I had some jello tins leftover from my candle making, and I wanted to use them as popsicle molds. I was searching for a nice healthy recipe when I stumbled across these Nutella popsicles. I quit kidding myself about the healthy thing and picked up a fresh jar of Nutella. These are like fudgsicles—but better!

1/2 cup nutella
1 1/2 cups chocolate almond milk (I think any kind of milk will do) 

Whisk the nutella and milk together until the mixture is smooth. Make sure your tins are clean and dry, and pour the nutella mixture into each tin. Place the filled tins in the freezer. After an hour poke sticks* into each popsicle, and put them back in the freezer to finish hardening for about 1–2 hours (this takes longer if you are impatient and keep opening the freezer to see if the popsicles are ready to eat yet). To remove the popsicles from the tins fill the sink with a few inches of hot water and dip the bottom of each tin into the water until the popsicle loosens enough to slide out of the mold. It only takes about a one second dunk—don’t over do it or they will melt! The recipe makes 6 little jello tin popsicles.

*Don’t mind my weird popsicle sticks. I didn’t have any regular sticks on hand, so I cut some skewers in half and used those (after removing the pointy ends of course).

The ombré hair trend has probably just about run its course, but I’m skittish about dying my hair (excluding the pink hair incident), so it took me this long to summon the courage to try it. I asked my awesome stylist if she could create a subtle ombré effect (so my hair didn’t look like the ends were just dunked in a bucket of bleach), and she totally rocked it!

I’m not one of those people whose home is always clean. I often hide my mess in a closet before visitors come (or before snapping photos for the blog). I feel agitated and unsettled when the house is in disarray, but I don’t seem to have the natural inclination to clean that some people have. I guess I’m a messy neat freak. I’ve been holding off on this post, because I’m a little embarrassed… I finished my cleaning schedule (a goal from my 28 by 29 list) and the results are beyond nerdy. I divided our home into zones and made a color coded chart.

I started with this cleaning schedule over on Apartment Therapy. The general idea is that if you spend 20 minutes a day cleaning, your home will stay fairly neat all the time. That makes sense, right? Their schedule didn’t work for me, but I liked how they split tasks into surface cleaning vs deep cleaning, and I love the 20 minute time limit—so I worked from there. (Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m explaining this in such detail. Feel free to make fun of me in the comments. I totally deserve it.)

Here’s how my four week cleaning schedule works. I divided our home into four zones (maximum one bathroom per zone). Each zone gets surface cleaned once a week. Surface cleaning includes picking up stray items, dusting, vacuuming, wiping down surfaces, etc… Each zone gets deep cleaned once a month. Deep cleaning includes mopping, cleaning windows, baseboards, kitchen cabinets, shower/tub tile, etc… I set a timer for 20 minutes each day and clean as fast as I can. I stop when the timer goes off, even if I haven’t finished. I’ll get whatever I missed next time around. If I miss a day, I cross it off the chart anyway—it’s good for my morale. I gave myself the weekends off, since I usually end up doing yard work then. Overall it has been a lot cleaner around here lately!

On the off chance that any of you are weird like me and find the idea of a cleaning schedule intriguing—here’s a pdf of my cleaning schedule. You can print it out and write in the rooms you want to include in each zone at the bottom. Let me know if it works for you too!

I’ve been longing for a different coffee table for a while. I couldn’t find one that I liked available for sale anywhere, but I knew exactly what I wanted. Luckily my dad has major woodworking skills and a garage full of tools! I drew a sketch of what I had in mind, and last Saturday morning we built my new coffee table. My mom and sister helped too, which makes the table extra special since everybody had a hand in it—well, except Daniel since he was still asleep. It turned out even better than I imagined!

I will write up some DIY instructions below, but since we figured it out as we went along and my dad was the brains behind all the measuring and sawing, I can’t provide detailed table building plans. It’s probably best to build a table like this with someone who has woodworking experience. I know if I had attempted it on my own, my table would have ended up crooked and covered in blood (because I would have sawed my fingers off).

How To:

We ordered the barn wood from this website, and the hairpin table legs from this website. My dad made a 30″ x 48″ base for the table by screwing two sheets of plywood together. First we attached the hairpin legs to the bottom of the plywood base with wood screws. After that we cut the barn wood for the herringbone planks to 3.75″ wide on a table saw. Then I layed out all the pieces so there would be plenty of color variation throughout the table top.

Next we used a chop saw to angle the slats so they would fit together to form the herringbone pattern at the center of the table. Once the pieces lined up properly at the center, we traced a line on the bottom of each plank where it stuck off the table top and sawed along the lines to make the planks the right length. Then we attached them to the plywood base with a nail gun—my favorite part! (When we tried to screw into the barn wood it split, but the nail gun didn’t cause the old, brittle wood to split at all.)

After that we lightly sanded the edges of the table to remove any big splinters. Then we used the table saw to cut the outer frame pieces to the right width, and my dad used grandpa’s old miter box to saw the corners. After a little more nail gunning to attach the frame, we carved our names into the bottom of the table with a Dremel tool, and we were done!

The only thing I still need to do is add a piece of glass to protect the table top. I like the look better without glass, but I don’t want to have to worry about making sure people use coasters to protect the wood (and by people, I mean Daniel).

So, what do you think? Have you ever, or would you ever try your hand at woodworking?

How about something manly to balance out all the girly stuff in my previous post? I spent all day Saturday in my dad’s garage making something awesome (to be revealed on Friday). Dad’s garage has always been a mysterious place. As a kid I used to perch on a wobbly wooden stool at his workbench and watch him make things with wood, motors, saws, soldering irons, batteries, LED lights, and brightly colored wires. Once he attached a plastic clown head to a motor and wired it up to a huge battery. When he switched it on the clown head spun around and around. It was delightfully creepy.

Dad’s garage would be the perfect place to play a game of I Spy. Here’s what I spy! See if you can spot these items:

a plastic horse
“The Duke”
a machete
a toy tractor
the license plate from my first car
a paint can opener
a hardhat
a bicycle pump
an old portrait of my mom

Last week my friends and I threw a tea party baby shower at my house for our friend Laura. I wanted to decorate with doilies since they seem tea party-ish, so I dyed some of the doilies with coffee to give them an antiqued look and folded them over yarn to make doily bunting banners. Don’t they look like big lace ribbons? Everyone brought a tea cup and a dessert or box of tea to share. I was on a serious caffeine/sugar buzz after sampling all the goodies (and going back for seconds)!

A few old mason jars filled with flowers and scattered around the house were the finishing touch. Simple and sweet decorations can’t be beat!

Guess what! Today is my blog’s third birthday! Thank you so very much for reading. I have stuck with it for so long thanks to all your encouraging comments, emails, tweets, pins, and facebook messages. Each one means so much to me, so thanks a million!

I’m starting a new blogiversary tradition—feasting on a huge bakery cupcake to commemorate the occasion. Today I got a chocolate cherry cupcake from Sugar Buzz Bakery. Holy yum. There were chocolate covered cherries baked into the center. It was the best $3.00 I ever spent. Everyone eat a cupcake this weekend to help me celebrate!

My rubber stamps are ready to go! I’m offering ten different designs for now, but I’m sure I’ll be adding more since they are so much fun to create. Future design suggestions welcome. ;) Check out the entire selection here in the shop!

You know, most of the time I tell Daniel how easy he has it in regards to fashion. He wears big baggy clothes and comfortable shoes. The most restricting thing he ever has to put on is a tie once or twice a year, but when summer comes around I feel sorry for him. He’ll never experience the wonderful ventilation summer dresses provide. It’s like having a fan aimed at your nether regions! How cute is Shabby Apple’s Bon Voyage dress? I’m loving those pleats.

1 Bon Voyage Dress from Shabby Apple
2 Simplicity Is Key Belt In Tan from Ruche
3 Go Green Ring from Shabby Apple
4 Carmel + Mint Woven Clutch from Blackbird and the Owl
5 T-strap Sandals from Seychelles

Shabby Apple Giveaway (Closed)

Shabby Apple has so many adorable vintage-inspired dresses, and lucky for you they asked me to host a giveaway for one $75 gift card! (You need to have a USA shipping address to be eligible for entry.) To enter the giveaway, Shabby Apple would like you to do two things:

1. “Like” Shabby Apple on Facebook—right here.
2. Comment below with your favorite Shabby Apple item. 

I’ll update this post next Monday (July 23rd) to announce the winner. But really you’re all winners, because you can use the discount code whistle10off for the next month to receive 10% off your Shabby Apple purchase!

And the winner is…

I used random.org to determine that the Shabby Apple giveaway winner is Corrin who said “I love the red Headliner Dress from The Block collection. So cute!” Congrats Corrin! I will email you shortly about your $75 gift card.

Don’t forget you can all still use the discount code whistle10off for the next three weeks to receive 10% off your Shabby Apple purchase!

I ran out of blank pages in my sketchbook, so I picked up a new one today. In college I had a professor who required us to decorate our sketchbook covers, and I’m going to start doing that again. Since I’ve had Danni’s washi tape notebook in the back of my mind for a while, I grabbed my new sketchbook and pulled out my tape stash. It was a bit tedious to cut all these little triangles, but I think my new sketchbook looks pretty sweet.

Now the scary part… filling the first page!