Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! Above are the cards I sent out this year. I actually sent them to Loveland, CO on January 24 to be hand canceled and then sent from there. I still haven't received mine, so hopefully it is in the mail today. Have a great weekend!

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Reuse Leftover Tinsel Garland: DIY Tinsel Stirrers

What do you do with leftover tinsel garland? Make tinsel stirrers. These are super easy to make. 

What you need:

Bamboo skewers

Tinsel garland

Glue gun

Cut about 1" strands of the garland, glue each end and stick the skewer on it. Done. 

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Dog Friendly Restaurants in Houston

There are a lot of restaurants in Houston that don't allow dogs, but here are some dog friendly restaurants in Houston via the City of Houston website. Not sure how updated this list is because Ziggy's is something else and we were at Lowbrow a couple of weekends ago and people had dogs there. Although Bryan and I don't take our sweet Rothko out to restaurants, I love the fact that people have the option to. 

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National Handwriting Day

Today is National Handwriting Day. I do not have the best handwriting. It is pretty decent when I try to make it look good, but just my everyday writing it isn't too great. I have been practicing my cursive more and more since I very rarely use it and don't want to lose it. I signed up for a calligraphy class in March in Dallas that I am really excited about from Blue Eye Brown Eye. I write a ton and would like to improve my handwriting to be "prettier" and not so sloppy. 

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Image via Pentel

Meal Planning Organization

I have never been too terribly good at planing meals. I know what we like to eat and I make sure certain items are always in stock at my house. By default we eat things that are easy and that are quick to make. As one of my goals for the new year I wanted to try new recipes. So I finally set up this meal planning section in my home maintenance binder. Of course all the meals are not new, but many of them are things that we don't eat on a regular basis. This past week we have eaten homemade fish sticks (I have actually made this a lot), salami and gouda paninis, homemade hot wings, snapper with squash, and homemade pasta using our pasta maker. (of course we had fruits and veggies to go along with these meals)

I got the meal planner sheets from a template on Home Made by Carmona.

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Ribbon Organization

Now that the holidays are over, I have finally put away all of my decorations, wrapping paper, etc. I love to reuse bags, ribbons and bows from gifts that I receive, so I usually store it for the next year or for whenever I need to reuse those items for another gift. 

I have accumulated a ton of ribbon scraps throughout the years and this year it was a little overwhelming and I wanted to figure out a way to organize them all. I looked online and saw this way below, which was surprisingly effective. 

All you need is clothespins and the ribbon. You clip one end of the ribbon with the clothespin, wrap it around several times and than clip the other end of the ribbon with the clothespin. Super simple! 

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Stamp Rate Increase

I love all the different stamps that are available to purchase now. Seeing as I send a lot of mail, I end up buying a lot of stamps throughout the year. The rate is going from 46 cents to 49 cents as of January 26, 2014. To me 3 cents is a huge increase. This means that it will cost more to mail packages as well. There is a chance it could decrease as this has happened several decades ago, but I have my doubts. Either way I just went to USPS.com and stocked up on a ton of stamps. 

Some of my favorite stamps available are are Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, vintage seed packets, patriotic star, bicyclists, among many others. 

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