In my current Project Life layout, I didn’t have a lot of pictures, so I wanted something else cute to fill up a space. So I whipped up this spring Project Life free printable. It has a fun quote from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I remember my mom reading that book aloud to us when we were kids, so this spring printable has some extra fond memories for me.

It’s sized to be a 3×4 right now, but you could enlarge it and frame it as just a fun print or use it for some other project! My first attempt at printing it, my settings were set to fill the entire page so obviously it didn’t print as a 3×4. Check on that before you print!

You can download the spring project life free printable here via my Google docs.I think it’s shared publicly properly, but someone PLEASE leave me a comment if you have problems accessing it. I’ve never done a free printable before.

The post Jumping Right In! Spring Project Life Free Printable appeared first on Real Life Notes.

Several things may have happened this week. Exciting things. It’s possible that we bought a house. It’s possible that it has a lovely back porch. It’s possible that CB2 and Robert and Courtney Novogratz are partnering in a new line of furniture and home decor awesomeness at CB2. It’s also possible that I want almost everything in the line to spiff up aforementioned lovely back porch.

The CB2 and Novogratz Collection is inspired by the Novogratz’ vacation home in Brasil. When I’m done seething with jealousy, I’ll swoon over the collection’s pops of hot color mixed into warm wood and exotic patterns. I may have mentioned it before but I love color. And not sissy color, big bold color is my style. I also love the patterns becaues they remind me of art that we’ve picked up on our various travels.

My absolute favorite item is the Figueira Indoor/Outdoor Swing Chair. It would be so comfy and gorgeous and relaxing on our back porch.

But the porch doesn’t get all the good stuff. I can definitely picture this quirky monkey lamp (called the Luli Lamp) cheering up our living room.

Or the Quadrado rug providing cozyness and color burst to the study. There are also several lovely colorful pillows that are calling to me. (“Jill!” they say, “Jill! Come takes us home to your new house!”)

CB2 is also hosting an exciting sweepstakes giving one lucky person (and 3 of their friends!) the chance to win a one week stay at the vacation home of CB2 collaborators and Bob and Courtney Novogratz in beautiful Trancoso, Brazil! 10 other winners will receive a $100 CB2 giftcard and a signed copy of Home by Novogratz, which is a pretty awesome prize, too. You can enter the CB2 and Novogratz Brasil Sweepstakes by going to www.cb2.com/sweeps and entering to win! Contest runs May 2nd through June 3rd.

Follow CB2 on their social media channels for more updates on the Brasil trip of a lifetime! Find them on Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook.

Oh, and if you win, you have to invite me along!

The post Furniture Swoon #CB2NovogratzBrasilSweepstakes appeared first on Real Life Notes.

For example, here’s one of the first pages I created. It’s from January of 2012. I’m clearly not a “scrapbooker,” but I have really loved beginning Project Life. What I really love about the Project Life style is the ability to add journaling, writing, ticket stubs, Jaye’s drawings, all kinds of fun stuff which you wouldn’t get to include in a typical photo album or photo book (like the ones I have from Shutterfly for the years before 2012.

So far, I’ve liked sticking to the same “kit” for each album. For 2012, as you can see above, I’m using a free kit I downloaded from MissTiina.com called Live Free Love Life. I love the super bright colors. For 2013, I’m using the Seafoam kit from Becky Higgins, the creator of Project Life. I like using a kit because I’m not so crafty or creative, and the kit makes everything look cute and put together without me having to think about it.

Other than the kits which have all the cards and papers I need, these are all the supplies I use for the most part: (1) A corner rounding punch (the kit cards come with rounded corners, so I wanted the pictures to match); (2) This scrapbooking pen from the Smash brand that I got at Target. It’s a pen on one end and a glue stick on the other!; (3) A date stamp so I know when stuff happened; (4) And the corresponding stamp pad!

The post On Beginning Project Life appeared first on Real Life Notes.

• Our awesome spring break trip to Great Wolf Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells. We went with some friends (Phil’s best friend from high school) who have a two-year old little boy. It was totally stress-free and perfect. The kids napped at the same time, the kids splashed and had a great time at the water park, and then the kids went to bed at the same time, and we played games for several hours. It was a really fun, relaxing trip. The perfect reward at the end of studying for (and taking) the Bar Exam.

• Our trip to the Cottonwood Art Festival that I wrote about last week. While we were there we strolled past one of the artists who focused on jewelry and were immediately drawn in. Everything he made was so incredibly beautiful. So much so that we found ourselves ordering a custom wedding ring to upgrade my current ring. Upgrading my ring was something we’ve contemplated doing for a while, but I didn’t want to do it unless we could find a really unique ring like the one I currently have. I think we succeeded. The artist has to make the ring still, so I won’t have it for a few months, but I am so happy and so excited about this ring!
  

• We planted a garden a few weeks ago. Two tomato plants, several different types of peppers and some squash seeds. Everything is growing well and getting big!
  
• Last week, I met up with some other bloggers from the North Texas area for a really fun evening. We went out to Grapevine for a Behind the Scenes Tour of the Sea Life Aquarium. I was super excited because Phil and I were members of the Sea Life Aquarium in Minneapolis, but we’d never done the Behind the Scenes Tour before. The tour was really interesting to see how the aquarium operates. For instance, did you know you can perform surgery on a fish? Maybe you did, but the idea had never occurred to me. And don’t worry, you don’t have to operate underwater, you just pour water over the fish’s gills every 10 seconds or so. (I asked a ton of questions; I was the only one who did. #homeschooler). It was also awesome to see the sharks from above, because yo could actually see the fins swimming around sticking out of the water, just like in a movie. I’d never seen sharks that way before; it is pretty ominous. (FYI: We are trying to teach Jaye that sharks say “Du-Dun, Du-Dun” like in Jaws). Afterwards, the bloggers and I had a little tour of the mall and a delicious dinner at The Rainforest Cafe. It was a really fun night out!
  

• That about covers it! However, I reserve the right to do a more comprehensive post at a future date on any one of these topics if I feel like it

The post A Hodge Podge of Things appeared first on Real Life Notes.

Source: Curbly via Pinterest, of course.

It was pretty skimpy to say the least. But now that we’ve seen the Before, I can show you the After and tell you more about the details! Here’s how our art wall looks now!

Now that’s more like it. I love the way it’s really a statement in the room now. I liked the mix of frame shapes and sizes. That’s what’s so awesome about a gallery wall is you don’t have to have everything match, and you don’t have to measure and hang precisely. In fact, I think it looks better if it’s more organic! Let’s break down the anatomy of this wall, i.e. what’s the art and where did it come from.

This is one of my new favorites. I found it at a church garage sale about two weeks ago for $4. The entire “painting” is stitched with yarn. I love the texture. I didn’t love the dreary brown mat, so I just carefully removed the picture, spray-painted the mat and put it all back together. Boom. Love.

Clockwise, from the top, starting with our yarn painted friend, we also have: (1) my favorite square “instagram” style picture of Jaye and I (in shadow form!); (2) the blank black canvas is waiting for a similar square photo to be found/taken, printed, and glued to canvas; (3) I just took an empty frame from Goodwill, painted it orange and hung it around the thermostat control. Now it’s art, not an eyesore! (4) a little iron monkey hangs from a nail. I bought the monkey at the Canton flea market when I went with my mom last month; (5) Phil’s maternal grandparents, Mick and Doris. They’ve both passed away, but they are pretty much our role models.

Again, clockwise from the picture in the very top left corner: (1) the top left corner is a map of the Mississippi River. The map was a decoration at Jaye’s first birthday party, which had a Mississippi River party theme. After the party, I put the map in an Ikea frame and love that it’s connected both to memories of the party and Jaye’s middle name!; (2) the little brown-framed landscape came from the Salvation Army last week. It’s a painting of the Cotopaxi volcano in the Andes Mountains; on the back it says “Cotopaxi (still active)”; (3) the big picture of Jaye with her arms up is from a recent photo shoot at the Picture People. It’s her “touchdown” pose, and I love it. The picture itself is printed on metal which makes it cool and modern; I used a Groupon to get it from Image on Metal; (4) the little wooden carving next to Jaye’s picture was also from Canton. It’s dated April 7, 1942 and looks like it was maybe carved/burned by a kid or teenager; (5) the drawing with the green mat is of Nafplio, Greece. Phil and I got it when I was studying in Greece during college, and he came to visit for a week. We love collecting art to remind us of our travels; (6) the orange quote is one of my favorite prints ever. Jaye has a little version on her nursery gallery wall. It was from Studio Mela, a local Minneapolis artist (well, it was local when I bought it…).

Continuing on: (1) this awesome gazelle (antelope?) head I bought at Canton. I love adding a 3D dimension to an art wall every now and then. I love the wooden tone in the mix as well; (2) the small picture at the bottom is a sweet picture of Phil as a newborn being held by his mother, who has the happiest look on her face. She passed away suddenly last August, so I wanted to make sure we remember her in a happy way in our home; (3) at the bottom of this image, you can see part of another painting we bought on our travels. This one is from our awesome week in Cozumel, Mexico. (4) Finally, the masterpiece on the top left was painted by non other than yours truly. That’s why it’s mostly hiding in this picture and mostly hiding in the room behind the lamp. It’s from the first Texas Blogger event I ever attended.

On to the bottom half of the wall, from left to right: (1) a watercolor of a tango dance from our honeymoon in Argentina; (2) a print of a sculpture at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis with the skyline in the background, done by a college friend; (3) one of my favorite pieces of art ever, a painting from the island of Solentiname in Nicaragua, bought (of course) during a trip Phil and I went on there; (4) the photo strips are from a friend’s wedding, when Jaye was just a few days old, one side has Phil, Jaye, me and the other has all of use plus our friends Chris and Laura. In that one, we’re mimicking Jaye’s crying face; (5) the next painting is of people picking coffee, I got it while on a trip to Guatemala with two friends in college; (6) this modern and whimsical pastoral scene is from a thrift shop. I bought it about a week ago and also painted the mat, which used to be pink and green. Jaye likes it; she noticed it one day and said, “Moo.”

Okay, there are a few more in that bottom left corner: (1) Jaye’s fingerpainted canvas art; (2) a newborn picture of Jaye in our arms; (3) a family photo from when Jaye was 3 months old. Whew. That post ended up being a doozy–way longer than I expected. But I think it will be fun to look back on, and hopefully it was at least vaguely interesting for you to read skim.

Linking up with Young House Love’s Spring Pinterest Challenge!

The post An Evolving Gallery Wall appeared first on Real Life Notes.

When Jaye was first born, we had a wooden rocking chair in our living room. She and I spent a lot of time sitting in that chair nursing. We had a pink floral nursing pillow, but I remember that it just never seemed quite right. I wanted something a little firmer, and not so squishy to provide a little bit more support and hold Jaye up at a better height. The only picture I could find of it was of me nursing and drinking a beer at the same time; I decided to avoid the mommy blogger wrath/judgment and not post that one.

I know Jaye is currently way past that age, but we are hoping that eventually we'll need nursing pillows again. That's why I was interested to learn about Mombo™, the nursing pillow with more to love from Comfort & Harmony! Mombo nursing pillows have a two-sided design. One side is firm for nursing and the other side is squishier, for baby to lounge during tummy time. From the pictures (I haven't actually seen it in person) I think the mombo nursing pillow looks much thicker and taller than the one we owned before, so that it would provide the extra support I wanted.

The pillows and other Mombo products are available at BabiesRUs and ToysRUs. You can check out all the different slipcover options there. I really like this pink slipcover with taggies. The Mombo nursing pillow also has a vibration option inside the pillow. Some of the reviews said babies LOVED this and it was great for burping. Others could take it or leave it. I think it would depend on your baby, but I think it's a really nice option to have! With Jaye we had a little travel swing that vibrated, but I am all about combining uses and owning less stuff because it's all multi-functional!

To learn more (or keep an eye out for sales/coupons!), you should "like" Comfort & Harmony on Facebook! You can also follow Comfort & Harmony on Twitter!

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Just to toot my own horn briefly. This is a pretty big deal! The pass rate for the Texas Bar Exam from out-of-state students (like I was) was only 65%. I spent two months studying full-time to take the exam. Then I spent 3 days (THREE WHOLE DAYS!) taking the exam in Fort Worth at the end of February. Then I waited 2 agonizing months (okay, I mostly didn’t even think about it) to find out whether I had passed or not. Now all I have to do is find a job. Ugh. Maybe I’ll host an “I found a job” giveaway if/when that ever happens, because apparently I host giveaways to commemorate big events in my life.

Giveaway starts now, is open to anyone with an email address and ends on Friday at midnight. May the odds be ever in your favor.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post I Passed the Texas Bar Exam Giveaway! appeared first on Real Life Notes.

The Cottonwood Art Festival is this weekend, May 4-5 from 10am – 7pm on Saturday and 10am – 6pm on Sunday. The Festival is located in Cottonwood Park, at 1321 W. Belt Line Road, one block east of Coit Rd. in Richardson, TX. Parking and admission are free and the event will be held rain or shine! Though the weather is supposed to be a perfect sunny 77 degrees on Saturday!

Here are the top 5 reasons I’m looking forward to attending:

5. People-Watching: I’m looking forward to strolling around the park and just taking in the sights. The setting will be great. The weather will be nice. Jaye will be chilling in her stroller or wandering alongside us.

4. Music: Throughout the event various music groups and bands will be playing, from harp music to acoustic guitar duets to country. It will be fun to stop and rest for a bit and just listen to whoever is playing at the time. Maybe I’ll even discover a new favorite band! The headliner band is a Journey tribute band called Escape. They’ll be playing from 5:30 – 7:00. You can find the full schedule of bands and times here.

3. Art: Don’t forget about the art. I wrote all about art and home decor at the Cottonwood Art Festival earlier this week. Click over to see three of my favorite artists out of the 240 that will be displaying their work this weekend!

2. Art Stop: The Cottonwood Art Festival is an awesome family event. There’s an entire zone devoted to kids with crafts and art activities for them to do!  Kids can paint their own pop-art masterpiece, try their hand at throwing pottery, or decorate a baseball cap. While Jaye might not be up for those more complicated activities, I know she’s going to love painting on the giant mural. At home, she often pulls her highchair up to the corner of the table all by herself (where she always sits for art projects) and climbs up saying “paint.” She loves getting messy with some art!

1. Food: Oh Yeah. This is definitely # 1. I love eating, especially at fairs and festivals. There are going to be a ton of awesome food trucks and vendors at the Cottonwood Art Festival. There will be crepes, oysters, fried guacamole (!), BBQ, kettle corn, a food truck entirely devoted to bacon, an espresso truck, and more. But I think I’m most excited about the Taste of Cuba truck. Yum, yum, yum.

I hope I’ve convinced you not to miss out on the Cottonwood Art Festival this weekend. You can learn more details about the Festival on their website or Facebook page. We’ll be heading over around lunchtime (food trucks!) to check it out. I hope to see you there!

This post is sponsored by the Cottonwood Art Festival. I was compensated for my time. However, all opinions are my own, and I’m honestly excited about going to the festival this weekend!

The post 5 Reasons I’m Excited for the Cottonwood Art Festival appeared first on Real Life Notes.

I’ll break it down for you. Complete with links to where you can obtain these beauts for f.r.e.e. Not that dear old mom isn’t worth a couple of bucks…but less money spent on the card means more for a gift, or breakfast in bed, or that massage she needs for her aching back. *hinthint*

1. What with my tattoos and all, I think this Badass Mother card could apply to me. From Benign Objects.

2. Since mom washes so many of your socks, let her know that she rocks them too! From Sissyprint.

3. Turn that “yo mama” joke into a sweet sentiment. From Cul-de-sac Cool.

4. A heartfelt apology for those stupid teenager things that gave your mother gray hair. From JHill Design.

5. This one is to help with the hinting to your hubby. Provides a cute checklist of the things a mother could want. From Ambrosia Girl.

6. Sweet banners and butterflies to celebrate mom. From Stuff Steph Does.

7. This collection has one for mother, mum, and grandmother. Love it because I know Jaye’s grandmas always appreciate a card with some baby scribbles on it. From 74 Lime Lane.

8. This fill-in-the-blank card would be great for a kid to fill out so mom can treasure it forever (and see what they really think about you!). From Paper and Pigtails.

9. Another fun one for kids to decorate. Fill in some facts about mom and draw a masterpiece. From Martha Stewart.

10. I love all the different fonts on this simple thank-you Mother’s Day Card. From Design By Lulu.

11. Hyperbole or not? Either way, your mom will love to get this card. And there are gift tags, too! From Love vs. Design.

12. I think this quote would be great for a new mother. From Ah, Crab Apples!

13. Make your feelings known in this declaration. From A Proffittable Life.

14. This heart-tree was about the sappiest card I could handle. It’s simple, sappy, and sweet. From Pumpkins and Posies.

15. This little nesting doll family made me smile. From Creative Mamma.

16. It takes a lot of adjectives to describe a mother. Polka dots help, too. From Paper Clutch.

17. This sweet card is very specific about all things for which mom deserves thanks. From Leslie Ann Jones.

18. Say it like it is with this cool pink card. Also has a “mum” version. From Maiko Nagao.

19. Tell mom you love her in lots of languages. From Orange Kitty Crafts.

20. Teal and red is a great color combination. And this is a great sentiment. From Key Lime.

Linked up with: All Things Pretty Thursday

The post Best of the Best: Free Printable Mother’s Day Cards appeared first on Real Life Notes.

It’s Monday morning again. And I’m already looking ahead to the weekend. Anybody else with me? One of the things I’m looking forward to this upcoming weekend is the Cottonwood Art Festival.

The Cottonwood Art Festival is this weekend, May 4-5 from 10am – 7pm on Saturday and 10am – 6pm on Sunday. The Festival is located in Cottonwood Park, at 1321 W. Belt Line Road, one block east of Coit Rd. in Richardson, TX. Parking and admission are free and the event will be held rain or shine! Though the weather is supposed to be a perfect sunny 77 degrees next Saturday!

If you’ve read my blog for half a minute, you’ve probably figured out that I’m interested in home decor. One of the biggest challenges for me in decorating my home is finding things for the wall. I have an entire Pinterest board devoted to the subject. But I also think that art is one of the best ways to make your home unique and add your own personality through art you love.

Source: Jennifer Cavan

I’ll be perusing the festival for art that I love. I scoped out a few of the artists’ websites and liked what I saw. For example, the paintings of Dan Bondroff, the Midnight Solitude drawings of Gary Bachers, and the oil pastels of Jennifer Cavan. Even if an original painting might be out of my price range, some artists sell prints or even cards that would look mighty nice on my gallery art wall or propped up on my rustic modern open shelving.

The Cottonwood Art Festival is a juried art show, which means that the 240 + artists who will be displaying art are REALLY, REALLY good artists. There will be 14 different categories of art, from drawings, paintings, and photography, to metalwork, jewelry, leather and more! But of course, there’s so much more to the event than just art. There will also be food, music, and art activities for the kids. I’m equally looking forward to that part, and I’ll be back later in the week to elaborate and drool over the food truck options.

Do you have weekend plans already? Learn more about the Cottonwood Art Festival on their Facebook page or website.

This post is sponsored by the Cottonwood Art Festival. I was compensated for my time. However, all opinions are my own, and I’m honestly excited about going to the festival this weekend!

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