No place like home.

Among many other “crazes” (wedding craze, baby craze, God please let me graduate this semester craze), I’m going through a house craze. Wishing and dreaming about having a home to call my own is among one of my favorite things to do throughout my day. Recently I’ve been obsessed with a few blogs, that may or may not have started the house craze. If you know me, you know I love to do it myself! DIY blogs and projects could entrance me for hours, maybe even days. Today [on my day off ] I had to wake up bright and early for an outrageously overpriced oil change at my local european car mechanic, which happens to be right up the street from a goodwill, which is only my most favorite shop to peruse. Lucky me! For the first hour of waiting for my car, I scoured pinterest and one of my fave blogs Young House Love. A few posts back, the couple, who had been searching for a buffet for their entryway, found this beautiful piece. (Find the Young House Love post here.)

 

Which then inspired me to look at craigslist, and that is where I found this little beauty.

 

This beautiful vintage buffet was a screaming deal of only $50!! Ugh. I’m currently wishing I had space in my mother’s garage or imaginary house to stash this thing away for my future. Here’s hoping that I’ll find something just as awesome when I actually have a space of my own!

One of my best friends bought her very first house a few months ago and as a full time nurse she doesn’t have much free time, so I’ve been given the job of helping decorate! Except for the fact that I’m cheap  frugal and don’t want her to overpay for all the laminate junk you find in most furniture stores these days. I’m all about the good old solid furniture our parents have! Today I came upon a fun blog, which is one of MANY, they take old furniture that has lost it’s pizazz and re-vamps it. That’s my kind of fun. Unable to find the perfect piece for my friends entry way for a decent price (i.e., under $500!!) I’m inspired to turn a “crummy” old, dresser into a buffet, much like they did on Southern Revivals blog with this piece!

 

Look at the difference, isn’t it beautiful? It literally looks like a brand new piece. Although I didn’t find a dresser that I was interested in today, there is always tomorrow.

Here is another piece I’d love to re-vamp! I saw this guy and was instantly in love. Although you may not be able to see his beauty, I can just imagine all the possibilities for him!!

 

I would love to paint it a solid color and use it like the blogger from 4 Men 1 Lady. Her’s is a projector stand, but she has a lot to say about drink carts too! Check out her blog post about transforming projector stands into drink carts here. 

Thanks for reading my ramblings! To see more of my favorites and house dreams, check out my  pinterest.

Betsy

 

 

I’m baaaack!

Hi guys!!

I’m back in the states and lovin’ it! I can’t explain to you how grateful I am to have experienced living in Italy for 6 long weeks. It was such an adventure, I learned so much and made some very sweet friends. That being said, God used this experience to remind me how blessed I am to have such a wonderful life back home. My family is amazing…to say the least. Little did my parents know, that when she had those 6 kiddos, they would grow up to become such great friends. And my parents?! I couldn’t ask for more encouraging and uplifting folks. There’s a very special guy who has made coming home pretty exciting as well. Needless to say, its good to be home!

I’ve been a busy gal since I stepped foot on US soil I’ve been planning, scheming and working away! God has blessed my fam with an eye for the arts, so it’s about time we put it to good use. My very first weekend home my lovely sister and I shot a wedding up in Phoenix on Saguaro Lake. Man oh man, it was a scorching 109 degrees outside and we were working’ pretty hard! It turned out to be just as beautiful as the bride though! Plans to focus on my photography endeavor are in my future! More to come on that later though.

For those of you who don’t know, I work at Trader Joe’s as a sign artist, again with my lovely older sister! It’s pretty much the best job we could ever ask for! This week we will be embarking on painting a 15 foot mural in the store! Photos of that will be posted as we approach the finish line.

For now, here are a few new posters from verses that have kept me inspired over the past couple of weeks!

This, is probably my favorite one so far. In times when I’ve really gotten myself into a mess, sometimes I’ve thought “It’s hopeless. Not even God could get me out of this one.”  But this serves as a reminder that he CAN! My God is the God of ALL mankind, NOTHING is too hard for him and I love that.

The proverbs 31 woman! An inspiration to all christian females! As I was making this poster, I was so inspired by the kind of woman we are called to be, that I might just make a series out of it! I love the feminine pinks and chocolatey purples.

This is kind of like the first one! Just as encouraging 🙂 God is so good!!

Well there ya go! I still owe you a few more, to catch up with the deadlines of posting a new poster each friday, but this will do for now. I’m hoping someday to have an Etsy store and sell these as prints, but we will see! Thanks for checking in 🙂

Betsy

P.S. All photos and artwork are my own,  feel free to pin or post on your page, but please don’t crop my blog address banner off the bottom!! Thanks 🙂

Things I miss most about home…

 

Its so easy to forget about how important some things are when you have them at your disposal all the time. There are a lot of very petty things that I miss about home, like the following:

-Different kinds of food: seriously italy, I’m tired of  paninis and pasta ALL THE TIME!! Where are the meat and vegetables? And spices…you’d think they’d use a lot over here, but most of what I’ve had is bland, dry and boring. First meal back home?? Mexican!! Mmmm.

-Modern electric devices like blow dryers, washing machines and clothes dryers. To have my clothes shrunken back to the way they were intended, smelling like lavender fields again will be phenomenal.

-My dog. My rotten, mean little dog who sometimes loves to roll on his back when I come home and act excited. I’m tired of all these stray cats, get me back into my house full of canines.

-My bed. My luxurious queen size bed that isn’t hard as rocks.

-Dry air. Sometimes, in the middle of the day when the temperature starts to rise, the air is so thick you want to choke and it feels like your stuck in a hot bathroom after someone else just showered. yuck. Dry Tucson air, I miss you.

-My home. My beautiful sprawled out home with a mountain view one way and a city view the other. I’m not braggin’ here folks, just really excited.

-Last but definitely not least,  family. Like I said earlier, it’s so easy to take advantage of things when you are around them all the time. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of time away to remind you how lucky you are to have 3 brothers, 2 sisters, a brother in law, 2 sister in laws and an amazing Mom and Dad who  love and support you. Pretty dang lucky if I do say so myself. Can’t wait to see you guys!!

Tucson in T-minus 48 hours.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen to me rant.

Kindly,

Betsy

Venice!

Wow. Time is flying by and I’ve been a bad blogger…sorry about that! I promise I’ll be more consistent from now on. Last weekend I spent a few days in Venice, what a cool city! It was different than anything I had ever seen before. As amazing as it was, there was a lot of trash and graffiti. It’s such a tourist destination, so I guess I assumed that it would be cleaner than everywhere else I’ve gone. At night as I walked through the latern lit streets and over bridges with gondolas smoothly sailing under them it had a magical feeling to it, like I was on the set of a movie or even better….disneyland. Is it sad that I might like Disneyland better than real places? On the first day in Venice we took a 5 hour boat cruise between a few different islands around the main land. The first island we visited was Murano where they make the infamous murano glass pieces! We were lucky enough to be able to sit through a demo where the glass artists were working away on vases, lanterns and a little unicorn that one man made in under a minute. It’s definitely a skill that takes a lot of patience to learn! These guys were amazing. For the rest of my time I walked around and explored this enchanted little town…and maybe got lost a few  times.

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Hope you enjoyed getting a little glimpse of my awesome trip! More posts to come as my Italian adventure comes to an end.

Betsy

Hope, faith & earnestly seeking Him.

Much of this trip has been about completely leaning on God. For everything from making friends, to speaking the language, to more serious issues like health and the unknown future. Sometimes, we just have to have the faith and give it all up to God. If I wasn’t so dang stubborn, I think this whole  thing would be a lot easier! Having gone through some times of hope and tribulation, I’ve learned to stay in constant prayer. It’s amazing the peace God gives you, when you follow his word.  Enjoy!

Be CONSTANT in prayer!! Love this message!

All about faith!

Hope you like my photos and design! Follow on the left, if you want to stay in touch. See you next week!

Lonnnng week!

In the past 7 days I’ve been to Pompeii, Naples, Paestum, Pienza and tomorrow I’ll be in Florence! It’s been a whirlwind, but a super duper awesome one! Pompeii is a town in Italy, near Naples where almost 2,000 years ago a volcano, Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the town in ash. Pompeii was buried and forgotten until nearly 1700 years later, when they rediscovered and excavated it. Upon excavation, they found that the ash had sort of preserved much of what had been lost. This enabled us to get a better glimpse of what everyday life in a Roman town was like! It is kind of a sad sight, but the ash preserved the bodies of people just being consumed by the ash and gases from the eruption. You can see people trying to cover their mouths and mothers trying to protect their children. It was crazy! Before we went to Pompeii we got to go to the National Archeological Museum in Naples and see the artwork taken from the site. The intricacy and dedication to their handiwork is amazing. They made beautiful artwork of tiny little pieces of tile to create what looks like paintings, until you get closer and realize they are mosaics. Also, it seems as it was a male driven, sexual culture, much of the art depicting the typical male! Yikes. I could talk about this for a long time, but I’ll let the photos do the talking.

Paestum is the most well preserved example of Greco-Roman temples from 500-450 BC. (That’s really old for those of you who don’t know!) These temples were just massive and made you feel tiny (AND wonder how the heck did they get those columns standing without cranes?).

Pienza is a small town in the province of Siena, which is known for it’s delightful selection of pecorino, a hard cheese made from she eps milk. I got a pretty little wheel of this delicious cheese with peppers, to bring home and share with my fam!

We also got to spend some time at a modern art garden called the Daniel-Spoerri Gardens. A place full of modern sculpture. It was…interesting. The plus side to that excursion was being able to spend the day outside! It was perfect weather and we were surrounded by fields of flowers and big beautiful trees. I took probably 5 photos of the sculptures and over 100 photos of plants, and thats when I realized I have a problem…with the desert.

Here are some photos of the excitement the last week has held.

Beautiful marble work!

Little faces on the ends of the tiles to scare away the birds! Amazing.

A man attempting to cover his face from the gases and ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius…it didn’t work, poor guy!

2,000 year old legos…;)

Me at pompeii! The only photo I have of me throughout the day!

View of Naples.

Paestum temple

Modern art museum!

So many buildings made form stone! My momma would love it here 🙂

Just because!

View of Tuscany

 

 

Inspired.

Okay, I’m going to be honest…I haven’t always exactly enjoyed reading the bible. It’s sort of this big daunting book that my brain translates as really confusing or overwhelming. That changed recently. I went to a church (one I’ve gone to many times before) and the pastor has a funny way of acting out the stories, thus making them more relatable to real life. This, and other inspiring events in my life have encouraged my to give this daunting book another chance.

In doing this, I’ve found a lot of verses that really touch or encourage me. I’ve taken these verses and put them with photos I’ve taken in various places on my adventure in Italy and now I’m sharing them with you! I really love to design fun things like this and I’m hoping I can find some way to make it a career some day.

I’ll be posting AT LEAST one per week, every friday (and maybe a bonus one throughout the week!) I hope you enjoy and find some sort of inspiration through my creative endeavor!

A verse, that has proven to be true in my life!

Think about that!! GOD is REJOICING over YOU! So awesome.

Okay! So there are my first two, for the last 2 weeks! I’d love any feedback or verse requests-feel free to leave a COMMENT! The leave a comment button is at the top of every post by the title and date 🙂

Betsy

A whirlwind week!

Okay, so I’m still figuring out this whole blogging thing, but I’m giving it a go! My pictures are crooked, but it could be worse. Bear with me while I work out the kinks 😉

Wow. What a week…okay maybe it’s been 2 weeks. I’ve been living in a charming little town called Orvieto. Every window has flowers in it, every door has an awesome knocker and the every shabby little building has moss growing somewhere on it. The weather is cool and mostly sunny, but is just as unpredictable as Tucson weather, sometimes it likes to surprise us with a torrential downpour without a moment’s notice. I’m hoping to share with you not only my photos, but tales of  my *hopeful* adventures too!

In the past 15 days of being here I’ve settled into my little apartment (when I say little I mean really little), explored the open air market that comes around every weekend, started some awesome classes, explored the man-made caves underneath the city of Orvieto, gone on field trips to Tivoli to see Hadrian’s Villa and an amazing garden (whose name is escaping me), Rome and saw the Trevy fountain, the spanish steps and had some awesome gelato. In the next week we get to travel to Rome again, Pompeii, Siena and Florence. Its going to be a long and exciting week!

Thanks for tuning in, I’ll be adding a project that I’m really excited about and some more photos in the next few days!

Some of my favorite parts so far…

First Italian latte in Orvieto!

Exploring the open air market.

cute little cars everywhere!

One of the awesome door knockers I was talking about!

Morning fog rolling out from Orvieto!

One of the many beautiful doorsteps around town.

View of the duomo from the clock tower. Look how HUGE the church is!

Cute vintage signs everywhere!!

Love these quiet dark little streets!

On top of the clock tower!

Thanks for joining me 🙂 I hope you guys enjoy seeing my adventures!! Hopefully some more posts and fun projects I’m working on to come soon!

 

Betsy

Hello world!

Hello world!! Here is my very first blog post. I think we are going to have a long and lovely journey together. I am starting this blog because at the moment I am 6,000 miles away from the ones I love and need a better mode of communication than Facebook! I hope to share my thoughts, travels and ideas with you. If you like, stick around and see what comes of it 🙂