craft it: coffee filter lampshade

Josh and I have been inspired to do a little re-decorating around the house. Our lives have been so busy the past few years that we really haven't paid much attention to the decor in our home. As we've spent more time together and more time in the house we're noticing all the clutter, items we don't like and things we'd like to do differently.

I've decorated the guest bedrooms pretty much by myself. They are fun and colorful and my little slice of girlishness in our house. The living room, dining area, kitchen and our bedroom are a completely different story. They are in major need of a decorating overhaul!

My friend LindseyLee suggested a blog that had pictures of a house that sounded like the style that we were looking for. She hit the decorating nail on the head!! I am loving Sarah Lorenz and her beautiful home! We have a lot of projects to do around the house before it is anything close to resembling this style, but I can't wait! Wow, this post has too many exclamation points!!

I started off with one of the cheapest ways to copy Sarah's style: coffee filter lampshade. Be warned, it takes a ton of coffee filters and your fingers will definitely get burned by the hot glue. I also think this project looks better on her lampshade since its a drum shape.

Here's the Before:

And the After:

This lamp is actually in one of the guest bedrooms, but I plan on moving the shade out into the living room when we start making over that room. This was just a $4 crafting project that I wanted to try out.....no sense in freaking Josh out by saying I was doing a project for the living room until I knew he was 100% on board. And lets just say that my "Honey, I'm going to make a lampshade out of coffee filters" didn't really get his decorating juices flowing. However, after seeing the finished project he's now a believer. And better yet, he's ready to start redecorating the living room!!

Re-decorating the living room will require painting some of our furniture, which I can't do while I'm pregnant. Sad. So, we're brainstorming and compiling ideas for the space. If you find any fabulous finds or have any creative thoughts please let me know!

**we're almost done decorating baby girl's nursery. i'll post pictures soon!

a different kind of bracket

My NCAA tournament bracket has been falling apart since day one. And now that the Tarheels are out of the tournament, I've thrown my bracket in the trash. What's the point of having a bracket if the 'Heels don't win the whole deal?! Josh and I were hanging out with some friends this past weekend up at Windy Gap (more on that trip later.) We mentioned how we were really hoping to not have our baby at camp because a) I'm not really into the whole have-a-baby-in-the-middle-of-nature type of delivery and b) we don't have a name for our little girl yet. Our friend William came up with a great idea: a Baby Name Bracket!

We collected suggestions from folks around camp and narrowed it down to 32 names. Josh and I both got to select our favorite 16 names. He had control of the left side of the bracket and I had the right side.

We weren't quite sure how to handle the challenges....at first we tried Josh's famous applause-o-meter.

That didn't quite seem fair. So we decided to do the traditional handraising voting method. Much more efficient....and it also showed the other voters who they needed to swing to their side for voting. It was so funny to see our friends trying to convince each other why one name was better than another.

I highly suggest using this process for any soon-to-be-parents. We got some great name ideas from our friends---some sweet names I'd never heard or thought of! The final four names were so cool! (Riley, Reagan, Avery, Elouise)

We did "secret ballot" for the last round of voting.

The votes were tabulated......and the winner was:

Now, I'm not 100% sure that we'll use Reagan. But, we both like it!

reagan jones....what do you think?

3/30/11 update: in the quarter finals, the judges had a re-vote for emmerson and eloise (mostly because i liked eloise better!) eloise won by a slim margin and made it to the finals :)

oh the madness!

Its March Madness folks, and you know what that means: all day basketball viewing at the Jones household. Our brackets are completed and bets have been made, now its time to cheer on our Tarheels (and maybe a few other ACC teams, as long as they're not playing Carolina, of course.)

Josh and I were trying to find some cheap tickets to the Carolina game tonight or Sunday night, but we haven't had any luck. So, we went up to the Time Warner Arena and caught Roy and his boys at open practice. It was so much fun!

We found some awesome seats.
I heard several "eh! make some room for the pregnant lady!"
not sure if it was Josh or not, but I appreciate folks hearding us toward these fanastic seats!

Henson is my favorite.
Here he is massively missing a three-pointer, but I don't even care.
I just want to pinch his cheeks, he's so darn cute.

ok, so you can't really tell in this picture, but Roy was joking with all the boys
he was smiling (shocker!!) and cracking jokes left and right
so surreal to see him without a scowl!

we also cheered on the 'blue team' (aka, the non-scholarship players)
they don't get much playing time, but it seemed like they were sinking nearly every shot
so fun to see them get so much support from the fans

Towards the end of practice there was a dunk contest. It totally seemed planned. The guys were all at the other end of the court, so I didn't get any shots....but trust me, it was amazing! The entire place went crazy. I hope none of the Bobcats were there---they'd probably be embarassed by how much more support the Tarheels were getting than what the Bobcats get!!

room re-do

Getting ready for our little girl has been fun around our house. We have three bedrooms upstairs and had them set up as two guest bedrooms and a spare room/girl area/quiet-time space. Since the other bedrooms already had tons of furniture in them, we decided to use the smaller bedroom/spare room as baby girl's nursery. More about that room transformation later.

This story is about the middle guest bedroom, or as Josh refers to it "the glow-in-the-dark-green" bedroom. The room won't be totally made-over. We still need it to function as a guest room. Buuuuut, I needed a little space in this room too. (Especially since I just got kicked out of my old room by our almost-here-baby.) I wanted this room to also serve as little crafting area for me. I love little projects and wanted a space to store my supplies in an easy-to-access but still well-hidden manner.

So I hijacked some space in the green guest bedroom.

One of the many challenges in this bedroom is the dark brown desk. The desk was a given to me by my parents when I was a child. Its stately and sturdy and I love it. However, it doesn't quite lend itself to the shabby-chic-neutral-to-white-oh-so-refreshing pallet that I love.

I was tempted to paint the desk white, but thought my parents might have a coronary. But, I really needed something to break up the darkness of the desk. So, I did the next best thing, I found a vintage fabric that I loves and slid it under the glass top. I also got rid of 90% of the random picture frames and added a few josh-would-call-them-knick-knacks-but-i-think-they're-just-fabulous-trinket-holders.

We still have a few more things to do in this room, mostly involving painting, but those projects will have to wait until after the wee babe arrives. Not being able to paint (since I'm pregnant)has seriously cramped my style!

tax time

Have you filed your taxes yet?? If you have not, let me make a few suggestions:

make yo'self a good breakfast.
it could be a long morning and a suger rush will help
actually, it will help a lot.

use turbo tax.
its simple and easy to use.
plus, it gives you a running total of what your refund is
i love watching the numbers scroll up!

We filed our taxes in the beginning of February and have already gotten our refunds back. Don't hate us because we're punctual! If you're going to hate me, hate me for something really good....like, because I'm fabulous.

36 weeks, seriously?!

Well, I'm now 9 months pregnant....but still have four weeks left to go before our little babe arrives. I have not figured out the whole math thing. Why the heck to people say you're pregnant for 9 months when really its 10 months? So confusing. So, I'll just stick with weeks. I'm 36 weeks into this thing.

I cannot believe we're really going to have a baby. I know that sounds strange, but stay with me here. Its just that I've been pregnant for so stinkin' long. We found out that we were having a baby almost 28 weeks ago....that's 7 months folks. Initially I felt like our life was going to be instantly different. You know....because I wasn't pregnant, then all of a sudden I was. But life wasn't that different. Sure, I was pretty tired during the first trimester and my tummy grew to enormous proportions.....but life didn't really change. Josh and I still got up, spent time with the Lord, went to work, engaged in ministry, spent time with each other and friends, and played. And, to top if off, I've had a pretty healthy and easy pregnancy; I haven't been sick and I've been able to stay pretty active. I guess I just got used to being pregnant.

So, now it feels like life is going to be instantly different. We're putting the finishing touches up on her nursery (I'll share pictures soon) and praying about our transition into parenthood and Jones-party-of-three. We're embracing these last few weeks and relishing our time together, this beautiful weather and a few last minute adventures.

This past weekend Josh went flyfishing for the first time since his ACL surgery. I wish we had a picture to document the event....but Josh kind of hates when I pull out my camera all the time and he left at 5:30am, and I was most definitely asleep. We also had the Young Life 5k at Lowes Motor Speedway. It was a summer camp fundraiser and one of the most unique 5ks I've run. How fun to finish on pit row!! I did run the 5k, although it was really more of a jog than a run. It felt fantastic to finally run outside! I've been running inside (to be close to other people and a phone in case something went wrong) for so long-----the freedom and fresh air was exhilarating!

So here they are....belly pictures at 36 weeks. And don't hate on the outfit, I'm heading to the gym and the t-shirt was from the race this past weekend.

night on the town

Our little girl will be here in a few short weeks. As we excitedly anticipate her arrival, Josh and I are soaking up our last days as Jones party of two. We've been eating out, traveling and spending time with friends.

This past weekend Josh and I went to check out Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors in Charlotte, NC. The concert was awesome---I wish I'd thought to take a picture during the show! We did grab a photo with one of my favorite couples Hef and CT:

night at the ballet

Remember that time when I told y'all about the Runway for the Ballet fundraiser that Chelsea and I worked on? We spent countless hours in meetings brainstorming and organizing for the event. Chelsea was the mastermind behind coordinating the day-of events and I was her lovely assistant.

The decorations, food, fashion and dancers were out of this world. But what else to do you really expect when the powers combine from Dean & Deluca, Neiman Marcus and the North Carolina Dance Theater?!

It was a fantastic event that raised a bunch of money and I'm proud to have served on the planning committee. I'm glad that Lindsey Lee Photography was there to capture a quick moment of these two hottie volunteers:

note: yes that is a giraffe on my necklace
i wish you could see all of chelsea's outfit, hello fabulousness!

yum. simply, yum.

I have just experienced the best muffins ever.
Let the drooling commence:

Magnolia Bakery Morning Glory Muffins
2 cups all purpose flour (i used whole wheat)
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1 1/2 cups shredded apples
3/4 cup coconut
1/2 cup chopped pecans (i tried walnuts in the first batch, the pecans are tastier!)
3 eggs, beaten*
1 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla

directions:
In medium bowl combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt.
In separate bowl toss together carrots, apples, coconut, and pecans.
Stir in eggs, oil, and vanilla. ADD wet mixture to dry and stir until blended.
FILL tins 3/4 full and bake 18-20 minutes in 375 degree oven.
Makes 12 large muffins or 18 regular size muffins

*or vegan egg substitute, used it and josh couldn't tell the difference. promise!