Brown Paper Packages #6

I skipped posting a BPP post last week due to the fact that I was out of town for a work conference. So, lucky for all of you faithful readers out there, you get a double dose of our favorite things!

Pi Day Celebration - 2 Saturdays ago was Pi Day. Not just any Pi Day, but the ultimate Pi Day. Click here to read my thoughts about this. To celebrate, we invited my parents over to enjoy what? You guessed it. Pie. We ate chicken pot pie and my Mom's pecan pie, and we played Trivial Pursuit (because, ya know, the pie pieces). It was a great day!

Free Cone at Dairy Queen - Dairy Queen gave away free cones one day for their 75th birthday. DQ has a special place in my heart, since I used to work there. But, lets be honest, we didn't go to support Dairy Queen, or celebrate their birthday. We went for the free food. 

And then this happened, when we realized the smiley poop emoji on my shirt looked like a chocolate cone....

Catching up with Friends - As I mentioned, I was out of town for a work conference last week. The conference was great, but definitely one of the highlights was getting to see my good friend, Maegan. It was really nice to get to have dinner with her and just talk about our lives! This past Monday, Nathan got to do the same thing with one of his good friends, Cody. Its not often that we get to see our old friends, but when it does happen, we are so grateful. We're both so blessed to have good friends to enjoy and trust! (no pictures available)


A New Craft - Whenever I was wedding planning, I decided that I wanted to incorporate things into our wedding that could be useful after the wedding day. Our guest book was a Bible, which is more special to us than a simple book with names written in it. Our unity ceremony used a canvas, which is hanging in our house as a constant reminder of the day two became one. We both bought practical shoes for our wedding day so that we could wear them from day to day. Which leads me to the new craft. I decided to turn my wedding bouquet into a wreath. I figured, why let something so beautiful collect dust in a closet when I could manipulate it into something equally as beautiful as well as serve as a reminder of our special day. Anyway, here is the result:

I bought a simple stick wreath and several sprigs of greenery. I used all of the flowers from my bouquet. The 3 larger white flowers were also from our wedding, but not from my bouquet. What do you think? Do you think I should have keep my bouquet the way it was? Leave a comment below (on the blog OR on facebook, whichever you prefer). 


March Madness - I'm not into sports. Simple as that. I'm not even that competitive, other than when it comes to being right about something. But I have really gotten into March Madness this year. For the first time in my life, I CHOSE to watch Selection Sunday. Although, I was very doubtful, I wanted to see if Murray State would make it into the tournament (they didn't...). Anyway, this spurred a series of events which led to Nathan inviting a bunch of people into a bracket pool using CBS Sports. Since then, it has been almost 2 weeks, and I have to admit, I'm kind of REALLY enjoying March Madness. You know what they say.... "Dems Deberry"

One bad thing happened since the last BPP. Its very trivial, but I'm still mourning the loss of my old phone number. As many of you may have noticed (via the mass text I was forced to send), I got a new phone and with that a new phone number. AT&T forced me to do this, since I was coming from a different phone provider. I don't want to get into all of the gorey details, but I'm really sad to be swittching numbers.... RIP old phone number. Needless to say, we are not very happy with AT&T. Click here to read important info about AT&T and scams they try to pull.

Our Bedroom Makeover

So, the walls of our bedroom are pretty much blank. Why? Well.... I guess because its the least likely place for a guest to wander into. Also, I've been waiting to stumble upon some type of decoration that is unique yet appropriate for our bed room. Additionally, we are on a tight budget, so its not like we can spend a huge chunk of money on making our bedroom look like it came out of a magazine.

I've been looking on pinterest and craigslist periodically to find cheap ideas. I was willing to create something myself as long as it wasn't something too crazy. FINALLY, the time has come to complete our bedroom!

First, I decided to just go ahead and paint some canvases. I wanted them to look calm and soft, yet bring in at least a little bit of color for interest. Here's what happened...

CLICK HERE to find out how to make your own abstract canvases!

Next, we needed something in place of where a headboard would be. Our bed is a free-standing mattress on a simple bed frame. Ever since I've been on my own, I haven't really been into having an actual bed or headboard. Mostly, because they cost so much. So, I've learned to improvise.

I found a neat idea on pinterest, and I figured I could give it a shot. It included a curtain rod, chiffon curtains, and white christmas lights.

First, I hung a curtain rod. Normally, I would not put the rod up so close to the ceiling, but I wanted it to be the same height as the curtain rod for the window (which is really high due to the length of the curtain). After the rod was set, I used command mini hooks to hang the Christmas lights evenly apart. Last, I added the chiffon curtains. Here is the result:

When the lights are on, it creates a nice ambiance. When the lights are off, you can't even really see the lights!

The total cost of the blank canvases, curtain rod, chiffon curtains, Christmas lights (300 light), and command hooks was about $80. I already had the paint and hooks to hang the canvases. 

Overall, I'd say this project was a success. And now our bedroom look a little less bare.

More pictures

Abstract Canvas

I recently painted some abstract canvases for our bedroom. Although I would consider myself fairly crafty, this is a project that anyone can complete! Follow the steps below to make your own!

To make this, I used 16x20 canvases, a foam brush, and craft paint. I painted these side-by-side so that it would obvious that they are the same style and color. 



First, I started with, what I would call a blob in the upper corner of the canvases. The first color I chose to start with was muted navy blue. To make this color, I used Royal Blue and Brown. These just happened to be some colors that I had.



Using the foam brush you can easily fade from one color to the next. This works better when you are using similar shades, but as you can see, it works with totally different color as well (red).



As I went along, I tried to be mindful of the shapes I was forming. I wanted the two paintings to be similar, but different, and definitely not a mirror image of one another. 



I used mainly many shades of blue (which I mixed to match our bedspread), but I also added the red streak, and the pink and khaki streaks. This gives the eye a focal point, instead of just glazing over. 



I pretty much just painted curvy lines. Each time I would added a new streak, I overlapped a bit onto the previous streak. Overlapping using the foam brush makes it easy to blend from one streak to the next.



You'll see in the large photo, that I actually flipped one of the canvases. I planned on this from the beginning as to help with them looking similar, yet different.

This project took me an hour at most. For this project, I used royal blue, brown, khaki, and red to mix all of the shades you see here. As I mentioned, you try this out with any colors (however I would probably stray from lots of black).

Enjoy!