Yep, I became one of those people. I actually have wanted to do this for a while now, but not until I seen a pin on Pinterest saying it cost $20 that I decided to do it. Mostly because I wanted to see if it actually cost $20 cause I thought that was too much! And I was right! Mine only cost me $15 and a few minutes of Jack’s time. We bought a white pre-made shelf at the home improvement store, 4 eyelet screws and two heavy duty bungee cords. Jack drilled the wholes for the screw and was even nice enough to use some left over fireplace trim to put a lip on the bottom of the shelf to prevent my lab top sliding off. I leave the cords in place and just slide over my treadmill arms and off I got….very slowly! Now I have a great way to work on this site!

I think this was my easiest office decor project. I found the corkboard on clearance at a craft store and I already had the gold and silver paint and round sponge brush. I poured the paint on a paper plate and lightly dipped the sponge brush into a color and dabbed it on the corkboard. I wanted to create a look that the circles were falling so I put a few circles on the top and created a drip look in the center with it pooling on the bottom of the board. Once I was finished with the gold I went onto the silver and repeated. After it was finished Jack helped me hang it on my office wall and I covered the nails with gold tacks. It is the perfect finishing touch to my new office. All of my projects and accessories were under $100…totally within our budget!

Would you believe this memory board was made from a birthday gift bag? Well it is. I knew I wouldn’t find a memory board with my color scheme within my budget and I couldn’t find fabric that I liked to make a traditional padded one. I found the birthday bag at Target and the canvas I got when I purchased the three for the world map. 

In my new office I have two grey chairs in front of my desk, which needed a small table to place in between them. I knew I wanted it to be metal and I wanted it to be silver to make the rest of the décor I made. I looked at several discount stores, but couldn’t find anything I liked within in my price range. On the verge of giving up I went to the furniture area of the craft store and found this bright lime green table that had a wonderful pattern, but didn’t care for the color. In the end I couldn’t pass up the $15 deal and took it home. I also bought a small square table to place between my two blue chairs in our living room. I purchased a high quality silver spray paint and got to work. I sprayed each table with a light coat of paint and waited it to try. I carefully made sure to get into all of the joints because that lime green would have been an ugly contrast to the silver. Once dry I repeated the process until I got the look I wanted. Now my co-workers have a pretty place to put their coffee or notebooks when they are in my office. Just remember not to pass up a great deal because of an ugly color and it is something that can be fixed with a can of spray paint and an afternoon of your time!

I got this idea after looking up office décor ideas on Pinterest. I knew I wanted a world map, but came into the same problem as with the Yosemite picture: not within the budget. So I did the same thing as I did with that picture, I made my own. I followed the same steps as with the other one, but after I modpodge the whole picture I painted it. I got metallic blue, black and gold paints from the craft store and pulled out all of my paint brushes. I started with the gold and slowly worked my way around the edges and filling in the contanets. I had to do several layers of gold paint to get the texture I wanted, I wanted it to look just like gold leaf. Once the gold was finished I started with the oceans. I mixed white and black to create different shades of blues and repeated the process, starting with the edges and filling in. I couldn’t be more excited how these pictures came out and they look so great on my cabinets!

Well it's time to start decorating my NEW office! I actually wasn't expecting to get an office since I am only interiming supervising, but I am more than happy to take it! It was really sad watching my old supervisor back up the office and by the time I moved in it looked empty, boring, and depressing. I knew I was heading into a role that was going to be stressful not only because of the new requirements of me, but also because I was stepping up to a supervisor role from a team that I was an equal in. I knew the transition was going to be hard and I wanted to be able to look at something that would calm me. The one place in the world that I try to think about when I am feeling stressed is inspiration point in Yosemite. I’ve lost count how many times I have been there and it still takes my breath away. I love looking at the view and just feeling so small and whatever is causing me stress flies away. The first thing I decided to decorate my new office with was a giant picture of inspiration point, but the problem was I was on a very tight budget since we are still in the middle of our debt snowball and there are limited places that you can get large pictures cheap in town. I knew I had to make my own and I knew I wanted it fast. After looking online and a couple of stores locally I couldn’t find what I wanted to make my own canvas art so I found a large picture online that I could use. Now I don’t have the software that allows you to break a picture down to print on single sheets a paper so I resorted to something I have down in the past: Excel! I inserted the picture into an Excel spreadsheet and enlarged it to the size I needed for the canvas and printed it out. Nine pages later I was ready to start the process. The first thing I did was cut out the unprinted area on each page except the ones that was going to be on the boarder of the canvas, making sure to have it perfectly straight for easier aligning later. Since I was using a damage picture I bought for only a few dollars at the craft store, I sprayed the canvas white so none of the color would seep through. Once the canvas was try I was ready to start. I started with the top corner of the picture and brushed on some Modpodge a little bigger than the piece of paper and placed the paper in place. I then went to the next paper, brushing on more modpodge and perfectly aligning the picture next to the previous one. I repeated this process until all of the pictures formed one large one. After I cut off the access outer boarder, I put several coats of modpodge on the picture to seal it in place and project it. Once it was dry I was so excited how it turned out and no one could believe that I made it!

Back in April I had a job interview for a supervisor promotion at another County Department. It was a really great interview and I felt like I would be a really good fit for what they were looking for. Later that I was talking to my current boss about how well it went and then it hit me, in my heart I knew I wasn't meant for that job. After I talked it over with Jack, I made the decision to email the interviewers and ask for them to remove my name from consideration. I explained that I was truly grateful for the opportunity and although I knew I would do a good job for them my heart wanted to stay in my current department. They were grateful for my honestly and understood. They ended up giving the position to my very good friend who was a much better fit for them. I felt so grateful that I listened to my heart and did the right thing. My friend was truly grateful too. Well what comes around goes around, today I was told that our project manager was going to be retiring in October and they have asked my current supervisor to start training immediately to fill her position. They asked me to take over as billing supervisor! Although this is just an interim position until the opening becomes actually available, that's just how working for the government works. I am really excited about this opportunity to learn and grown. I am very excited about my new supervisor and I am excited to help lead the billing team through the next challenges we face! Note to self - when something doesn't feel right in your heart, listen to it, its God speaking to you.

Well the hallway ceiling is just one more step closer for us to getting rid of the entire ugly popcorn ceiling and getting our new floors! The hallway ceiling was low enough for me to remove the popcorn on my own so Jack was able to work on other projects. I had all of the texture off in just a few hours and once the dry wall dried I was able to plaster the holes. My last step of the project was to prime and paint the ceiling. From start to finish it only took me a weekend to accomplish. Once I was finished with everything Jack started planning out our new pot lights! However, due to the A/C duct work we were only able to install two lights instead of the original three planned. By this point Jack has done lots of electrical work and after a few days and new toys are new lights were installed. He removed and patched the old wall mounted light and we were good to go. It amazes me how much brighter our hallway is now and that we can actually see in our cupboards! Only two more room left and all of the popcorn will be gone and we can finally get our new floors!!!

 few weeks ago I shared the free give away cake I did, when promoting my bakery business and this cake is one of the 25% off winners. One of my friends won it and wanted to use it for her daughter’s birthday. Since she is turning seven her favorite movie is Frozen so that was what she wanted her cake to be. The cake was a simple chocolate with chocolate buttercream cake covered in ice blue fondant. I added white fondant and layered it like snow and sprayed the cake with edible pearl spray making the cake sparkle like ice. I cut out snowflakes using snowflake cookie cutters and piped a small amount of white buttercream and sprinkled clear sprinkles to make it look like ice.  After placing all of the snowflakes on the cake using sugar water, I piped some white buttercream along the edge of the cake and sprinkled some more clear sprinkles. Lastly I topped the cake with a gum paste seven and piped and sprinkled more sprinkles. I found the toys at the local cake supply shop to finish the cake off! The cake came out so cute and sparkled in the light!

One of my all-time favorite movies is Jurassic Park. I watch that movie at least once a month, especially when I am baking. I know if I have a huge order of cupcakes to do all I have to do is turn on the Jurassic Park trilogy and I am good to go. When I first learned about the Jurassic World movie they were making I was really worried they were going to ruin the trilogy I so loved; however, that went away after watching the trailer. I was totally hooked and was really excited to see that it was going to be coming our around my birthday. I made these cupcakes in honor of my favorite move. I baked chocolate cupcakes and topped them off with red rock colored frosting, added some edible rocks and plastic dinosaurs and plants. I even made my own dirt by putting different color cookies in the food processer and sprinkled on top. They were super cute and super tasty at my movie night birthday!

Coming off of one wedding and our own blessing, I just finished making cupcakes and a cake for another wedding. The bride to be has order several large order of cupcakes from me several time and was not surprised that she needed 14 dozen cupcakes plus one small cake to cut into. She choice chocolate, French vanilla, strawberry, and lemon cupcakes topped with coral buttercream and white pearls. The cake was a chocolate with chocolate buttercream covered in ivory fondant. I added a little ivory lace on the bottom of the cake to balance the coral hydrangeas that were placed on top. I wasn't able to find coral hydrangeas so I bought peach and colored them with coral food coloring and vodka, just like I did for the roses on our blessing cake. She borrowed the cupcake stand that was used at the pervious wedding and it helped make her beach wedding perfect!