Dressing Up My Nest

For weeks now, our dining room has been a combination of bare white walls and a small table and chairs. It has been in dire need of dressing up! So last week I put up the gorgeous wood cabinet that The Nerd's grandpa built many years ago:

I am going with a color scheme of robin's egg blue and brown; my modern paisley frame seemed

perfect for the top of the cabinet:

I found some pretty distressed ceramic birds at Craft Warehouse to perch on the shelves. The postcards are from a fun tongue-in-cheek shop called DippyLulu's. I needed some gentle reminders for my kids that whining is not allowed! :)

Some vintage-look items from my kitchen fit perfectly behind the mesh door of the cabinet:

And a real bird's nest (abandoned) is nestled on the bottom shelf, filled with darling felted eggs.

On another wall, I set up Message Central, with a sparkly memo board, our white board/cork board combo, and our calendar. I have a tutorial for making the calendar board at my craft blog, The Scrappy Frog.

Just trying to make my nest a little prettier...

Not Me! Monday #4 - of Tv and Haircuts

Ahh, it's time once again to breathe a therapeutic sigh of relief as I carefully do not admit to any of the goings-on of the past week. As always, you can see what other folks are not doing at MckMamma's blog here!

I did not allow my kiddies to spend more than the usual hour watching TV last week. I did not plop them in front of the entertaining box for several episodes of colorful preschool goodness. And obviously, I would never have subjected my six-month-old to such mind-numbing activity. Nope, not me. Why would I need that extra time to get stuff done? And don't you know that when you're busy working around the house, the children will just play quietly at your feet? No need for edutainment here!

(excuse me for just a moment while I laugh and laugh and laugh about the "playing quietly at your feet" comment! Whew! Ok, ready to move on...)

This past weekend I did not cut off my daughter's beautiful golden hair. I did not yield to her pleas to have short hair please Mommy even though I thought it looked better longer. I did not have dreams of no longer having hair battles in the morning. And of course I did not think she looked as cute as a button when the whole process was . . .er, not finished. And absolutely I did not sit her in front of that entertainment box again while I was doing it. Oh no, not me!

This mommy did not dress her boys in matching clothes for church yesterday. She did not do so, hoping that they would not develop a complex from their mommy who seems to have a need for matching their clothes. She also did not make them sit and smile endlessly in various poses, only to choose a photo in which Michael was staring wide-eyed at the camera. Oh no, not her! She certainly didn't use any bribes containing sugar for the photo shoot or lecture number one son about the pitfalls of dripping his yogurt down his new shirt. (don't look, people, the photos were taken before the yogurt dripping episode).

And finally, I did not spend an entire day creating fabulous kitty paintings in which each cat wore sunglasses. Oh my, that would have been a frivolous use of my time and not beneficial to the poor neglected children either! I did not then post them in my etsy shop and then shamelessly use this post to promote The Framed Frog's newest items. Nor did I dance a jig and scream excitedly just because I made my first sale this past weekend...

So what have you been not doing this past week? Don't be afraid to (not) admit it - it's good for the soul! :)