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