We Remember

Happy Memorial Day

  Today we remember.

Hey Look I have a 3 Column Blog Now!

For some reason today it was REALLY important for me to change to a 3 column blog.  I searched and searched for a way to do it...and finally did it myself...kinda.

Anyway...I'm still working on the kitchen cabinets.  No new pictures, because when you paint white paint over white primer...not much changes.

And, because I hate posting without pictures, here's a couple pictures from Courtney's visit last weekend.

Kitchen Update 4

And now on to the window/sink side of the kitchen:

Before:

During:

During-er:

It doesn't even FEEL like the same kitchen anymore!  Walking into our house feels different now, it really does!

Kitchen Cabinets--Week 3

We wanted to start and finish painting our kitchen cabinets in a week and a half, but last week was crazy busy with business stuff.  So we've done only one side. The good news is that the one side is completely finished...except for the door and drawers...

Today when I get home I'm hoping to put on some paint clothes, grab my MP3 player, and get to work on the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen...

P.S. I am listening to E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle on my MP3 player.

Small Business of the Month

Here's a picture from this past Tuesday...

The plaque reads:

Small Business of the Month Award
Gottwals Books
1806 Russell Parkway
For Outstanding Business Achievement And Exemplary Service to the Community
April 2010
Warner Robins Area Chamber of Commerce

Kitchen Update 3

 

The doors and drawers are a work in progress.  We still haven't touched the other side of the kitchen, but that's ok because I LOVE how this turned out!  Love it with a big hug and a kiss.

Speaking of Courtney

 A couple days ago I commented how excited I was for Courtney's visit this weekend.  My sister-in-law is so fun to be around but since she lives in Texas I have to content myself with phone chats.  Anyway, she wrote a post for the Baptist Women in Ministry blog, which you can read here.

It's about the live of Lucie Eddie Campbell-Williams, a woman who I'd never heard of, but was an incredible influence in many aspects.  Courtney's working on her Ph.D. in Church History with a focus on the Civil Rights era and so her telling of a black woman who lived in the midst of it is very interesting.  Check out her blog post here.

(the picture above is one of my favorites of Courtney...isn't she the cutest thing?)

Kitchen Update 2

BIG WEEK

We have a big week ahead of us.  Tomorrow the Warner Robins Chamber of Commerce is going to be at our Warner Robins location to award us with the Small Business of the Month Award (for April).  We also have a couple guests coming to see us this week...including...

My wonderful, smart, funny, and beautiful sister-in-law Courtney!!!  Horray!!!

We will probably stay up late giggling, have a pillow fight, paint each other's nails....umm...or just play Scrabble.

Kitchen Update

Since Monday, our kitchen has gone from this...

to this...

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh...

Chalkboard {at last}!

I finally joined the millions and made a chalkboard for our house. 

I made it out of a picture frame we inherited (a fancy word for...nobody else in the family wanted it) and a piece of wood we had sitting around our house from who-knows-what.  The wood just happened to be the right width for the frame and my dear husband cut the length down just a hair for me.

 
The kitchen part is a hopeful future prediction...we have one side primed and painted with the first coat...

Here's a before of the frame...gold and pretty ugly, but I loved the green ribbon around the center and the details.

Nothing a can of $0.97 Lowe's spray paint couldn't handle.

The Accidental Sweater Fix

 I say accidental because all I was going to do was sew buttons on this cream-colored sweater I got at Target.  All the buttons fell off the first time I wore it...why does that always happen?

I kept forgetting to take the sweater with me to the store, so I bought the wrong sized buttons...twice.  (Am I the only one who doesn't have a huge bag of buttons around the house?)  Too big and then too small. 

So while we were watching Celebrity Apprentice Sunday night, I started thinking about the cream colored ribbon I'd just bought for another project and wondered how I could make buttons out of it.  Then I started gluing the ribbon on over the button holes and did that on both sides.

Next, I twisted the ribbon into flowers and "sewed" the ribbon into place every once in a while to hold it together.  (If you want to make actual rolled fabric roses, this is a great tutorial!)

I think I'm going to put a button behind the flowers to I can button that very top button when I wear it (so that the button faces in and you can't see it).

Linked to Transformation Thursday, Today's Creative Blog

Kitchen Changes {coming soon}

New kitchen coming soon to the Gottwals house...

Here's one of the millions of pictures I've gotten inspiration from...

Picture Credit

 

Am I forgiven for forgetting to post my sweater pictures I promised at the end of yesterday's post?

Modern Bird Studios Copy Cat in Picasa

I really love the images that Modern Bird Studios does.  They take regular pictures and make them into amazing art.  Here's the example they show on their website.

I love the look but can't spend $165+ to order one from them (although for the quality and the wood mounting they do I think it's a great deal).

So I started playing around in Picasa.  I've tried several free photo editing programs and Picasa's my favorite.  I'm sure anyone could figure out how to do this by playing around, but I thought I'd do a quick step-by-step of it to make it easier....and so that later when I forgot how I did it I can look it up!  I did the process with a few different pictures and it worked best with pictures taken without flash, although any picture will work to some degree.  Here's my before and after.

 Here's my original, a picture we took at St. Simon's Island last month.  First, I like to save a copy of my picture, that way I have the original handy.  You can always undo, undo, undo, until you have the original back after the editing, but this saves time and you won't have to redo, redo, redo to get your modified picture back.  Just go up to File and Save a Copy.  It'll put the copy at the end of the album.

Go to the Effects tab and make the picture Black & White.

Next, go to the Tuning tab and play with Highlights and Shadows.  On this picture I slid the Highlights bar all the way to the right and Shadows about halfway.

I want to use the Highlights and Shadows effects again so I click over to another tab and then come back to Tuning.  This resets the effects so I can slide the bar again.  This time I slid the highlights about halfway and the shadows a little more than halfway.

Next, I went to the Effects tab toTint.  Click on Pick a Color.

Then to the Basic Fixes tab to Crop...

...and we're done!  

(Too bad I look partly bald, but isn't Shane's messy beach hair the cutest thing ever?)

If you have any questions let me know and I'll see what I can answer, but I'm no computer wizard (I can hear Shane laughing at the thought!) and I figured it out so I don't expect you to have any problems if you try it.

Linked: Between Naps on the Porch, The Persimmon Perch, Today's Creative Blog, Thrifty Decor Chick, A Soft Place to Land , Transformation Thursday
Tomorrow I'm going to show you a sweater I made cuter with a little ribbon...can't wait!

Inspired by...Modern Bird Studios

Inspired by the art at Modern Bird Studios, I worked on a picture of me and Shane to get a similar effect.  I'll be posting a tutorial Monday of how to do it!

Happy weekend!

In the works...

I have a couple projects in the works to show, just can't show them yet.  One I made as a birthday present and don't want to spoil the surprise and I'm waiting for some time to finish up the other one.

I'm nervous about both. 

In other news, we've been working at home getting some books out of our house and into our stores.  We sort and price while we watch this:

We just started Season 5.  See why I haven't been blogging much this week?

New Signs at Gottwals Books in Warner Robins

 BUY and TRADE with us!

(you can see the old and boring storefront if you scroll WAY down to the very bottom of this page)