19 Years and counting...

Yes, it is true. 

Today is my 19 year wedding anniversary!

As I stood in my shower this morning contemplating, "19 years...Really?"  I looked around and realized, this is exactly where I want to be.  In our home that we have created, with our son sleeping soundly next to his daddy in our big comfy bed, loving every minute of it!  The little memories we have made scattered through out the house...I wouldn't want it, and can't imagine it, any other way!

I love you Fowler boy!

You are my Knight in Shining Armor!

Forever....and a day. 

Christmas Fowler Style

The first sign when you enter the house!  After Santa has been here, he flips the little hanging sign over to let us know he's been here. 

 We collect our Christmas mail in the little tin mailbox I've had for years.  It gets stuffed every year!  After resting a bit on our chair full of Joy and St. Nicks, you can pass by my other reading chair and sit for a cute Christmas story from any one of the books.  Or perhaps your more in line to take a quick wintery shot in one of our Peppermint shot glasses tucked in amongst our rolling bar.  Don't get frost bite from the snowballs as you are looking!

 

 After your warm Peppermint winter shot, you can figure out which day we are on and choose the "Word of the Day" from our newest advent calendar.  Didn't know what else to fill those darling little envelopes with, so if one us is having a conversation during the month of December with you, and all of a sudden a random word or phrase pops up, don't be alarmed and think we are crazy, it's probably just "Word of the Day."

Yikes!  

It looks like today's word may have been hot!  Poor Frosty melted right into his hat!

 The fire place area includes our Native American Creche and Santa holding ALL of our stockings waiting to be filled (although, Justin's is not up in this picture due to him needing a new one this year and I am in the midst of making it...).

 

 The mantle is the perfect spot to highlight all of Justin's letters from Santa and Marcus, Justin's elfman.  The awesome 3-D glasses are when we drive through Vasona Park for Fantasy of Lights and watch the twinkling lights turn into twinkling snowmen and stars.  Super cool!

Around the corner from it all, is our advent calendar corner.  It's loaded with Justin's advent calendars we've collected through the years.  The Playmobil set hanging on the right wall, makes the cutest Christmas scene in the paper house display!  It changes every year as Justin decorates the scene himself. 

 The last room to get a little Christmas spirit, is the water closet. 

 Love my bubbling glittery Santa nightlight!

 The Musical Bears were given to us last year, and they have filled our house with Holiday songs.  If you don't want to hear an instrument, take the bear off the main stage and move him to the lower platform, you'll no longer hear that instrument.  When he's ready to come back, he'll jump in like he never left!

 

 This beautiful vintage Christmas scene, came from my mother and is the perfect little hiding cloth for my vintage bowls to stay warm behind.  On top of this cabinet (above pictures) are my vintage chocolate molds and little mini cookie presses.  I love this corner of the house!

 Even the collection of baseballs are touched with cheer!  They are highlighted by the most beautiful glass block ever!  Nanny and Poppy, you rocked these!  My parents made these amazing Holiday glass blocks by drilling a hole in the back, filling it with white lights, and printing vintage images onto shiny card stock which they ran through a sticker maker and stuck to the front of the blocks.  I have two, and love them both!  

 

I hope you had a good visit.  Come back soon as we still need to wrap up our Christmas tree!

On a side note, and to shamelessly promote myself, I've been working on posting items in my Etsy shop.  I read a tip that one of the best ways to stay out in the public's eye, is to post daily.  At .20 cents per item, you really can't go wrong!  So go on, check it out. I may have just that right gift you were looking for.  : )  

~nic

The Pretend Boutique

I can't even begin to tell you how much fun I had on Saturday!  My sister-in-law, Robin and her two friends, Kelly and Christina, one fun filled night recently, decided that they needed to get over their artist fear and host a Holiday Boutique.  What a grand idea!  They schemed up their plan and thought, how bad could it be to host a boutique for a couple of hours on a Saturday?  Nothing too dangerous as going to a full fledged craft fair or anything.  So they decided, let's do it.  Last Monday is when I came into play.  Robin emailed me and asked if I wanted to join.  Of course I did.  If anything else, she said, it'll be fun just to hang out and eat and drink.  It so was!  

Everyone worked hard during the week and got our wears together.  I even pulled an all nighter on Friday to finish up some last  minute items.  Saturday morning, I woke up and got it all together, Robin came to pick me up and we headed over to Kelly's house in a darling little neighborhood of ours in Willow Glen.  Super Cute house, and Super Cute items she makes! You can find her here. When we walked into her house and saw how darling everything was displayed, we knew it was going to be a fun day!  We set up our stuff, made our little plates of goodies, poured ourselves some coffee or tea, and waited for that first customer to arrive.  We were giddy with nerves and excitement!  Who would be the first customer and what would they buy?  One of Robins beautiful framed photos?  Or perhaps it was going to be the Sugarplum Joy banner that Kelly made.  Or maybe, just maybe, I'd get an order for my quiet book. 

We talked, we filled our plates again, heated up some spinach dip, made some delicious rum spiced cider, and waited.  Hmm...we thought.  Perhaps no one can see our sign.  Well, we'll just go outside and fix ol' Santa here with a sign that welcomes the troves of people inside!  Yes, that will help! We moved Santa, although I didn't want him too close to the street in case the mob came and decided to swipe Santa, and placed our newly crafted signage right near him.  Yes, that will do it.  They will come now. 

After acting like crazy, slightly drunken, loons out front, we came inside and waited on pins and needles, again.  Oh my gosh!  It's working!  A truck is pulling up RIGHT in front of the house, right in front of Santa and the sign! Robin blurted out, "Act natural!"  Our "security" girl, Christina, jumped up to pretend like she was a customer already browsing.  Yes...the girl is out of the truck!  She's...she's...crossing the street to another house.  Didn't even give a second look our way.  Blocked ol' Santa and didn't care.  We fell over in laughter!  

Our beautifully set Holiday Boutique, didn't get one customer.  Not one.  I didn't care, I had so much fun hanging out with Robin and her friends.  We even came up with a better marketing plan for our Spring boutique.  While outside moving Santa around, Kelly made the comment that her neighbors were probably thinking, oh look at her pretending she has a shop. We died laughing but thought, what a great idea for our boutique name, The Pretend Boutique.  Intriguing right?  What could they be selling at the Pretend Boutique?  Makes you want to come find out.  Well, you missed out on this one, but you are more then welcome to come to our Spring event.  I'll keep you posted on the details.  (okay, so even now, I'm "pretending" that I'm talking to a lot readers right now...I'm really good at this!)   I can't wait to do it again!

Going a little nutty!

So this morning I quickly logged into my Etsy account, to humor myself that I had received more orders. 

I saw that I had a conversation waiting to be replied to. 

I thought, oh, my book must have made it to it's new owner. 

No, it wasn't that at all. 

It was an email from the Etsy group showing that I had been featured in a treasury find!  I was so excited!  I'm so new to Etsy I just really couldn't believe it!  I feel so honored to be choosen in this wonderful assortment of handmade goods! 

Here is the link:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4cf6117a350a6d91f597c0d1/mind-your-ps-and-qs-gifts-under-20

Talk about another big boost to help me along.  I am truly an Etsy believer!

~nic

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I'm a day late, but I wanted to wish everyone a

Happy Thanksgiving! 

I hope yours was as wonderful as mine was. 

Great food, great family and a great nights sleep! 

I love the holidays! 

I'm working on all my Christmas decorations and for the first time ever, really get to share them with a whole bunch of people! 

I can't wait!

Also wanted to give a HUGE shout out to a wonderful gal in WA, Lisa, who placed my first ever Etsy shop order!  I wasn't even open a full 24 hours, and she had placed an order for one of my quiet books!  I have since finished and shipped it out, I hope she is enjoying it! 

Thank you!! 

(I don't think she's a blog follower, but just in case.  : ) ) 

Shh..I did it!

I'm officially open!

One Day Shop

I'm taking the ride...I hope it's a fun one!

~nic

Getting going...

So I did it, I think.
I'm pretty sure I opened up an Etsy shop tonight.
I haven't listed anything as my pictures are too big and it's getting late and I'm getting tired. But, I worked a little on my profile and set up my Paypal account.
I'm getting closer...

Also exciting news is my good friend Ashley gave me the CUTEST custom stamp. I think it was a little prompt to help with my Etsy shop. I LOVE it! She even bought it off Etsy. It's all swirly and says Created by Nicole Fowler. I've already stamped it on a painters canvas tarp to use as a tag for a couple of new style quiet books and it turned out so great. Nice and clear with no smudges. I can't get a close up picture of it because our camera can't seem to get it clear enough.
Maybe you'll just have to buy a piece from me and I'll use it! hehe! ; )

Our "New" Old Bed

I've been slowly working on our master bedroom, getting it to become "us".
My parents bought my husband and I our bed 5 years into our marriage.
We had this gymnasium of a water bed, complete with mirrored/etched headboard that wrapped it's way up the wall to attach to the lovely mirrored canopy.
Oh yes...can you say hideous 70's water bed?
You can!
Then you know why my loving parents bought us our bed.

Anyways, we've had it for 14 years now and it still works wonderfully.
I just wanted to tweak it a bit. It has a head board that basically has a mantel on top, so when you would sit up in bed and lean back trying to read a book, eventually your body would go numb because this little mantel would press against your neck in the most peculiar, uncomfortable way. I had run across an egg top foam mattress pad at Salvation Army for 3 bucks a while back. My hubby had two pieces of foam core from some old company signage, they were the perfect fit. I taped the two pieces of foam core together, folded the egg top foam into thirds and simply wrapped an old white curtain around the whole thing. I pinned the curtain in the back, ran some heavy duty velcro I have along the top and bottom and popped it into place. Yeah, no more numb legs!


This is the foot board, which is what the head board looked like. I'm also thinking of getting some bed risers, I love my new bed skirt, but it is a little long. I like the pooling affect, but it may be a bit much.

I also added the curtain canopy above the bed this weekend and the swing arm lamp.
I love how it all turned out.
Hubby is a big fan too!

I've got a few more "big" things to finish up, like my beautiful crystal chandelier, and hubby's dresser...which is turning out to be a bigger project than I thought. I know we'll conquer it! I'll keep you posted. : )

~nic

Working hard

Hi all!
I've been working hard on two quiet books. One for a little boy, and one for a little girl. It's been fun doing them at the same time. I've finished the boy one, which you can check out here. It has already been given to Peyton, and from what I hear, he loves it! I'm almost done with the little girl one and will post it as soon as I get it finished.

The other project that I finished up, is our bedroom tv unit. It has actually been done for a bit, but I lost my camera to computer cord, and haven't been able to download them..until now! Yeah!

This started out as your typical armoire, with an upper portion that was half shelving, and half small drawers, with doors to enclose it all. So lovely country 80's. Thanks mom and dad! I took out all the guts of the upper portion, filled and sanded. Then painted it all white, with a touch of black here and there. I also papered the upper portion and cut a hole in the back for the TV to be able to stick out. I also cut off the huge hunk of an upper decorative nothing thing. It was weighing the whole piece down and made it HUGE.
I love the way it turned out!
Take a look:






Of course I had to add some items to the top of the unit. The little hat box is filled with all of our high school and Navy letters. There are LOTS of them. The two vintage linens came from my grandmother, which I adore. The picture, well, don't look too closely at that. Those were taken when I was 18 for my hubby. I had gone to a bridal fair with my mom, and signed up for Bedroom style pictures to be taken. This is one of hubby's favorites. The tall candle stick came from a garage sale, for a whole 75 cents, with the Z Gallerie price tag still on it. The love sign was wood from the Salvation army store, painted white and added some cute ribbon to hang it from. The mirror, well, if you know me, I have mirrors. No really. As I'm sitting here typing, I can look up and see four mirrors in my house.
I love mirrors.
And I don't even wear makeup.
LOL!

~nic

Little light table

I bought this little light table from our local catholic school thrift store a while back for 4 bucks. My girlfriend at the time thought I was crazy.
I could see it...in a nursery...all done up...in pistachio!
What do you think?

Before

After
Oh look at that cute green goodness! I love this little guy and really don't want to give it up.

I recovered a cream covered lamp shade to this beautiful blue, green, yellow and white plaid. I added the wood like buttons as an extra touch.



Can't you just see reading to your little one a sweet night time story? I'm really digging working the paint to look old and chippy. I don't know if I can give this one up, but I really don't have anything that matches it, nor a little one anymore. No, wait...he'll ALWAYS be my little one. : )

~nic

Beach, Strawberries and a burger

Hi all! I'm back with no more black outs! Oh no, not me, my computer! The screen kept fading in and out, so our good friend Delos hooked me up with a new laptop screen. All I had to do in return was make him a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Thank you!

I've been wanting to share a few pics from one of our end of summer weekend trips. We spent the day at Pescadero Beach with some friends of ours. We found lots of beach glass and some cool shells and even ran across some handmade drift wood forts.
Yup, you read that right.
Drift wood forts.
Really cool.

I took so many picture that day it was hard to figure out which ones to put up. The drive through Half Moon Bay on the way to the beach is always beautiful. I couldn't believe I actually captured some of it with our janky little camera while sitting in the passenger seat doing about 45.



Our friends up ahead in the mini van. Hi guys!


The ever famous cemetery leading into Half Moon Bay. Maybe it's just famous to me and my childhood memories. Half Moon Bay hosts the Pumpkin Festival and when I was little there always seemed to be a group of "haunters" dressed and roaming the cemetery when we made the annual trip.


After we played around at the beach, we headed down the coast to a little "Honor System" farm to pick our own strawberries. Super fun! We were the only ones to actually pick some out of our group, but our little family had a great time doing it. Justin was really in awe once he saw the rows and rows of strawberry plants. The farm itself, was super clean and super cute with delicious looking items!




After all that fun, we all headed into the Santa Cruz area to find a place to grab a burger. We found the perfect joint, named Burger. They had the most unusual burgers I had seen. My hubby had one called the Phatty. The buns...were two grilled cheese sandwiches! Some of the burgers, had buns made from glazed donuts. Um...I don't know about that one. Mine was good though, the Dude and little man had the Kobe Burger sliders.

It was a great way to end our summer!

We are back in full swing now, school, gymnastics and soccer. I've got some projects going on and John has been offered a position with DataLink that he has decided to take. We are very excited about it but a little sad that he had to set aside his business. It just makes more sense for us financially, right now. He didn't close shop, just won't be pursuing any outside contracts. His official start date was September first. I love you honey!

It's also my fathers 74th birthday. My parents spent the day in Pismo beach and just returned about a half an hour ago (8:30 pm). I can't wait to hear how much fun they had and what they found! Happy Birthday Daddy, I love you very much!

~nic