the Olive Grove: July 2012

Monday, July 23, 2012

A twofer!

On Saturday I got to host a sweet baby shower for our friend Abby who will be meeting her sweet little Emily Claire by the end of August. I am just loving that our church is have a mass production of little girls lately. That means I get to have a sliver of pink and girlyness in my home though it is short lived. We had a tea party for Abby and Emily Claire and I whipped together some quick crafts for it. So, here is a twofer post. A two for one folks. First, cake bunting. SO.EASY & SO.CHEAP. Then, a Kahlua Cake. I have seen cake bunting sold on Etsy for around $15-20 buckaroos. I'm pretty sure it cost me less than 10 cents. Here is a quick way to decorate the top of your cake:

1. Find scrap paper and make a diamond template and fold in half to get a triangle pendant.

2. Put a strip of double sided tape on the inside.

3. Fold over string leaving a 1/4" gap between pendants

4. Use two kitchen skewers (these are from my kitchen drawer that we use to make kabobs). Maybe chopsticks would work as well?

5. Tie the end of the strings together and then double knot around skewers and voila! Cake bunting. You can monogram or embellish the pendants however you may like!

Now, the cake. I don't bake much. Like probably once a month if even that. I just don't have the time or desire to. I hope I get into it someday because I sure like eating baked goods! This is my moms recipe for Kahlua cake and it is amazing and simple. It's pretty much a dump cake....my kind of cake. Here is the recipe:
3/4 cup Kahlua or Coffee Liquor (if you don't have either you can just brew really dark coffee)
3/4 cup oil
1 box of dark chocolate cake mix
1 large box of chocolate pudding mix
4 eggs
1 16 oz carton of sour cream
6 oz of semi sweet chocolate morsels

Directions:
Dump it all in a bowl and mix well. Grease your bundt pan and poor in cake mixture. Bake at 350 for 1 hr. Let cool for 10 minutes and invert onto plate or cake stand. Once cool I top it off with powdered sugar. My mom has drizzled hers with chocolate sauce before - so good.

And here it is all in it's beauty. A Kahlua cake has been bunted :)

More shower pictures to come!

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Breakfast Nook

Here is a quick glimpse of our little breakfast nook that is attached to the kitchen and living room. We weren't really sure what to do with the space at first. It used to have our little table for four here but it was a small space to try to fit in with enough chairs around it. After about a year or so we put our extra oversized comfy armchair in it which didn't fit in the living room quite right because of our double french doors and added my desk that used to be my great grandmas. We love this little space now! I love that I have a spot for my calendar, coupons and to do lists without having to go downstairs into our actual office. I only took one before pic (fail). This is what we did to the room:
-painted using Kelly Moore paint color Sand pebble (not too far from what was originally there but used it to match the rest of the house)
-scraped the popcorn off the ceiling
-put in new lighting (one of my great grandmas chandeliers that was gold and I spray painted white)
-found awesome fabric on the cheap and had my talented mom make me window treatments!
...and then decorated a bit!

BEFORE

AFTER

This is the nook looking into my little galley kitchen. Isn't that spoon and fork awesome? I was walking through St.Vincent DePaul's junk yard and saw these beauties in it. They were dark brown and what do you know?! They got spray painted white. :) I spray paint everything white. I was originally going to name this blog "for the love of spray paint" but Justin gave me the axe on that. :) Spray paint is the best and I should probably own stock in it. Oh and I almost forgot, they fork and spoon cost me a whoppin $1.99! What a steal! I hung it with a little bit of burlap.

Often in the morning when the boys wake up they sit in that chair and drink milk together while I make them some breakfast. Pretty cute!!

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Friday, July 6, 2012

Toy Room / Guest bedroom makeover

I'm finally getting this room up on the blog to show you the before and after! With all of this amazing weather, I have been living at the beach all morning and afternoon with the boys. You gotta soak it up while it's out because you never know how long it's going to last....though July doesn't have a drop of rain in the forecast!!

This room is the largest bedroom in the house. We contemplated using it as the master bedroom because of it's size but we decided to take the smaller bedroom with the bathroom connected and be closer to the boys' room. This bedroom is a guest bedroom when company comes but is used daily as a toy room. We love having a room designed just for toys. I can close the door and voila! no mess to be seen! The boys don't have toys in their room which also makes for less clean up. I like that I can keep the craziness contained into one space! :)

I have forgotten how bad this room was. The ceiling was sinking, the carpet was disgusting and there was a big hole in the wall (see pic below) that was covered up with a poster when we bought the house. Good cover up...we were definitely fooled. We would of bought the house even if we knew the hole was there so no biggie. Justin tore out the ceiling and replaced it along with adding new insulation and then fixed the hole. We painted, replaced carpet and that was about it! I still have a ways to go on decorating. It's a room that I kind of threw together to make functional and haven't put much time into. We will get there! Here it is:

BEFORE