christmas time!

December has just begun and it's already been great! We have had a lot of fun decorating the tree, and doing our Advent calendar! It's certainly been a blessing to have Shane's family close and also to know that mine is just a few miles awhile and will be seeing them all shortly!

The tree that is in our living room was given to me by some good friends (Jen and Craig). Before them it was passed down from Sue (thanks, Sue! :D) It's a nice tree, and certainly fills our needs!

But, I'm sadden to say that it may the last year for this tree. It's not fluffing as it should and many of the needles have fallen off. But, you know, these trees don't last forever!!

 

 

Jen also lent us the tree skirt her grandmother made. She only asked that if I ever intend on getting a new one, that I give it back. Certainly will! :D

We decided to put the tree in front of the slider this year rather than by the kitchen, because it gives more living room space. We need all the space we can get in this room! Especially next weekend when Mom and Dave come to visit! YAY!

This little boy is both excited for them and Santa to come! :D Aren't we all?

I've done some decorating around the apartment, as much as I can without overloading! I try not to do too much to avoid it looking cluttered!

Started with the tree! Definitely love the soft glow of the lights in the dark!

Most of the ornaments are new. They were a must have purchase from IKEA! If you remember, we went there for the kitchen shelves? Well during that trip I fell in love with these ornaments. Thought about them constantly. So, much that I went online to purchase them, but they weren't available for shipping online.

Soooo....you can imagine how excited Shane was to go back and get them with me! :) That's love I tell you!

 

 

 

I filled in the areas surrounding the boxes and stars with some plain red balls, silver bells (which I didn't take a picture of on the tree), hearts that came with the IKEA set, and of course this little guy!

 



LOVE my smooshy boy!!! Can't believe how big he is getting! Get to see him and his beautiful sister in 2 weeks! YIPPEEEEE!

The rest of the decorations I just randomly sprinkled around the living room.

I bought a snowflake table runner for our coffee table. I wanted to keep the decorations as neutral as possible, as to not overload the Christmas theme, but rather play up winter so I can keep them up longer and get the most use out of them!

This bowl is filled with the silver bells I mentioned that are on the tree, and some gold balls. I took the paper shreds from the box the IKEA ornaments came in and used that as filler :)

 

I love the look of this in the glass bowl! 

Couldn't forget to give the bar/bakers rack a little festival appeal! I think the garland is simple enough without over doing it!

 

 

Our DVD rack (which by the way, is completely filled! We need to come up with an additional movie storage solution, quick!) Just a little sparkle and jazz!

 

 

 

Without going too crazy on the pictures, because I know that posts can get very long with those, here are just a few more together to give you the idea :)

 

 

 

I have a beautiful table cloth that I bought from Home Goods last week, and some fun ideas for the dining table. So, stay tuned!!

 

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend! See ya soon! <3

pinball fun!

Well, this post is a little later than I had originally hoped. It's been sitting in my edit list too long! I had a change in work schedule at the Hospital 2 weeks ago and it has been tough getting back on track to my normal schedule. We did 24/7 support in the Emergency Room for the Physician's Go-Live of their electronic documentation. I did mainly 2p/3p - midnight shifts. Definitely not my cup of tea since my bedtime is 930pm! Which is just about coming up now!

A few weeks ago, Shane came up with a great idea to bring Grayson to the National Pinball Museum in Baltimore. I didn't even know they had one, until he mentioned it a couple of months ago.

We surprised Grayson, who when we got there was so super excited! It was a neat place. You walk through a couple of rooms filled with old style pinball machines. There were mannequins that were "playing" on the machines. There were some machines that weren't really even machines, they were more like pool tables.

Once you move past the museum portion, you can go up to the 2nd and 3rd floor where they have a ton of pinball machines that you can play openly for 2 hours! Grayson thought this was the greatest thing and we did that for the next 2 hours! Man let me tell you, you don't realize how sore your arms get after playing pinball for 2 straight hours! But, totally worth it!

 

And, here are some shots of the machines that were there. Of course I couldn't get all of them, although, there were some pretty awesome ones indeed!

The Adam's Family was my favorite growing up! Definitely love this one!

 

Grayson and Shane loved the Star Trek one!

 

 

 

Just a couple of more! Promise :)

 

 

 

 

 

With all that it was a great day and we had tons of fun!

 

It's past my bedtime now - 9:47pm!! Night all <3 

holiday card givaway!

We are hosting our first give-a-way over at Etsy's Flashy Pics!

Enter your chance to win one of our Holiday Cards!

 

There are two ways you can enter to win: 1) Visit our facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/FlashyPics  and leave a comment

2) Leave a comment here on our blog!

 

Either way, your name will be put into a drawing on Sunday, Nov 18th for a chance to win!

 

We have so many great ideas for the upcoming season...hope you come back to join us and see what we have in store! :D

 

<3

kitchen shelves

Happy Monday, Folks! It was quite difficult for me to get out of bed this morning! Certainly one of those days when I'd rather be snuggled in the blankets! But, I got up and got going!

Side note: Starting this Wednesday I will be working 2pm-12a, and 3-12a shifts at the Hospital. We are implementing Physician Documentation in the Emergency Room and have to offer 24/7 support. Tomorrow I have off, then I work 6 days in a row. Saturday and Sunday aren't as bad with being able to work 12pm-8pm and then 1pm-8pm. But, I will certainly be happy when I can get back to my normal 7a-330p!

Now, get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich! :-P

After our post about the Vintage Kitchen here, we couldn't wait to get started on the other side of the kitchen!

Since our cabinets are flush against the wall, we miss out on utilizing the tops of them as extra storage. I knew right away that I wanted to hang a shelf over the cabinets above the cut through, which is above our sink. It was just a matter of finding the right ones!

That's where IKEA come in! We went there last Saturday, and found the perfect one, basically right away! That almost never happens for us!!

Image Source - IKEA.com

Equals this....

It's amazing what I difference it makes! And I love the wood that we got the shelves in too! It's the grey-brown finish. What I love most about it is, it's not just a flat stain. It has a worn look to it, and looks very homey to me!

Image Source - IKEA.com



 

Shane was such a sport in hanging it up! He ran into a few glitches, but I was so impressed with how quickly he was able to assemble and hang it all!

Which is probably a good thing on his part, because his girlfriend was itching to have it done too! Because, as you can image, I couldn't wait to have it up and ready so I could start loading up the goodies on it!

 

Hope you all enjoy the beginning of your week!

 

 





Night all! <3

lamp!

I'm so sad! We purchased a lamp from Goodwill and we planned to snap pictures and show you the process that we took to paint it. All very exciting!

But, some how I deleted the before pictures and all I have left is the after :(

So, here is our lamp that we finally decided to put in the living room on the entertainment stand! woohoo!! I can cross an item off on my list!!

We purchased this lamp for only $10 at Goodwill. It had a really ugly bird on it with all these flowers. Very '70s.

Off to Lowe's we went, cause it's right across the street and super awesome! Every trip I take there I have to walk through the lumber section because the smell reminds me of my dad <3

We purchased a can of Valspar spray paint in Stone. The stuff, is pretty amazing!  It came out like little flakes of stone and then it adhered to the lamp like mud. Interesting stuff.

We sprayed only two coats of it, because well, our "thin" coats are more than generous coats! We like to be thorough and make sure everything is hit! The only problem we had was around the base. Realizing after the fact that the base comes off, we'll need to go back and take it off to the bottom again.

But, after a $20 lapshade, I think we did pretty well with our $30 lamp!! LOVE IT!

<3

lets take a tour!

It's that nice Fall weather that makes me want to get up and moving! I love the crisp air and the smells that fill you up. The apples and wine. The comfort food and cozy sweaters.

I especially love the memories I have of fall. My mom decorating the house is definitely one of them! She has an eye for decorating and is always changing things up. We may pick on her, but it's more of an envy of mine that she just "knew" how things should look and would just throw things together.

Where right now, we are in the apartment and things get a little cramped, I try and make it as much as home as I can. It can be challenging between a budget and apartment living. But, it's also fun to try different things and see what we can come up with!

I'd like to share those things with you and just take a little walk through our Fall flavored home!

 I can't wait to tell you something super exciting about one of the throw pillows we bought!

The yellow and white swirled one we got at Pottery Barn at a super steal! The pillow inserts end up being a little more than the covers, because the covers are changeable. So, even though the insert was still $26, we got the cover on clearance for $9!! I was so excited!

Of course, we needed another pillow to go with it. So, we went to Home Goods (of all places) and I found this rectangle shaped on. At first glance it looks like a postcard and you can't really make out the words.

BUT, at second (or third) glance you may see what I saw the second I picked up the pillow!

 

Brockton, MA!? NO WAY!

At $16.99 for this one, I knew it was meant to be with an address like this!

 

 

 

We of course had to do the pumpkin thing! I'm a little saddened by the fact that the one on the right, has a droopy face :( It didn't look like that when we first carved. It's getting really weepy and mushy! I just took this last night!!

 

 

This is what they looked like the night we carved them. From the left:

Grayson and Mine, Shane's, Shane's Dad (Papi) and Shane's Mom's (Mami)

We had a great time with these!



Thank you for coming to visit! Hope you enjoyed your stay! :)

Peace and <3!

vintage kitchen

Do you all remember those awesome brass bundt and fish shaped pans that you'd see hanging in older kitchens? Yeah, I remember them too, and honestly, I remember hating them more than anything.

I started thinking of them recently, because we desperately needed some life brought to our little kitchen that could!

I bought a "swag" at Home Goods about a month ago, so that is hanging on the wall above our stove.

I knew that there needed to be something on either side of it. "But, what" I asked!? And, then, for some strange reason, I thought of those darn bundt pans. Really!? I couldn't image them here, but then again it was like they would look perfect there at the same time.

There were some ideas that I knew would look neat, but not so much in our kitchen

 

{source: Apartment Therapy.com}

{source}

 

{source}



 

Wishing that I had enough room like in the last photo here, I had to settle do something similar to the first one! But, I drew inspiration from enough enough to know that I really wanted to hang pans just like these!

 

I googled some places and searched on Etsy with real no luck in finding any that I liked or were within our price range. I mean, they may work for our little gallery kitchen here, but in the future; not so certain.

 

One day we wondered into Goodwill looking for a lamp (which we found one by the way!! that'll be for another post!) I went to the kitchen section just to pursuse the shelves, when all of a sudden I saw a bunch of bundt pans! I was so excited!! We purchased 4 of them at a wopping $2 a piece and we were off!

This was them yesterday morning before Shane hung them up.

All nice and clean!

 

 

And here they are in their new home!

 

We may at some point paint the others, the red one right now is the closet to being a matte finish. I love that one! I think they look so lovely up there on the wall! The style of them really fit in this kitchen! And, my style I guess changes depending on the room! :D

 

Have you ever purchase something that you disliked for years and then found yourself working it somehow into your own decor!?

 

<3 Peace and LOVE!

photo shop

We are so excited to introduce to you the newest addition to our lives: FlashyPics!

FlashyPics is the name of the photography company we started! It's not so much photography services, but more about the photos themselves. But, who knows, it may evolve into more!

The photos are posted and for sale at Etsy.com. Etsy is an online store that sells everything homemade, vintage, photos, furniture, and so much more! I've loved the store for years and always dreamed that one day I would have something to sell on there. And, now I do!

Take a look at the shop! Check back often as I still have plenty of prints, just not enough time in the day to edit them all! :)

Just so you know: Shane and I have decided that it doesn't really matter to us how took the pictures. So, we don't really say which ones were taken by me or taken by him. It's mainly about doing something that we enjoy and then sharing it with everyone else. We have so much fun just walking around and exploring different places. Then, when we feel it's something spectacular, we take a shot of it!

Looking forward to continue sharing our work with you all!!

<3!! Kristin :)

light it up!

Shane and I both brought some light into this relationship. And, while it's typical for items to clash and not necessarily get along. It's a little crazy when everything is the same!

At my apartment I had small lamps. The were basically "bedroom" lamps because, well up until 2 years ago, I only had a bedroom to light :D

Aside from my array of bedroom lamps I brought in to the mix a floor lamp. As luck would have it, so didn't Shane. About 2 to be exact! (insert sarcasm here!) Now we have 3 floor lamps and a bunch of little lamps. We need to go lamp shopping!

There's been many of conversations surrounding lamps (more than I think healthy)! We first decided that we want to purchase two lamps. One for the end table right outside the kitchen doorway. And, one for on top of either the book shelf in the "entryway" or the tall shelf we have all the electronic equipment on. I personally want it on the book shelf, but I may need to give up something else to get my way on that one :D

We then discussed the height of the lamp we wanted. For the table, a medium sized lamp should do. As for the entertainment shelf, I want fat and more of a bowl style base, but not too high. I love color, which is a little different for Shane. He is really into browns, rustic and silvery tones. While I am all for those as well, and most of my furniture and accessories are of the same nature as his. We just have too much of it going on. So, we need COLOR!!

Here is our path down the lamp journey!

We discussed silly, with the leg lamp!

Personally, I think this lamp is pretty cool and would not be ashamed of displaying it in our home :)

 

{source: http://www.redriderleglamps.com/}

 

We've gone into Home Goods, Lowe's, TJ Maxx, Marshalls

They all have the same lamps. Very modern and funky.

 

 

{source: Apartment Therapy}

 

 

Shane surprised me one day we were in Lowe's when he pointed out a Tiffany style lamp he liked.

Really!? I almost jumped into his arms!

I love the different glass textures of the Tiffany style!

The problem is the price tag!

This one is $400!!

 

 

{source: http://www.thelampswesell.com/}

 

 

One like this lovely-ness from Pottery Barn would work for the entertainment shelf

This particular one costs $170, but we may be able to find one similar somewhere else

 

 

So, that's our journey through lamp land! I think the consensus will probably be a Tiffany style for the table by the kitchen and one like the Pottery Barn ceramic lamp for the entry way!

 

Which do you think? Is it difficult for you to shop lamps?

 

Peace and <3!