Home Made Barbecue Sauce

Summer is here! Bring on the grill, the pool, long days at the park and longer nights under firefly skies!

To ring in the sunny season I'm sharing with you all my own homemade sweet and spicy barbecue recipe. :D

 You will need: a medium-sized bowl (yep... that's it!)

• 1/2 Cup ketchup
• 2 Table spoons chili sauce
• 4 Table spoons liquid smoke
• 1/2 T spoon Cinnamon
• 2 Table spoons honey
• 1/2 T spoon Cajun seasoning
• 2 T spoons ancho chili powder

1. In the bowl mix all the liquid ingredients
2. add in the seasonings and mix well
3. roll meat in the the barbecue sauce (or use a basting brush if you choose)
4. cook and enjoy! ( I cooked mine on a cast iron grill but this recipe is also great over a coal or gas grill)

Anticipation

I  am just so excited! The first fruit in the garden has started to grow at last!

Our tomatoes are on their way! The squash is starting to bud beautiful, large, yellow flowers which give me hope for this falls crop.

The anticipation is killing me! I just can't wait to have tasty plump tomatoes on turkey burgers, fried tomatoes, homemade pasta sauce, and BLTs with homemade bread and homegrown tomatoes and lettuce! oh my goodness, I need to go cook something now.... and prune my garden, and I may or may not stair at my itty bitty tomato wishing it was bigger already, while I'm at it. Ha.

Take a Hike

Hubby and I went on a small hike the other day just for fun. I thought we should get out while the summer days are still slightly cool and not too humid. It was so nice to just get out and do something active and different. During the walk, we even found a couple of critter trails and a bunch of mulberry trees. 

They reminded me of my childhood growing up near a marsh where I and my siblings would play and collect mulberries for my mother to make mulberry cobbler or mulberry syrup to put on our pancakes.

Hubby and I didn't have anything to put some in and most of the trees were too high for use to be willing to climb at the time but I can see us going back just to pick some soon! 

It’s a memory I would love to share with Button and all my future children, for sure.

Hopefully, I won’t forget my camera in the car next time so I can share the trails with you all.

Tradition

Life has been going by so fast. Yesterday I had the honor of celebrating my little sister's birthday as well as my older brother's. 

He is such a goober. :P

We all (my parents, sister, and brother and significant others) went to a local amusement park as a last, traditional, family birthday outing. It was just so much fun to spend the entire day hanging out with all of us together again. 

Of course, we got lost a few times,

And eat really unhealthy (abide, tasty) park food,

and ended the night watching brilliant fireworks and carnival lights.

It truly was an amazing way to end a long childhood tradition and one I can't wait to share with my children. 

Product Branding

I have been working on my photography business branding for a while now; from brainstorming, editing, re-editing, creating a design, creating shipping products, etc. and I am so happy to say... I'm DONE!

So here is a sneak peek of my packing branding and what each order will look like when they arrive to the customer.

I love the deer logo. I thought of using a couple of different logos and packaging ideas but in the end, I chose this clean, simple, natural look with the deer.

Why a deer, well for one, they are my favorite animal and second, I wanted to use the slogan "A fleeting moment" which meant the logo had to go with that. Then I just worked around that theme and looked for a natural feel like the wood tag with my photography businesses name on it.

I choose the pink and gray-blue honestly because I liked the way they looked together and with the more neutral colors.

This is what the inside of each box will look like (unless you order a mini session).

The "package" on the left is how the smaller prints will be wrapped to protect them from any scratches during shipping. The wallet prints, usb (if ordered), and a small thank you gift will be in the deer logo bags. Underneath the filling, the larger print/s will be placed and wrapped the same way as the small ones are.

In the above photo you can see the corner of the thank you note I will hand write to each customer.

I am so excited to have this all done and can't wait to send some out!

Blue Breezes

Now that the days are brighter and longer, Hubby has had some spare time to help get some stuff done around the house. It has been so nice to just be able to hang out with my man and make our house a home.

This weekend he finished spray painting the fan that goes in Button's nursery. You can see it here on the changing dresser that I took back when we were still fixing the room up.

Here is another snippet of it from the same post but a little closer.

We got the fan for free from our old landlords when we moved (they told us we could keep anything left in the house when we left... so we did).

Unfortunately, those were the only two I got of it before it got beautified.

Hubby chose a nice, vibrant, blue spray paint to paint it a gloss finish ( topical oasis by Valspar) and then just topped it off with a clear sealant spray for an easy, no sanding, done in a day project that really brought new life to this poor dull fan.

I love how it looks in his room now. It’s also great to have a little flair with function. It’s like have my cake and NOT gaining five pounds! Woot!

The color Hubby picked makes it look retro, which totally goes with some of the other vintage things going on in the room... namely this beauty

So I'm geared up, binged out, and ready for hot summer days with the windows opened, breeze flowing in, and a stun'n fan a’blast'n!

Button's Three Month Photo Shoot

So much has changed since little man two-month photo shoot. For starters, he is awake a whole heck of a lot more. He's so much more fun now and I love hanging out with those cute little cheeks. 

 He's also improving a lot on lifting his head up and pushing up on his hands.

 Button has a new favorite pass time, sucking on his hand.

Oh, my goodness how he's growing so fast!

Runneth Over

Things are finally in full bloom and now I'm just counting down till the day I can eat homemade spaghetti sauce made from my homegrown garden and have a fresh salad from my front yard! <3

My vase runneth over and so does my joy!

What a beautiful time of year this is, oh how I wish I could stop time and cherish this fleeting time of my life where all is well and blessing abound. How full is my life, how great is my God!

Getting it Booked

Our bookcase in the upstairs hall was majorly lacking in style and class;

Probably due to the fact that it was actually a small linen closet before we took the folding door off of it. Whatever it was, it was lacking and boring so I and Hubby got to it and added a little blink to this slim lady.

It makes me so excited now and (slightly) more motivated to get my fat booty up the stairs whenever I want a book. 

Now the bookcase stands out against the (much needed to be painted) off-white walls and adds a nice subtle contrast without being overdone.

All we did was taking out the shelves, measure the inside of the bookcase, cut wrapping paper to the correct size and then tape it up (with the tap on the backside).

Yep, that's right, we used wrapping paper for this project, not wallpaper. We decided to go this route because it’s in an apartment and we wanted to be able to take it down when we move, that, and wallpaper costs a LOT more than the wrapping paper we got. We actually got it and planned to use it for this project back in December. It was leftovers at target from Christmas so we scored it for $3! Lucky for us it only took one full roll because we neglected to think we would need more than one when we bought it. I would suggest grabbing at least two if you plan on doing a bookshelf like this, just in case.

I'm so pleased that it came out so nice and that we picked a print that actually looks like high-quality wallpaper.

So there you have it. How we turned a dull, boring linen closet into a fabulous, clever, built-in bookshelf for $3 and a little elbow grease.

Being A Mommy

My Little man is being extra needy today. I think his tummy's not feeling well and he won’t let me put him down. Which is fine for me because it equals extra snuggle time :D. but, it does mean maybe not getting a real post done today like I had hoped *sigh*. Just wanted to let you all know what’s up. Hopefully I'll be back with a finished post later tonight but for now, I got to be a good mommy and hold my sweet little man.