 g of carbohydrate

Our vanilla extract contains .5 g carbohydrate for a 1 teaspoon serving.

Sooooooo, this means that in our entire smooth we have a total of 69.5 carbohydrates! Boy I hope I did that right, check my simple addition ; ) Meaning…. that the points plus for our smoothie comes in at … oh boy.

I just realized we forgot one MAJOR element to calculate our points plus. FAT! So let’s just buzz through that quickly.

Spinach = 0g fat

Oikos = 0g fat

JIF = 8g fat (1TBS)

Banana = 0g fat

1% = 2.5 g fat

Vanilla = 0

OK!! Now we’re ready. So the total fat is 10.5 g which makes the points plus for this smoothie 11. As you can tell from the ingredients and the nutrition provided this is not just a “drink” but a meal, which makes the points for this MUCH less intimidating. Sometimes it’s hard for me to convince myself to drink a beverage with 2 points let alone 11! But this smoothie has great balanced nutrition for breakfast or lunch. I definitely recommend!

So I’ve been back on the health wagon for a while now and have found that I’m feeling a little burned out. Like I’ve been eating the same things over and over and have gradually started veering back to the fast food way. While the decisions I make a fast food joints like Chick-fil-a, Panera, Pei Wei, Chipotle (are these fast food places?? more like high fat places, haha) are better than they were before and I’ve made a conscious decision to watch what I’m eating, I still need to be eating at home 80% of the time.  So it’s time to freshen things up! Fortunately yesterday I found THIS great blog (via Pinterest, of course) with an awesome attitude and approach to living a healthy life. She has some yummy looking recipes and workout plans available. I figured I’d give some of her recipes and meal plans a whirl. First up

The Green Monster Spinach Smoothie

image via Iowa Girl Eats

Although the spinach in the title is probably a BIG turn off for some (my husband included) sweet ingredients like vanilla greek yogurt, peanut butter, and banana make for a rich, sweet tasting treat packed full of the vitamins we all need! I think it will create a really nice balance and that you probably won’t end up tasting the spinach at all. I’ll definitely let you know, though ; )

One of the things I noticed about her meals is that they are all nicely portioned. Much smaller than I’m used to, but that’s a good thing! She’s also inspired me to load up on healthier snacks that provide more well-rounded nutrition, like fruits, veggies, and cheese as opposed to those “100 calorie pack” things which really have no nutrition and sometimes just make you hungrier! I’ve found a weight watchers recipe for cucumber salad which includes red onion, watermelon, feta cheese, and spritz of olive oil and lemon. It’s light refreshing and low in calories and fat (obviously olive oil is a calorie MONSTER, so it’s best to take it easy and MEASURE!!). I’ll be trying to fill out my meals with more filling foods like that. Some other things I picked up at the store tonight include:

Lara Bars

Variety Cheese Cubes

Oscar Mayer Cracker Combos (with turkey and cream cheese only 270 calories!)

Grapes, Cantaloupe, and Strawberry

I love refreshing my refrigerator a bit and getting organized for healthy eating. It makes me feel empowered! Do you have any favorite healthy recipes? Food blogs? Happy Eating!

I am so excited to be participating in the February Photo-A-Day Challenge from Fat Mum Slim! I’ve been seeing posts all month long for January on Twitter and wish I’d started up. Anyone can participate and you can use any form of photography you wish, phone, DSLR, instant, point and shoot and post anywhere you want, Twitter (use hashtag: #FEBphotoaday), Facebook, Blog, Instagram, etc. If you haven’t joined Twitter yet I definitely recommend you do! I totally prefer it to Facebook. There isn’t SO MUCH going on, just simple status updates and a 150 word Bio. LOVE. Think about it :)

Visit the highlighted link above for details, including what to shoot on what days! Enjoy!

I’m so excited for February! We’re going to Park City, Utah to ski at Deer Valley. We’ve never been skiing in winter before, usually during spring break. Unfortunately this winter may prove to be worse than most springs, the snowfall has been scarce. But maybe we’ll get lucky and get some good snow before we leave. Even if we don’t get snow while we’re there it will definitely be chilly, so I’ve been looking for cute mittens and cowls to purchase for the trip. I’d make them myself, but if I wanted them by february I would have needed to start about a year ago to finish in time! Yes, I’m THAT slow. Ok, not really. I just get easily distracted and for get to pick up the needles everyday. Speaking of… I think I’ll knit tonight. YAY! Hahaha, anyway, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite shops on Etsy with knit products. Right now I’m really loving the oversize, chunky knit cowls, they are soooo dreamy and look soooo cozy! Plus, with these stores the price is right!

Royal Windsor Knits – The Canterbury Cowl

CT Handmade – The Chunky Cowl Scarf Shawl Hood

Yes Jess – Forest Cowl

Happiknits – Super Snuggly Chunky Knit Cowl

What do you think? Any favorites? There are so many wonderful colors its hard to choose just one! I’d love to hear your input :)

I’m so excited to share this with you! My first Pinterest recipe try-out! I’ve never been much of an iced coffee person (even though it looks delicious). I love the smell but have never really enjoyed the taste. It has to be heavily sweetened. But I absolutely loved this recipe (surprise, it’s heavily sweetened)! DELISH DELISH DELISH! While it took a little while to get everything ready and I had to wait a while for the coffee it was worth it! This is such a great drink to prepare in a to-go cup for errands or to take to class or prep in a mug and enjoy on the couch. I’ve already done both!

Instructions:

Iced Coffee Concentrate. 

Ingredients-

• 1 gallon water (I buy a gallon of drinking water)
• 1 lb bag of your favorite rich coffee (course ground if ya can get it)
• Coffee filters or several layers of cheesecloth
• a fine mesh strainer.
• a large bowl
• pitcher (big enough to hold a gallon)

Directions-

1. Pour gallon of water into your large bowl.
2. Dump the entire bag of coffee into the water/bowl.
3. Stir to make sure all grounds are saturated with water.
4. Walk away, for 12 hours or overnight.
5. line a mesh strainer with a coffee filter or several layers of cheese-cloth, set the strainer on top of your pitcher.
6. Pour (or ladle) your coffee mixture into the strainer. (this part takes awhile…  I often had to walk away while it filtered into the pitcher)   If using coffee filters, you might have to replace them several times during the filtering process.
7. Once all the coffee concentrate has been filtered, stick it in the fridge (it will last for a month!)

Sweet Cream
Ingredients-

• 1, 12oz can of evaporated milk
• 1, 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk

Directions-

1. mix both cans together, refrigerate.

From there just follow the images for the best sweet and creamy iced coffee EVER!

ENJOY!

NOTE: While I found this on Pinterest the original recipe can be found here.

I’m sure right about now you’re singing the next line to Aretha Franklin’s famous tune, Respect.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. find out what it means (the lyrics continue with “to me” but for my purposes with this post we’ll simply stop at find out what it means.)! I’m serious. Get a dictionary and find out what it means because there seems to be such a colossal lack of respect in society today; lack of respect for family (specifically children to their parents), for our elders, for the disabled, and ESPECIALLY for our beliefs. Since you probably won’t go and get a dictionary ; )

Merriam-Webster defines “Respect” as:

Definition of RESPECT

1: a relation or reference to a particular thing or situation <remarks having respect to an earlier plan>

2: an act of giving particular attention : consideration

3a : high or special regard : esteem b : the quality or state of being esteemed c plural : expressions of high or special regard or deference <paid our respects>

4: particular, detail <a good plan in some respects>

— in respect of

chiefly British : with respect to : concerning

— in respect to

: with respect to : concerning

— with respect to

: with reference to : in relation to

re·spect

[ri-spekt] Show IPA

noun

1. a particular, detail, or point (usually preceded by in ): to differ in some respect.

2. relation or reference: inquiries with respect to a route.

3. esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment.

4. deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgment: respect for a suspect’s right to counsel; to show respect for the flag; respect for the elderly.

5. the condition of being esteemed or honored: to be held in respect.

If you’re thinking this post is coming a little out of left field let me fill you in. Recently Bill Maher (I refuse to acknowledge this man as a comedian) made some very insulting remarks about both Jesus Christ and Tim Tebow in a recent Twitter post on Christmas Eve. You can watch a synopsis of this ordeal here.

Maher considers himself a “critic of religion.” But, here is my question to you: WHY CRITICIZE RELIGION? If you choose to believe in nothing at all, no God, no devil, no master plan, no heaven, no hell, that is TOTALLY YOUR PREROGATIVE. But be respectful and do not mock the beliefs of others.

This whole thing has got me asking myself, why make fun of ANYONE!? You don’t have to be best friends, or even like someone else to be considerate, respectful, and civilized.

I think we all need to work harder at being respectful and courteous. I feel like we live in a time where people have absolutely no regard for others. People walk around completely oblivious to their impact on others, they do what they want, say what they want, act how they want.

I think it’s time to wake up. It’s time to grow up. I think we make life harder for ourselves by acting disrespectfully and irresponsibly. As naive as it may sound I think sometimes to myself if everyone was a little more like Mary Tyler Moore what a better world we’d live in. For those of you who haven’t seen the Mary Tyler Moore show you probably don’t understand that statement. I encourage you to watch it. Seriously. Her character is honest, kind, polite, respectful, genuine, wholesome. Don’t get me wrong, I know we’ll never live in a perfect world. We will never all be kind, polite, respectful, genuine, wholesome people. But, we can do better than this, what we have now, I know that much!

Have you ever wanted something so much that you just had to have it right then? Yeah, me too. I’m floating in that boat right now, actually. I’m really struggling with the concept of God’s time versus my time. There’s something big that I want, but it doesn’t seem like the timing is right.

Sadly, we live in a world of instant gratification. We hear a song we like on the radio and seconds later we can buy it and have it on our phone. We need an answer, we pull up Google and BAM… answer. Just like magic. We get what we want, when we want it. I mean, really,  it’s no wonder people act the way they do (especially children to their parents), we live in a world where we simply get what we want.

It’s hard for people who want things like a car, success, an education, a home, a family, etc. BIG things. We do what we can to get them on OUR time, but we forget that God’s time is always better. We try so hard for that little red corvette, when really God has a Lamborghini waiting for us (metaphorically speaking, obviously ; )).  Even though we can’t see it and even though we struggle to understanding it, God’s plan is perfect. We’re just so anxious… so “ready.” I’m working hard to leave good for great! My plans aren’t just mediocre, but God’s are AWESOME. So…

I’ve decided to give what I want up to God. To let him handle it on His time. It’s definitely a challenge, sometimes it seems like I’m fighting against my own nature or something. It can be hard to swallow but some things just aren’t meant to be. I’m spending my time thanking God for the blessings He has given me and praying that I can understand His will for my life more clearly and accept and embrace it. I’m praying that He gives me patience and helps me to wait on him.

I’m reminding myself that good things come to those who wait.

Galatians 6:9

For we will all reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time.