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Holiday

a slice of life

summer activity | fun with food

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Blue Apron.  As always, all words and opinions expressed are honest and my own.  (Oh,, and the first 50 readers to sign up will get $50 off their first two weeks Blue Apron, so you might want to stick around.) Our vacations are behind us and now the bulk of the summer is ahead of us.  This is the first summer where my sons aren’t going to a day camp (or we’re not moving across the country), so we’re going to need to find lots of things to do to fill the long days.  Of course, the usual pastimes are on the list – playing with friends, swimming at the pool, outings to local parks, fishing, and bike rides.  But we’re also hoping to sneak in some learning, work, and other enriching activities. One of those enriching activities we did this weekend was cooking a

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All Things Home

peonies

Well, we’re finally home for the summer.  We got all of our trips done back to back and I won’t have to pack a suitcase again until I go to France and Italy in the fall.  It’s so good to be home, although I loved visiting family and then unplugging (quite literally) with our church’s pastors and their families at a private island on Rainy Lake in Canada.  I’ll share more about that trip in another post, but I thought I would first share a nice surprise I found when I got home… The hedge of peonies planted by the previous homeowners (five bushes in all), had blossomed.  The bushes were dotted with fluffy pink flowers. Knowing that peonies are short-lived, I helped myself to a few of them for a bouquet. I even painted them for my oil still life series, but peonies have me beat for right now. 

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All Things Home

training rosemary topiaries & other garden things

We almost broke into the 60’s in Minnesota last weekend, so I had gardening on the brain.  We’re still waiting for all of the snow to melt and the ground to thaw, but the warmth and sunshine gave me the itch to get my hands dirty.  It’s going to be a while before I can start on the yard, so I decided to repot some of my houseplants that needed more elbow (root) room and give everything a haircut. First up were the rosemary plants that have been flanking my kitchen sink for a few months.  I’ve never had much luck keeping rosemary alive for very long, but plants love all of the rooms on the back side of our house, which faces south.  We get beautiful light all day long, so they can grow and stay healthy. They were both looking like they needed more soil and I have

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All Things Home

speckled milk-painted eggs

I told you another milk-painted egg post was on the way and here it is, just in the nick of time before Easter.  This idea came about because I bought a bunch of real eggs to paint, but then I found the paper eggs and those were going to be even better for my original plan.  So, I was left with a bunch of cheap white eggs.  I will insert here that I eat eggs for breakfast almost every day.  Big egg fan.  But, I’m picky about my eggs and like ones that are free-range and organic with rich yellow/orange yolks.  They just taste so much better!  These were just run-of-the-mill, pale-yolked eggs that don’t have a lot of flavor.  I wanted to find another use for them. So, I made these speckled milk-painted eggs, but I used quail and robin’s eggs as inspiration. This speckled milk-painted egg project was

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All Things Home

milk painted paper eggs

After making the Pysanky eggs last week, I thought it would be fun to break out the MMS Milk Paint and make some more eggs!  I selected a color palette of Mustard Seed Yellow, a custom green (2 parts Boxwood + 1 1/2 parts Lucketts Green), a custom pale blue (2 parts Eulalie’s Sky + 1 part Linen), and Artissimo. I found at Target and knew they would be perfect for milk paint.  I was planning on just painting some small papier mâché eggs, but these were even better.  They are larger, about the size of duck eggs, and the fact that they open up makes them easier to paint and they can actually be filled!     No prep work was required.  I just painted on one coat of each color.  I painted the white eggs in the lighter colors and the craft eggs in the darker colors. The

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All Things Home

indigo pysanky egg tutorial

I confessed on my Instagram Stories earlier this week that I still had my white lights and greenery hanging up outside.  As in Christmas lights and greenery.  I think mid-March is past the line of Christmas decor looking wintry and acceptable!  But, it’s been cold and snowy and, when it’s been warmer, I haven’t wanted to spend my time taking down Christmas decor.  Anyway, it finally happened today!  The funny thing is that I had it built up in my head as this big, annoying thing I had to do and it took less than 10 minutes. So, with the Christmas season now officially over (or way beyond over), I decided to dust off an old Easter project I did years ago.  I was introduced to Pysanky, or traditional Ukrainian eggs, by my dear friend Shari.  She was the perfect friend for the stage of my life when I needed

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a slice of life

Christmas past

As I’ve been getting ready for Christmas in this new house, I’ve turned my thoughts to past Christmases.  I have always loved Christmas and I have a lot of good ones to look back on… The Christmas when my parents gave me a German dollhouse, complete with painted furniture and red checked “feather deckers” on the beds.   The Christmases I spent rushing off from Christmas brunch to dance in the nighttime parades at Disney.  Yes, it was working on Christmas, but there was something magical about it, just the same.  It was Disney, after all.  And the Christmas when Jeff and I farm-sat for some friends and I was running around in my jammies and wellies, feeding the goats and horses before we opened our presents. But one of my favorite Christmases was the one that seemed, as we were getting ready for it, like it might be one of

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All Things Home

Wallace Sleigh Bells

My Oma was an avid collector.  It was just in her nature and she didn’t fight it.  After she passed away, it was almost overwhelming dealing with all of the stuff.  Thousands of swizzle sticks and postcards, and five gallon buckets in a row, filled to the brim with seashells collected on the North Carolina shore over the years.  She collected cookbooks, Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates, campaign buttons, silver dollars and dimes, souvenir spoons, alabaster fruit, Stieff Repousse silverware and serving pieces, and Hummels.  That list maybe scratches the surface. She also collected Wallace Sleigh Bells. She bought one every year from the time they started making them in 1971.  As we were sorting through her attic, we came across the sleigh bells and divided them between her children and grandchildren, so I brought home four of them.  I selected my birth year, Jeff’s birth year, and two random years

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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