Building a Home - Powder Bath Reveal

I'm happy to report that I'm finally getting back to posting reveal pictures of our house.  They'll probably be slow to come, but I'm trying to get them out, I promise!  First up, the powder bathroom downstairs!

I'll remind you about some of my inspiration photos that I had for this room.  I wanted the room to be polished and warm with a little touch of glitz and glamour.

Source: houzz.com via Tales of a on Pinterest

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Tales of a on Pinterest

Source: splendidsass.blogspot.com via Tales of a on Pinterest

Source: designinthewoods.blogspot.com via Tales of a on Pinterest

My favorite features were the sconce lighting, the beautiful and glamourous mirrors, and the beautiful counters.  This was reflected in my final inspiration board for the powder bath shown below.

And now for how it turned out in real life!

I love the serene feeling that you get in the bathroom.  I love the ample drawer space to place extra hand towels and toilet paper for guests.  And I love the mix of rustic (the mirror) and glitzy (the chrome fixtures).  I am so happy with how the room turned out!

Some details on how we pulled it off:
- We used remnant stone so we got it for a song
- Since our cabinets were custom made they were able to adjust for the narrow wall depth and bump out the sink area which I ended up loving the look of
- We made sure to place the toilet paper roll on the side without the floor vent after experience in our last house where the roll would unroll constantly any time the heat or air ran
- We had these cabinets glazed to give them a higher-quality look

Room Details:
Wall Color: SW 6211 Rainwashed
Flooring: 3 1/4" white oak with a dark stain
Granite: White Vermont (aka Superwhite) remnant
Sink Fixture: Delta Linden Centerset Lavatory Faucet, Chrome
Mirror: Hobby Lobby (they still have them in store and are 50% off often!)
Cabinets: SW 7646 First Star (trim color) with dark gray glaze
Drawer pulls: Chrome Egg Cabinet Knobs (linked are similar)
Lighting: Artcraft Lighting Princeton Transitional Wall Sconce In Chrome With Silver Pleated Shade

Little Lang's

Today I'm excited to introduce you to one of my friends and sorority sister.  She has a new kids clothing line that I'm in love with!  Jana started Little Lang's in the Fall of 2012 and has received a great response to her adorable outfits for girls and boys.  I sent her some questions so that you could learn a little more about her and her awesome line.

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Buttercup Pant with Ruffle Halter, Cutie Patootie Dress

What made you want to start Little Lang's?
I started Little Langs after I realized my love for sewing and putting fabrics and designs together.  I started making my kids clothes and others started asking me to make for them!   I work part time but realized THIS is what I enjoy and love--and life is too short to spend your whole life doing something you don't enjoy!  I got over my fear factor and went for it.  What do I have to lose?  

The Buddy, Knickers and Swing Top

What are you most proud of about the line?
I am most proud of how far we have come in 5 months!  We have launched 2 lines, winter and spring/summer as well as recently paired up with an incredible manufacturer and will be featured on ZULILY three times this month!  It's been incredible.

The Buddy, Buttercup Pant with Ruffle Halter, Knickers and Swing Top

What are you favorite pieces for a boy?
I love the Madras appliqué shirts as well as our Little Lang's Classic with our logo.  It's simple, cute, age appropriate- and they feel like Dad, yet the handprint reminds us they are still our little boy.

Perfect for Play Shirts

What about your favorite pieces for a girl?
For girls---that's hard!  Bubbles are always adorable but I love our Seersucker Cupcake/Capri set.  It just doesn't get much cuter!

Crab Applique Shirt and Cargo Shorts

What's your goal for Little Lang's?

My short term goal is to continue to increase my reach to other areas and demographics.  Long term, I'd like to grow the business enough to be able to quit my day job and focus on this!

What are some opportunities for others to support you and get involved?

For those who like our clothing, my hope is that they share with others! We hope to grow and pride ourselves on our quality products and excellent customer service.  If someone would like to host a Little Lang's trunk show, they can contact me (jana (at) littlelangs (dot) com).

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You can catch up with Jana on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.  And, of course, check out her adorable Little Lang's website!

And like Jana mentioned, she's going to be on ZULILY multiple times this month! Her first sale starts this Sunday, May 19th so don't miss it! You can get some wonderful pieces at a discounted price but remember, supplies are limited!!

As an extra bonus, Jana is excited to offer Tales of a Peanut readers a sale on her Perfect for Play line that is selling like hotcakes!  She's offering readers boy shirts and girly fit shirts for $19 and $3 off ALL bloomer sets, cotton dresses, and onesies.  Just mention that you saw about Little Lang's in the "Message" area of the order form.  Jana will send you a modified invoice for your shirts when she processes your order.

And one more way to get a deal on Little Lang's merchandise is to check out the inventory sale on the Little Lang's facebook page.  Jana has listed items that she has in sizes available (nothing custom ordered) and if you can find one in your child's size you'll get a bargain!

Thanks Jana for sharing Little Lang's with us today!  I can't wait to see your Fall line and get my kids into some more Little Lang's clothes!

*This post falls under my link/reviews disclaimers and I wasn't compensated in any way for this post.  I just wanted to share about my friend's awesome business!

Create It Thursday - Fabric Covered Bulletin Board

 A while ago I saw Emily Clark do a post on a huge memo board that she made for her son.  I knew that I wanted something to go on the "backsplash" of my desk in my office and thought that this would be a perfect solution!

So right before we moved in I headed to Lowe's to buy some insulation sheathing.  Mine looked different than Emily's did but I figured it didn't matter (and it doesn't).  I bought the cheapest one there and asked them to cut it to my measurements for my area for me.  While they looked at me kind of weird for buying insulation sheathing in ballet flats and asking them to cut it to a non-normal size, they did it with a smile!

Last week I finally got around to actually covering the sheathing with fabric.  If you remember from my office inspiration board the colors in the room were gray walls with pink and black fabrics.  So I went shopping through my piles of fabric and came up with a pink and white seersucker that would coordinate perfectly.  PLUS, I could probably get away without ironing it since it was seersucker.  That's what I call I double win!

So I assembled my required items.  My insulation sheathing cut to my dimensions, a piece of scrap fabric that was able to cover the sheathing plus 3"+ on all sides, and a staple gun and extra staples.

I started by cutting my fabric to about 3" on all sides of the sheathing.  If you're short on fabric you can definitely do less, just make sure that the fabric can wrap to the back and that there's enough fabric on the back to staple.

In a move that would make my engineering professors at college shudder, I never measured anything and just eyeballed the whole thing.  I started with one corner of the long end and put a staple in and then tried to keep the same seersucker stripe along the edge as I continued to staple one entire long side.  Is it perfect? Definitely not, but unless you come, sit, and stare at it for a while, you're not ever going to notice!

After I did one long side, I flipped the board to get it to the right tautness.  Again, I picked a spot near the middle, make sure that I liked how the fabric was pulled along the front, and put in my first staple.  I again tried to keep the same seersucker line on the edge as I stapled down the other long side.  

When I got to the corners I decided to treat them as a present.  I tucked the corners in and stapled them down.  I did both corners on one end first.

After stapling the corners, I folded the end edges up and stapled along them.  I went back around my board to staple in any areas that I felt weren't being held as tightly as others and then I was done!

I brought the board downstairs and wedged it into my space.  Since there are electrical outlets under the upper cabinets and since the board was the same size as my space, I didn't secure the board, it's just sitting on my desk.  If you are going to be hanging it, Emily suggested using monkey hooks.

I love the pop of color that it gives my office since the shade is up high.  And it is the perfect surface for tacking up inspirational pieces, pictures, and ideas that I come across.  Pins stick and hold in in perfectly!  And for less than $10 (since I used fabric and a staple gun that I already had), you can't beat the price!

Today I'm linking up with Lamberts Lately for Create It Thursday.  Hop on over to her blog to check out some other great ideas!

30by30 Update

In an effort to be transparent in my efforts to better myself this year, I thought I'd try to update you all once a month to let you know how it's going.  Here's my status:

1. Go to Paris - went in April!

2. Implement a chore chart with the kids and myself

3. Implement a menu schedule

4. Get Supper Club going again - had dinner last Friday night and have a summer schedule!

5. Attend dotMom in the fall - hotel room is booked

6. Throw a Christmas Party - caterer is booked

7. Plan a "Light 'Em Up" program for us to do in the summer

8. Become more proficient with Photoshop & organize my pictures

9. Finish my 2011 One Tale a Day Blurb book

10. Complete the 2012 OTAD pictures

11. Make a 2012 OTAD Blurb book

12. Complete the 2013 OTAD pictures

13. Make a 2013 OTAD Blurb book

14. Make blog books up to present day

15. Start an Etsy shop - have a brand board done and am working on initial listings

16. Go on a by-ourselves date with Jason every month - pretty sure Paris counts for April!

17. Re-vamp the blog design

18. Re-learn all about my camera and start taking great pictures

19. Take pictures of and blog about the new house (complete all my unfinished projects!)

20. Be more diligent about keeping up with friends

21. Take kids to Disney World - booked for December

22. Cook at least two new recipes every month - two new recipes coming up in the next two weeks!

23. Re-start and finish reading the Bible in a year - restarted

24. Get kids into doing Random Acts of Kindness together

25. Start learning Bible Verses with the kids

26. Write 30 letters to friends and family telling them what they mean to me

27. Start some type of exercise program - did Ballerina Pilates on Saturday, need to pick a program

28. Get our family eating more whole/real foods

29. Learn something new (computer language, language, cooking style, way to fix my hair.....) - installed a trial of Adobe Illustrator and have a book to help me learn it

30. Spend more time in the moment, cherishing my family - I'm enjoying having more snuggle time with the kids and time just keeping up with Jason

Mother's Day Freebie

As you might have noticed in my goals for this year, one of the items was to start an Etsy store.  I'm working on getting one set up to offer paper products like invitations, name cards, etc like those that you've been seeing on the blog for a while.  While I was working on things for the store this week I thought I'd make a graphic of one of my favorite Bible verses to print and give to my Mom for Mother's Day.  I thought you might enjoy it also so, enjoy downloading it and remember to thank your Mom for all that she's done for you!

You can download the file here.

What to do over the summer?

I'm working on a summer schedule for our family to keep us occupied and engaged this summer instead of having to come up with something new to keep everyone happy each morning.  I'm hoping to share some of the things that we're doing over the summer so that you can implement them into your summer routine if they fit your family.

I'm very excited to share one of the projects that I'm most excited about for this summer: Kiwi Crate!  I had heard about Kiwi Crate on Pinterest a while ago but hadn't really checked it out.  I've recently connected with them and am so excited about sharing some of the fun things that they have going on!

Kiwi Crate is a crate of kids crafts and activities geared towards 3-7 year olds that's delivered right to your front door.  You can either subscribe to the service and get a new crate every month (in 3-, 6-, and 12- month increments) or you can now purchase single crates for $19.95 to give you and your kids a single set of activities!  Here are a few of the single crates that I'm most interested in trying for our family!







Right now Charlotte (4) is interested in finding out why and how things work so I think these crates would be perfect to keep her interest for a long period of time (hours or possibly days if spread out) and keep her interested in learning over the summer!

In addition to these cool crates, when I went to look at the website in depth I found lots of other things that are AWESOME about Kiwi Crate!

They have party favors (or party activities) like this super cool Super Hero Cape or making a Fairy Wand!





In addition, they also have an area with top quality kids craft materials for you to stock up on to ensure that your kids are learning and having fun with products that are fun and of good quality!



They also have gift cards or gift crates that I'm thinking might be my new "go-to" birthday gift!  I hope my kids are as excited about these as I am because I am really giddy thinking about the possibilities!  Honestly, reading over this post I've got a lot of exclamation points and I promise they're all genuine.  Trying to tone it down now.  :)

And as an added bonus for the next few days, Kiwi Crate is part of a giveaway to make your Mother's Day the happiest ever!  Enter this sweepstakes for a chance to win $250 each from Target, Nordstrom, Lululemon, and Anthropologie!  But make sure and enter soon because the contest closes on Sunday!


*This post falls under my Link/Review Disclosures and there are affiliate links in this post.  Any clicks and purchases that you make will result in support of this site.  But, I promise, all enthusiasm and opinions are my own!

The City of Lights

Our last day in Paris was another early morning.  We hadn't gone online early enough to get tickets for the Eiffel Tower so we had to wait in line to go up.  Every time we walked by the line was huge and so we decided that when it opened at 9:30 in the morning would be the best chance of us getting up without wasting our entire day.  So we walked up 8:30 and were still probably at least 100th in line.  And this was the line for tickets.

So we waited and waited in the cold.  And waited some more.  9:30 came and went and while there was security in the security stand, no one was going through it.  Finally around 10:15 the ticket windows opened and then they started letting people go through security.

Honestly, this whole experience was the worst of our trip.  If you go and want to go up the Eiffel Tower you MUST go online and purchase tickets ahead of time.  Not that the people with tickets didn't have to wait, they had to wait for them to open security up like we did, they just didn't have to wait in the line to buy tickets and then go through the masses to get through security.  You would think that since they operate the lift to the top 363 days a year or something and have been doing it for years they would have a better system for it!  Hopefully it was just a fluke that we happened to be on the day that it was a nightmare to get up, but still, buy tickets in advance!

I was definitely over the waiting in line to go up by the time we got to security but we persevered.  There was another obstacle in the ascension of the tower.  I didn't realize that I'm scared of heights but going up with not much between you and air and a lot of space to the ground didn't make for a very comforting ride!  But once we got up it was still not very busy since it was first thing in the morning.  We went straight up to the very top and started admiring the views.

It really was gorgeous and I'm glad we went up, but I can't stress enough, GET TICKETS AHEAD OF TIME and still plan to wait!

That afternoon we headed to Rue Montorgueil to experience this popular walking street.  The shopping this afternoon was possibly one of my favorite things about the trip, because it was fun just to explore the street and the shops and take our time enjoying the city.  Getting to have a famous Stohrer Eclair didn't hurt either!  It was as good as I'd heard it would be!

We made sure to leave ourselves plenty of time to get to dinner.  We were hoping to get into the Frenchie Wine Bar but knew that it was first come, first serve and the doors opened at 7.  We walked by a little before 6:30 and no one was there yet but when we walked back at 6:45 we were the 6th couple in line!  We had no idea how big the bar was but knew that it was small so we hoped that we could get in with the first round.  We shouldn't have worried, there was probably room for 30-35 people at a time.

This is the sign of the Frenchie Restaurant across the street from the wine bar.  It is a small prix fixe menu and in addition to the fact that it's near impossible to get reservations, everything sounded "too exotic" for us.  We were already craving the BBQ at the bar.  But, if you're in town and don't have reservations for the restaurant and want them, it won't hurt to go and try and get in to the bar.  There were at least two couples that got to eat at the restaurant due to cancellations that were standing in line for us and volunteered quickly with the staff came out to offer the spots!

Frenchie has such a neat atmosphere.  You eat at shared tables with other couples and it's made up of small plates meant to be shared.  So, if you hadn't had a Stohrer Eclair an hour before, you could share a handful of plates to make a full meal.

After reading about the pulled pork sandwich on The Paris Kitchen, I was dying to try it. And now comes the time when I make the most inflammatory statement ever to grace my blog.  This was the best pulled pork sandwich that I have ever eaten.  I'm sorry to those of you in the South (like me!) who live on BBQ and think that yours is the best.  No, to get the absolute best, you must go to Paris.  It was tender and juicy and packed with flavor.  Just typing about it makes me want to go back just for the pulled pork!

Jason got a pasta and said it was good.  I could hardly tear myself away from my sandwiches to try it, but it did taste pretty good, but was a little too "gamey" for my taste (I think it was rabbit).  We also had this cheese that, honestly, I have no idea what it was, but it was really good too.  We wondered if it would beat the mozzarella at Torrisi in NYC and it didn't, but it was good!

It was a neat experience dining with other diners.  We ended up being placed at a table with another couple from America who had actually lived in Alabama at one point!  What a small world!  They were very nice and great to advise us on some places to try after we left Frenchie.  We didn't make it to them but Verjus is on our list the next time we get to Paris!

After we left Frenchie we headed back to get a final Nutella Crepe and watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle some more.  It was nice to sit on the steps with our gooey, warm crepes and just enjoy time together.  I love the pictures that we got of the tower that night.

Our return home on Tuesday was uneventful but long.  It was neat to get to see the area that we were flying over, but we sure flew over the ocean for a long time!

It was nice to get home to our own bed and we loved waking Charlotte and James up the next morning.    This was a trip of a lifetime and we enjoyed it so much.  It seems strange that we've only been back for two weeks because it seems like ages ago that we were in Paris.  But we're already looking forward to going back and (eventually) taking the kids to see The City of Lights.  They treated us well! Au Revoir Paris!