Laundry Room Inspirations

A few days ago I told you about my decorating goals for 2013. My first goal is to make my laundry room more pretty and organized. When I start a project like this I like to get some inspiration from pictures. Now with the internet, we have so many sources besides just books and magazines. Some of my favorites are Houzz.com, Pinterest, Better Homes and Gardens, Coastal and Sountern Living, HGTV and of course, other bloggers websites. I have collected a few of my favorites here in this post. If you have a laundry room like mine, in need of a little help, these pictures might inspire you to add a little something to yours too.
Inspiration 1 ~

sweetpickinsfurniture.com

Tray Transformation

Since I moved everything around for Christmas my coffee table became very bare. I had been looking for a large tray but everything I found that I liked was so expensive. Then one day I was in Home Goods shopping for someone else when I found it, a large tray for only $29.99. YES!!! Now it didn't look like this originally so I'm going to show you how I did it and what it looked like before...

2012 Decorating Review

Looking back on 2012, I am so glad that I started this blog. It was a strange thing for me to do considering the fact that I just recently discovered what a blog was but it has allowed me to express my love of decorating while still being able to stay home with my kids and have a flexible schedule. It is definitely not a money maker, or at least it hasn't been so far, but that was never my intention for the blog anyway.  I enjoy sharing information and having an outlet for my passion in decorating and it has been a bonus to realize the sense of community with other bloggers. I really enjoy connecting with others that I don't even know that share my passion.

I am still learning a lot about the technical side of blogging, HTML, linky parties, buttons, etc. I have learned a lot of new vocabulary and still have a lot to learn but I hope you'll stick with me this next year because I still have more to share with you.

I wanted to show a recap of the last three months in case you missed something that you might be interested in. I don't always share all of my blog posts on facebook, (I know some of my friends follow me there.) so if you'd like to never miss a post again, you can subscribe by email or better yet, join through google friends on my sidebar. I love having new friends!!! Here are some of my favorites of the year and some of the more popular posts.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As we approach a new year, it is customary to reflect on the past year and to set goals for the new year. This week I will post a recap of my favorite projects and posts for the year. (well, last three months anyway) but  today I am setting some decorating goals for myself in the new year. I am writing this down and telling all of you so I will be held accountable and forced to do it.

Everyone has them. Rooms that we avoid at all costs. I have spent the last few months showing all of you the pretty rooms and the mostly completed projects. Now I am focusing on the not -so -fun rooms that we all have.  Today you can see the real life...

Recipe ~ Rum Balls

 Rum Ball Recipe
Rum balls...I promise, you can't eat just one.

Wrapping, Wrapping and More Wrapping

I know I'm getting old when a day after wrapping presents, usually on the floor, I am sore from head to toe and suddenly have a "bad back". Despite the pain and near overdose on Advil, I'm pretty proud of myself for having wrapped any presents at all so far. I feel ahead of the game from where I usually am at this point.

A Sad Day in Our Nation

While I always enjoy the traditions every year of wrapping presents, baking cookies and watching Christmas movies with the kids, I feel so sad that there are parents out there that had planned on doing these things with their sweet children that are no longer with them. The thought of these poor families that probably already had presents wrapped for their kids, that had plans to take their child to go sit on Santa's lap or to travel and visit their Grandparents, will never get to do those things and their future holidays will be forever changed. This tragedy in itself is horrible but the fact that it happened at this time of year makes it that much more painful. I think this tragic incident in Connecticut has made us all appreciate every moment we have with our children and our families. Having two young boys myself in elementary school, it really hit home as I'm sure it did for many of you as well.

None of us know how long we will have and this is an unfortunate reminder of that. As I spend this next week with my family, shopping, wrapping, baking, and celebrating Christmas, those families will be on my mind. I am praying for them to get through this, the toughest thing they will ever have to do.

Recipe ~ Apple Crisp

Even if you don't like apple crisp, just the smell in the house alone makes it worth making this recipe. It reminds me of home and the holidays. No scented candle in the world can reproduce this. In my opinion it tastes as great as it smells too.

The ingredients ~
Approx. 6 Granny Smith Apples
Approx. 1/2 cup sugar

Crumble mixture ~
1 stick butter softened
1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350.
Peal, core and slice apples. I use a corer to make it easy and then slice those pieces into thirds.
Put sliced apples into baking dish and sprinkle with the 1/2 cup sugar
Make the crumble mixture ~ add all of the ingredients together and mix with hand mixture. It will be crumbly :)

Note ~ If you have really large apples, you can double the crumble mixture. You can see in the picture the size that I was using and they were really large so I doubled it here and ended up having to use two baking dishes.

Sprinkle your mixture over the apples.

bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes. You want the apples to not be too crispy but also not too soggy, so keep an eye on them in the oven. The thinner they're sliced, the more quickly they'll cook.

Serve while it's still hot and as Dolly Parton says, "...cut the sweetness with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream." From Steel Magnolias if you didn't get the reference and must be said with an extreme Southern drawl.

Hope you enjoy. More recipes to come next week so please join me and my mom. These recipes might have a little rum involved so you won't want to miss that!

Special thanks to my mom for letting me share the family recipes!!!

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A Christmas Decorating Recap, Indoors and Out

Just a quick recap of the last couple of weeks of Christmas decorating. Even though it's only a little over a week to Christmas, I'll probably tweek a few things because I just can't leave well enough alone. Are you like me in that way? Here's what we have going on at the Teer household so far...


The rustic front porch with grapevine, greenery, twinkle lights and deer.

December Fun

Well, we have been having a lot of fun lately and there have been many distractions to keep me from getting the tree up but it is finally finished. Before I show you my favorite details of the tree, I'll show you all of the fun things we've been up to...

Shopping with Mom (The Finds)

This is probably one of the best finds in a long time. When you see the before shot you're going to wonder why this was such a long time coming...

Christmas Decorations at Mason Marcus

Well, it's that time of the year, when family gets together and I know when I get an invitation from my mother to get together at her house there will be some sort of decorating or party planning involved. Let's just say the apple does not fall far from the tree. Shopping and decorating are two of our favorite things. I wanted to share some pictures of her house and some of my favorite things.

Christmas Porch

My little project today was sprucing up the area by the bench outside. I pulled the cart before the horse, as I tend to do, and made the pillows before the cushion. The cushion intimidates me a little and I knew that if I didn't get ANYthing done that I would never do anything to it at all.

Room Tour ~ The Dining Room

If you have been following me the last couple of weeks, you have probably seen a lot of this room already. It has changed quite a bit since we first moved in. My house was very beige and dark. We have a lot of oak trees and a covered patio off of the back so the house needed some lightening up. Whenever I look through magazines, I will tear out pictures of rooms that I like and I noticed a theme that had never really occurred to me before ~ white walls. Almost every picture I had torn out had them. So, I thought that painting the room white would solve both problems, no more beige and no more dark room. DONE.