Five Friday Favorites #3

It's been a weird week for me, at least in terms of my work life. I worked from home Tuesday because of a leak in the bathroom, had to leave early on Wednesday because of the leak, had to leave early on Thursday to meet at our home site, and I spent a good chunk of the day on Friday packing up my office so I can move down the hall. Definitely didn't get enough time for actual work squeezed in there. But I'm still happy today is Friday, since really, how can you not be happy on a Friday?? Here are some things I'm loving this week...

Favorite DIY planters: How easy and adorable are these little brick succulent planters?  Grab some construction bricks with holes in them and plunk in a succulent and a candle. Done!

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{House Update} Wraps and windows and doors, oh my!

The house is speeding along so fast lately, I can't believe it. We stop by every couple of days, and each time we go, we see so much progress! Here's what she's looking like now...

{Recipe} Baked Plantain Chips

When we were at the Outer Banks last summer, one of our friends fried some delicious plantain chips. I loved them and made them several times at home after that. When I noticed plantains were on sale at the grocery store recently, I decided to try a baked version and was pleasantly surprised with this healthy, simple snack.

Happy Earth Day!

I wasn't planning on doing an Earth Day post (which, coincidentally, might explain why I'm posting this after 9 EDT...but hey it's still Earth Day for a few more hours!), but then I figured I'd share a few simple ways to celebrate...

Five Friday Favorites #2

Happy Friday, all! Here are five things I'm loving this week...

Favorite eat-in kitchen: I first saw this breakfast nook a while ago, but I can't seem to get it out of my head. I would love to re-create something similar in my kitchen.

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{House update} The first floor takes shape

Our visit to the site last weekend was by far the most exciting yet. With the exception of the back wall of the family room, the first floor had been all framed out. We could walk around the first floor and see how big each of the rooms are and start to imagine ourselves living there. We'll walk in through the garage, and throw our stuff in the laundry room. Here's the window above the sink that I'll be staring through when I wash dishes. Wow, this pantry is huge; will we ever have that much food in the house? And although the basement has been done for a little while now, this is the first chance we had to actually walk through it since the outside stairs had been added.

View from the sidewalk

Five Friday Favorites {Numero Uno}

Let's face it: I'm not exactly a model blogger. When am I going to post? What am I going to post? It's anyone's guess (and yours is as good as mine, honestly!). My content's all over the place, and while I do enjoy being a bit random, it would nice to at least occasionally post home-related stuff (which has been hard, since we're still impatiently waiting for that pesky house of ours to hurry up and get built already!).

To {slightly} help with those issues, I thought it would fun to start posting a series I decided to call Five Friday Favorites. For one thing, it gives me a regular post to stick to each week. Just one, and it's an easy one...I think I can handle that. For another, I can incorporate some home decor topics here. Not just home decor... that would be much too consistent for me... but definitely some favorite looks for around the house, and whatever else I might be fancying lately - DIY, food, fashion, travel, pet stuff, whatever. I had a lot of fun picking out my first set, and it was hard to limit it to just five things, so I'm definitely excited about continuing this in the future!

So here goes, five favorites for this fabulous Friday...

Favorite bold decor move: Black paint. I love the rich feel that black paint brings to a room. I don't know if I'd be brave enough to put it in a large living space, but I think I may go for it in our new powder room.

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FMS Photo-A-Day March Wrap-up

Three months down in the Fat Mum Slim photo a day challenge for 2013! March was a great month - our highlights included two little getaways (our WV ski trip and my girls weekend in Austin) and the foundation for our house being poured - yay! My favorite (only?) project of the month was our new return air grille - I'm still loving how it looks! Anyway, like the last couple of months (Jan and Feb), I wanted to do a quick wrap-up of my daily pics along with the list of prompts - here they are!

Girls Weekend in Austin

This past weekend, I had a pretty awesome girls weekend in Austin with two of my favorite ladies. We had very little planned ahead of time, but everything came together for the makings of a fantastic trip. Here's how our itinerary turned out for our weekend getaway in Austin...