Yep, just a little bit of presidential awesomeness for your Tuesday! The Epic Art Store by Jason Heuser on Etsy, Twitter, and DeviantArt. There’s more, so make sure you take a minute to check out his sites.

xo

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Hungry Heart Vintage. This Blogger blog design was super fun to do. And, challenging! I’d never done a retro / mid-century design before, but once I got into it there was no doubt this was going to be fun. Lora was great to work with and had lots of inspiration to share for the design. We found a great formica background and font on Tack-O-Rama – if you’re in need of some retro elements this is definitely the site to check out.

Want a custom design for your blog? Contact me, I’d love to work with you!

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ibis Snuggling Bunnies

Happy Friday!

xo

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And be blissfully happy forever!

melanie turner interiors via desire to inspire.

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We rented Warm Bodies the other night. Wikipedia describes is as an “American paranormal romantic zombie comedy” film based on Isaac Marion’s novel of the same name. That’s a mouthful, right?! It was a good movie, definitely worth the rental. Though I have to warn you it gets off to a slow start – so stick with it you won’t be sorry.

The best part about the movie is the soundtrack! Not to be confused with the original motion picture score. Yeah, that happened when I was searching for the movie’s music on Spotify. I couldn’t find the soundtrack so I create my own Warm Bodies Soundtrack – give it a listen if you’re on Spotify. If you’re not you should definitely join – I listen to music all day and it’s heavenly.

Sitting In Limbo – Jimmy Cliff
Missing You – John Waite
The Bad In Each Other – Feist
Be the Song – Foy Vance
Patience – Guns N’ Roses
Shell Suite – Chad Valley
Hungry Heart – Bruce Springsteen
Shelter from the Storm – Bob Dylan
Hinnom, TX – Bon Iver
Yamaha – Delta Spirit
Rock You Like a Hurricane – Scorpions
Oh Pretty Woman – Roy Orbison
Midnight City – M83
Runaway – The National
Numbers Don’t Lie – The Mynabirds

What have you watched recently?

xo

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Log in to your Blogger blog, go to Template > Customize > Advanced > Add CSS

Code to center your Header Image:

#header-inner img {margin: 0 auto;}

To center your Header’s Title and Description (text):

#header-inner {text-align: center;}

Code to center your Post Titles:

.post-title {text-align:center;}

Code to center your Post Dates:

.date-header {text-align:center;}

Code to center your Gadget Titles:

.section-columns h2, #sidebar-right-1 h2, #sidebar-left-1 h2  {text-align: center;}

Code to center your Tabs (menu):

.PageList {text-align:center !important;}
.PageList li {display:inline !important; float:none !important;}

Don’t forget to click Apply To Blog. And, you’re done!

Let me know if there is anything else you want to center & I’ll do my best to update this post.

xo

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You know how people say “I fell out of my chair”? It literally happened to me.

I oh so briefly mentioned a couple of times recently on the blog that I had an opportunity presented to me… an advertising agency representative sent me an email- and folks the only emails I get for my blog (other than comments from lovely readers such as you sitting right there) are either spam or people wanting to increase my page rankings. So, you can imagine my surprise when I read the subject line: Partnership Opportunity with Toyota/RAV4. That’s about the time my butt hit the floor, quite literally… I fully intended on jumping up and fist pumping the air, but didn’t quite get to the jumping up part right away. Can you jump down? Maybe.

My husband, who is always supportive of my “creativeness” (blogging fits in to that very broad, in my case, category) and since we celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary very frugally & quietly with dinner out at Applebee’s we were inspired to actually spend some quality time, alone time, together with a vacation.

There are lots of reasons we haven’t been on a vacation in years. Yes, the economy hit our family hard and we’ve had to pinch and scrimp to get by and vacations were one of the first things to get wait-listed. At first we reduced by sadly omitting my husband from the group so he could stay at home to work because he couldn’t get the time off – so it was just me & the kids. Then, it just kind of dwindled from there, money was always still an issue, but also the kids grew up and ‘budgeted’ family vacations became a 4 letter word around our house – besides they had their own things going on which were way better than a few days with mom and their sibling.

We needed to decide where to go. My son suggested a road trip back to California, but that was a little too far. My husband mentioned Florida, and while it was closer and on the same seaboard I did the math with Google Maps and it was still wee bit far, too. The next day, as luck would have it, we got an email alert from Groupon for hotel reservations in Myrtle Beach, SC. BINGO.

We went, we drove, we beached, we swam, I burned, I read, he worked (I was going to work but apparently left my mojo at home!), we slept, we napped, and napped some more, we ate, we basically had a very lovely & relaxing time.

I’ve driven a Toyota before, we had a 4Runner years ago and I absolutely loved it. This RAV4 is amazing, this may be because our newest vehicle is a decade old, or maybe not. The RAV4 is a really sweet ride. The technology upgrades are going to be something that I will sorely miss. Most notably I will be pining for the blind spot monitor, backup camera, dual climate control, display audio, and the AMAZING smart key system.

The folks at Toyota were as generous as all get out. They even delivered the RAV4 to my home. This whole experience has definitely been a joy and something I won’t forget.

#RAV4inspired – Southeast Toyota

Disclaimer: Southeast Toyota Distributors, LLC (“Toyota”) provided me with use of a RAV4 for a short period of time and a gas card. I am receiving no other compensation from Toyota. The opinions I have shared about this vehicle are my own.

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This week, even though a shortened work week, seemed very long and super busy to me.

• Carrie Loves Design is fantastic – work is good and abundant right now and I couldn’t be happier.
• My oldest moved out (again) and is always welcome back home if the need arises…
• But, I took over her bedroom like a boss and moved my office in there – no more dining room office! Yay!
• My youngest had club soccer tryouts, plus he finished up his junior year of high school, and is coaching a youth soccer team (just finished team selections) + started his own lawn service business. He’s crazy busy. But, has discovered that gas money does not grow on trees and did something about it.
• We’re down to 4 dogs! With my daughter moving out she took her Sophie with her.
• My in-laws house finally, FINALLY closed escrow last Thursday – it’d been on the market for 2+ years.
• And, my husband not wanting to break his typical & predictable character defect left the moving of everything out of the house until the very, very last minute (((shaking my head here))) – case in point: he was still there on Friday moving stuff out as the new owners, thankfully friends, were moving in.
• But, my little garden is flourishing, we had a lot of rain last week.

It’s bursting at the seams.

Close up of a squash flower, I have 4 plants and they are HUGE!

Strawberries are still trying to do their thing, even though the tomato plants are hovering over their space.

I always try to plant flowers with the veggies, this year it’s lavender in each of the 4 corners.

Some roma tomatoes, they look so sweet.

Last year I planted a cilantro plant and it died within 2-3 days. Just shriveled up and died. Very sad & disappointing. This year I have to contain it with a tomato plant cone thing, it’s 3 ft. high! And, now it’s sporting these cute little white flowers. It doesn’t even look like the same plant on top — the bottom of the plant has the more (fuller) cilantro-like leaves. I cannot make enough guacamole to keep up with the plant, but I’m trying!

I do what I can.

Have a great weekend… We’re going on a little vacation tomorrow, first time in literally years! So, hopefully you like vacation shots.

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I mentioned Kimberly Geswein before in regards to Phonto, and I think she is just so talented.

Demo // Purchase

You can download any of the KG fonts from dafont.com or you can download them all in one zip file from Kimberly’s site.

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• A Different Blue by Amy Harmon
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Beautiful Ruins: A Novel by Jess Walter
• The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls
• The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple
• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Not pictured, but also on my summer reading list

• Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn
• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer Smith
• Everything is Perfect When You Are a Liar by Kelly Oxford

And, because it wouldn’t be my reading list without a little supernatural…

• Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
• The Beautiful and the Cursed by Page Morgan
• The Passage by Justin Cronin

What are you reading this summer?

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