My First Advertisement!

The other day on the Etsy forums a kind lady (I don't even know her name!) posted that she as giving away some free ad space on her blog. I responded and she gave it to me! Here is the link to her blog. My ad is on the left side. Cool, huh?

Summer is Here!

This weekend is pretty low-key at the Nelson house. We had a BBQ on Friday with around 11 people. It was a round-the-world theme so I made Hawaiin and Thai Kabobs and Jeremy grilled them. Yum! I totally forgot to take pictures of the night, but if anyone wants the recipes just let me know!

I have been on flickr all afternoon finding fun summer photos. These are couple that I came up with. Don't they remind you of summer?

1. Beach Ball in Pool, 2. Green Leaf, 3. honolulu lulu, 4. "Somewhere Under The Rainbow", 5. bug or bird?, 6. Sunflower, 7. Beach Cruiser, 8. every moment has its special charm, 9. Almost ready to eat. Yummy!!, 10. Olympus 35RD, 11. 1910 - 2007, 12. Global, 13. Better late than never..., 14. beach time, 15. Imagine the Wright sisters, 16. Grilled & Loaded, 17. "It's Not A Picnic Without Food!" :p, 18. insalata caprese, 19. Ice Cream Dressed in Red, 20. one cherry, 21. pop!-py, 22. big bang in pink, 23. Wheat, 24. Cleared for Landing, 25. Smile!, 26. Real Joy, 27. Seashells, 28. Happy Girls Under a Rainbow, 29. leftover drops, 30. endless summer, 31. Running ahead of oneself, 32. When it all blows over, 33. Bliss, 34. The closed window, 35. When I'm sleeping, I slow down my breathing...Living in dreams, dreams that come true...thinking of the color blue... ZZZzzzzzz..., 36. i can taste summer! a.k.a. childhood summer! a.k.a. childhood reminiscence! a.k.a. those were the good times!

I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of the long weekend!

ps, if anyone knows why my toilet keeps overflowing, let me know. It is a major bummer to deal with this weekend!

Eating Hot Dogs

This is a fun picture that Melissa took of Noah and me eating hot dogs at Lena's birthday party. That's all I have for tonight!

Busy Weekend

Here it is, yet another post on the weekend recap!

Friday night we went furniture shopping. We have been looking for the perfect bed ever since we have been married (7 years this August) and we still haven't found it. There is a bed at the Pottery Barn that I have loved for years, but it is just too expensive and I can't pull the plug on paying that much. We didn't find one on Friday night either. The search continues. After shopping we met Melissa, Sara, Eric and Lena at Turtle's for supper.

Saturday Esther and I got up early and went to garage sales. I dropped Esther off at about 11:00 and I kept going until about 1:00. I found some pretty good stuff: scrapbooking wire paper stands, (actually found on Friday...$2.00 each!!) salad spinner, old reading books with great pictures (I might use the pictures for cards), lots of kids clothes for Esther, and much more.

Saturday night we hung out with Karin and Trevor. We went to Iron Man in Eden Prairie and then we went out to eat at Pei Wei. After that we came back to our house and Karin and I made these crazy chipboard buttons out of her scraps. Jeremy and Trevor watched a movie and made us apple strudel pie (from a box). It was good!

Sunday was Jeremy's cousin Andy's confirmation in Cannon Falls. It was fun to hang out with the whole family! Those Brages always have so much fun together. There is always a lot of laughing.

Tessa and I got over to the old Brage Farm and took lots of pictures. I'll leave you with a couple right now. I am going to be editing and posting them on flikr, but I'll post a couple here too.

This last photo was taken by Matt . We found this old Toboggan in one of the sheds and we thought it would make a fun prop for a Christmas card photo. I don't think we'll use it...the shorts don't really say, "Merry Christmas!"

I hope everyone has a good week!

A Revelation

This revelation comes via my mother-in-law Kristi. This is the email (forward?) that she sent out yesterday:

I've been using aluminum foil for more years than I care to remember. Great stuff, but sometimes it can be a pain. You know, like when you are in the middle of doing something and you try to pull some foil out and the roll comes out of the box. Then you have to put the roll back in the box and start over. The darn roll always comes out at the wrong time.

Well, I would like to share this with you. Yesterday I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it and looked at the end of the box. And written on the end it said, "Press here to lock end". Right there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. How long has this little locking tab been there? I then looked at a generic brand of aluminum foil and it had one, too. I then looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too! I can't count the number of times the Saran warp roll has jumped out when I was trying to cover something up.

I'm sharing this with my friends that did not know this. If you all ready know this, delete this message and don't e-mail me and make me feel dumber than I already feel. If you didn't know this, e-mail me and let me know so I won't feel so dumb.


I hope I'm not the only person that didn't know about this.

Kristi sent this out to MANY people and it has been fun to see the responses from all the ladies. I never knew that these wonderful tabs existed, so I decided to take some photos to commemorate this occasion!




As the email pointed out, even the generic foil has the tabs. They are a little harder to push in than the "Glad Wrap" name brand, but they still work!



As Cathy found out, the wax paper and the parchment paper do NOT have these tabs. I think we need to write to the companies!

Anyway, as most of you can tell it has been a boring week in blogland. I hope someone found this post helpful...or just amusing.

I'll have more projects to post soon!! I just need to get some stuff photographed and then I will put them in the store.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Yard Sales, New Projects

I had a meeting at work on Wednesday, so I wasn't able to take the day off. Instead I took today off and I was able to do some yard sales this morning. I really didn't find very many things, but it was fun to be out. One thing that I did get was a set of glasses like these. Jeremy always comments on glasses like these whenever we see them at antique stores and I was really excited when I saw a whole set for only 50 cents! I also got some cute kids clothes for Esther. It was nice to be out and get some sunshine and fresh air. I'm so glad that spring is here!

I finished some new projects. I have posted most of them on etsy. I hope to get some more stuff done soon! Here is what I have so far...

I hope everyone has a good weekend! Leave me a comment on what you are doing! I love getting comments and hearing what you are doing.

Weekend Recap

It seems like on Monday I always do a weekend recap, so here it goes...

Friday night Jeremy and I took it easy. Got Zuppas and came home. I actually fell asleep on the couch for about two hours and then wasn't able to go to sleep until around midnight!

Saturday I got up pretty early and got some housework done, went to the post office to mail an Etsy order and then got ready for Tony and Nadine's wedding. The wedding was great, very touching.

Sunday we went to church and it was the last week for Sunday School. We will miss the kids, but it will be nice to have a break too. It was confirmation Sunday. Jeremy says that he loves Confirmation Sunday because we get to hear the kids talk about how much they love Jesus. I have to agree that it is pretty touching to see them get up in front of everyone and profess their love for Christ in front of the whole congregation.

After church Melissa, Tiffany and I went to the craft show in Uptown. It was a lot of fun and cool to see so many people selling their stuff. After that we went to eat at Loco Taco or Taco Loco or something like that...I can't remember. It was good, but I guess not memorable.

Sunday night we celebrated Lena's 2nd birthday. It was pretty low-key. Sara and Eric had a BBQ and Sara made an awesome chcolate cake.

I think that pretty much wraps up the weekend. I just wanted to get it on the blog because I also use the blog as a little bit of a journal. I hope everyone has a wonderful week!!

Treasury!

I made it to my first Treasury on Etsy. The Treasury is a place where members can pick their favorite items and group them together for everyone else to see. Most of the time people pick things in a theme. This Treasury is themed spring, but some people like to group colors or items. Anyway, here it is

Etsy Treasury



If anyone knows how to grab the entire screen and save it, let me know! I have tried thumbalizr.com and that doesn't seem to be working today.

Fun Weekend

Friday night I went over to Esther's house for a chocolate party. She had participated in a thing from Hersey's where she got a box sent to her with chocolates, shopping list notepads, pens, bags, magnets, etc. I think she was supposed to try to promote it. We took a couple of pictures that she's posting to the website, but we didn't really know what else to do. It was fun to just hang out with the girls and talk.

Saturday morning Jeremy, my mom, Karin, and I went to Craftstravaganza. There was some great talent there! I can't believe how cool everything was. Karin and I ended up buying pendants from Pam Loudy. I think Karin got one similar to this one I couldn't find the one that I bought. My friend Lisa was also there. She was really busy helping customers when we went by her table, so we didn't get to talk. I hope she did well!

Saturday night we went over to Esther and Jason's to watch Juno. This is the second time I've watched it. I still love it.

Sunday Jeremy did the March of Dimes Walk for Life. His coworkers all walked together. I was going to walk with him, but it was snowing and someone needed to teach Sunday School. I hope they raised a lot of money!

Sunday night was pretty low key. We just took it easy. That about wraps up our weekend.

I noticed today that one of my favorite paintings on Etsy was on sale, so I snatched it up. You can see it here. I LOVE this artist. Her colors are so amazing.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Wow, it has been a long time

I realized today that it has been a long time since I've posted anything on my blog. I think the blog is one of the things that I neglect the most.

Nothing really exciting has happened at the Nelson house this week. We have gone to work, gone to church and came home.

Yesterday was my day off again. I took a lot more pictures and I'm going to be posting a lot more things on Etsy soon. Here are some of the things I'll be posting. I'll give a sneak peek here:

I plan on posting most of these over the next week. The more I space them out, the better.

Peter was back last weekend and I think he's mad at me. Instead of looking in the window like he always does, he had turned his back on me.

Don't you love how we still have a broken light from last summer? We still need to do our spring yard work.

Store Set-Up

I think my Etsy store is just about done. I've been working the last couple of days to get things listed and to get everything in order. I never realized just how much work it was! I spent about 4 hours on Wednesday just taking pictures of all of my stuff. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon editing the photos and posting. I've posted stuff every night since then and I still have a couple more things to post, but thankfully I'm almost done. One problem that I'm having is that I don't know what to write in the profile or the store greeting. It is hard for me to come up with things to say about myself! Maybe I'll have someone else write something about me.

Jeremy is out of town tonight for a men's retreat, so I have the house to myself. I stopped at Chipotle and got a burrito bowl and chips and guac. and I'm ashamed to say that I ate all of the chips all by myself. I didn't eat hardly any of the burrito bowl. I need to learn to make healthier choices.

I'm off to bed. I was hoping to get a little bit of housework done tonight before I went to bed, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. I'll get up early tomorrow morning, umm yeah right. Happy weekend!

Peeping Peter

I have a friend. I'll call him Peter. Some would consider him rude, but I find him charming. Peter visits me at least once a week. When I first met Peter I was a little bit freaked out. The phone rang, I looked out the window and all of a sudden there he was...staring at me. I walked around, I got right up to the window and made gestures and faces at him and he didn't move. I thought he was just plain weird and a little bit scary. After a couple of times seeing him looking at me through the window, I started to get used to him. Now after about a year I look forward to seeing him and enjoy his company.

Lot's O' Food

I am titling today's post "Lot's O' Food" because that's what it seems like we've been doing lately; eating and eating and eating. Monday we went to Green Mill to celebrate Karin's birthday, Tuesday we were at the Twins game, last night we went to Dangerfields with Melissa and tonight we went to Salsa A LA Salsa with Jeremy's parents. Yipes! Not only are we going to gain tons of weight, but we are going to go broke too! I actually have some things planned to make at home, but it has just worked out better to go out. Next week we will have to get back on track. We also need to start working out again. It is so hard to get up in the morning and do it, but we need to start again.

When were were in Omaha for Easter we had planed to make a whole morning of visiting a fun shopping area that I saw in my Country Home magazine. We got up early and headed downtown to find that nothing opened up until 11:00am! I was so disappointed! We had planned to be on the road to CO by 12:00pm We were really surprised that they opened so late especially because Omaha was hosting the NCAA Tournament and there were tons of tourists around. We did find one antique store that was open and spent most of our time there. Here are a couple things that I found:

Jeremy found this cute cookie jar. I love that he knows exactly what I like. He even knew where it would go in the kitchen.

I also found this great green bowl. My and grandma use there bowls for their fruit. I'm glad that I found one too! It seems like most of the things in my kitchen are green. I need to start branching out in the colors that I buy, but most of the time green just calls to me.

Finally, we went to one more store and what did I find??? Jackpot! Lots and lots of old photos. Most of them were only .10 each!! Most of the time photos cost at least $1 each. Look for lots of fun projects coming up! I have already started some, but I haven't had a chance to take pictures yet.

We also found this cardboard cutout of Paris Hilton - it was $35! We couldn't believe it was that expensive! I took a couple of pictures of Jeremy with it and decided that we could live without it. Yesterday were were wishing that we would have bought it so that we could have snuck it into Eric and Sara's house when they were in Hawaii!

Tomorrow we are off to another Twins game! Go Twins!!! They won today with a homerun from Morneau. Hopefully we will get to see an exciting game.

Camera Found!

I lost my little camera for a couple of days and I couldn't download the pictures from our Easter trip. I found the camera in my craft room (imagine that!). Here's the rest of the photos!



Noah loved the fact that we got ballons at church!

We had a fun party at Old Country Buffet for Grandpa's 80th birthday. We had our own separate room and could celebrate in style! The cake was really good too - carrot cake! Yum!

We went to Manitou Springs and went in some of the little shops around town. Noah and Ashton were buddies around town.

The first night we got to Grandma and Grandpa's we told them that we wanted to go to Giuseppes to eat. It is the old train depot in Colorado Springs that has been turned into a restaurant. Noah loved watching the trains go by.

I have a couple more photos of our stop in Omaha. I'll post those soon. I'm going to try hard to get back into the blogging thing and be more faithful in posting.

Home Again

We got home last night from our quick trip to CO. It was great to visit my grandma and grandpa and aunt, uncle and cousins. It had been a couple of years since we saw my cousins. The drive seemed really long this time. I think it was about 15 hours each way. I brought two cameras along and I've only downloaded the pictures from the Rebel. Here are some of the best ones:

For some reason my pictures seem really pixely. Instead of downloading them from my computer I took them from flikr. There is limited photo space on blogger, so I'm trying to save my space. Maybe I need to upload them on flikr at a larger size??? I don't want them really large because I don't want people to be able to print them off. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know!

I will download the rest of my photos soon. I have some great pictures of Noah and my cousin's son Ashton. They are very cute!

Thanks for reading my blog! Hope you all have a great evening/day whenever you are reading this!

Leaving Town

We are taking off for Colorado tonight to spend the weekend at my Grandparent's house in Colorado Springs It is also Grandpa's 80th birthday! We will be leaving around 3:00 after Jeremy gets home from work and driving to Omaha and staying over night. There is a really cool shopping area in Omaha that I saw featured in Country Home Magazine. Hopefully we will be able to check it out tomorrow morning. You can see it here. I will post about it when I get back.

This will be the first time that we have seen my aunt and uncle and cousins in years. It will be so much fun to see them!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Whew! Finally Done!

I have been slowly putting almost all of the photos from our trip last fall on flikr. I finally finished tonight! I have been working on editing the Barcelona pictures the last couple of days. It has been fun to go through them and remember all of the sights. In Barcelona there were so many beautiful wooden doors with ornate knockers, handles and knobs. I took as many pictures as I could, but I still wish I could have gotten more. At the time felt bad always stopping to take pictures of them when we were walking places. Everyone would have to stop and wait for me. Now I'm so glad that I got the pictures.

If you want to see more pictures from our trip, just click the flikr icon on the side of the page. Have a great weekend!!