Fall-ifying

We've been doing lots of fall-ifying around our nest lately with fun seasonal decor and treats!

First up were some delicious soaked pumpkin pancakes! I was so excited when a store near us started to carry organic pumpkins so I could make homemade puree - so easy! I used this recipe but soaked the flour and water overnight with a bit more ACV than called for, and used coconut milk instead of soy. They were really good and cooked better than any other pancakes I've ever done. I topped mine off with some raw coconut butter, banana, and a bit of drizzled raw coconut nectar. YUM!


This beautiful leaf branch Lovebug and I took from a friend's backyard was our first piece of nature to bring in for the season and it inspired much of our fall decor. I love the heart shape and pretty brown color of the leaves.


Next up with our homemade pumpkin puree we made soaked pumpkin cupcakes for a family get together, which we topped with a delicious cashew and hazelnut frosting.


Inspired by the above leaf branch I made some leaves out of brown packaging paper I had saved and hung them on thread. Lovebug loved doing this alongside me and made some darling little leaves herself:). I really enjoy lighting candles this time of year and have lots of soy ones leftover from my sister's wedding everywhere along with some pillar ones I recently made.


I think pinecones are so unique and beautiful. These ones we collected during a recent family photo shoot and the large acorns were given to me by a dear friend.


I adore soups, especially this time of the year. There is nothing better than warm soup on a cool day! This sweet potato, squash, and apple soup which my Love adapted a bit by adding carrot too was delicious and such a lovely fall color.


This is sitting in our dining room and is just a little vignette of dead branches from our backyard, a few leaves, and pinecones. Simple. I like it.


I really love our fall decor this year! It very much looks like fall around our parts as we don't see a ton of reds, oranges, and your typical "fall colors" but I still appreciate the colors we do see :). I think it's beautiful.

Have you been fall-ifying too?

Lovely

This last weekend didn't go as we had planned at all as we were supposed to be antiquing here, but we still managed to have a lovely weekend! I got to spend some ridiculously fun time catching up with old friends from high school. It was our 10 year reunion and it was so enjoyable seeing where everyone is in their lives. I'm so glad we stayed in town and I was able to be there!


We were also treated to some lovely weather with an incredibly yummy taste of fall around here. I sure do LOVE summer and have had a blast the last couple of months, but I'm extremely ready and excited for fall and all of its fun activities and enjoyments. Aren't you??? Fall has me planning this and that in my head and I seriously cannot wait much longer!


In celebration of the coolness outside we headed to the park yesterday for some soccer and playground playing. It was great seeing SO many families outside soaking in the delicious weather and involved in various physical activities. I love to see active families. :) Well, I hope you've had an incredible summer as well and here's to the MANY lovely fall weekends ahead of us!

P.S. I seriously love all of these little pieces of summer around our nest that we've collected over the years...especially the white coral we found on a Mexico beach. But it's time to change the look around here to fall now!

Around our nest...

We've been working on alot of organization projects as of late. Some of them are finished, some are in the process, and some are being put on temporary hold or on a near future to-do list. I truly love organization and everything having a place...I really really do. So although these projects have been really time consuming, I've been enjoying the process and loving the end result! Most of the work has involved the closets, which were in dire need of much purging, storing, and organizing. They look and feel SO much better now, and I actually love walking in them! :) We have boxes and boxes of clothes to sell and give away, which I further look forward getting done SOON. We used the below boxes in quite a few places for storing different things. They are from here and are made from recycled fiberboard (the square ones are on sale big time right now), plus I just like their simple white design.


The closets were ready to get organized because we finally finished the below dressers we've been working on for quite some time now - YEA!!! We got the "dressers" (there are 2, but one is shown) at an Antique Weekend a few trips ago and knew they were going in our room to store clothes. They are metal kitchen cabinets from around the 50's, if not earlier, and they have porcelain doors which we thought was pretty cool. We cleaned them up quite a bit and had metal tops made for them. Then we rust proofed and primed them with this, painted them with this, and sealed them with this. Afterwards, we let them offgas for awhile which is a great thing to do even if you use green products like we did. Lastly, we added magnetic catches for the doors from our local home improvement store and added some coordinating legs from here. It was quite a process and we swear we took "before" pictures but cannot find them anywhere - darn it! They turned out much better than we had envisioned though and work perfectly. However, we were disappointed to find out that Lovebug has no problem opening them and likes to get all of mommy's "pretty" clothes out. :( Oh well...hopefully that gets old fast!


So that was a major accomplishment and we were thrilled beyond measure! In celebration, I made some brownies which we topped with mint chocolate chip Coconut Bliss of course! The original brownie recipe is right here but we tweaked it a bit by using coconut oil instead of vegetable. They turned out great although I would throw in more chocolate chips next time for some added texture, thus why I had to add some on top :).


It feels so great to get some of these big projects done that have been on our to-do list for quite awhile now. I look forward to alot more organization that will be going on in the next few months around our nest! Do you have any upcoming fall organization projects planned?

I am SO glad it's Friday...it's going to be a BUSY BUSY weekend for us but I'm really looking forward to all of it!! Have a great one!

Hello there March!

Hi. How are you? I took a little break from blogging last week and it was nice to just be away for awhile. Sometimes I feel pressure to post (from myself) and last week I didn't feel it for whatever reason. It was nice and we had some lovely weather, so much time was spent outside enjoying it! Well, March arrived whilst I was away and I can hardly believe it. My beloved February is over with all of its red, hearts, chocolate, and whatnot. I guess I'll have to put away my little red collection of books I gathered that sat on our coffee table for the month. See Romeo & Juliet on the top? We got that little gem in Verona whilst living in Italy...it's one of my treasured little trinkets.


Well anyway, it's just about time to welcome all of the gorgeous spring colors that I love just as much and I cannot wait to start seeing everything turn! It's supposed to be just perfect today and the rest of the week, so I'm sure we'll be outside soaking it in as much as possible. Hopefully though I can pop in and share some of the going-ons of our green nest because I have surely missed doing so and hearing from each of you! Be back soon...

Our Heart Day

Hope your Valentine's was as perfect as ours! Wasn't it so much fun that it fell on a Saturday? It was a slow day at home with the three of us just hanging out and enjoying each other. We ate some delicious food (and desserts:), crafted a bit, and caught up on some of our favorite shows online. I thought I'd share some hearts and such from our weekend...


Yummy whole wheat chocolate chip pancakes made for me by my sweet Love...


Lovely patch I made from recycled shirts, then embroidered and sewed onto one of my Love's undershirts as his little gift from me. He loves it as he has always wanted a tattoo of my name, so this was something in that direction :)...


Delicious and simple homemade pizza made by my Love for dinner...


Adorable new leg warmers on Lovebug as her little gift...


Precious little conversation people customized for us by these Etsy gals that inspired my Valentine's look this year...


Fun little banners and mobiles I made from newspaper, acrylic paint, and cotton yarn...


Hope the rest of your week is full of yummy, lovely, delicious, adorable, precious, and fun things! OH and thank you so much for all of the sweet comments on Lovebug's party, especially to Joslyn for putting it on Kirtsy. I felt so honored and am super glad I finally posted it! :)

2008 Christmas Decor

I don't think we'll be leaving our decor up for another week anymore because our tree is looking very very sad :(, so I thought I'd do a little photo post of our Christmas decor before it comes down. Isn't so fun to decorate your nest? I already have ideas brimming for 2009 - stockings that need to be made, more vintage ornaments found for an advent calendar, and many other things. It seems forever away, but time flies when you're having fun so I know it will be here before I know it!










Have a great weekend!

So long fall...

Oh I hope everyone's Thanksgiving weekends were wonderful! Ours was delightful! Thanksgiving day was long, but was such an enjoyable time with our families. However, we REALLY missed the beloved ones that couldn't join us (you know who you are!)!!! Friday and Saturday were spent working on things for Lovebug's 1st birthday party next weekend, which I am so excited for! Lots of Christmas music was listened to all weekend :)...speaking of which, Pandora has some great x-mas stations in case you're interested! We also took down all of our fall decorations, but I was able to get some shots of them before doing so...






The lentils/split peas got containered for cooking, my Love used the squash in a delicious penne dish, the soy candles got put away for later use, the acorns got saved for future crafts, and then everything else got composted!!!

It's hard to believe...but, so long fall! HELLO December!

Shells to pumpkins

This week thus far has partly involved putting away our mementos of summer (yes, FINALLY). I just got to the point where I was ready to let go of it all until next year and was fully open to fall. I love fall...I love all seasons really, but I do love our summer mementos we've collected over the years quite alot. Now that I'm finishing up some of the fall decor today though, I really love the fall ones too :), so it's really the changing of the seasons I truly adore.




Of course with Lovebug walking these days, we had to do the whole pumpkin patch thing this last weekend to officially welcome fall. We got there right before the crowds of people arrived and it was good family fun. Lovebug loved it! She stayed by one particular pumpkin almost the entire time but walked around a bit here and there. She really enjoyed seeing all the other babies and kids, and tried talking to all of them as she's quite the social gal. :) Her favorite part however was the hay and grass that surrounded the pumpkins - she just sat there and played with that for quite some time.





Today, we have errands to run, decor to finish up, bread to make, Lovebug's laundry to do, and some bills to pay, amongst the other everyday stuff of course :). There is a cold front coming through that I can already feel a bit, which is exciting! It makes our nest's change to fall decor seem all the more justified. Maybe we need to make some apple cider to go with our bread today! Have a good one.

Lovebirds Event Decor

For those of you interested in the decor, the theme was "lovebirds" and the decor was so much fun to create and make. I went as "green" as possible and looked first to what I already had that could be used...but when I needed to go outside of that, I chose organic, sustainable, or secondhand materials. We did not have any cans or bottled beverages, and used cloth napkins, real plates, cups, and utensils...so it was a pretty near zero-waste event with only a bit of gift paper and cooking material packaging being recycled and food scraps composted of course. My Love made the cute drink tags below out of a cereal box from our recycling bin and tied them with some hemp twine we have lots of onhand at our house.



The entry table featured two "lovebirds" I made from recycled vintage sweaters and a nest made from long shreds of magazine pages received in a package. The leaf shaped labels were made from pages of an old Shakespeare poem/sonnet book I got secondhand that fit in nicely with the "lovebird" theme. The favors were scraps of white fabric leftover from making our curtains, filled with organic birdseed from Green Mama's and tied with the hemp twine. I tried to find organic fair-trade chocolate eggs to put in the nests but couldn't so had to settle for "sugar free" ones from Central Market...






The buffet table's centerpiece was a floral arrangement accompanied by some birdhouses...The flowers I made with floral wire, floral tape, and pages of the Shakespeare poem book mentioned above, which were then arranged in a vase of my Mom's filled with organic birdseed and tied with red ribbon I found rummaging around my ribbon/twine box. The embroidered bird runner on the table is vintage found at Circa 77...The birdhouses we already had in the backyard, and the little birds were also made from recycled vintage sweaters and stuffed with Texas-grown organic cotton (little tidbit of eco info - the great state of Texas is the 2nd largest producer of organic cotton in the WORLD -yea us!)!







The coffee table centerpiece was a little "lovebird tree" with fallen branches from our backyard, more recycled vintage sweater birds, leaves cut from the Shakespeare poem book, finished off by another magazine shred nest and a second beautifully embroidered vintage bird table runner found also at Circa 77.








It all brought me lots of enjoyment to create as creating always does...and we love it all so much it's going to stay up as our "spring decor"...the birds, nests, and flowers fit in just perfectly with Easter and spring!