My Happy List & WW Soup Recipe

1. Healthier living!  Not only was it stressful starting back to school, but working at a new location added an extra dose!  I am an emotional eater, was eating out all the time and using food to help me through.  Now I have calmed down and am back to planning meals, shopping at the grocery store and cooking some.  (Have you tried this garden vegetable soup from Weight Watchers?  It is delicious and zero points!) Because of this, I have more energy to ride my bike or take a little walk, even if it is for a very short trip.

Wedding Photographs

Our son's wedding photographs are finally in! Here are some highlights from the special day! All photos are by Wasabi Photography.

beautiful bride and groom

getting ready

ceremony

family

wedding party

reception

cake

singing and dancing

a lovely celebration

I am wondering if this is my last wedding post. I feel kind of sad because it sure has been fun writing about it.

Shelving ReDo

Recently we had every carpet in our home cleaned. We moved everything out into other rooms so there wouldn't be obstacles for the carpet cleaner. If you read how I cleaned my kitchen, you know that I move EVERYTHING out - lol!  

This is what the great room shelves looked like before the mass movement of things.

Sparkly As

You can't really see it here, but there was a rhinestone brooch on my mother of the groom dress on the left waist. Something special had to be done with it after the wedding!  

What I Did with the Flowers

A few posts back I wrote about preserving the flowers from Danny & Natasha's wedding. This is what I did with some of them.

There was some eucalyptus in the floral arrangement that I dried as well and it smells so wonderful.

It is in a good spot where I pass by several times a day. Sometimes I stop to smell the roses (really the eucalyptus; the fragrance of the roses is long gone).  

This arrangement sits on top of this sideboard under a charcoal portrait Ashleigh drew of one of her college roommates.

I found these gold balls a few weeks ago.

Here is a photo from the wedding under some red roses.

Have you smelled the eucalyptus lately?

Linking with Table Top Tuesday, Wow Us Wednesdays.

Handmade Journaling Book

I wanted to join in on Ricki Treleaven's SMASH book party but first wanted to make another journaling book of my own. This is the front cover. It is a picture I saw online. It looks like a place I would like to be when I write in it! I used cardboard for the front and back pages. I made the picture for the front a little larger than the cardboard so I could glue it on. Then on the inside, I put another piece of paper to hide the edges that were glued down. I am going to take my time and think about how I want to embellish the front cover.

I can't remember the source of this photo but will be happy to give credit if I can find it.

Final Days of Summer

I visited my sister in Cincinnati. We stopped for a snapshot on our way to Graeter's ice cream when we saw "Meyer" on the building which was our stepdad's last name.

My Happy List: Wedding Memories & a New Tag

This is my first time to join in on this linky party. It caught my eye because I am really feeling an abundance of happiness lately.

Keep Calm

This post was inspired by a visit to Beth's blog: Beyond The Garden Gate.

I start back to work TOMORROW!

I am the Lead Nurse for a school corporation of 15,000 students. Each school has a full time nurse with 17 nurses in all. When school ended in June, we knew one of our nurses was retiring. About the second week of June, three more nurses resigned! I about lost my mind!

At that time I was shopping for iPhone cases and saw this: 

source

Hoosier Home Tour

I was asked by Debbiedoo's to give a home tour.

We are Hoosiers, living in a northern suburb of Indianapolis. Our home is one big copycat. When our daughter Ashleigh was in her senior year of high school and our son Danny was in his senior year of college, my husband Dan decided he wanted to live on a golf course. Since I wanted to get rid of the upstairs, it was fine with me.

We copied an existing model home in another neighborhood because it was exactly what we liked.  When I say copied, I mean everything...not just the floor plan, but the cabinets, flooring, colors of walls, etc. The decorator had done such an incredible job, we figured we saved a ton of time and money going this route. We did change the look of the exterior and flipped it for our lot as well as making some minor changes, but it is pretty much the same as the model home inside.

When we moved into our home, I imagined I was in a castle because it had such high doors, ceilings and woodwork along with so other many neat features we had never had before. It took me a few months to get to know it and feel comfortable in it, before I could call it "home."

When you enter the front door you can see there are several arches leading from the foyer to the dining room, great room and kitchen; a hallway with a door that opens to the master bath and bedroom; French doors that open to the office; and a staircase leading to the lower level.

This is a picture of our office right after installation. The company put this picture on their website along with all the other ones they did as examples of their work.

Here is a picture of the master bedroom. I talk more about this room here and here.

  

The dining room ceiling has a lot of wood trim which is one of my favorite features of the house. The ceiling is 14 feet high. I fell in love with it when I saw it in the model home. 

I made this wedding cake out of boxes. You can read more about it here.

The decorator used this photo as an inspiration for the fireplace wall in the great room. I am not sure what magazine it came from; she just handed me this copy.

So this is how it came out in the great room.

I love the shabby chic finish and special molding detail.

This tile was used on the fireplace

in the foyer

in the guest bathroom

and in the laundry room in various shapes and sizes. I love how the floor tiles make the house flow.

Here is more of the great room. I can never get good pictures of this room. I need professional help here.

I have written about my kitchen before. In fact, I shared with you how I recently cleaned it!

another archway - love those archways!

The kitchen has both painted and stained cabinets, 

a high window above the sink with a deep windowsill, 

fancy molding under the sink

a beautiful island for entertaining,

some shelves to play with,

a wine rack with storage for glasses above it, 

a window seat,

a distressed knotty pine wooden floor,

and a gourmet kitchen hood.

There is walk-in pantry (immediate left door) in a long hallway that leads to the garage. On the immediate right is the guest room and bath. Further down on the left is a big closet and the laundry room. Finally, at the far right is a closet under a set of stairs that goes to a huge unfinished room above the garage. 

Here is the pantry.

The family enjoys these pictures and takes whomever visits our home to see them. 

This key hanger was in my Dad's mobile home. My brother unscrewed it off the wall for me while we were cleaning things up after Dad died. I think of him when I go out to my car.

Here is the guest room on the main level. There's another one downstairs. 

This mirror hung in my childhood home. 

The guest bath sink and shower/commode areas are separated by a door.

When people use the bathroom, I receive compliments on this collage I bought 25 years ago when we lived in Cincinnati.

So now let's go downstairs for a bit.

I will just show a few pictures of the basement because it is Ashleigh's living space right now.

Here is one of my favorite features, a special wall treatment painted in the downstairs bathroom that was in the model home. We had them duplicate it.

The bedroom is painted the red you see in the bathroom.

The bar...we have had some fun parties here

with a stage that even has a little spotlight among the lights above it.

The minute we walked through the door of the model home we fell in love with it and knew it was the one, but when we saw the stage, it was a done deal. That is because Ashleigh was an entertainer back then.

This was taken on the weekend we moved into the house.  We had a huge graduation party with a local band for both Danny and Ashleigh.  

There is more downstairs, including a media area, a place to play cards and a huge storage area.  I have pictures of the storage area here. You can also see the view looking out my front door there and on this link you can see my back deck.

Thanks for visiting my Hoosier home!