Hammer Time

Everyone knows Baking Soda is one of those "must have" items to have in your house. Cooking, Cleaning, Deodorizing, it is pretty much an all-around awesome product. I have recently experienced yet another benefit of this amazing concoction: bug bite zapper. If you mix the baking soda with a little water, rub the paste on your pesky bug bit, viola!, bug bite cure. I guess it is because it draws the bug poison (ick) out and absorbs it, note really sure, all I know is that it works. Take it from me, I am a mosquito favorite and have dealt with my fair share of bug bites.

No more itch for me!

Light Up the Night

My Favorite Time of the Year!
Yes, Fall of course, but more specifically the week before Halloween.
Carvings pumpkins, decorating and of course, costume making.

This year's inspiration - These Bad Boys
How awe-inspiring, whimsical and altogether magical are these fireflies?

What a great reminder of the glory in the beauty of the world around us.

Cannot wait for next week and my costume!

firefly image courtesy of gardenmatters.com

Fall for it All

Who doesn't love fall? The warm colors, the crisp air, the leaves, the pumpkins, the scarves....oh don't worry, I could go on and on.

I love fall, probably because as a child of the desert, I was deprived of this season entirely for the first 18 years of my life.

Here are my favorite fall snippets of the week:

Apple Cider in Apple Cups
Are you kidding me, how fun are these?!

Glam Carved Pumpkins

Gorgeous and Festive



Happy Falling!


Apple Cider Cups via Busy Mom. Beautiful Pumpkin Carvings courtesy of Martha Stewart, of course.

Joieful

Citizen Hotel - Sacramento, CA
photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

Oh my GOSH!! I have been working with Joie de Vivre hotel group for the past week, getting ready to help them send out their first Chip's Picks newsletter tomorrow and I am browsing some of my favie Conde Nast Traveler blogs and what do I see???? A shout-out to the very newsletter I am helping to facilitate!

Check out the article HERE!

Go sign-up for Chip's Picks and you will get a chance to receive some hotel deals that are pretty much the bomb.com

Seriously, such an amazing hotel chain to work with and the hotels are the among the best in boutique elegance in California. I love to feel like I am part of something bigger than myself. In this case, it is a pretty sweet marketing campaign. Yes!! Major discovery for the day.

Read It and Weep

Who doesn't need and love some "me" time. No silly, not time with me! Alone time. Time to think, evaluate and enjoy being you. A little alone time goes a long way, I don't care who you are, One day I hope to create my own little "me time haven", a magical place stocked with my items of wonder. Designed , cared for and lived in by yours truly. It will be filled with quiet and light, and of course comfortable seating and chandeliers.

A glimpse into my dreams of this place:
The heavy, carved, wooden doors creak open as you walk into the room, closing behind you with a soft and comforting thud. You take a deep breath and the crispness of a room closed off from the rest of the world fills your lungs, while the musty smell of knowledge rushes towards you from the book lined walls. The shelf-lined walls lead your eyes upward and eventually end where the unreachable ceiling begins, leaving you with a child's starry eyes. The smooth and knotty wood beneath your bare feet soothes your tired feet as you're beckoned by the fat velvet of your worn chaise lounge. Wrapped in thick chenille, you sit and gaze out the expansive wall of window panes, pouring their ethereal light all around you. Warmness and comfort fills every part of you and yet, here is where you feel so free. Your heart twinges with happy longing as you glide to your beautiful, ebony Model D. Your fingers brush the keys and their light voices bounce off the walls, a sweet companion to the calm room filled with stories. A glass of iced tea sweats in your other palm as you take in one more deep breath and smile with all of your heart.

I could go on of course, but why don't we let some pictures do the rest of the talking:

Wonder, Hope and Dream.

True or Falsa

The Southwest is constantly calling to me through items I see in stores, online and in friends' homes. Not the peach and turquoise Southwest but the vivid, colorful Southwest. I am always drawn to warm colors, organic patterns and naturally textured fabrics. Growing up, I thought my parents' Falsa blankets were just plain old ugly. We used them in the car, for picnics, for cuddling up in outside when it was cold and I could never understand why they liked them. At all. Of course, I have now come to my senses and those warm patterns on a thick cotton blanket fill me with sweet thoughts of summer nights, wet grass, vintage trucks and fireflies. So I bought some. That's right, plural. So they won't get lonely of course!

When I grow up, I will purchase some genuine, hand woven Mexican and Indian blankets but until then my 12 ft. long, 50's, streamlined, white couch is going to have one of these bad boys adorning it:

Fiesta Foreva!

Glow Forth

Can you say seriously obsessed? Because after looking at these Duffy London Chandelier Canvases, that is exactly what I am. Obsessed.



How sick would these look in your entryway or hallway? You could even just use a couple together.

Looking for something not quite so girly/graphic? Try this Rust Canvas on for size:

Turned off in the daytime and on at night for an awesome built-in lighting system for entertaining and mood lighting.

PROJECT ALERT!

The Duffy London Glo Canvases are seriously my new must-have home decor item. I cannot wait to hang them in my living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, hallway - I mean, these are so fun and glamorous all at the same time.

I could also make them...hmmm... with a picture of my own which I could have put on canvas and framed by CanvasPop.com (which I have been dying to do anyway) and install a couple of LED (not florescent as these ones are) on the backside of the picture and voila! My very own personal Glo Canvas.

Now, the only question remains: who has a birthday coming up and needs a sweet gift???

all Glo Canvas pictures courtesy of Duffy London. Hallway Picture courtesy of HGTV's urban oasis.

Sack It Up

Last week, I was lucky enough to take part in the Covington's family vacation. Great hosts, amazing activities and my favorite part of Colorado. It just doesn't get much better than that.

My days in Colorado were filled with great adventure. One of the days, we rented a jeep, drove over Ophir (oh-fur) pass, spied on some Pika in their natural habitat (look 'em up, the cutest boulder creatures ever), further explored one of my favie Colorado towns - Telluride, where we took the gondola ride with a professional downhill mountain biker (don't worry, he is also an Auditor), and continued on through Red Mountain Pass back to Silverton and Mineral Creek for some awesome picture taking of waterfalls and other scenery right out of God's picture-book.

We were lucky enough to be in Telluride during their farmers' market, which was just awesome. It was filled with lots of little joys and even included some bag people. That's right, Telluride had bag people. Bag Monsters, actually. Quite the scene they made, which is obviously the point. Their all-plastic bag outfits looked disgustingly sweaty, but aside from scary thoughts of a possible heat stroke, I couldn't help but smile.

Apparently the original Bag Monster travels the country, spreading awareness of the overuse of plastic bags and promoting reusable bags by providing other people with the opportunity to "feel the weight of their impact on the environment" by having them wear plastic bag suits.

Article on the Bag Monster in Telluride -
http://www.bagmonster.com/2010/08/telluride-elks-park-dont-feed-bag.html

(Bag Monster on the Green Carpet at the EMAs)

For having been raised in an extremely conservative home, the practice of using reusable bags at the grocery store is one that I was introduced to at a very young age. My mamacita did exactly this for many years, using cloth bags for our groceries. I thought it was just absurd as a child. Now that I am older, I not only see the "green" nature of this practice but also that it a.) reduces clutter in your house b.) reduces the guilt you feel when you throw away all of those bags c.) they can be SUPER cute.

Project Alert!

I figure to cover my bases I would need about 25 canvas bags, just to make sure I have enough for those extreme grocery shopping days :). ECOBAGS offers a wide variety of canvas bags, starting around $5.00/piece. Of course, you can always get them on Amazon too, which is definitely cheaper than anything else out there. With a little bit of permanent paint and/or ink and some inspiration, your canvas bags can not only make a enviromental statement but can become an accessory, turning you and your grocery cart into grocery shopping chic. I am thinking of simple, sketchy, vintage designs of some of my favorite foods, since that is what the bags will be holding. Here is a sample of my brainchild:



If you have more resources than time, you can always order them with colorful designs already in place. Cafe Press and 4 Imprint have some very easy-to-use design wizards which can guide you in the right direction.

I cannot wait to have a bag day and embark on my new craft adventure!

Natural Born Adventurer

I am and have always been, hungry for adventure. New places, new people, new food, new experiences - you name it, if I haven't done it, I probably want to (excluding a few certain items that I am pretty sure would be bad life choices).

Working 40, er 80, hours a week can put quite the damper on an adventurous spirit, even when you have an amazing job that allows you to travel and to express some of your creative energy. In order to be happy, this adventurer must find joy in the "everyday adventures and discoveries", happenings that might otherwise be overlooked and not recognized for their pure joy potential.

I am slowly but surely realizing that discovering the world around you can be one of the most exciting adventures of all.

And now I present...my adventures and discoveries.
I can only hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Ciao, Ciao