Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Coupons anyone??

Never in my life have I clipped coupons, but after hearing many success stories of spending $30 a week on groceries for a family of four, I've decided that my family of two (and a half, including Blue) is spending far too much on our grocery bill and that I should do something about it. SO after spending the weekend in Tampa with Josh's parents, I snagged the coupons out of their Sunday paper and started clipping. Coupons were all clipped by Monday, and I went shopping at Publix on Tuesday. Combined with their BOGO sales, I saved $38 and spent $55. Not too bad for this girl who typically spends $90 or more on her weekly grocery bill!

I will continue to coupon, but there needs to be some kind of method to the madness of all those little squares of money saving paper, so using this method, I hope to create a product like this to house all of my new found coupons.

Now back to teaching... Have a happy Wednesday!



Saturday, September 18, 2010

Flower Preserving Par Deux!


Here is what I used:
  • A 11x14" Shadow box
  • 2 pieces Fabric (one solid white and the other sheer purple)
  • Ribbon (one sheer white and the other solid purple)
  • A Hot Glue gun with lots of extra glue
  • Pearlized Pins
  • All of those beautiful dried flowers
  • A wedding invitation
And Here is what I did:
  • Cut both pieces of fabric and glue them directly to the back of the shadowbox.. Be sure to pull the fabric tight before you glue. It will make a difference!
  • Get some inspiration. I'm not very artsy, so I used the internet to find a style that I liked. The one that I found looked nothing like the flowers I had, but the concept was good. At the wedding Meghans flowers were cascading, and the flowers in the picture I liked (and Linked) were cascading as well, so I used that as my guide.
  • Glue down the invitation.
  • Glue down the greens
  • Glue down everything else! This is such an easy project. Don't be shy of your glue gun, just use it! You might be suprised with the result! Here was mine:
  • Get a second opinion on how the flowers are arranged. Sometimes we need a little perspective. Josh told me that I needed to fill some of the space on the right side of the flowers. Can you tell a difference?
  • Add the ribbon and pin it down.
  • Using a some leftover sheer white ribbon, finish the border of the frame.
That's it! There is a sealant that I plan on spraying on the entire arrangement that will help the flowers retain their colors for years to come, but I haven't found it yet, so these flowers are going to have to wait.

So here is the finished project. What do you think??

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

How to preserve flowers





Recently Joshua's brother Jason got married to his wonderful fiancée Meghan.

The wedding weekend was filled with many different activities for the families and bridal party and I was honored to be part of the happiness that was shared by the happy couple.

The wedding was simply gorgeous with the bridesmaids wearing a deep purple and the flowers, a bright variety of Gerber daisies, orchids, calla lilies and roses. The bride was stunning! Her dress was layered with lace and satin, and she wore an elegant veil with a lot of detailing around the edge. Because I don't feel that my words do her justice, I've decided to add a picture:


She was (and is) so beautiful!

Now on to the flowers... are they not beautiful? Luckily, when I was in high school, I worked at a florist which did flower preservations. I offered to do that to Meghan’s flowers, and after some specific discussion on what exactly I would be doing to them, she agreed!

Here's the first steps of what I did to prepare her flowers to be preserved.

1. Cut all stems down to 1 inch


2. Dry any dew-like moisture that may have been remaining in the flowers with a paper towel


3. In a shoe-like box (do not use a plastic container. Flowers might get moldy if you do), fill about a quarter of the box with Silica and place the flowers (bud up) in the powder (or beads depending what kind of silica you purchased. I've used both and they do an equally great job).




4. Carefully fill the rest of the box with the Silica, meaning, don't dump it all in at once. Fill around the flowers first, then the inside the flowers.

Here is what my finished product looked like.


and


(I used both Powder and Gel)

There were a few extra orchids that I could not fit into the two boxes that I filled and the stems were cut so I couldn't put them into a bouquet like arrangement, so I did this:


Orchids last a long time, so this pretty arrangement sat on my kitchen table for about a week and a half! Not too shabby if you ask me!

Back to the preservation; It only takes about a week for all of the moisture to be taken out of the flowers, so be patient and don't peek. You'll be able to see the finished product before long!

Here is how mine turned out:


Color definitely got darker but they are beautiful. Much more vibrant then if you just hung them to dry, plus wait until you see my next post when I give you the steps on how to make something of these lovely flowers!

No onto my exciting news: Joshua booked us on a 1 year anniversary honeymoon cruise which leaves in about 8 hours!!!!!

I'm SO excited! Bahamas, here we come :)

I've got the most wonderful husband...

Until next time,

Suzanne

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Fishing!!


I am a high school choral director living in (my opinion) one of the most beautiful little towns in Florida, Merritt Island.

My husband, Joshua, and I are blessed to live on a canal where I frequently get to do one of my favorite hobbies, Fishing! A few days ago, Josh and I were able to go fishing on the beach in Indialantic, FL with one of our friends from Church. According to our friend, we didn't end up catching a lot, but we still left with about 20 fish! My best catch of the day was a 14 inch pompano which Josh and I will be enjoying for dinner tonight! Josh's most interesting catch of the day was a Crab... haha :)


Anyway, since we were able to catch so successfully (in our opinion) we decided on doing our own fishing expedition this morning at 5am at the Cocoa Beach Pier. What we didn't plan for was the tide. I'd never seen it out so far!! The pier, which we had planed on fishing off of, was closed until 6am, so Josh waded out into the water so not to waste the time invested on this early early morning. At 6 we went to the pier and met a wise old fisherman named Tony who helped us with our rigging. Unfortunately, we were only able to stay on the pier for about 15 minuted because Josh had to get to work. We got home and I took a nap... a very long nap, in fact! Truth is, I fully intended on getting a lot of stuff done today, and aside from mowing the lawn, I've been unable to do anything due to my lack of energy.

Ah well, at least we'll have a nice dinner of baked pompano!