Home Girls and Sweet {Jolie}: Giveaway winner!

Today, the Home Girls are excited to announce the winner of the Home Girls & Sweet {Jolie} giveaway!

Thank you so much for hanging out with us this week! We hope you enjoyed getting to know each of us and getting a sneak peek at the owner of Sweet {Jolie}'s beautiful home and amazing product lines!

Before we announce the winner, let's recap on the week...

Monday: Tanisha @ My Knotted Life introduced Nicole, the owner of Sweet {Jolie}! She talked about her passion for fashion and design and how she started Sweet {Jolie}! Tuesday: Nicole @ Meet the B's introduced Sweet {Jolie} and showed off some of the beautiful handcrafted products available in the Sweet {Jolie} shop! Wednesday: Kristi @ making it in the mountains started the tour of Sweet {Jolie}'s gorgeous industrial vintage styled home! Thursday: Bre @ Brepurposed finished up the home tour with stunning bedrooms and a master bathroom. She also showed you the new addition of Sweet {Jolie} Vintage!

Be sure to follow Sweet {Jolie} and each of The Home Girls!
Sweet {Jolie} Shop // Facebook // Twitter // Sweet {Jolie} Vintage
My Knotted Life Facebook // Google + // Pinterest // Bloglovin // Twitter
Meet the B's Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Bloglovin
making it in the mountains Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Bloglovin // Instagram // Twitter
Brepurposed Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Instagram // Twitter
Okay...
Drum roll please...
And the winner of the Sweet {Jolie} blue hummingbird infinity scarf and $50 gift credit is.......
Kimberly S. 
Congratulations, Kimberly!
The winner has until 08:00am EST Monday to claim their prize. If we have not heard from the winner at that time, we will select another winner using Rafflecopter's randomized drawing.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you so much everyone for participating in our very first giveaway!! It was a great success!!

Home Girls & Sweet {Jolie} Giveaway: Sweet {Jolie} Vintage

Welcome to the last day of our giveaway! Thank you so much for following along all week long! Today is your last chance to enter, and we will post the winner tomorrow!!!

Today, the Home Girls will be finishing up Sweet {Jolie}'s home tour with Bre at Brepurposed. Bre will introduce you to Sweet {Jolie} Vintage, the newest addition to Nicole's business! She has some beautiful vintage products that I can't wait for you to see! The giveaway ends tonight at midnight, so if you haven't entered, now's your last chance! Brepurposed Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Instagram // Twitter

If you missed the other Sweet {Jolie} posts, check them out below!
Monday: Tanisha @ My Knotted Life introduced Nicole, the owner of Sweet {Jolie}! She talked about her passion for fashion and design and how she started Sweet {Jolie}!   Facebook // Google + // Pinterest // Bloglovin // Twitter
Tuesday: Nicole @ Meet the B's introduced Sweet {Jolie} and showed off some of the beautiful handcrafted products available in the Sweet {Jolie} shop! Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Bloglovin Wednesday: Kristi @ making it in the mountains started the tour of Sweet {Jolie}'s gorgeous home!
Facebook // Google+ // Pinterest // Bloglovin // Instagram // Twitter
Don't forget to give Sweet {Jolie} some love!!! Sweet {Jolie} Shop // Facebook // Twitter

What would you spend that $50 gift card on?? Don't forget to enter today at Brepurposed!

Home Girls & Sweet {Jolie} Giveaway: Home tour

Welcome back for Day 3 of The Homegirls and Sweet {Jolie} giveaway! You will have a chance to enter every day for an awesome prize from Sweet {Jolie}!

Home Girls :: Sweet {Jolie}

Thanks for joining me for Day 2 of our Sweet {Jolie} giveaway!! Myself and three other amazing bloggers make up the new group The Home Girls, and we are so excited to have partnered with Sweet {Jolie} to bring you some great inspiration and products!!!
All week long you'll have the chance to enter for a $50 giftcard to the Sweet {Jolie} shop and a beautiful blue Hummingbird Infinity Scarf. You'll also get some great home decor inspiration from the owner's stunning home!

Home Girls & Sweet {Jolie} Giveaway: Meet the owner

If you missed the exciting news on Friday, The Home Girls are joining together to do a giveaway with Sweet {Jolie} this week! This is our first giveaway and we are so excited to have you join us! Not only will you have the opportunity to enter for a chance to win a prize from Sweet {Jolie} all week long, but you will also get to see some amazing featured products from Sweet {Jolie} as well as major design inspiration from her beautiful home!
Sweet {Jolie} Shop // Facebook // Twitter

Meet the Home Girls

Hi everyone! I am beyond excited for what I have to share with you today! I've partnered with three other amazing new bloggers to offer our very first giveaway! We've partnered with Nicole from Sweet {Jolie} to offer you tons of inspiration and an awesome prize! I can't wait for you to see all of the gorgeous featured products from Sweet {Jolie}!!!
First I would like to introduce you to our team! Meet the Home Girls!!!! Be sure to check out each of these awesome ladies! We are all DIY & decor bloggers who are fairly new to blogging and are SUPER EXCITED for this giveaway!! These ladies are AMAZING! Give them all some love!!

Taking time to relax and unwind

If you've read some of May's blog posts, you may have heard about my crazy schedule recently. Pete and I have been on the go since the beginning of the month and especially busy for the past two weeks! In the span of a week and a half I traveled for my sister's graduation, my friend's bachelorette trip, my cousin's wedding, and my sister-in-law's wedding! Two of those events were a long drive away and the other two were states away! 
It was all super fun and very exciting! I'm so glad I was able to work out my schedule so that I could celebrate with people I love so much! But boy, am I exhausted!!!

Today, I finally had time for a little rest and relaxation. I ran a few errands and then met a good friend for lunch. It was relaxing just to chat and catch up! When I got home, I snuggled up with the kitties for a bit, and then I decided it was time for my favorite way to unwind.. a bubble bath!

It's funny how bubble baths evolve as you grow older. When I was a kid I used to beg my parents to let me take a bubble bath. I would stay in the bath playing with bubbles until the water was cold. Now I take a bubble bath to relax and unwind.
I set up a bathtub shelf, put on my favorite girly Pandora station, and grabbed a good book. I tried a bubble bath product I hadn't used before, Jasmine Luxe Bubble Bath by The Soap & Paper Factory. I loved it! The jasmine scent was very light and had an elegant feel. It made my skin feel silky smooth! The ultimate in relaxation!

I first heard of The Soap & Paper Factory in one of my winter Popsugar Must Have boxes. They included their Roland Pine shea butter soap in a box around the holidays. It smelled like Christmas trees and was very festive. To my surprise, my husband even loved it! When I was asked if I wanted to try another Soap & Paper Factory product, I knew it would be a product worth trying after our first experience with Soap & Paper Factory.
The Soap & Paper Factory creates handmade products for the body and home using earth friendly ingredients and packaging. They make soy candles, shea butter soaps and hand cremes, perfumes, bubble bath, and more! You can't go wrong!
The Soap & Paper Factory | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

After a good soak in the tub, I'm feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. Back to work tomorrow and ready for another busy weekend!! What's your favorite way to calm the mind after a crazy week??
*This post contains a gifted product. Read my full disclosure policy.

Dining room wall art

Wow, this project has been a long time comin'! I think I've been working on it since... February??  We've just been so busy the past few months that I've only had time to sit down and work on it here and there. I'm glad it's finally finished! I love how it turned out!!
We had a nice big blank wall behind the table in our dining room and were unsure what to do with it. We couldn't seem to find any art that we liked, so I decided to make some DIY dining room art. One day I was walking through the craft store (one day... more like every day!) and blank canvases were on sale in all sizes!! Score! I bought the biggest one I could fit in my car for the dining room wall (and a few other small ones for various other projects like my "Love lives here" canvas!).
Then over what seemed like weeks, I looked for inspiration. I decided I wanted to do some word art of some sort (Of course! That's my thing!) and started looking for quotes that had something to do with the dining experience (it is a dining room after all!). I thought about how we probably won't get much use out of our dining room until we have kids except for holidays... like Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving... thankful... give thanks... In all things, give thanks! Perfect! A great bit of advice from the good Book too (1 Thessalonians 5:18)!

So I got to work using my font transfer method. 
First, I painted the whole canvas with a roller using leftover paint from the living room. I printed out my words, cut them to size, and played with the layout until I found what I liked. 

Then I flipped over each word and shaded the back with a lead pencil. You want to shade it in pretty dark so that there is enough lead to transfer over.

Then I taped each word in place with painter's tape to keep them from moving while I traced. 

Trace the outline of each letter with a pencil or pen. Press kind of hard in order to get the lead to transfer, but be careful if you are using canvas! You don't want to stretch it out from applying weight or pressure.

When you're finished, you should have faint letters on your canvas that you can now easily trace! For this project, I started tracing with a permanent marker, but the ink was bleeding and spreading, so then I used acrylic paint with a small paint brush.

I thought it looked really sloppy, so I went over it a second time with a fine tip paint pen.

Much better! I left it on the wall like this for a day or two to decide what to do with it. It needed a little something else...

This morning, I decided to add laurel branches! Because who doesn't LOVE laurel branches?!?! :)
So I started by making parentheses on both sides with my paint pen. I went back over them and widened them a little towards the bottoms.

Then I free handed some laurel leaves after practicing on some scrap paper first. I completed one side first and then the other so that I could keep the leaves somewhat balanced and even.

And here it is finally! Took me long enough! Tah dah!

Now I'm just debating whether to color in those leaves or not! Thoughts??

  Our dining room looks happier already :)
>>> See where I link up each week! <<<

Blogging: Resources for getting started

I've learned a lot in my first year of blogging, and although my blog still isnt quite where I want it to be, for the most part it looks how I want it to look! That look took a lot of work! If you just make the random decision to start blogging (like I did) without any research ahead of time, chances are you have no idea what you're doing or where to even start! As you can imagine, my blog wasn't so pretty in the beginning. In fact, here's a peek at what my blog header looked like when I first started....

Yikes. I was proud of my ability to draw straight lines in MS Paint ;)
Needless to say, I quickly realized I had some work to do. I started looking at the blogs that I read frequently and learning how to do things they had on their blogs. For instance, I noticed everyone had a signature at the end of their posts. So I researched it and implemented it. Or I thought, how do I get a picture next to my blog name on the millions of tabs I have open at the top of Google Chrome? I learned it is called a favicon, and I made one. Or how do I create a pretty navigation bar across the top of my page? How do I get a hover Pin It button on my images? How do I add social media icons to my side bar? Lots of research later, I slowly learned these things and my blog started to come together. And here we are now!!
If you're just starting out, I thought I would spare you all that research and list some of the resources I found. Some of them are great compilations of tutorials and some of them are specific tutorials. Almost all of the blogs listed below have other information about blogging on their sites, so be sure to browse around! 
Resources A-Z Blogging tools & resources | The Blog Stylist Blogging and social media resources | Writing-Wishing 50 online tools to better your blog | IFB
Design & HTML Tricks 58 tips for transforming your blog | BoostBlogTraffic.com How to make a blog header | The Anti June Cleaver Move the date below the header in blogger | xomisse Adding a custom menu bar | Living, Laughing, & Loving Add social media icons | Bonjour, Blogger! 10 tips on sizing images for you blog | One Dog Woof Creating a navigation bar | Honeybear Lane How to make page buttons | In Which A Girl Reads How I made my blogger my own | The ngnrdgrl Personalize your favicon | Sycamore Street Press
Important Pages How to Revamp Your About Page | The Thinking Closet Must Have Blog Pages | The Flourishing Abode
Growth How to start and grow your blog | Liz Marie Blog How to grow your blog and love it too | Post Cards From Rachel Why you need a facebook fan page | The Daily Post How to increase blog traffic | Carrie Elle How to increase blog traffic and make friends | Cropped Stories 6 tips for growing your diy blog | The Girl Creative
Blog Planners Organized blog planner | Organizing Homelife Where to find free blog planner printables | Wondermom Wannabe Free Printable Blog Planners | A Well Crafted Party <----- the one I use!! Free Printable Monthly Blogger Checklist | Play, Party, Pin Free Blog Planner Printable

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Free Bachelorette Scavenger Hunt Printable

Two weekends ago was my sister-in-law's bachelorette party! As one of her bridesmaids, I wanted to contribute something a little creative and a little silly so I put together a bucket and made a scavenger hunt!!

In the bucket I included a tiara, a "Bachelorette" sash, a wine glass, bachelorette Mad Libs, a bar scavenger hunt, and a wine bottle wearing a wedding gown :) (Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures!!!! I totally forgot to take pictures of this project!)
I labeled the bucket "Barf Bucket" with a gold paint pen. You can search Pinterest for lots of great bachelorette barf bucket ideas! I thought it was a clever idea :)
For the scavenger hunt, again I used the help of Pinterest and looked at a zillion different scavenger hunts. I pulled together ideas from many different scavenger hunts and put them together. I removed the bride and groom's names from my printable to make a generic one for you to print! I printed mine on a 4x6 piece of cardstock, so that is what it's sized for!

You should be able to right click the image to open it in full size in a new window. You can then save it to your computer to print as you like. You can also download it from Google Documents.

While we didn't quite accomplish the entire scavenger hunt by the end of the night, we certainly had fun with it!!! Hope you enjoy this one or gain some inspiration to create your own!!!

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10 Things I Learned In My First Year Blogging

Hello everyone :) Hope you are enjoying the month of May so far! May is one of my favorite months of the year! It's always full of fun things! My birthday, my husband's birthday, my sister's birthday, several of our close friends' birthdays, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, and Memorial Day! It's also usually when the weather finally starts becoming beautiful every day around here. How could you not enjoy it?!?! 
This May is extra exciting because we have some other fun things going on too! Next week my little sister is graduating (Woohoo!!! Goooo Kayla!!!!!!!). This week, I'll also be heading to North Carolina for my good friend Jenny's bachelorette party while Pete heads to Louisiana for his best friend's bachelor trip! Then, I will also be heading to Louisiana to visit with family and celebrate my cousin's wedding!! The next week, Pete's sister is getting married!!! We have two crazy fun filled weeks ahead of us! I'm beyond excited!!!
Last week, I celebrated my blog's first birthday and promised I would have some blog related things to share this month! This week, I put together a list of things I learned in my first year blogging! Blogging can be overwhelming at first, so I wanted to share some important lessons I learned along the way.

It takes a lot of time. I had no idea what I was getting myself into in the beginning. Every post requires a lot of effort... you write the post, research keywords, edit photographs, then promote on social media and link ups. All of that is assuming you even had time to work on any projects worth blogging! In addition, you still want to have time to respond to comments, read other blogs, and participate in the blogging community. When I started blogging, I thought I would eventually end up posting every day, but the reality is, I work a full time job and have other responsibilities on my days off. Because of how much effort goes into a single post, I only have time for 2-3 posts a week. Now that I realize that's all I can handle, I feel much less stressed about rushing to put out content. Be realistic about what you can accomplish.
A project doesn't have to be complete in order to be shared. I didn't have many posts in the beginning because I was so focused on "finishing" a room before I showed it on the blog. I'm sure you all know how long it can take to be totally satisfied with a room!!! So I've stopped doing that and started showing progress. I plan to start doing that with crafts also. Sometimes I work on a craft a little at a time for a month or two because that's all I have time for. There's no reason I can't show a glimpse of what I'm working on. It gives your readers a little sneak peak of what's to come!
Don't be intimidated. I spent most of my first year blogging afraid to share my blog. At first I didn't even want to share it with the blogging community because I didn't think it was good enough compared to the other blogs I read. I didn't share my blog with anyone I knew personally until recently. It's tough to put yourself out there, but once you do it, the feedback you get is so reassuring and you learn so much more from other bloggers. Go ahead, show off your hard work!
Support other bloggers. If you want to get anywhere in the blogging world, you have to participate! Meet other bloggers on social media, through comments on link-ups, or through blogging forums. I made some great blogging friends just through something as simple as the Liebster Award! It's great to support each other and promote each other's blogs through social media. It can also lead to opportunities to co-host events like giveaways or link-ups! Speaking of link-ups...
Participate in lots of link-ups! I didn't start getting page views until I started participating in link-ups. My very first linked post was my DIY Painted "Love Lives Here" Canvas, and I was shocked by my numbers the next morning! Even better, that post was featured on two blogs which helped my numbers even more! I was so excited! The results from one link-up were all it took to convince me of how important they are! Link-ups are a great way to increase your following and meet other bloggers by commenting on their links. Here are some of my favorites...
Sunday Share Your Creativity Party @ It's Overflowing Monday Monday Funday @ Uncommon Designs Online Tuesday The Inspiration Exchange @ City Farmhouse The Makers @ Tiny Sidekick Wednesday Work It Wednesday @ The Turquoise Home Hump Day Happenings @ A Savory Feast Friday Inspire Me Please Weekend Blog Hop @ Liz Marie Blog Best DIY and Recipe Party @ The 36th Avenue Link Party Palooza @ Tatertots and Jello Saturday Saturday Sharefest @ The SITS Girls
Let me know if you host a link-up or participate in a great one I should know about!
Google+ is where it's at! As a blogger, it's important to join social media. I am currently on Google+, Facebook, and Pinterest. Out of the three, I am most impressed by the growth Google+ has given my blog! As soon as I joined and started promoting there, my followers increased quickly! The sense of community among bloggers on Google+ is also great. Everyone is promoting each other and sharing each other's work. I love it! 
Pictures are vital. When I look at my early posts, I want to hide my eyes. Such crappy pictures! At that point, I was using a plain old point-and-shoot digital camera and was not editing my photos one bit. I got a digital SLR for Christmas, and it made such a huge difference! I still have a lot to learn photography wise, but just having a nice camera makes posts look so much nicer. I started doing basic edits using PicMonkey, and I use GIMP for anything major. (Pete just bought me Photoshop for my birthday, but there's a bit of a learning curve there. Luckily he bought me the "For Dummies" book to go with it! Ha!). Photography is definitely something I want to work on this year. The internet is a very visual place (helloooo, Pinterest!), so it's vital to have photos that capture readers' attention!
Monetize early. I wish I had added GoogleAds and Amazon Affiliates to my blog sooner. There's no reason why a new blogger can't add these early on! You won't make any money off of them so early, but having ads on your site tells brands that you are willing to work with them. I didn't start getting contacted about doing product feature posts until recently, right after I added ads to my site!
Branding is important. You want people to recognize your blog. No, you probably don't think of your blog as a business when first starting out, but if you want it to take off, you really should promote it like it is a business! You need a logo that you use for everything and you need to send a consistent message to your readers on what your blog is about. You really should think about all of this before you even get started. For instance, I wish I had thought more about my blog name, because now, a year later, my blog is less about "the B's" and more about our projects! It's hard to make those decisions early on if you don't know where your blog is headed, but it's important to think about who your audience is and what kind of content you are going to deliver. 
Focus on one thing at a time. There is an incredible amount of information out there about blogging. It's a lot to take in and can be overwhelming. Don't try to make your blog perfect all at once. Try to add one new thing at a time. If you're designing your blog yourself, try to learn one new HTML or CSS thing each week until it looks how you want it. Then start focusing on other things, like learning about SEO! Check out my blogging lessons board on Pinterest for some of the things I've implemented on my blog!
Follow my board "Lessons:: Blogging" on Pinterest.


I've learned so much more than just these 10 things, but these are some of the important ones that I wish I had learned early on. Have any of you learned any important blogging lessons? I would love for you to share! Linking up: My Pinterventures // The SITS Girls

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First Blogiversary!

Imagine you are standing at the edge of the ocean. The air around you is warm and comforting as the sun beats down on you. You really want to go for a swim, but you know the water will be cold compared to what you're feeling right now. You stick your toes in the water and quickly yank them back out. Freezing! You keep trying again as you get used to the cold and then ever so slowly make your way into the water one inch at a time. Eventually you get to the point where you realize, you just have to dunk your head under water or you'll never warm up. The idea of plunging the rest of your body into that icy cold water sounds awful, but you know it's the answer. So you do it. And what do you know? Now you're warm again and the water is quite nice.
That's what starting a blog was like for me. It took a while before I even decided to get my feet wet, and even once my toes were in the water, I VERY slowly eased my way into it, writing sporadically. Once I finally got into it, I started to realize my fears more and more and eventually just had to dive head first! Now, I've been blogging for a year and can't believe how much this little blog of mine has evolved!

I don't have any super exciting projects to share with you today (although Pete and I are working on quite a few!), but I do have some exciting news! Today is not only my birthday (officially throwing me into my "late" twenties), but it's my blog's first birthday too! In light of both celebrations, I thought I'd go ahead and bite the bullet, do that whole diving in head first thing, and finally tell my friends, family, and all of Facebook about my little slice of the internet! Later today I will be posting the link to my blog on my personal social media accounts for the first time ever! (Eeeek!!!!)
So to those of you reading for the first time, hello! Welcome! If you know me well, you know I have a major passion for crafting and decorating. So when Pete and I bought our humble abode last year, I decided I might as well document the progress of our home and share it with others in hopes of inspiring someone the way so many bloggers have inspired me over the years! It's a work in progress and I still have so much to learn, but my blog and I have come so far this year (you should have seen it's ugliness in the early months!). 
You can read more about my life, why I blog, and why it took me so long to share, but if you know me well in real life, you know I'm a pretty reserved person, and it probably makes perfect sense that I was afraid to share my blog! The only people in real life who knew about it were people who accidentally found out and a couple of long lost friends I stumbled across in blog land! I'm super excited that it's out in the open now and hope that sharing it turns into a good thing!
In celebration of one year blogging, here are some of my favorite posts to recap the year...
My personal favorite and my most pinned project is my DIY "Love Lives Here" Painted Canvas. 

My most viewed post was the DIY Mail Tray which has definitely made a huge difference in the amount of clutter in our kitchen!

I really love the Restoration Hardware Knock-off Art I made recently for the living room. 

And these Easter planters were so much fun to make!

My entryway is currently still my favorite room in the house (although still a work in progress!).

Throughout the month of May, I plan to celebrate by sharing some lessons learned in my first year, sharing some of the resources that helped get me started, and co-hosting an exciting event towards the end of the month!!
Thanks for stopping by! Follow along if you like! Share your thoughts! Feedback is welcome. You can find me on Google+, Facebook (brand new page!), Bloglovin, and Pinterest!
Thanks for reading, my lovely friends! And happy May!!!! :)
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