This is the box that my Papa built...

My Papa (my mom's dad) was an amazing, kind, caring, soft spoken, and supremely talented man. I have so many memories of him, and a lot of them involved some kind of project. See, he was an expert woodworker. He could build absolutely anything, and he was such a perfectionist that you knew it would be, well, perfect. We built a lot of bird houses together. By together, I of course mean that he cut out all of the wood and put the whole thing together while I watched wide-eyed. Then he would have me paint and decorate our creation. Trust me when I say, these were some very interesting "pieces". I was not very good with the paint... Anyway, I think my mom still has our "Eat at Sarah's" diner-inspired birdfeeder in her yard! Oh how I wish I had some pictures!

When I got a bit older, my Papa would build things for my sister and me, and we'd usually receive them as gifts. One year for Christmas, I got this box:

It's gorgeous. He didn't paint it any particular color, leaving it blank for me to one day create something hopefully nicer than any of the bird houses/feeders I created. I think he gave this to me about 10 years ago, and here it still sits, untouched in my entranceway. It houses many odds and ends, but mostly winter accessories, hats, mittens, scarves. Every single time I look at it I think of my Papa. It's been about 6.5 years since he passed away, and this is one tangible object I have to remember him by.

Finally, my husband and I spruced up the box a bit. We went back and forth on what color to paint it. Did I want a neutral that would go with anything? Did I want a bright bold color to brighten up our otherwise dull entranceway? I think the choice was pretty obvious. My Papa was a very bright spot in the lives of everyone he ever met, I had to go bright.

Our main floor has a lot of aqua blues, and lime greens. In the basement we have ton of reds and yellows, and other bright colors. Since this box resides on the main floor, I grabbed a few paint chips in various blues, greens, and yellows. I set them all out on top of the box, and stood back and imagined. It was a highly technical process which ended in me picking this one: Behr 490B-4 (Sea Life).

I'm actually planning on completing this project this weekend so I can post about it on Monday! Stay tuned to see how it turned out!!

My big finger and iPhone keyboard do not get along...

Guys, twice now I have deleted comments by accident. I went to push "publish" and my big fingers hit "delete" instead. The first time I just emailed the commenter and they resubmitted, but today I couldn't do that, there was no email associated with the comment :(. I feel like such a loser... please don't hate me :)

Here's a great post over on Living in Yellow that tells you how to add an email address to your google account, so if I do this to you, I can let you know what a total moron I am!

Happy Monday!

Weekend Recap, Vol. 5...

Well, yet another summer weekend has passed... we are that much closer to cooler weather, sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, and turning on our fireplace. But not quite yet! I am still not really ready to be done with the warm summer days. Unfortunately, our weather didn't really cooperate this weekend, it was gloomy and our plans of going to a country fair were cancelled and we spent the days mostly inside. We played some scrabble, and some cards, and Leroy laid around like the lazy dog that he is...

We did venture out for a little window shopping, and we finally tried Five Guys!! It only recently opened up in Ottawa, and I have been hearing such glowing reviews from all of my internet friends in the USA. Finally, we made it there for lunch. The menu was a bit strange, we're not used to having to order fries and drinks seperately, usually fast food comes in a meal deal! Anyhow, we both got a bacon cheeseburger and split a large fry and large drink. Friends, it was insanely delicious!! And they give you soooo much. Next time we'll only split a regular fry.

Anyhow, it was a pretty lazy weekend, but I think I needed it. It's been a pretty busy summer so far, and the next few weeks will be pretty packed too. Having a couple of days to just laze around and run some errands was just what the doctor ordered!

Tell me about your weekend!!

Tails & Toes made its first big sale!!

My mom and I were SO excited to get our first big sale this week! We sold one of my mom's beautiful baby quilts, and a few bibs, all in one order. I was so excited to send it off, so I spent a few hours brainstorming how to package it up all nicely. I strongly feel that in a creative industry, first impressions are so extremely important. Whenever I order something on Etsy, I love when it comes packaged all nice and pretty :)

Here's what I came up with! I put the items in clear plastic bags, which I sealed with our shop sticker (forgot to take a photo of this detail - damn!). Then I wrapped the package in raffia, tied in a bow with our business card attached. Lastly, I put the Etsy invoice in a pretty pink envelope.

And off it went! Can't wait for more orders. If you haven't yet, please check us out here. 

Friday Favorites!

I'm a lucky girl, yesterday was faux Friday for me! I am off again this Friday, but this time I took a vacation day. Just felt like I needed it! Anyhow, like most of my Fridays off, I am busy cleaning up the house and doing laundry. It's especially necessary this week since we were away last weekend and things have definitely been neglected.

This week went pretty quick, since it was only a 3 day work week for me! It was pretty busy too, on Tuesday night we went and upgraded our iPhones. We both had the 3GS and now we both have the 4. We're behind the times, but we're economically conscience (read: cheap) so we always go for the earlier model for the cheaper price :) In this case it saved us $125! Siri sounds cool and all, but I can live without it. Oh, and you betcha I got the pretty white one this time!

Anyhow, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Here are my favorite blog posts of the week, in no particular order:

There are two ways to look at life... over on Kate Henley. Beautiful post about positivity and life. I really loved reading this yesterday, I am always finding it hard to stop viewing everything that happens with complete negativity. This helped.

our last days of summer bucket list... over on Sunny with a Chance of Sprinkles. Short and sweet! Loved the idea of creating this list. Our summer days are numbered!!

these are my [confessions]... over on In this Beautiful Life.

Facebook Rehab: Day 1... over on Diary of a Blonde Newlywed. I have tried to give up Facebook several times and have never been successful!

A Stenciled Accent Wall... over on Love & Renovations. Loved the end result and it's a cool idea!

Lastly, even though I am new to the blogging world, I really wanted to share this post and button (I'll be putting it on my sidebar for sure!) from five30three. Please please please turn off the word verification on comments! It's very frustrating, especially if you don't get the words right in one try :) Have a fabulous weekend!

Black Bean Tacos!

I already blogged about the black bean burgers we made as an attempt to try some more economical, meatless options. They were a huge hit, so I started thinking about other things we could make, replacing ground beef with black beans. And then it hit me, it was so obvious - TACOS!! We love tacos in our house, I usually make them at least once a month, but sometimes even more, sometimes once a week! This might be the first recipe I have ever created myself, so I am pretty proud to share it with you all.

Here's what you'll need:

1 can of black beans
1 red pepper
1 small red onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup of chili powder
2 tsp of cumin
2 avocado (mashed)
2 tomatoes
salsa (maybe 1 cup? however much you would normally use)
grated cheddar cheese

First you need to dice up the red pepper and the onion, add them to a frying pan with the olive oil and garlic. In the meantime you can drain and rinse the can of beans. Once the onions turn translucent, add the beans. Cook until the beans start to come apart and are a little... mushy, for lack of a better word!

That's all it takes! This will make enough for 8 tacos, it usually gives us 2 meals worth. We have made this probably 4 times in the last month. It is SO unbelievably delicious, even my husband didn't miss the meat in this meal at all.

Our very first camping trip..

I apologize for not getting this up yesterday, like I promised. I have an ok excuse. We were out all evening getting new iPhones last night!!! No? Bad excuse? Oh well :)

Our very first camping trip as a little family of 3 was a giant success! We all had a ton of fun, and it was incredibly relaxing. If you follow me on instagram, you've probably seen a lot of these photos already. We didn't have a signal out in the woods, but I still took pictures using my iPhone. I wouldn't say we were exactly "roughing" it... Haha.

Our campsite! Up a big hill.

We arrived on Saturday around lunch time and immediately got to work setting up our tent. We may have gone just a touch overboard by purchasing a 7 man tent... we wanted to make sure it would be big enough to set up Leroy's crate if needed, and it came in such a small bag we didn't think it would be, well, HUGE. Oh well, it should last us a while and we can eventually fit a couple of kids in there! There were some tensions and some moodiness while setting up the tent, but no arguments. The ground was extremely hard and that made it very frustrating, but in the end, we did get up and then we said a little prayer that it wouldn't collapse on us as we slept... and it didn't! Wohoo!

After setting up the tent, and some lunch, we wandered down to the lake. Leroy wasn't allowed on the main beach, so we had to walk a little further down to the boat launch to take him in the water. He's never been swimming before, but he loves his kiddy pool and sprinkler in our backyward, so we were hoping he'd be a natural, and he was! He went right on and was super excited. He could have chased the water frisbee we bought all. day. long. I actually had to drag him out of the water when we were ready to leave!! It was adorable. I tried to get a couple of pictures, but I didn't want to get my camera too close to the water, so they're not the best. We came back to swim 3 times! It made us really sad that we don't have anywhere we can take him swimming here at home. We might have to make a few day trips back to the campground for some doggy swimming before the summer is over...

Other than the lake, we really just ate, relaxed, ate, drank, relaxed, and sat in front of the campfire! Did I mention we also ate and relaxed? :) The day before we left they finally lifted the full fire ban that was in effect. Thank god! What is camping without a fire? That was our evening activity both nights we were there. It was a lot of fun, and kept the bugs away.

What did we eat, you ask? For dinner, a gross sounding but totally amazing concoction, suggested by my sister: Kraft Dinner with taco beef and tomatoes. It was insanely delicious and now I want to make it for supper every day of the week... if only it had some actual nutrition in it... damn. For lunches we ate egg salad sandwiches and party mix, and for breakfast we had scrambled eggs and homemade banana muffins (recipe to come sometime this week)!! Camp food is awesome.

When it came time to leave, we were looking forward to getting home and showering. Neither of us slept very well while we were there either, so we were definitely looking forward to sleeping in our bed, and last night we went to bed super early, before 9pm. The bed felt like sleeping on a marshmallow compared to the concrete feeling of the forest floor. It was heavenly.