Happy Halloween!

XOXO,

Maverick & Charlie

Check Baby, Check

Well, hopefully you guys have been as busy as I have and haven’t noticed my little disappearing act lately.  Call off the search parties, I’ve just been hiding in my house.  My patient case load was a little slow this month so I decided to take on a little project that I can’t wait to share with you {soon readers, soon}.  I’m also starting a company newsletter and blog for my office, doing a little blog design project for a friend, sewing projects for another friend, AND training for the half marathon NEXT WEEK {ack!}.  This all culminated over the last two weeks, so I don’t intend for this to be my new normal.

We did manage to make a little progress on my list last weekend though and went camping with some friends of ours, Cora {who I mention on here frequently} and her husband Jared—thus checking off item #12.  It only took six years of togetherness, but we finally slept outside by a fire.  It was so fun!  We drove to the mountains and did a little hiking and camping in Shenandoah National Park.  The leaves were at peak color change and the temps really felt like fall, so it was beautiful, fun, and freezing!

My m.o. is leaving the camera memory card in the computer and realizing it only when I’m out and about trying to take a picture.  which of course occurred to me as soon as we started our hike.  I at least had my camera phone, so the weekend wasn’t a total loss.

Whole lotta stuff for a 24 hour trip!

We hiked to the summit of Matthew’s Arm.  At this point on the trail, we’d just intersected the Appalachian Trail.

Setting up camp!

Cora & Jared had this cute little 2 person tent.  We set ours up and it was huge—we called it our tansion. {Tent + mansion = tansion}.  We had a little doormat and everything.  

Me & Cora

My “it’s cold!!” face.  The sun hadn’t even set and the temps were in the 40s, so I knew there was a long night ahead of me….

Luckily we had a fire {and a two-man sleeping bag}—it took a mere two hours to get it going.  I did my part by handing over discarded pages of my House Beautiful mag. Aren't I a sport?   We cooked hotdogs, cheeseburgers, and beans for dinner and planned ahead, cooking biscuits cowboy style for breakfast the next morning…

Of course the night wouldn’t be complete without SMORES!  {And apple cider to boot.}

I was only a little excited about these jumbo marshmellows.

We had to be back to the city early on Sunday so we were up and adam by 5am…or at least the boys were.  Jared had the fire going and Tyler cooked eggs and sausage to go with our biscuits—it was delicious.  I’d otherwise call it divine had it not been in the o’dark thirties.  Isn’t it great how guys take over everything with camping?

We crawled through the front door at 9:30 the next morning, tired and reeking of camp fire—it was so fun!  We can’t wait to do it again, we’re just not sure when.  It SNOWED here yesterday and we’re out of town for most of the upcoming weekends.  Here’s to next time, Terrys!

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In other FANTASTIC news, anyone catch this game on Saturday???  I was ready to curl up under a rock after that first half but the boys rallied and made this Bulldawg proud!  We’re 6-0 since the rocky start that had me on my heels earlier this season… It’s great to be a Georgia Bulldawg!

I’ll be doing my St. John’s River Dance for the rest of the week—GO DAWGS!! With an exclamation point!

Fun with Contact Paper!

First, let me say this:

Look, I followed through!!  I told you I was going to post something and I did!! After all those times when I say I’m going to show you pictures from a trip or recap a weekend or post a recipe or tell you where to eat in Savannah and I NEVER do it, I finally did it!!  I tell ya, I have a graveyard’s worth of unfinished, never published posts… But this isn’t one of them!

Okay, now that I go that out of my system, you can return to the regularly scheduled edition of Barefoot Daydreams.

What can you do hanging out solo on a Thursday night that will completely transform a small space and cost you nothing?  I’m so glad you asked!

You guys know I’m a sucker for a horizontal stripe.  And I have loved the idea of a tan and white striped wall ever since I saw this bathroom on Young House Love.  Striped walls have really hit the scene since then and I have been salivating over rooms like this and this and this.  Remembering an idea I saw on Pinterest {see how I’m tying this all together?}, I was bored one night and realized I had all of the tools I needed to join the striped wall gravy train.

A roll of white contact paper, a measuring tape, level, and a pencil is all I needed. 

I measured the wall floor to ceiling and figured out I could have eight 12 inch thick stripes—four white and four beige.  I measured the width of the wall—about four feet—and cut three strips of contact paper to a little bit more than four feet.  The stripes on the back of the paper made this whole process relatively easy.

Ready to go!

At this point, I was still a little skeptical this whole thing was really going to work.  Sure, it looks great in a picture or from a distance, but in reality, isn’t it just going to look like I stuck contact paper to my wall?  But this was literally going to cost me nothing but time, so what did I have to lose?

Before: entry way wall

I taped up a few just to get a feel if I was really going to commit to it.  I realized these stripes were way too big for such a small wall, so I recalculated to put up 16 stripes instead of eight.  I cut the strips 6” and got started.

Using the level, I penciled in a line across the wall to help me position the contact paper evenly.  I found it easiest to start positioning the paper from the center and adhering it moving outward.  It’s just shelf-liner, so it’s not too sticky and easily came off if I needed to reposition it.  {Avoid doing this too much though so it stays sticky}  Since I’d cut the stripes slightly longer than the width of the wall, they rounded the corners a bit.

After just three I was spazzing out I was so excited.  I l-o-v-e-d it!  The contact paper adhered perfectly to the wall—it looks just like paint.

Once I got the hang of it, the rest of the stripes went up in a breeze.  After they were all up, I just took a sharp knife down each corner and pulled off the excess paper that rounded the corner.  The whole thing, start to finish, was done during the two hour season premiere of Gray’s Anatomy.

Now, are you ready for the after??

You sure?

It looks pretty fantastic, so I just want to make sure you’re prepared.

Okay….

TADA!

Isn’t it adorable?

What was that?  You want to see a close up?  Okay!

I was thrilled with the outcome.  Except when I was done, NO ONE was there to appreciate it so I just sat on the sofa beaming for a few minutes.  I texted a picture to my mom and went to bed, deciding not to point out the change to see how long it took Mr. Husband to notice the change… I waited…and waited…and waited…

Finally, I brought it up later the next day.  “So did you notice anything different about the house?” He looks around.  Makes his I’m-trying-to-think-of-something-so-I-don’t-get-in-trouble face. “No?”

“YOU DIDN’T NOTICE THE STRIPES IN THE ENTRYWAY??”

“Oh. Yeah. I saw those last night.  Looks cute babe.”

Boys.

Whatever.

Anyway, heads up to my fellow renters—this project was easy, fun, cheap, and drastically changed the space.  The stripes have been up for about a month now {or whenever the Grey’s Anatomy premiere was} and there is no sign of them budging, curling, or coming off. 

So, do you think it would be bad to have striped walls in every room of the house?  {I know, I know….}

Life Imitating Pinterest

As I’ve mentioned no less than 842 times, I’m ob-sessed with Pinterest.  I evangelize it to everyone.  I will never be short an idea for what to wear, what to cook, what to paint, or how to paint it.

If you haven’t experienced it, it’s a place to catalog things you find on the internet in the form of pictures.  See a recipe you like? Pin it!  See a pair of shoes you want to remember? Pin it!  Love that room layout in the PB catalog?  Pin it!  You also get to see what everyone else pins, and if you like it, you can pin it yourself!  It’s half cataloging your ideas and half borrowing from everyone else.  {Or if you’re like me, 25% cataloging, 75% borrowing.}

Here are my latest pins come to life.

{Don’t judge the food:décor ratio…}

Pinterest…………Me……….Pinterest

 

Bacon-wrapped jalapeno & cream cheese stuffed chicken bites

 

Pumpkin Roll

Stuffed French Toast

               

Moss Letters

 

Split pea candle filler

 

Cinnamon Apple Donut Holes

 

 

 

 

Homemade Pop-Tarts

And hopefully some of these pins will come to life in the near future…

Probably not, but that’s what Pinterest is for! 

So, most of mine are a poor imitation but I’m never short of ideas or inspiration!  Anyone else tried something they found on there?  I have one more Pinterest-inspired project to share tomorrow—and I already wrote the post so I SWEAR I’ll follow through with this one!

{All pins can be found on my boards here}

Happy Thursday Pinning!