Cartwheels and Pearls

I only say "mantle" because our wood burning stove is not home to a real mantle. BUT if I did have a mantle, this is how I would decorate it! I had to leave so I just gave up on putting a lot of things on here and just settled for three framed printables, a garland, and a few spare hearts. We don't use our wood burning stove at all don't be alarmed of any fire concerns!







Have a lovely week everyone! And happy (EARLY) Valentine's Day!

Salvation Army sells some gorgeous (and some ugly) works of art. Many of them are on canvases and we all know how expensive canvases can be. Especially large ones. A few years back, I gave my mom a painting that I'd picked up for around $4.

It's sat behind a curtain in my craft room since then. I guess this is where I publically call out my mother for not appreciating my gifts. (Sorry, Mom!)
But anyways, I pulled out (and dusted off) this old canvas and decided it was perfect for a bit of regifting. For some reason I loved the original picture and was a bit sad to paint over it.
I apologize for the grainy, dark pictures. I took these at night and the lighting in the room is terrrrible. Maybe I should have given her new lights instead?

Anyways, I was inspired by these canvases that are similar.

As you can tell, my lettering is obviously crooked and very messy but it's not THAT obvious from a distance so I just let it slide.

My one annoyance regarding this work is the fact that the letters in the bottom corner are really dark! UGH
 As you can still tell, I obviously didn't put very much paint on it but I liked how the flowers shone through and the background design.
and perhaps I was running out of red paint shhh.

Speaking of my downfalls: canvases. I have an addiction to them. It's a good thing they're so expensive or else I'd have probably hundreds of them. I seriously love making art on canvases but I have nothing to do with all of it so I have to stop myself!

So if you're looking for a gift to give me, I strongly suggest either canvases,  more paint, or chocolate. You can't go wrong with any of those ;)

A little bit of snow can't keep us inside! Unless of course it comes accompanied with a power outage and we can't get the car out of the garage. Christmas was VERY interesting this year... actually it was not interesting at all. It was rather dark and cold!

For 5 days we were without power and finally got it back on the evening of Christmas day! Thankfully we have a wood burning stove (but no generator!) so we didn't completely freeze but we did have to go without water and electricity for a bit there. In addition to having no power, a tree had fallen across our dead end street so everyone was stuck! On Christmas morning, we opened our presents by candlelight which will be something I hope I can laugh about in a few years in an non sarcastic and bitter manner.

Anyways, here's this year's Christmas card picture!

And here's how deep the snow was after the recent "snowmeggadon" or whatever everyone was calling it! See that rocking bench in the background? It's almost entirely covered!
 Here's a before picture of the dogs. After all the snow fell, they could barely make it out to sit on their favorite spot of the hill overlooking our pond and the rest of the yard.

She kept sticking out her tongue to catch the snowflakes and I can't tell you how many pictures like this I got!

Here's a final after picture of all the snow! It was well over my knees and was so ridiculous. We had 2 snow days!

We've all done that before right? Meant to share some vacation photos but never got around to it. I'm the number one culprit of this! Here's some pictures from my trip (gulp) last summer to London. So it was a long time ago I know but I figured I'd share them rather late than never. I apologize for the pictures being so small it only let me change the size of a few of them. Uh blogger wanna get on that error that seems to keep happening to me?!?!
But anyways,
Here's my cousin and I in front of the London Eye

Here's the Big Ben!