Spiritual Sunday & Sunday Favorites

Another week has came and gone and done so very quickly I might add. It's time once again for "Spiritual Sunday" which is hosted by Charlotte and Ginger @ The Blogger Spirit as well as Sunday Favorites which is hosted by the lovely Chari @ Happy To Design.

After taking time to view and listen to my post please go over to both of the other blogs and read what everyone else has for today. You'll be so glad that you did.

For my spiritual post today I am including a beautiful video of Alan Jackson and Allison Krauss singing The Angels Cried. It is so very beautiful and might even bring tears to your eyes. Just a warning there but I know you will enjoy it as much as I do.





Sunday Favorites is a wonderful way in which we can all choose a special previous entry from our blogs to share with any or all of the new readers that have recently discovered us. Today's Sunday Favorite was originally posted on January 24, 2009. I don't normally talk about my business but thought this would be a great way in which to introduce it to any of my newest readers who didn't know. I would also love to have a giveaway with regards to it. My business is Teaporia and we offer large selections of teas, tea accessories and more. Now back to the giveaway - five people will be chosen by Random Integer to receive 5 sample bags of various teas. The tea bags sent will be my choice and each will be different. Simply leave a comment on today's post and let me know you would like a chance to win. That's it, that's all you have to do. The winner will be chosen and announced on next Sunday.

You can find my Teaporia link on the home page under my blog header if you would like to go and visit the website.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

For Tea and Teapot Lovers

Photo above courtesy of the sweet Susan @ Between Naps on the Porch. Go by and give Susan a visit today. Susan is a wonderful hosts for Tablescape Tuesday and her blog is filled with many wonderful DIY posts and more.

Do you like tea? Whether it's hot or cold? Do you enjoy sitting at mid morning or in the afternoons and enjoying a nice cup of tea with maybe a hot scone or other treat? Nothing like sitting in front of a roaring fire in the winter time and sipping a hot cup of tea while relaxing. Maybe partaking in your tea time while outside sitting on your back porch or deck? For me it's a real treat in the day to take my cup of hot tea, my favorite scone and just sit outside enjoying the quiet and maybe if I'm lucky the wildlife. Of course all of this is made more special by fixing myself a special tray loaded with my favorite tea pot, cup and saucer. Sometimes I even put a tea rose in a special vase on my tea tray as well. It's just the perfect ending to a perfect day! I think most of us do enjoy this little pleasure for ourselves. I know I certainly do! I am extremely happy to announce that I have found the perfect place in which you can order fabulous teas, tea pots, cups, saucers, and all of your tea time favorites. Not only have a found such a place I even decided to become a consultant for them. Who is this wonderful place I'm talking about you ask? It's Teaporia!! At Teaporia we offer a large variety of your favorite teas for serving hot or cold. Teaporia opened their doors over three years ago and at that time had a selection of around 50 teas to choose from. Because of the large demand for various types of tea they have now expanded their offerings to over 150 selections.
We carry everything from sample bags to 1 pound bags and more, all for your indulgence. We have recently added our Teaporia Kids Line of Teas for all those little ones that love their "own" tea and their special tea sets. Be sure to take a look at the collection! Teaporia is happy to Custom Blend any teas at your request. We also make up gift baskets, have gift certificates and will ship anywhere in the United States for you. Tell us what your needs are and we will do our best to make you happy.

Begin your experience or enhance your knowledge of tea by trying some of our many different flavors. Don't forget to try some our easy scone, muffin or cheesecake mixes. They all go great with a cup of tea. Share a cup with your friend, have an impromptu tea party with your children, or just sit back and relax.

Here are a few things that Teaporia has in their line of teas, teapots, scones, and more. Teaporia as well as a large selection for children. Including special teas and tea service for kids.

You will also find several recipes on the site such as: Tea Time Cookies, Pumpkin Pie Squares, Cranberry Orange Bread and many more.

So for a large selection of teas, tea pots and much more head over today to Teaporia (simply click the banner below) and have a look around. I promise you that you will enjoy the site and find something for the Tea lover in YOU!




Teaporia...the place for all your necessi-TEAS!

All Things Pink & Glittery

With Valentine's Day just around the corner and everyone having reds, pinks and decor on their minds wouldn't it be lovely to win some beautiful accessories for this sweetheart of a day? Maybe a sign that is cut out in the shape of "Be Mine" and embellished in pink glitter? What about a large amount of lovely pink ribbons? Or pink glittery starfish? Well all of this can be yours by doing one simple little thing or by increasing your chances and doing a couple of more things.

Tales from the OC Cottage is giving her wonderful readers just this opportunity now. The drawing will take place on Feb. 5th so be sure and head on over there now for your chance to win a lovely gift.

Cakes, Cakes and More Cakes

I've always loved sweets! I've always loved weddings! I fell in love with weddings all over again when Trucker and I married in 2006. So much so at that time it lead me to open a home based business. For three years I had a wedding business of handmade wedding invitations which I completely loved doing. For personal and health reasons however I closed it after two years. But I never lost my love all all things wedding. I knew when we were discussing all the wedding details I wanted our cake to be unique and different, not your traditional wedding cake at all. In fact just a lovely, unique "out of the box" cake. I finally found the cake of my dreams and the reason I loved it so, because it looked like a small stack of wedding gifts. It ended up being the hit of our wedding.

Miss Beverly asked us this week when we post our Pink Saturday pics to do something Valentine related since the holiday is not far away. I decided to do pink Valentine cakes for this. I just didn't feel up to roaming around the house taking pictures of my pink items since I had my surgery. So I hope I am forgiven for this and everyone enjoys the beautiful Pink Valentine's cakes instead.

I am also joining Mary @ Little Red House in her Monday Meme of Mosaics. For that I have chosen Pink Wedding Cakes that are "out of the box" and unique.



This is our "wedding cake"! See I told you unique and "out of the box".


I do hope you've enjoyed the beautiful cakes. Thank you to both Mary and Beverly for letting me be part of Pink Saturday and Mosaic Monday. Now that you've all seen my mosaics and Valentine's head over there and check out both of these wonderful ladies and their blogs.

Sweet Ladies in Blog Land, I Need Your HELP!!!

I've felt very under the weather for the last week or so and because of that and having some minor surgery today I won't be doing any home projects for the next week or so. Oh how I hate that and know that I will be going through withdrawal! Like a druggie I need my fix of DIY around here. So tonight while looped up on pain meds I've been looking around the web for inspiration for what I can be doing when I get to feeling better. Now I need your help you wonderful sweet ladies who I call friends. I am calling upon your expertise, your thoughts and your guidance. Help me do some choosing of colors, bedding, and headboards. I have narrowed the colors down for you some. As well as the bedding and headboards. But I still need your loving input. This will be the first major redo that I've ever done. Shocking but true.

The first major redecorating around here will be our master bedroom. Our bedroom was actually the den and has a drop down floor and two bi-fold door ways. Right now one of the doors is covered up, I placed the china cabinet in the dining room in front of it. On the bedroom side it has a ceiling to floor curtain over it. We aren't really sure if we want to permanently close it off or not. What do you think?

For three years now I've lived with nothing but a concrete floor, because the laminate wood flooring was ruined by former dogs. If you catch my meaning. So it had to be ripped out. It's never been in our budget to do the floors yet and honestly I could never decide what I wanted. Since it was the family den it also has no closet. Trucker built a makeshift closet in front of the door leading outside. It's ugly but works. I don't even have any sort of covering over it. Just the bare boards and clothing hanging there for the world to see. I would show pictures but truthfully I am ashamed of this room right now. The walls are all paneled in the 70's dark paneling. The good points to this room? It is large and measures 20x25. It has three nice size windows that have the plantation shutters. This I really really love. The ceilings are also tall around 10 ft. So all in all the room has good bones, so to speak.

Ok now I've filled you in on how it has potential. Our plans is to take the backdoor off and build a huge walk in closet onto the room. The backdoor leads out onto a concrete porch and we never use it because we have a window unit air conditioner in our bedroom ( no way we can do without it, after all hot flashes are terrible) which is right beside the porch. It's way to noisy to sit there and relax. We are considering building our bedroom floor upwards and making it the same level as the rest of the house. I think I've made my mind up to put down laminate wood floors again as well. Or we've even thought of staining or painting the concrete. Help here please too?

Now for the good stuff. Here's some pictures I want to use for inspiration for our room. So tell me what you lovely ladies think please. First off let me say that I know I want the colors to be either turquoise or a soft blue, and I want brown to be the accent color, along with white antiqued furniture which I will do myself.

These are the headboard ideas I've came up with. I'm going to name the pictures of the headboards so you wonderful sweet ladies can give me your input please. I'm begging! I can't make up my mind on what type of headboard. I am leaning towards the shutter headboard since we have the plantation shutters to the top of each side of the bed. Our bed sits in between the two windows.

This is the only picture I've got of our room. Try to overlook Trucker and the grand babies and you can see the plantation shutters and where our bed sits. See how dark our room is? This is with all the lights on in the late evening. It's a dungeon in there.

Short picket fence

Fireplace mantel and pillow

Floating Pillow and shelf. I really really think this idea is cute and could be done easily.

Columns and hanging Bookshelf

Large shutter headboard (the one I am leaning towards)

Bead board

Fancy Scroll (of course we wouldn't have two, although as I'm getting older it is starting to look pretty good sometimes)

Birdhouse (this one looks like it might be tough to build)

Painted door

Tall picket fence

I love the way this bed has the drawers for storage underneath as well as the matching nightstands. I want Trucker to build our bed on a platform with the storage under it.

Ok is everyone still with me or have I bored you to death by now? I've narrowed my choices down for the bedding and these are the ones I really like. But do you think they are to dark? Wrong color? Do they look manly enough?

I really like this one but it's more of a teal green than blue.
1.

I really love the colors in this as well. More of a turquoise color and brown.
2.

Close up of 2.
I love this color and the shimmer. But maybe a little girlie for Trucker.
3.


Like this as well. 4.

I believe this is how we are going to do the walls. Where the paneling is now go over it with this wainscoting. Then at the top paint it either the blue or the brown. Probably the blue. I also love the striped nightstand.


This would be the icing on the cake for me. Painted to match the room of course!
This will definitely be a summer decorating job for me. As well will be doing it a little along. So ladies what do you think? Can I pull it off? We have the furniture we are going to use all except the headboard and storage underneath. I will be painting it myself and doing the glazing and antiquing, so this will save us a ton of money. Naturally we want to do this as frugally as possible. As said I've never took on a challenge like this before. Do you know of any other ways in which to save ourselves as much money as possible? We will be doing all the work ourselves as well.

Thanks ladies and now I need you to put your thinking caps on for me! Tell me what you think?

I know this is an uncompleted DIY but I am linking to:

Transformation Thursday @ The Shabby Chic Cottage
Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed
Remodelahlics Anoymous @ Remodelaholic
Show and Tell Friday @ My Romantic Home

Ladies I sincerely hope that by linking up with an unfinished project that I haven't upset you. If by chance it does upset you then please by all means let me know and I won't do it again.

My Favorite Reds

Today I've decided to join Sue over at It's a Very Cherry World for her weekly Rednesday Meme. If you love the color red as much as I do then you completely enjoy everything about this meme. Be sure and go over to Cherry World and take a look at some amazing reds of all kinds.

Today I am going to share with you four of my all time favorite reds. These three mean the world to me and more! I would give these reds my life over and over again. Bet you wonder what sort of red I'm talking about? Not Valentine's today, not dishes and not any sort of DIY project. This one comes from the heart. My reds are my daughters and grand daughter in their fabulous red dresses and red nails and toes to match.

First up is my Daughter Princess (as I call her here). After all she really is a princess (to me and her dad anyway). Here she is posing for her Sr. Prom outside of our home. I love love her dress and all the rhinestones. We purchased it at Jessica's Bridal and Formal in Trumann, Ar not very far from home. See what I mean about a Princess?


Second is my step daughter (who holds my heart as well) posing in her red dress for her 7th grade Homecoming Maid picture this year. Isn't she gorgeous? Her mother decided to rent her dress, which I think was a very wise decision considering she is only 12 years old with many more years of growing to go.



Third I have my grand daughter. Now talk about a love of my life! Here she is posing on July 4th this year. She is 3 years old and we were headed out to the fireworks display. It is rather comical really. Every time we get her for a few weeks each summer she gets all excited about baths. Not so much about the bath but the fact that since she was born my Princess will take time to paint her nails and toe nails. Baby loves and adores this. This time Princess painted them red to match her dress which has red cherries all over it.


Last but certainly not least is Trucker. LOL. Of course I had to get him in here in his red shirt, dress slacks and the honest to goodness miracle of a tie! As you can see he is escorting his daughter onto the football field for her big night.



So there you have it! My favorite reds of all. I do hope you enjoy this little turn from the usual types of reds we normally see.

Don't forget to go over to It's a Cherry World and see lots more.