Friday Favorites

   This month has been full of great things so I thought I would take a moment and reflect on my favorites. It is easy to get caught in a hard moment and forget all of the wonderful things that are going on in your life. This month has had some ups and downs for sure. A down is that my great grandma died (she was 97), while that was sad it also made me remember my grandma and my aunt who have died and that made me sadder because I did not get to spend nearly enough time with them. My great grandma though had not seen her husband in twenty years, 2 daughters in many years, as well as her siblings and parents, she got to see them again in the most glorious of places and I know she is happy there and it was her time to go, so I am glad she has gone home. 

• New House, we bought a house! Read about our buying journey here. I’m so excited to get in it in the next two weeks. Packing stinks, apparently we have a lot of stuff! I am ready to set up and make a house our home and fill it with our love and family. We plan to be there for at least one baby…no that will not be anytime soon….and many years, so looks like I won’t have to pack again anytime soon, time to get more stuff. This was the begining of the kitchen, there were 8 more to follow and still not finished with it!

• School started back up, strange to say that as a favorite. Teaching is much more fun than learning if nothing else subbing has taught me that.  I got to start back up this week and it felt so good to be back. I love walking into a room and getting to teach little minds. The things they come up with are so interesting and funny. If this year is as good as last year, I may even look into going back and getting my degree so that I can get a job in this district.  Subbing though is great because I have flexible days, I choose when I want to work, and I am off for every holiday. Now I don’t get paid if I don’t work so summer time is not my favorite, but it was great to be home only working part time.

• Pinterest, okay this isn’t a new thing but I am addicted again but this time not for recipes. Looking for living room set up and knick knack type things for the new house has been my new addiction and Pinterest has been feeding it. I never really went to the home décor category unless it popped up on my home page, but there is an amazing amount of information there! I love looking at color combos, furniture arrangements and how to keep it all looking great. Today I found this great idea for an empty space in the kitchen that will probably be needed to house my collection of cook books. (image source)

• Picmonkey, I have used Picmonkey some for my pictures here and over at ARWB resizing and such. I had never used it to design a completely new image. I found this tutorial about designing a room or wall area on picmonkey. Using the overlay feature aka the butterfly button, you can add your own images, erase the parts you don’t want, and repeat until you have the picture you want. I had so much fun designing the ‘entry’ from the garage.

It's not perfect but it is pretty cool.

• Arkansas Women Bloggers, this group of women is so stinking awesome. I have met probably 10-15 of these women and not a single one has made me feel judged or like I didn’t belong. This weekend I am attending my first blogging conference. I am excited to meet more ladies, learn a lot of new things, and have a great time. The group founded by The Park Wife, who is one of the sweetest most helpful people I know, is all about helping each other, learning from one another and building meaningful relationships. We can make money from our blogs, we can achieve a large amount of followers, but that doesn’t matter if we have no relationships that bring value to our readers and friends. I’m so glad to be a part of this talented, lovely group of ladies who will accept anyone in and make them feel like a part of the group. I can’t wait to share with you all the fun details of the weekend, be sure to follow me on Instagram and Facebook to see what is going on.

   What has been your favorite things this month? Anything on home decorating that I should look into? Sound off in the comments I would love to hear from you! Have a great weekend.