Comments

I've had a lot of people lately asking how to comment on my blog.  I just tested it this morning, so it seems to be working.  Here are the steps to leave me a comment.

1. At the bottom of each post, you'll see a line like this.  Click where it says "Comments".  If you don't see this, skip to Step 2.
   

 2. Scroll to the bottom of the page.  You will see a box to type your comment in.

 3. Type in your comment, the choose "Anonymous" from the Comment As drop-down box.

4. Click "Post Comment"

That's it!  I love reading your comments, that way I know I'm not talking to an empty room.  Try to leave me a comment, if it doesn't work, contact me on Facebook by clicking here.

Thanks!

Let the Yardwork Begin... Scratch that... Continue!

No, it's definitely not the beginning of our yard work, but we're still no where close to being finished.  You have to give us a pat on the back though, cause our forest yard used to look like this.

Then we had it logged....

Then it looked like this....

Yikes!! Look at all that mud!!!! Now we have grass in spots, but still have a few brush piles and a LOT of stumps to deal with.  When I look at the yard, it feels like we have so far to go, but then I look back at these pictures and it reminds me of how far we've come.  We didn't start out with a graded, top-soil covered lot.  We started out with a forest, and it takes time to go from forest to yard.  I just have to keep reminding myself that. :)  Here's the yard as of yesterday.

It seems like we're always on the go in the summer, and it's too cold and the ground is frozen in the winter, so Fall is out best season for yard work.  So, last weekend, Chris broke out the backhoe and started digging up some stumps. 

So far, he's gotten 9 out since last week.  I can't wait till they're all gone and we can just mow our yard like everyone else in the world!  But... I do know one member of the family who will NOT be glad to see the stumps go...

Mercedes likes to use them as a bed. :)

Well, that's where we're at with the yard work.  Our goal, (I'm putting it on here to give us motivation) is to get all the stumps out this Fall/Winter and burn all the remaining brush piles.  Is it do-able?  We'll see!!

If I Only Had a Brain...

For everyone who thought the post title was about me.... shame on you.  Of course it's a scarecrow reference!  I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't quite finished making the house Fall-tastic.  I had one more scarecrow that I wanted to put out.  

My dad actually made this one for me.  Who knew that two privacy fence planks and a few boards could turn into a scarecrow? My daddy, that's who! The deal was, he would build it if I would paint it.

I've actually had this for about a year now.  He made it for me last year and for some reason the thought of painting a scarecrow on it intimidated the heck out of me.  Finally, I decided that I couldn't let it set in the basement for another year.  It was time this scarecrow got a little sunshine.  So I broke out the outdoor acrylic paints.

First I painted the base colors of my scarecrow.

Then I went over it to shade and add details.  And...... here he is!!

Chris put him up at the end of the driveway with some of my corn stalks.  Now I'm greeted everyday by a scarecrow!!

Now that I think about it, the end of the driveway is a great place for this guy.  The other side of the drive is where we put our trash out and we have MASSIVE crows that get into it.  Hmm... I wonder if scarecrows really scare crows??  We'll see!

New Kitchen Art

Woohoo!!  New wall art in the kitchen!!  I am so proud of myself at this moment, I created this new piece all by myself  :)  First, here's what the kitchen looked like before.

I liked the picture behind the table, but I've had it for about 3 years now, so it was time for a change.  Who knows, it may re-appear some day.

I wanted something to bring in the whole vintage-industrial vibe.  I decided to give a go at making my own... scary....  

I started out by finding a cute free font online.  This one's called Mailart Rubberstamp from here.

I knew what I wanted my sign to say, so I typed in out in GIMP.  If you're like me and you're too cheap to buy Photoshop, you should really try out GIMP, it has a lot of the same features as Photoshop, but it's free... yes, I said free.  You can download it here.

After that, I pulled in a free texture and added it as a layer. 

I put this layer on top of the text and made it a little transparent and I was left with this.

I had it printed to a poster size at Sam's Club.  I made it 20x24 and it only cost $8!

Now came framing.  

Awhile back, I found this frame at Goodwill for $4.

 

 It was a little scuffed, so I broke out the Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint, put the new picture in the frame and it came out like this.

 

There are a few scuffs on the glass, but I think it adds to the vintage charm. :)

Ahem... in the pics below you can see our horrible paint job in the kitchen... we had major paint issues in here, it'll be getting a new coat for winter :)

 

I'm thinking about hanging some colorful plates around the picture to add some color.  What do you think?

-Brooke

Fall on the Outside Too

It was a busy busy busy week!  The week after vacation in always brutal, but finally, we made it to the weekend and I got a couple of projects finished.  Earlier this week I posted about decorating the inside of my house for Fall, but I still hadn't done anything to the outside.  So yesterday, I went out and bought supplies and put together my little arrangement.  

I finally had my first, decent sized garden this summer, you can read about that here.  Not only did it give us goodies through the summer, it left me with corn stalks to decorate with!  I bought a bale of straw, pumpkins, gourds and mums.  I had the scarecrow in storage from last year.  

I propped up a pitchfork against the straw too.  When we were excavating for our house, we found this guy buried in the ground.  We held onto it, who knows how long it had been buried!  We plan on decorating our basement really rustic, I want it to have a lodge-like feel (it's gonna be Chris' playroom)... so I think I might put the pitchfork somewhere down there.

The gourd on the left is my favorite... look at his twisty stem.

I had enough corn stalks to make two stacks.  The other one I'm gonna place at the end of our driveway with another scarecrow.  Who doesn't wanna be greeted by a scarecrow?

Hopefully next year we'll have our covered front porch on the house and I can throw a few pumpkins up there too.  The porch is (hopefully) going to be our big Spring project... sigh... so many plans...  :)  

Brooke

Fall is Officially Here in the Gillespie House!

Wooohooo!!  I finally got everything unpacked from vacation and worked up enough motivation to go dig through all of our storage to find our Fall decorations.  Just as I feared, they were buried.  They were way under all of the Christmas decorations and Summer decorations.  And, it's spider-land down there!  Majorly eye-opening.  This weekend, I'm Chris is setting off a spider bomb.  But enough about the neglected basement...

I really thought I had a ton of Fall stuff, but when I dug it out... not so much.  I had enough to decorate the house, but I would have like a few more gourds and pumpkins... maybe on my next trip to WalMart. Enought chatter... let's get down to the good stuff... pictures!  (Hint: You can click on any of the pictures for a bigger view)

First things first, I had to get in the fall mood, so out came the pumpkin candles... yummy!!

 

The entry table got a few pumpkins and leaves.  I worked at a church one fall as a secretary and one of the women there gave me the leaf light.  I thought my lanterns looked Fall-like enough for me to keep 'em out.

I kept everything I had on the piano, but added some extras.

 

My name is Brooke Gillespie and I have a problem... I can't take straight pictures to save my life!  My makeshift coffee table got a leaf place mat.

The front door got a little makeover, I haven't tackled the yard yet, maybe this weekend.

I changed out the sign on top of my window chalkboard.

 

I was gonna erase the chalkboard and write something Fall-related, but I couldn't part with the drawings from my two favorite boys, my nephews Brayden and Landon.

This is Landon's (age 7) flamingo... I really think that's way better than what I could draw.

 

This is Brayden's (age 2) kickin (chicken)   :)

If I would have had enough pumpkins and gourds, I would have kept the basket on the table and filled it up with 'em.  Alas, I ran out of pumpkins... so the big candle came out.  That's okay, I love my big candle!

Some scarecrows gained a warm home by the fireplace.

The mason jars stayed, but got a little place mat upgrade.

Yes, I know these pictures are blurry.  It was night time and I could NOT get the camera to focus.  A few pumpkins, a scarecrow and some sunflowers made their way onto the bookcase.

And last and probably least... the side table got a new friend.

A few simple things added a cozy Fall touch to our house.  I love the change of the seasons!  I can't wait to make my pumpkin/ haystack/ corn stalk arrangement outside, and you know I'll post pictures ;)

P.S.- Spoiler alert... two of the pieces of furniture pictured above are getting makeovers soon....

Happy Fall Ya'll!!  

-Brooke

Vacation :)

We're back!!  Yep, we got home around 10:00 last night.  I love vacation, but I'm so glad to be home.  I always get a little homesick, I've always been that way, I just love being home.  I know, I'm a weirdo...  Anyways, I've had time to think about many, many projects that I want to do around the house, and I'm ready to get started.  But first, I wanted to share some pictures of our vacation.  Enjoy!

Okay, so on the drive, I was completely obsessed with these windmills.  I've seen 'em from far away on a hillside, but up close, these puppies are huge!!!  I also find them incredibly soothing... I don't know, something about the constant repetition I guess.  Chris actually made fun of me because I literally took 50 pics of them, I'll spare you and just post this one.

Our first stop on this three part vaca was Massanutten resort.  This place is actually a ski resort, but they're open year-round.  We were there for 2 days... it rained pretty much the whole time.  So we did a lot of nothing.  Seriously, there's nothing worse than being stuck in a hotel room.  But finally, towards the evening of our second day, it cleared enough for us to escape our room. We went to the on-site driving range, where a couple of golf balls may or may not have went soaring into the road (ahem... Chris).  I did learn a valuable lesson from this.  If we ever decide to go golfing (real golfing, not just mini-golf) we need to go on a day when absolutely NO ONE is there. 

 

One cool thing about Massanutten was the wildlife.  I was out of the car standing just a few feet away from this guy.

During all that rain, we did manage to sneak out to a little vacation tradition... FIVE GUYS!!  Best burgers ever!!

2 days is just about all we can stand of a regular hotel room, so we headed out into the woods for a little camping and kayaking on the Shenandoah River.

We had a nice campsite on the river. (I did have a fear at night that there was an ax murderer out there though.) Yeah, I get a little crazy sometimes.  You could say that I have an active imagination...

The first night, we set up camp and then headed out to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the WVU game.  It was a huge game, so there was no way we were missing it.  We ended up being in Buffalo Wild Wings for 5 hours... 

The next day, we were picked up at our campsite by this guy and we headed out to start our 18 mile kayaking trip.  They took us upstream to start out, so the first day we floated back to our campsite (10 miles) and the second day we floated from our campsite down to the kayaking company (8 miles).  This was by far the best part of vacation.

 

And... we kayaked our first offical Class 2 rapids (below).  I know this guy doesn't look like much, but when your coming up on it, it looks like the river just stops in front of you.  It was a 2 1/2 foot drop, it got the ol' heart a'pumpin. 

 

I LOVE this picture of Chris.  Everything is perfect, his pose, the sky, the mountains...oh yeah, and standin' up in the kayak is pretty cool too. :)

After two days and 18 miles, we were ready for a little relaxing.  Luckily, we had a suite waiting for us in Williamsburg.

When we got there, Chris had to get his sports fix.  This picture cracks me up.  He's watching ESPN, reading MSN (Mountaineer Sports Net) and listening to Mountaineer Sports Line.  That's my guy... haha...

Williamsburg is a really nice, relaxing place.  When you go into Colonial Williamsburg, you feel like you've stepped back in time.  They even have costume rentals so you can fit in, I was tempted... very tempted.... but I held back.

A couple days later, we explored Jamestown and Yorktown.  If you're a history buff, these places are must-see.

This is an old church in the first English settlement, Jamestown.

 

Here is a cannon that was used in the Battle of Yorktown during the Revolutionary War.

This is an "earth work" that George Washington and his men dug to sneak up on the British at Yorktown.

And here is the house where the British surrendered.

On the way home, we stopped by a Bass Pro Shop.  Look at him, he's downright giddy.

I have to admit, this place made for some pretty great photo ops.

 

 

 

After that we stopped at Ikea... YAY!!!!!   We don't have one close, so anytime I get to go, it's a big deal.  So after the whole vacation, here are some goodies that I brought home.

Cute little throw from Ikea to add some more color to the living room.

I found these bottles with seals at Ikea for only $3.99!  I'm gonna use these when I tackle our master bath.

These little guys were only $.79... I heart Ikea :)

I found this at a thrift store in Williamsburg, you can never have enough chunky picture frames and it was marked down to $1.

I thought this old fashioned clock from Ikea was adorable.

Set of three little baskets, Ikea $4.99, picked up 2 sets of these, these are going in the master bath too.

Now these two are the pride and joy of the entire trip.

I found this lampshade in the "As-Is" section of Ikea.  It was marked down from $25 to $3.99!!  I can't find anything wrong with it, so it must have just been the stitching or something.  I've got big plans for this little guy.

 

And now for my favorite..... 

This Coca-Cola crate is my favorite find.  We found this at a church yard sale near Massanutten.  The sticker on it said $10, but my wonderful hubby talked them down to $4!!  I found the same kind on Ebay for $50!  But, no Ebay for this guy, he's staying here. :)

Wow, that was a lot of pictures.  Did you notice the new fall header at the top of the page?  My house is getting ready to get the fall treatment too, I just have to get the motivation to go dig the stuff out of the basement....  

Oh, and by the way, it is absolutely FREEZING here!!  It was in the 80s in Williamsburg, and yesterday is was only 47 in Motown... I'm not prepared for this...

-Brooke