In the kitchen

Sarah at Thrifty Decor Chick is hosting a new party called "Show Us Your House"--a great idea since we all love to peek into one another's homes, don't we? Today's feature is kitchens. Here's a look at mine.

Our kitchen is a large, open room which includes a casual eating area and a seating/desk area. It's hard to get a photo of the whole thing, but here some views from around the room.

First, the working area:

More of the workspace, this time with the island pendants turned on:

The eating area:

Our table is from Pottery Barn. It's enormous--11 1/2 feet long! I love being able to have a table big enough to seat lots of people. Beside the table is my mother's dough cabinet, which is one of my most prized possessions. As you can see, I mix all different wood finishes without much hesitation. Works for me!

The desk area:

A shot from the working end looking out toward the screened-in porch:

The stairs to the left of this picture lead down to the "terrace level," also known as the walk-out basement. I like the fact that the stairs are open; it makes the lower level feel more like a part of the house. On that wall is a family portrait wall clock I created.

One of my favorite features of this part of the kitchen is the lighted shadowboxes at the top of the cupboards. I use them to display pitchers. You can read more about my collection pitchers here.

Another of my favorite things is the window treatment. I love the plantation shutters on the windows of the other end of this room, but I wanted to be able to see out of the window above the sink, plus I wanted some fabric for color. I came up with a very easy way to make a no-sew faux Roman shade. You can see that tutorial here if you like.

My kitchen connects to the back entry, the dining room, the living room, the downstairs, the deck, and the screened porch. No wonder I have to mop the floors so often!

Kitchen details:

• Cupboards are maple beadboard; granite is Santa Rita
• Drawer pulls and cabinet knobs are from Restoration Hardware
• Appliances are KitchenAid
• Wall color is Ruskin Room Green by Sherwin-Williams

Thanks so much for visiting me! I'd love for you to join me this week as I start a new linky party called Grace at Home. Click here to read more about it.

Grace at home: a new party!

I'm often asked to describe my blog. "Is it a faith blog?" people ask. "Is it a homemaking blog? Is it a decorating blog? A family blog? A ministry blog?"

These are fair questions, and the honest answer to all of them is yes.

My blog is all those things. There's one thing, though, that ties it all together for me: grace. That's the thing I prize most. My blog's purpose is to do what the title says--to impart grace.

I want my home to be full of grace, too. I want it to be a place where my family, my friends, and my guests feel special and loved and welcome. I'm betting you feel the same way about your home.

To celebrate all the things we do to make our homes places of grace, I'm starting a new weekly linky party: Grace at Home.

This party will be a place for you to share anything related to making your home a place of grace. I invite you to link posts about

• DIY projects
• decorating
• recipes
• hospitality
• homemaking tips
• parenting
• marriage
• faith
• self-care

Whatever you do to make your home a place of grace, I'd like to hear about it.

The party will take place every Thursday, beginning March 22.

Will you join me? I'd love to have you! And I'd appreciate it if you'd help me to spread the word!

DIY Spring wreath

I like to have pretty wreaths for different seasons, but I don't like to pay a lot for them. So I make my own. Here's my latest creation:

This springy wreath sprang from humble ingredients (get it? springy--sprang??). I was inspired by these mossy rocks from the Dollar Tree. I used 9 bags of them, so the cost of the wreath was $9.00.

For the base, I used an old Christmas wreath that had been languishing for years in my attic (I'll bet you have a couple of those, too!) Note: the Christmas wreath works well for this wreath because it's green, but if I had it to do over I'd probably wrap the wreath with packing tape or clear plastic just to make it more manageable.

I hot-glued the mossy rocks to the wreath. There are five rocks in each package: two large and three small. I simply pieced them together onto the wreath, kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. There's no pattern to the placement; I just wanted to cover the surface of the wreath.

When the wreath was covered to my liking, there were still a few bits of evergreen showing. I used scissors to give the wreath a haircut. As you can see, this was messy, but it didn't take very long.

The sun has been shining so brightly that I haven't been able to get a photo without glare, but here's the wreath in its home on my screened porch:

I like the way the wreath provides some green against the backdrop of the trees that are still grey and leafless.

I think it's just right for spring! What do you think?

**I'm joining these great parties:

Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style

Open House at No Minimalist Here

Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Creek Cottage

Inspiration Friday, At the Picket Fence

Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest

Show and Tell Saturday at Be Different, Act Normal

St. Patrick's Day decor

We're a family of redheads. There's lots of Irish blood in our veins. So St. Patrick's Day is a favorite at our house.

My spot for St. Patrick's Day decor is the dough cabinet I inherited from my mother. This is one of my favorite pieces of furniture, and its deep tabletop is perfect for creating holiday vignettes.

This is actually two small vignettes. One includes a homemade chalkboard plate (I use this for everything!), a bright green vase, and three different St. Patrick's pieces collected over the years.

The other vignette is anchored by this fun subway art from eighteen25. I simply printed it and popped it into an 8x10 frame. It's not a perfect fit, but it's close enough for fun. The pitcher was a TJMaxx find two years ago.

And here are the of the few remaining Beanie Babies to be found around our house. We used to have dozens of these toys; most of them have gone to other homes over the years. But these guys have hung around to help us celebrate.

Last but not least, Lee added a Lego mini-fig leprechaun to the decor. Isn't he cute?

The other spot for a little St. Paddy's decor is the dining table on my screened porch. I simply used a wall hanging (found at a thrift store last year) as a table runner and topped it with glass hurricanes filled with gold. Let's hope the meals served here are end-of-the-rainbow worthy!

TIP: Paint gravel with metallic gold spray paint and you've got instant gold! This is fun for St. Patrick's Day and it's also great for pirate play. Years ago I buried a bunch of this in our back yard; Will and Preston had hours of fun digging for it.

Do you decorate for St. Patrick's Day?

**I'm joining the St. Patrick's Day Blog Crawl at Cuisine Kathleen, the Tutorials and Tips party at Home Stories A to Z, and Weekend Bloggy Reading at Serenity Now.

Smart phone help needed

I am a lucky woman. I own a "smart" phone. But the truth is that it might as well be a dumb phone. Aside from the apps that came pre-loaded on my phone, here are all my apps:

Twitter and Facebook apps that my son downloaded for me. A game that my youngest son loaded once during a long wait at a physician's office. And the two apps I actually loaded for myself: Solitaire and SleepMachine. That's it. There's not another screen of apps waiting to be used. This is all I have.

Sad, isn't it? I feel as though one of my parents might say, "Lots of poor people would give anything to have a phone like that; now you'd better use it!"

But the truth is that I'm kind of intimidated by having a phone that's smarter than I am. I don't know where to begin. I'm not brave with technology; I'm always a little afraid that I might mess things up.

Until now, that is. I'm tired of being scared to use this amazing tool. So I've signed up for a newsletter that I thought you might want to know about. It's called appSmitten. Once a week, they'll send me a newsletter recommending apps that I might like to try.

Do you need smart phone help, too? You can sign up for the free appSmitten newsletter by clicking here. I signed up to be an appSmitten affiliate; that's how impressed I am by this idea.

How about you? Do you have a smartphone? If so, are there apps that you can't do without? I'd love to know!

Spring break highs and lows

This week has been Spring Break for my boys. For the very first time, Jack and I took Lee on a trip--just Lee! No older brothers. Just LegoLee. The highest point of the trip?

Can you guess where this was taken?

It's hard to beat the fun of taking a Lego fan to LegoLand!

The lowest point of the trip? That was Thursday night, our final night in Florida, when Lee developed such severe abdominal pain that we sought out an Urgent Care center. Lee doesn't have an appendix any more (his appendectomy was part of our family fun in 2009!), but this pain was of similar severity, so we were worried.

The urgent care physician couldn't diagnose the problem, so she recommended that we go to the local Emergency Room for a CT scan. Of course we went straight to the hospital--but by then it was 9:00 P.M. and we were told that the wait time at the ER was five hours. FIVE HOURS. Lee's pain had subsided by then, so we decided that spending five hours in an ER waiting room was not the best course of action. Thank God, Lee is much better now, and we can follow up with our physicians here.

I have lots to share, and I look forward to catching up with you all. Right now, though, I need a rest from my vacation!

**Have you ever dealt with an emergency when you were away from home?**