5 Intentions

I can not believe 2014 is coming to a close! This year started on a sad note and is ending on a happy note. Today also marks my blog being a year old! I am so blessed to be blogging and I can not wait for a new year of blogging! 

This coming year I want to do 5 intentions for the new year as opposed to doing a New Years resolution. I want to challenge you to do the same. Let's be intentional. Let's become more like Jesus and less like the world. The 5 intentions that I want to work on are in 5 areas in my life. Health, Spiritual, Personal Challenge, Friendships, Marriage. 

 My 5 Intentions For 2015:

1. Health: I am getting back into yoga. I was introduced to Holy Yoga, and I love it! I am going to do a more in depth post on Holy Yoga and how it has benefited me health wise as well as spiritually. 

2. Spiritual: I want to be intentionally joyful as well as thankful. I want to be teachable and start praying more. 

3. Personal Challenge: Learn to use my gifts to bring glory to God. 

4. Friendships: To build and cultivate all of my friendships. Not allowing my intervert personality to be an excuse. 

5.Marriage: To serve my husband with my whole heart and to do so joyfully! 

What are you 5 intentions for this coming year? 

~Brandy

A Belated Christmas

  I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas! My Christmas has been lovely and I am excited that my blog is turning a year old on the 31st! I am so excited for this up coming year and can not wait to share with you what's new! May you have a wonderful holiday season with your family and friends and I will post on the 31st! 

Love you all,

Brandy

Winter Wonderland

 

Sitting in Dunkin Donuts with some ladies from church, when I looked up and saw it was snowing. I am not a huge fan of snow, but it does remind me of God's grace covering sins.

When Colin got home from running errands, he asked me to go for a walk with him. Now anybody who knows me, knows that I am not a fan of being cold. However, Colin looked so excited that I decided to just suck it up and go with him to one of our favorite parks.

 

As cold as I was, it was a pretty place in the snow.

 I think most of all the important thing is that we got to spend the time together. We also finished up our Christmas shopping and everything is wrapped. It is coming up fast this year. It is so nice to be able to enjoy the rest of the holiday just with family and friends. Over all we had a pretty stress-free season, which is nice. Last year ended up being last minuet!

We also decorated the tree the day after Thanksgiving:

 

 

My brother Michael had his first choir concert and I was so proud of him! He did an amazing job!

 

Took a selfie with some of my siblings :)

(Sorry the picture was fuzzy; I had my three year old brother in my lap)

So far the Christmas season is in full swing! How is your holiday preparations coming along?

Home Decor Finds

Happy Saturday! The weekend is here and I don't know what your plans are for today, but mine so far have involved cleaning. I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but Colin and I live with his parents. So, while I am mainly responsible for our space, once I start I just keep going! I don't really mind cleaning. I use to hate it when I was younger. However, it has grown on me.


I have started a new DIY project. I am making over my makeup drawers. I am hoping to finish at least the drawers and then access if I need more paint. I am going to post a before picture below:

 

A few years ago I covered the handles with zebra print duct tape. At the time it seemed like a good idea and I loved it. Now that I have been looking at it, I was feeling like it needed paint. I started with one drawer, and in all honesty: I am kind of just coming up with the general idea of what I want to do as I go. I painted the first drawer and so far I am loving the colors I chose! Here is a picture of the drawer I painted:

 

 

 

I am planning on doing a more in depth post on how I am going about this project. As well as a full picture of the finished project.

 

 

Yesterday I went to the Painted Mill for their vintage tag sale. I love shopping local and I love antiques. I found a great afghan for $10! I fell in love! It is prefect for not only fall but Christmas as well.

 

It is so gorgeous!! It just the perfect addition to our room!



While I was visiting West Virginia, I picked up this cute little sign for $6 at the flea market down there.

 It was my first fall décor item that I put up. I have been slowly starting to take advantage of the Christmas decorations, so that after Thanksgiving I can start decorating for Christmas. I started getting my holiday scents from Bath and Body Works and sadly my fall scents are starting to dwindle down to the point you can't light them anymore. I have been waiting for the 2 for 22 sale to come back so I can get a couple more holiday scents. I have been using the left over wax to make wax cubes for my wax warmer. That way I am not throwing away any perfectly good wax! I did snag this one to last me till after Thanksgiving ;)

 

 

 

While on the topic of home décor, let me share this amazing find I found about a month ago at HomeGoods!

 

I have been finding quotes and I love displaying my favorites on this pretty chalk board. I think I spent $14/$16 for it. I have been looking for something like this, and I have used it for one women's event at church already, you can see how I used it here. I wrote "Welcome" and it just added a sweet southern touch.


Have you found any sweet finds for your home lately? Share with me in the comments below!


~ Brandy

 

How To Clean Out Your Bath and Body Works Candles

   If your anything like me, the Bath and Body Works candles are my favorite. I especially love it when they have their 2 for 22 sale!! :)

 They also have cute, reusable jars. Let's face it, even though they are so worth the price, it's just a waste to throw the jars away. All you have to do is clean them out and they can be used for storage, candy jars.. It does take some time, so I suggest doing this on a day when you have time.

So at about this point in your candle the wick will have been burned down. Below is the picture of the inside of the candle:

 

 

 (Sorry for the poor picture!!) But you can see enough to see that the wick is burned down. At this point it's time to clean it out use it for something else.

 

 

Step 1:

 

You put your candle in the freezer.

 

 

 

I had my candle in there for anywhere between an hour- 2 hours. This is to allow the candle wax to crack, therefore making it easy to remove the wax.

 

 

 

 

 You can kind of see the crack in the wax. There are a couple small cracks. If you don't see any cracks replace the candle back into the freezer and until the wax cracks.

 

 

 

Step 2:

 

Now it is time to remove the wax from the candle jar. Take a butter knife and start taking the wax pieces out of the jar.

 

 

 

Now once you get the wax out, I put the remaining wax in an air tight sandwhich bag to be used in a wax warmer. No need to throw away perfectly good wax!

 

 

 

 

Step 3:
 
 Now for what I consider the harder part of this project. To remove the stuck on wax and the three metal wick holders. Those things are glued on and I found it easier for me to just put hot water in the jar and let the wax and the glue soften so that I can remove them.

 Once I poured out the water I remove the remaining wax. and then work on the metal pieces.

 

 

 

I used a tooth pick to remove the glue from around the metal pieces. Then I used the same butter knife and removed the metal pieces from the jar.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4:

 

Now it's time to take the stickers off. Now I did this as step three, but it really doesn't matter in which order you choose to go with. It is the easiest part. I did the bottom first. I ran hot water directly onto the bottom sticker to make it easier to peel off.

 

 

 

After I soaked the sticker, I then just take my finger and scratch the sticker off the bottom.

 

 

 

 

Now it is time for the front sticker.. I do the same thing as I did with the bottom sticker.

 

 

Step 5:

All you have to do is wash your jar and then you get to enjoy your new jar!!!

 

~ Brandy

Update: What's Been Going On?

     I am so glad to be able to sit down and actually write this evening. I have my new candle from Bath and Body Works burning and I felt like today was a good day to update you on what's going on with me since my last post. 

West Virginia:
   I have yet to really talk about my trip to visit my Aunt Koren in West Virginia. Let me first say, that I loved that small little town I was in! I fell head over heals being in the mountains and enjoying a slower paced life. I loved waking up and seeing the mountain and not having to use an inhaler was nice too. ;) I have every intention of going up as soon as I can and taking my kids there someday. I am going to insert my pictures from the trip that I took with my phone here:

My view outside my Aunt's front porch. 

The Flea Market prt.1

The Flea Market prt.2

A cave, we saw while sight seeing
 

The pictures just don't do this place justice! 

Fort Seybert 

The reenactment of the burning of Fort Seybert

This is from my last day. My Aunt Koren was leading a 1860's Church service. I

My Aunt Koren and I.



Women's Prayer Tea:
   At church we did our first prayer tea praying for the women in our community. It was such a joy to spend my time with these wonderful women of God. I learn so much from these women. The food was great and I took some pictures of our fellowship hall decorated for our tea.

The table we used. 

I brought some things from my home to use for the center piece. 

I love small southern touches! 

I brought these from my house. They are just so girly and fun! 

The orange curtains are some that we had at the church. They were so pretty and fall like that we decided to keep them on the windows! 

The table were we put the food.


TTC????
  Well, I am going to touch on this topic a little bit in this blog post, but I plan on doing a different post on this topic. This is going to be a new topic that will be floating around on my blog. If you remember when I started this blog, that's what I started talking about was timing and I did two posts before I felt like expanding into other topics. I have come to this new chapter in my life and I'll be honest, this is not going to become a TTC blog. I started this blog with that in mind, but the more that I have prayed about it the more that I have felt that I didn't want this to become my entire blog. I know that there are women who struggle with infertility, at the same time I want to share my thoughts here and there on the topic. ever since I was little I have always wanted to be a mom. I still have that desire. at the same time I don't want to stress myself over all the things that could go wrong. My general plan is to just let God bless us in His timing. Don't get me wrong, I would love for that to happen sooner than later. However, I am feeling really content right now. Like I said , I do plan on doing a more in depth post on the topic, I am hoping in the next day or so, just to explain how I plan on touching this subject here on my blog.


I hope ya'll are having a blessed evening!

~ Brandy