Baby Room

The nursery is done we are so excited!  It makes becoming parents that much more real. Our theme is bears with green accents. It started out as more of a woodland theme with wood slices everywhere  but we went more with greens and subtle wood accents.

Kyle used our diy shapeoko to mill these cute "bear" wall art hangings for the nursery. He used this pretty green toned wood and a wood slice from our wedding centerpieces. They turned out super cute. We found this tin "W" at hobby lobby and thought it would just make a really nice centerpiece above the crib. Kyle's boss made us this beautiful crib out of quartersawn oak and it just really fits the room nicely. It's a transition bed so it can be used for crib now and a toddler bed later. I also made some crib sheets out of my favorite green fabric that matches the quilt that I did (check for posts later) and those turned out super cute! The fabric matches the baby quilt I made with greens and teddy bear oranges.

Kyle and I had really great teamwork on getting the nursery ready and our little boy is just going to love it.

Fresh Towels

So the other day my husband and I were talking about how our towels smell. Since I'm currently being lazy I decided to buy all new towels for upstairs bathroom for my own personal use. Because I deserve that. We made a Target run and bought all new Fieldcrest luxury extra long bath towels. I got them washed right away so we could begin using them and they are literally the best things ever! We decided that when we're millionaires one day will only use fresh new towels. It's that amazing.

Our old towels are not by any means not good they just had a stench. I should've looked this up before but the fix is simple. Your towels lose their absorbency and begin to take on that musty smell that only happens when they're wet. The solution is to wash the towels on the hot cycle once with one cup vinegar NO DETERGENT and then wash them on another hot cycle with half a cup of baking soda again NO DETERGENT. Throw them in the dryer without a dryer sheet and viola! clean fresh towels once again.

So now my guests will have plenty of towels in the bathroom downstairs to use while they're visiting us in the new baby.  Although I didn't buy that new towels they will have some nice once again fresh smelling towels to use.

Apricot Jam Ya'll

Our good friends, Brad and Sara, invited Kyle and I over to experience making Jam. Neither Kyle nor I have ever made jams or jellies before but I have always wanted to! We bought 10 pounds of Apricots (pronounced with a hard 'A' if you have Southern roots like me) and decided to take our chances in an Apricot Jam.

We tried two different recipes, one with liquid pectin and one with powdered pectin. Honestly, they taste the same but the powdered pectin recipe yielded the best results for us. Or at least, the prettiest! 

Our expert jammers had all of the tools that you need to can. You can purchase your own set of tools pretty much anywhere mason jars are sold but here is a link to some at Target. We used pint jars and the recipe yielded around 40. Next time I make a jam, I am going to use quart size jars since it is so good--giving away a pint just seems mean!