Guest Post - nook & sea

When I need house decorations or accessories inspiration, I turn to this sweet girl's blog. Kristina is the author of nook & sea and I have met her a few times as well. 

Her sense of home and life is pure California, great pieces, little touches here and there.

I love this board you put together for you all for her guest post.

Thank you Kristina!

Hi everyone! I'm Kristina with the home decor and lifestyle blog, Nook & Sea. While Meg's away, I thought I'd share a bit of my favorite exotic finds! With the Moroccan trend taking the stands, it's no wonder that ornate and colorful housewares are in the spotlight. Decadent lanterns, intricate wood detailings, bright fringes and soft frills make the Moroccan style even more appealing this summer season. And with retailers like West Elm catching the drift, perhaps it's time to add a little exotic flare to your space! We could all use a little getaway :)

lounge, tile, living room, bedroom, pillow, coffee table, pink vignette, fabric, basket

Guest Post - Delightfully Noted

Ok first guest post for you while I am on my vacation. Jennifer of Delightfully Noted is a blog I turn to and am never disappointed with what she posts. Whether it is a recipe or a cute and easy house decorations, Jennifer has some great ideas. Today she is sharing this great project with you all that produces great results and isn't expensive.

Hey there little Henning lovers. I am Jennifer of the Delightfully Noted blog where I share all things creative & everything delightfully in-between. I'm tickled pink that sweet Meg has agreed to share her little corner of the world with me today.

Lately, I've been enamored with mercury glass ever since I came across this pic from West Elm.

Come to find out you can make your own mercury glass decor & between you & I, it's as simple as pie. Honestly! The only challenging part of this project is tracking down the Krylon Looking Glass; as in like I- stopped -at- five- stores- type- of- challenging. 

Who knew this darn thing was such a delicacy among the spray paint world?

Hobby Lobby ended up being the only place to come through for me. So fist bump to the HL.

Besides the elusive Looking Glass spray paint you will also need:

*Spray bottle with 50/50 mixture of vinegar & water

*Paper towel

*Clean, glass vases {I picked mine up at the Dollar Store}

*Plants or candles to place inside

I started off by spritzing a quick shot of the vinegar/water mixture into my first vase with my spray bottle. This technique leaves water droplets on the inside of  the glass which will help you achieve the mercury effect later. Then I LIGHTLY started to spray my vase with the Looking Glass paint. I emphasize LIGHTLY because this stuff is very thin & watery & if you go all guns blazing you'll get streaks.  The can of spray paint instructs you do about 5 coats of paint. I think I did about seven or eight {I did a spritz of the 50/50 mixture between each paint coat} but I wouldn't take my word on it because I am no good at math under normal circumstances so just imagine what I'm like when I'm high on fumes?

Allow the glass to dry a few minutes. For the final step, spray some of the water/vinegar mixture on a piece of paper towel & with your index finger start gently rubbing away at some of the paint. 

Be random & spontaneous on the places you distress on the vase.

The point is not to be a perfectionist here! Stop once you are happy & then allow the glass to dry again for about a half hour or so.

Okay, I fibbed.

The final step IS actually to add plants, or candles, or what ever floats your boat to your vases.

When lit, candles give an absolutely beautiful ambience inside distressed mercury glass but I wanted something for our outdoor patio table so I went with succulent plants. 

I know these type of plants need good drainage so we'll see how long these babies survive inside the vases. I'm sure there is some savvy way to like drill a hole into glass but I'm not allowed to play with power tools when the hubby's not home.

On an another note, let me tell you it is incredibly hard to photograph mirrored objects with out capturing your fun house midget reflection on every picture!

Any more mercury fans out there? Of the glass, not the planet.

We all know Pluto RULES! Oh Pluto, you'll always be a planet in my heart. Sigh.

Has anyone else been working on sprucing up there outside oasis?



Thanks soooo much Meg for having me today!!

For the rest of you party people you can find me hanging around here, here, & here and if I'm not there then you can find me here working away on my little stationery shop.

Hope you all have a delightful day!

Thank you Jennifer for this awesome project. Definitely primping up my backyard with this great project when I return from my trip! Be sure to check out Jennifer's super cute note cards and the other great house projects she has on her blog. In fact, a wreath on her blog was how I found her blog in the first place. A few days later, I find myself racking my brain to remember where I had saw a super cute wreath (this was before Pinterest) and fortunately I found it again and a good blog friend too!

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

With the warmth and plenty of sunshine, southern California has been experiencing this week, it has got me thinking about gardening and what I would love to do with our small backyard. However, I will be the first to admit I do not possess a green thumb. Most plants that I come in contact with do not live very long and quickly die. I swear I water them every other day (ok in reality probably every other week), I swear I put them in the sunshine (ok maybe either they get too much sun or not enough sun). So if any of you have some green thumb tips, I do seriously need some, thanks!

If I did have a green thumb, these are some backyard projects I would be working on stat!

First, this incredible hanging herb garden with a shoe holder, in fact I think I must do this even with my lack of a green thumb.

Source: brownpaper--packages.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

And then because I still have two more pallets in my backyard even after Sean made the wine rack, I need to start working on this lovely project.

Source: brownpaper--packages.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

It would be fun to lay my own cement and make a beautiful walkway

Source: home-solutions.hsn.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

Since I love eating strawberries, I put them on my yogurt each morning, I would need to build this strawberry tower so I could walk out into my backyard each morning for fresh berries.

Source: chesapeakecrafts.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

Actually I would love to tear down the ugly brick wall we have surrounding our AC unit and replace the bricks with the pallets and a planter box to make the area more pretty

Source: camelotartcreations.blogspot.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

Maybe I can add some color to our fence with these potted flowers

Source: shannoneileenblog.typepad.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

Of course a backyard isn't complete without a fire pit especially for making s'mores!

Source: images.landscapingnetwork.com via Kathy on Pinterest

Turkey turkey, gobble gobble

Happy November 27 folks! Crazy that December is just a few days away. I was grateful to be able to spend a few days with my parents for Thanksgiving, although Sean and I got sick on Thursday and are still fighting whatever we both caught. Sorry, Mom and Dad, hope you don't get our colds. 

Just a few things we did when my parents were in town, ate sushi, ran a 5K, went to a Ducks hockey game, hung out in Seal Beach to name a few things. Definitely had a wonderful time with them and then this morning when my parents left to leave, I told Sean if I don't tell them good-bye then they can't leave. I was sad to see them go. 

 Of course, this post wouldn't be a proper recap about Thanksgiving without photos. That morning we started out with our annual family tradition of a turkey trot run. This was our post-run photo.

Sean won 3rd place in the race despite being sick, he was more sick than I was.

Aren't my parents cute?

From there, of course we headed home to start cooking the turkey! 

For our menu we had turkey, cornbread stuffing, green beans and mushrooms, cranberry relish (Mouch recipe, Mouch is my maiden name), cranberry mousse (Henning recipe), crescent rolls, mashed potatoes with chipotle gravy, spicy and yummy and for dessert pumpkin pie and chocolate pecan pie (recipe and photos as a guest post on Wednesday)!

Here is a photo of our table decorations.

Then filled with food!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Mouch and Henning family!

Kip and Kimbia wanted to say hello to you all as well.

Ok the place cards I decided were glitter pinecones. The great thing about this project is now the pinecones are sitting pretty in a vase in my living room. 

I bought spray adhesive and glitter at Hobby Lobby. For the name cards, I had some leftover cards from our wedding and just printed our names on the cards.

I sprayed the pinecones and sprinkled the glitter over the cones and I used a different color for each pinecones.

And the finished product...

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too, maybe you are still stuffed and filled with love from being with your friends and family members.

Monday morning craftiness...

Happy Monday morning all! I hope you had a great weekend, I certainly did. I saw Happy Feet 2 on Friday night, oh my gosh it is so cute. And I actually like this one better than the first one. Saturday I went with my wonderful friend, Shawna down to the Queen Bee craft fair and had a great time. Check out a few photos from the market. I was just amazed at the individual booths and the design and effort and energy put into each person's booth. They definitely all get an A for effort and excellence.

Do you recognize some of those shops and their corresponding blogs? Man, I would feel so fortunate if I could have  half of the success that the pleated poppy and allora handmade do. 

I didn't buy a ton but I did buy some Christmas gifts for people, which I won't reveal here because they read my blog and then found out. Shawna and I shopped the rest of the day, went to Hobby Lobby and I bought a few items for the place cards I am making for Thursday. I do have one thing to say about Hobby Lobby, they do not sell a bag of pinecones. Not the cinnamon scented pinecones, just regular pinecones. So Hobby Lobby get those stat!

Yesterday was raining pretty much all day so we stayed in and went to church. We heard the pastor who married us give the sermon as our head pastor was away and I loved his sermon, he was preaching on time and what God says about it. 

Back to the craftiness!

 Ok I have been adding some projects to my living room recently and I apologize, I haven't posted these project under sooner. Other topics took priority here on the blog but they are up today for your viewing pleasure. My living room is farm chic, you know mason jars, twine wrapped wreaths and so to add to the decor, I redid a footstool I found at Goodwill with a burlap sack I bought on ebay for $2. I bought some extra material to make the footstool cushioning larger. I hope you enjoy!

I unscrewed the legs of the foot stool and polished them up a bit.

I bought some extra felt to provide some extra padding.

I laid the burlap sack across the felt then flipped the stool over and stapled the burlap sack to the bottom of the stool. You will have to use a heavy duty stapler for that.

Then I screwed the legs back on and viola, a burlap covered foot stool. 

I have another project for you, lucky you :-)

I have been seeing those yarn wrapped letters so I purchased the supplies at Hobby Lobby. I bought three Hs because one was too thin for my taste, so I glued all three together and let it sit overnight so it was completed dried. 

I picked out a reddish-orange yarn and started wrapped it in the center first.

Wrap it around and around...

Then I started on the other parts and just continued to wrap and wrap.

Here is the finished project and where I display it in the living room. 

Lastly, the winner of the heart necklace from OliveYewJewels is... Lacee of Mommas like Me!! Congrats Lacee. I will contact both you and OliveYew Jewels.