Posted in Home, Queens Lake

Making a home

This moving stuff is so much, not so fun, work.  Luckily Stevie came just a few days after we moved in and really made a huge dent in the unpacking.

Then my mom and her friend, Judy, were here last week. They completely unpacked Hanna’s boxes. That was a really big help. Since Hanna is away at school her room will be the acting as the guest room. My mom also worked in the yard quite a bit. She really misses having a large yard, I’m happy to accommodate her love of gardening. She prepped some garden areas, put out lots of garden decor and planted some roses. She was happy and I was happy!

I’m the indoor cat to my mom’s outdoor cat.

I love decorating, moving things around and editing what we have to work in new ways. I have an eclectic style, a bit farmhouse, a bit traditional and now a bit New Mexican. We don’t typically buy new furniture or big investment types of purchases. I like to change things around so garage or resale purchases are better for the budget and frankly my style. We have many family pieces, like the tv that my grandma dragged from someone’s trash to her house, she gutted out the tv parts leaving the shell of the case. She then refinished it, adding glass doors and a glass shelf. I use it to house the various crystal we have, also, mostly hand me downs.  I love this sort of stuff. Historical pieces, well, my history anyway.

This is the TV cabinet my Grandma repurposed

I want our house to be…..timeless, not trendy. You won’t find a sign that says “Farmhouse” or drop cloth curtains hanging from our windows or anything like that. Not trendy, rather, updated and comfortable.

After mom and Judy left I went in and added the little touches to Hanna’s room that make a place special. She wanted to incorporate cacti into the design and I found these cute cacti lights at Pier One so I tucked those under the edge of the upper cabinets. Super cute if you ask me.

Hanna chose a pretty Emerald green but I went with the lightest color on the card, Breaktime, to give a spa like feel. Before she left  for school Hanna picked out some throw pillows and accent pieces to go in her room. plus we purchased the chair and nightstands I previously talked about on my blog. I purchased new all white linens to keep with the spa/hotel vibe I wanted. I’m going to add several pictures of her room for you. What do you think? I love how it turned out.

Hanna loves it, too. And we are ready for guests! Whose coming next? YOU?

I’m hoping to squeeze in some knitting this weekend. I really should get in my craft room and finish unpacking there. I have way too many books. Not to mention I haven’t even opened the boxes labeled yarn or crafts yet, I won’t say it out loud but it’s a hot mess in there. Look at the picture with your eyes closed please.

Real life ahead————–>

Happy knitting.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Weekend Getaway

This was a great short trip to Arizona. My mom is here with us for the winter and she has a wish to see every National Park in the US. We also thought it would be fun to play tourist so on Friday we stopped off in Tombstone. We went on Dr. Jay’s walking tour. It was fantastic. Dr. Jay was dressed in period clothing and walked us literally and figuratively through the town telling us what life was like and how the shoot out with the Earp brothers and Doc Holiday really went down. The pre-Hollywood version.  It was a really great day.  


Mom with the Earp Brothers and Doc Holiday

 


We finished up our evening relaxing in our hotel watching a movie together. We watched August Rush (Tim’s choice) and Ciraline (Hanna’s choice) while we ate an easy dinner of sandwiches. 

Saturday we added a new National Park to mom’s checked list. We went to the Saguaro National Park (West). The weather was perfect, about 70 degrees. 

We were all impressed with the unique cacti, the Saguaro, only found in southwest Arizona and into Mexico. The cacti are found in exclusively in the Sonoran Desert.  


We hiked and explored a bit. We really enjoyed being outdoors.  
Me and mom

Hanna, Tim and Chuck

We found this cute heart shaped Prickly Pear.
After we left the park we stopped at the Dessert Museum.  This was great, too.  We spent a good 3 hours here.  And easily could’ve spent the day there. It’s a botanical garden and a zoo. It very much focused on the desert life. Everyone’s favorite thing here was the Raptor show.  It was well done, we saw a few different hawk varieties and an owl.  They were trained to impress us with their natural skills and flew very close, as if we weren’t even there, you could feel the wind of their wings more than once.  We learned they were rescued birds from various life altering events, in one case a nest was left abandoned when the mother bird flew into an electric fence.  These baby birds would have starved to death without help.  

 
To round out the weekend we did a little shopping on Sunday.  My daughter wanted to go to Lush, where she grabbed some bath bombs and lotion bars. My husband snagged a Arizona State shirt. I went to Papyrus and Michael’s.  We don’t have great shopping here in Las Cruces and we love to stop at some of our most missed shops when we travel.  I have a few things I’m really excited about.  I’ll photo those and get the info up here, too.  



 

 

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