Motivational Cough Drops & Mr. R's FIRST SALE!!!

This week has been killer, so to say that I'm happy to see Friday is an understatement.  Work has been so crazy busy... life in general has been busy.  We are almost completely out of food in our house.  Am I the only one who waits until the very last minute to go to the grocery store?  I don't know why I wait so long, because I love Wal-Mart and that's usually where I shop.  Anyway.  I made this really cool mega-list of all the dinner's we'll eat in the month of May with my daily exercise matched up depending on how long it takes to cook that night's dinner.  Last night I whipped out my handy-dandy meal & workout plan and wrote out a menu for next week.  How CUTE did it turn out?!  I love it!  

Side Bar:  Y'all have got to get some of these markers if you have a chalkboard in your house.  For real.  They are amazing and will change your life.    

The little framed chalkboard is just an old picture frame I had lying around.  I painted the glass with chalkboard paint when I was working on this project and got a little out of control.  It happens.  :)  Then, I worked on making my shopping list for the month of May based on my meal plan for the month.  Hopefully, I won't have to grocery shop again until April!  If you'd like to use an adorable little shopping  like the one below, click  here  to get your own.  

Meanwhile, everyone is sick.  Me, my husband, my dad, my co-worker, and my grandpa.  Stupid head cold came out of nowhere!  Thank GOODNESS for the motivational cough drops!  They're totally saving the day.  And my throat.    

Everything mentioned above here is completely irrelevant.  It's just every-day stuff that tickles my fancy, but the REAL point of this post was to tell y'all that.....
my....

{wait for it}
husband......
{wait for it}
MADE HIS FIRST SALE!  He's officially made money now and I'm so proud of him!  He sold his first policy and got paid and I love him and am proud that he has stuck it out this far!  He works hard and isn't compensated until someone buys a policy from him - so keep him in your prayers as he continues to build his business.  So, his first clients were....us and my parents.  But what we bought from him was really inexpensive.  The payment he received was spectacular!  In one day, he made about half of what he made in a week at his old job.  We are excited!  I'm SO proud of him!  I love him so much!  I know God put us here for a reason...and this is his first taste of new-job-success.  So many of y'all have left comments saying you'd pray for us...even more of you have e-mailed me and let me know that you've been keeping us in your prayers.  Thank you so much!  They are working.  :)  
And one more thing....today after work, my mom + me + my dad's mom are going to the beach for the weekend!  =)  Girls night(s)!  Pop bottles!  Not.  We're going to a Christian women's conference and I'm super duper excited about the possibilities!  It's going to be a blast and I'm curious to see how the hubbers does without me.  Considering I was so pitiful when he left me for business trips...haha.  I won't be home until Sunday afternoon.  Sunday night at our church I'm addressing the congregation to fill them all in on the women's conference WE are hosting in June...so wish me luck!  I'm not a public speaker.  
So yeah.  That's life lately.  :)  

Coo Coo Kachoo, 

Mrs. Robinson

DIY Chalk Container

As per the usual, I found something I liked on Pinterest and decided to make it myself!  :)  My favorite crafts are the ones that I can make without having to buy anything new.  So, here is my pinspiration!  :)  And after that is what I came up with for our home based on this picture.  

  

Source: reneweduponadream.blogspot.com via Amie on Pinterest

To make my own chalk canister, I started out with a tin can that once held canned tomatoes.  Am I the only one who obsessively saves all of the tin cans I could be throwing away?  I hope not!  They are so versatile and I encourage you all to start saving them!  (I'm such a pack rat..)  So anyway, the can I used is short and fat.  This shape works best for the type of chalk I have (which are also short & fat.  My adorable husband bought the wrong kind, but it's totally okay!)

    

I washed the can first.  I usually take the paper off of my cans, but I left the paper on this one so that I wouldn't have to use primer before painting with chalk.  Ultra sneaky.  :)  

I do not have spray paint chalkboard paint, but I do have the regular kind!  I love it!  I've used it a TON!  I painted the paper label with chalk paint by using a sponge.  :)  Two coats was all it took.    

I ordered some liquid chalk pins off Amazon.com and they are amazing!  I used them to write the word "chalk" on my can after letting it dry overnight.  *It's very important to let the chalk paint sit & dry COMPLETELY before writing on it!*

My chalk was once stored like this in a cabinet.  : /  It was very sad, messy, and pitiful.  It was also ugly and forced me to keep my chalk hidden!  How dreadful!  

BUT NOW...it is stored in this beautiful tin can!  :)  

I set it next to the HUGE chalkboard that's in our foyer.  You can find the Fancy Chalkboard Tutorial by clicking here!   It's my first tutorial, the first DIY project we completed for the new house, and it's also my FAVORITE thing in our house!  :)  I hope you'll check out that post because frankly, this picture is horrible. I apologize.  But you can see the little can at the bottom!  :)  

 As always, thank you for reading!  Have a great day!  :)

DIY Fancy Chalkboard

I worked on this project for what felt like a long time, but I am so pleased with the final outcome!  There are tons of tutorials on the world wide web for painting things with chalkboard paint, so I am aware that this is nothing "new" or "exclusive."  However, I consider my craft to be a FANCY CHALKBOARD and that is a little different from the norm.  :)  This mirror has been around for years.... my parents had it hanging in their living room.  They remodeled their home and this gorgeous mirror got stuck in the garage.  So, when I moved out of their house and into an apartment, the mirror came with me and thus began our travels.  We shared several homes together and it was the focal point of every living room I've ever had.  However, my new husband and I are living in the house I grew up in because my parents have moved into a smaller home.  So...back to square one:  beautiful mirror, but because of the remodeling my parents did several years back, there is nowhere for it to hang.  I decided that if I turned it into a chalk board it would be more versatile and could go pretty much anywhere.  So, that's what I did.

Start out by cleaning your mirror.  

I used Rust-oleum chalk board paint.

Make sure to stir your paint really well!  I forgot to get a paint stick, so I just used a cheap wooden spoon I had around.  :)  I am painting a mirror that has a bordering frame, so I started painting the borders using a small paint brush.  The mirror was attached to the frame and there was no way of separating them.  It got a little messy, so I'd encourage anybody doing a similar project to use something that has a removable frame.

Even though I didn't "stay inside the lines," the finished product looks perfectly imperfect.  It worked out.  :)

After I painted all of the boarders

After you've used a smaller brush to get close to the frame, fill in the rest with chalk board paint by using a much larger brush.  Luckily my husband helped me, because it took forever.  We needed four coats of paint to cover the mirror completely, and I later learned that we should have sanded down the mirror first.

• It takes four days for the paint to dry completely and be used as a chalk board
• The back of the pain can said to drag a piece of chalk across the finished chalkboard before writing it on.  Erase the chalk, and now your chalkboard is ready!

Below is a picture of the FINISHED PRODUCT!  and I even got it done in time to use it at our "Sweetest Day" dinner party!

We had it out on the porch for our guests to see as they arrived and it was such a nice touch!  Everyone was impressed and I think it really dressed up the chalk board!  Now, I have it sitting in the foyer by the front door, as pictured below:

P.S.  God Gave Me You was our wedding song.  I ran out of ideas of stuff to write on the board that day.  But, it is very versatile and I love it!  :)  It makes me smile every time I see it and I hope that if you choose to make a Fancy Chalkboard, you'll enjoy yours as well!