Baked Donuts!

We bought a donut pan several months ago and have had so much fun creating baked donuts with it! Why would you want to make baked donuts? Sure they don't taste like their deep fried counterparts, but they are delicious and they are a lot healthier too!

We have enjoyed sharing them with our friends, and seeing their surprise when we show up with them. They look like they would have taken a lot of time and effort to make, but it's just as easy as making a cupcake!

We used the recipe that came on the pan, but you can also use any cake recipe (and even cake mix if they aren't the "moist" kind), and of course dessert breads work well in the pan too. We can't wait to continue our experiments with them.

Beachy Bathroom

We may live in the mountains, but step into our second bathroom and you will feel like you are at the beach! When we bought our home the second bathroom was already painted a very beachy feeling light blue color. I decided to "go with the flow" and create a beach theme in that room. First up, a simple crafting project for the wall.

A simple grapevine wreath adorned with a few shells (hot glue gun to the rescue), and you have an unique decoration. You could even take the shells over the entire wreath, but I liked the look of the wreath too and wanted it to show.

Again, since we don't live near a beach, I did have to buy all my shells at the store. Of course if you have a shell collection from your travels to the beach, it would make any of these projects even more special. Next up, a simple apothecary jar filled with shells and topped with a candle.

Do you create rooms based on a theme in your house?

Right Sizing Your Home

Can I just tell you how much I love this book? We got a chance to review it after it released, and I have often returned to it for inspiration and ideas. Lately I have been thinking a lot about it because we live in a home that is somewhat small, and like a lot of people, we have a lot of stuff filling up our small space.

I'm a huge clutter buster, but even with paring down to just the things we love and use, we still have things that need to be stored. I would say that storage, or lack thereof, is really more of an issue than actual square footage in our home.

This is why I enjoy the book. Gale is awesome at laying out inventive ways to maximize space, and she also has a great approach to making sure that you get your goals right in the way you want to use your spaces. No sense making a room look and function well if it doesn't actually suit the way your family uses it.

Right now I am working on our master bedroom closet. I want to maximize the space, and make sure that we can use it in the best way possible. We need to store things other than clothing (extra blankets for winter, and even some bathroom extras like TP and such). I've appreciated taking some of the ideas from this book and putting them to use in my mind as I plot and plan for our closet.

What project are you working on right now?

DIY Paint Chip Egg Garland

Easter, one of my very favorite holidays, is just around the corner. So many fun and wonderful DIY ideas are popping up on blogs just in time for Easter. This Paint Chip Egg Garland combines the best of both worlds! A great way to use all those extra paint chips, and make something fun for Easter as well!

Source: modernparentsmessykids.com via Aubry on Pinterest

Isn't this just too fun?! I'm going to have to try my hand at making one for our home.

DIY

Do you enjoy DIY projects? Around our house we absolutely love them. Besides being fun to do, one of the reasons we love to DIY is to save money. So many of the things that we have changed about our home we wouldn't have been able to change if we had hired someone else to do the work.

With spring arriving (even though it's still snowing today), my mind has been filled with DIY projects that I want to do in the garden. Number one on my list is to build some raised garden beds for square foot gardening. Second on my list is to create an outdoor "living room" of sorts in the back corner of the yard.



This corner now has a poured concrete pad, but as you can see, it's the perfect spot for an outdoor living room! Plus, like I said, we sure love a good DIY project!