FRIDAY NO. 22

Happy Friday! Sorry for the radio silence around here. If you are following along on Snap chat (mrsshelbycoats) or Instagram (mrsshelbycoats) then you know I spent the end of last week and beginning of this week in Hilton Head, SC! I'll be sharing all about our trip next week, but for now here are a couple of pictures.

We got back from our trip on Monday afternoon and Matthew picked me and Ellie, my parents puppy, up to head home! My parents have been in Gatlinburg this week and we got to puppy sit for them...

And now for Ellie's sleeping pictures. She is 11 weeks old so she still gets really sleepy, really fast and will just fall asleep wherever she is. It's the cutest thing, and I'm pretty sure Matthew and I just sat and stared at her multiple times this past week lol.

Needless to say our puppy fever is at an all time high right now.

This weekend we are having my nanny's birthday and then going to a murder mystery dinner that my in-laws are hosting. We are SO excited about this murder mystery dinner, the theme is, "Bumped Off on Bourbon Street- a Mardi Gras Murder Mystery". We all have been assigned out characters already and we're dressing up like them, it's going to be so fun! I'm sure I'll be sharing it all on Snap chat. My MIL made these cute tickets for all of us, too.

This post is my 500th post! I started blogging at the end of 2012 but slacked off for a bit, and then picked it back up in 2013. I've had a few months here and there where this blog of mine got put on the back burner, but I have enjoyed it so much. I love this little space of mine, and get so much enjoyment out of this hobby. So if you are new here or have been following along for awhile now, thank YOU! I love reading your comments, emails, and even snap chats of y'all reading my blog!

I hope you all have a great 4th of July weekend!!

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FRIDAY NO. 22

KNOT & NEST REVIEW

Happy Wednesday! We are one day closer to Friday, and to help get you through the day I wanted to share this beautiful print that I received with you! Also, keep reading for a coupon code!

Rebecca from Knot & Nest sent me this adorable personalized burlap print and I am so excited to have it up in our home.

It is an 8.5 x 11 Burlap print that is completely customized to YOU! It fits an 11x14 standard-size frame with a mat that has an 8x10 opening. 

We placed this print in our foyer and I love that it's one of the first things that people see when they come through the door.

Rebecca has so many different items/prints in her Etsy shop. From weddings to holidays to nursery prints, I love it all! One of my other favorite prints is this "What A Difference A Day Makes" print. I have been looking for something just like this for my parents. They would absolutely love this!

I asked Rebecca to share a little bit more about Knot & Nest, just because I love hearing about how people got started or how they came up with their shop name. It's just so interesting!!

 So here we go...

A little about the owner of Knot & Nest and how we got started...

I was raised by an educator (a principal, to be exact!) and an entrepreneur…so I’ll let you do the math! I received a bachelor's degree in education and a master's in Reading, Language & Literacy, because I have no greater desire than to help others feel understood. I may not be doing that in the classroom anymore, but I am most certainly pouring that same desire into my work. Enter my shop, Knot & Nest: heirloom pieces of burlap & guest books to commemorate the most personal and unique moments of your life. I desire y’all (yes, I’m a southern girl at heart!) to have walls that speak for themselves, speak of the love you share for one another, and commemorate the milestones that make YOU who you are. 

How we got our name...

We wanted the name of our business to represent the types of occasions our product lines help you and your loved ones commemorate. We create heirloom burlap art prints & wedding guest books for those celebrating weddings & anniversaries (also known as, tying the Knot) and new babies & homes (what many like to lovingly refer to as a period of, Nesting). There are so many ways to commemorate these beautiful milestones, but our favorite way to do so is in print, because you can hang them in your home to enjoy for years to come. 

Some of our favorite items in the store...

I love creating the baby statistics print, probably because I know that an absolutely adorable, rosy cheeked baby boy or girl will have it hung in their nursery soon enough: http://etsy.me/237maQ2 

Our best selling item...

Our best selling item is this wedding anniversary print: http://etsy.me/25UZLLa

Friends, mothers, and grandparents love to gift the bride-to-be with this print at their wedding shower. This print can even double as wedding decor before being permanently placed in the bride & groom’s home. We also have quite a few husbands going out of their way to find us on Etsy and ordering this print for their anniversary! 

Keep a look out for some new items to be added soon...

We are planning on expanding our 'inspirational quote' product line very soon. We already offer a 'design your own' burlap art print {http://etsy.me/1UaPNj1}, so we're getting a feel for some of our customers' favorite quotes, and will begin offering them to the public very soon. 

What makes us unique as a burlap art print & wedding guest book shop?

We have a quick turn-around time (1-3 day processing time), so there is no doubt we can have a burlap art print or wedding guest book to you in time for your event. We thrive on bringing others’ visions to life, so please stop by and browse our entire collection {www.KNOTnNEST.etsy.com}. Maybe you'd like to design your own or pick from one of our 80+ wedding, anniversary, housewarming, and new baby designs. 

Rebecca is also very sweet and sent me a coupon code to share with all of my readers!

Coupon Code: LIFEas10 {10% discount on any item over $16.50, good through the end of August}

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KNOT & NEST REVIEW

FRIDAY NO. 21

We are so close to the weekend, and I am very excited! We will be spending a good bit of this weekend with our families since it is Father's Day, and I am so happy about that.

Speaking of Father's Day...I text my dad the other day asking if he had any black exterior paint, because I am wanting to paint our front door black. I know to always ask him if he has any paint before I go buy some because he has SO much paint from over the years. Sadly he didn't have any paint, but he did have some mauve paint that he offered. I gladly passed on that color ;) Texting my dad is probably one of the funniest things. He just got an iPhone a couple of years ago and he LOVES emojis. He sends one for every occasion and it always cracks us up. Also, my mom makes this dessert called chocolate lasagna and my dad will literally do anything for it lol so I was trying to bribe him into building me something out of pallets with chocolate lasagna.

I am collaborating with some amazing Etsy shop owners over the next few weeks, and I can't wait to share everything with y'all, starting next week. For now, I'll share a few pictures with you. I shared these on Snap chat (mrsshelbycoats) last night and I had a ton of people asking which shop they came from, so come back next week for more information, and there may or may not be a coupon code ;) 

I wish I was laying out right now soaking up all this vitamin D, but very soon I'll be soaking up all the vitamin D in HHI! So stinkin' excited!

Last but not least, We finally got to meet my parents new puppy, Ellie Mae, last night! She is a maltipoo, and is absolutely adorable. My parents brought her to my sister's softball game last night and she slept most of the games but played around towards the end of them. We were soaking up all the puppy cuddles!

She literally did this over half of the games.

 Just snoozin' away

Towards the end of the game she woke up and was ready to play though!

Matthew was one happy camper last night holding and playing with her!

 She is tiny right now and I was eating it up. So much cuteness!!!!

We will be at my parents house this weekend some so get ready for more puppy snap chats. I just can't help myself. I probably made over 20 pictures of her last night lol. I told Matthew that when we do get a puppy I will have to delete all the pictures on my phone just to make room for all the pictures I KNOW that I will be making. :) 

Blog posts from this week:

Weekending

Loaded Baked Potato Dip - Appetizer

Hot Dog Bar Printables

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FRIDAY NO. 21

WEEKENDING

Friday I left the office early to get my hair cut. I just got it trimmed and had some long layers put in it, nothing too crazy, but I can tell a huge difference. My hair is so thick and once it starts getting longer I have to have layers or it will just be too much to deal with. My hair dresser told me that it would look really good curled with all the layers, so as soon as I got home I started curling it. Matthew got home a little after that and I was finishing up my hair when our door bell rang. It was our neighbor, and they asked if we wanted to see a fawn that was born a few hours earlier in their backyard. So of course we said yes and went over to check it out! Sadly I didn't grab my phone, but it was the sweetest little fawn just hanging out under their trampoline. The mom had given birth in their backyard, but our neighbor informed us that she has been hanging out in our backyard all week, so sweet!

After our wildlife adventure we headed out for a quick dinner at Sonic and to drive around since it was so nice outside. I looooove driving around in the afternoon as it's getting dark in the summer.

Saturday we woke up and my SIL and her friend were still there so we all lounged around watching Gilmore Girls while Matthew was at his chiropractor appointment. He brought home donuts for breakfast. After a few more episodes, my SIL and her friend left to head back home, Matthew had some work to do so I headed to the pool. I got there early and got a good chair. I stayed for a little over an hour and then our friends, Ethan and Rachel came over to hang out.

We tried a new place for lunch and really liked it. It was very similar to Genghis Grill if you are familiar with that.

After lunch we came back to the house and Ethan and Rachel helped us move all the wood and tools into the house so that Matthew could make all the measurements for our farmhouse table!!

We hung out for awhile and then got ready and headed to a church in Brentwood where we were having a singing night. Our college campus ministry was going to it, so it was good to see everyone again!

We came back to the house and ended up all going for a night swim since no one was at the pool. It was spontaneous and ended up being a lot of fun! I love those kind of nights.

Later that night my mom sent me a picture....of their new puppy!!!! They named her Ellie Mae and I am so excited to meet her!!!! They have been looking for one for a few weeks now and my mom asked if they found one before they left for vacation would we dog sit for them while they were gone for a few days. Matthew and I quickly responded with a YESSS! So we get to dog puppy sit for them in a few weeks and we are really excited. I already know having a puppy around the house is going to add to our puppy fever we have, but hopefully we can stay strong...lol.

Sunday we went to church, picked up groceries, cleaned and did laundry, worked on the farmhouse table a little bit, I got more tanning time, and watched a good bit of New Girl. We started it last Wednesday night and we are obsessed with it. It is absolutely hilarious!! 

Here is another picture from our farmhouse table makin'! I am so excited about out table and can't wait to see it completely finished soon.

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WEEKENDING

FRIDAY NO. 20

Friday, we made it! Monday flew by for me but the rest of the days went by very slowly. We don't have any "real" plans this weekend other than waiting around for the repair man to come fix our ice maker. Yep, our brand new refrigerator that we have only had for around 3 or 4 months (I can't remember!) I do plan on making it to the pool this weekend though!

I love sitting on our back patio (after the sun goes down some) and either read or browse Pinterest on my tablet. It's so peaceful!

I made My crock pot made creamy ranch chicken this past week. It was a new recipe and Matthew and I really liked it! The leftovers were even better for our lunches.

I am loving my June playlist on Spotify! I may have already made my July playlist and listen to it at work, too... ;)

Do y'all remember Emily Ley's Simplicity Challenge? I followed it pretty closely back in January when she did the challenge, but I'm thinking it's time to do some of them again!

I had to go home on Monday for lunch because I forgot something and the weather was absolutely incredible! Sunny, warm and low humidity. It made driving by the pool on the way out of our neighborhood to go back to work very, very hard!

I posted about our Summer Soiree at the beginning of this week and had a lot of people ask about the labels I made for all of the food. I will be sharing those next week so you can print them for your summer celebrations.

It is supposed to be H-O-T here this weekend. Hoping everyone at the CMA fest and Bonnaroo stays well hydrated this weekend!

My SIL and one of her friends have been staying with us since Wednesday night because they have a PT conference they are attending here in Nashville, so it's been nice to catch up with them and hear all about school and their clinicals they just finished up. PT school keeps them very busy, so it's been fun having them over for a few days! 

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FRIDAY NO. 20

JUNE | GOALS

Although I didn't mark everything off like I wanted to we still accomplished a lot this past month.

Here are my May goals.

1. Work on my office. I am going to mark this on off. However, it is still a work in progress, and probably will be for the next couple of years, we got a lot done in there! One Saturday I went in there and just cleaned the whole room out. It did look like this...

Matthew got my computer, desk, and chair all set up and we got Matthew's twin bed from his college apartment set up in there for guests! 

2. Yard sale prep. I am going to mark this one off, because I have a few totes full of stuff for the yard sale that our neighborhood hosted, but the morning of the yard sale we woke up and it was raining and no one was participating! So although we didn't have a yard sale I went though our stuff and decided on what we need to get rid of. Now to just get it to Goodwill ;) 

3. Create a 'House to-do list'. We did this and these past few weeks we have been marking things off. We still have a lot to do but it will all happen over time!

4. Video Tour. I didn't even attempt this one. Once we got the paint we started painting and our house has looked like a construction zone for the past couple of weeks. Seriously, painters tape, drop cloths, you name it. Once we get all of that up I will attempt to make a video!

5. Landscaping. We took out one bush and plan on taking the other one down as well. We also found these beautiful planter at Target and placed them on each side of our front door. I absolutely love pulling up and seeing them each day.

6. Print pictures. Didn't attempt this one either. Painting kinda took over this past month for 'house projects.'

1. Continue painting. I'm not going to say finish because I know that's a lot to get done. I would like to finish the dining room, do the second (& hopefully final) coat on the study and kitchen. Then I would LOVE to start on our living room...that will be tricky since we have so much furniture in there. 

2. Try 3 new meals. One new meal each week. There are so many recipes I want to try!

3. Keep nails manicured. I know this was a goal a couple of months ago, but I need to keep it up!

4. Take advantage of our neighborhood pool! It has been open and I haven't been there yet. So crazy of me! I'm just ready to get some vitamin d.

5. Video Tour. Hopefully I'll get to it this month!!

6. Get ready for my girls trip and nail down all the details. Our girls trip is this month and I am so excited! We met a couple of weeks ago to discuss our trip but we need to have dinner again soon to nail down all the details of what we want to do and see. If you missed it, we're going to Hilton Head for a long weekend. It's our first time there so if you have any tips and "must see/do" activities please let me know!

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JUNE | GOALS

OUR SUMMER SOIREE | 2016

Our first annual summer was a success. If you are following me on Snapchat or Instagram then you already saw a few peeks into our weekend, if not I'm going to share today! Fair warning: This will be a picture heavy post. The weather wasn't in our favor for our soiree, but thankfully it did let up a bit that afternoon and we were able to get out and play a few games of cornhole.

I'll start with our drinking station. I wanted to keep our soiree as simple as possible, as well as budget friendly! So we cut out the soft drinks and stuck with the classics. Sweet tea, lemonade and water. I had lemons and limes cut for people to add to their drinks, if desired.

 I picked up some cute yellow washi tape and put on all the cups so people could label their drinks to keep up with. Worked like a charm.

 Yellow bowls can be found at Target.

Next up is our appetizers! I made a loaded baked potato dip and lil smokies. Looking back now I wish I would have just made the loaded baked potato dip. It was gone within minutes of getting it out of the oven.

"Hello Summer" pineapple printable + Pineapple cookie jar

I will be sharing the recipe for this delicious appetizer this week!

Our sides table is next. We had baked beans, cole slaw, and potato chips! I found the cole slaw recipe a few weeks ago, and it turned out pretty good. I'll share that recipe soon, as well.

I posted a picture similar to the one below on Snapchat Friday night as I was getting everything together and immediately I had people asking where I found these wooden platter/utensil holder. Well, I got the from my FIL...for free. For his meetings and networking lunches at work he has a caterer that does all the meals for him, and she uses these wooden platters to serve the food in. At the end of those meetings he is left with all of them so he started bringing them home. We used them at Thanksgiving and Christmas and they are absolutely perfect. He has so many of them that he gave me some to have at our house for parties and I love them! I found scrap pieces of fabric at WalMart for $1 a piece and cut them to fit in some of the wooden platters.

 I found red paper sacks at WalMart and cut them with decorative scissors. Since we were using hot dog baskets I knew it would be hard to have a hot dog and chips in there without them falling through the holes, so I went with this option. It worked great and made for an easy cleanup!

And now for the hot dog bar! I searched everywhere to find what toppings I should have out, and eventually came up with a good amount.

For fun I put these hot dog menus out. I got that idea from Kristen's blog! The mini easels they are on are from Target's dollar section, and I actually borrowed those from a friend at work. They worked out perfectly and now I want some of my own.

I made all of the labels through Picmonkey. Easy + free.

I borrowed the hot dog baskets from my mom. She had a ton left over from my nanny's 50's theme birthday party a few years ago. Again, made for an easy cleanup!

The Hot Dog bar:

- Diced onions

- Green onions (left over from loaded potato dip, just set it out in case anyone wanted it)

- Diced tomatoes

- Shredded lettuce

- Pickle spears 

- Shredded cheese

- Nacho cheese (canned from Walmart, just threw it in the crock pot and left on low)

- Chili (canned from Walmart, just warmed it up on the stove and then set it out right before we ate)

- Ketchup, mustard, mayo, barbecue sauce, and relish 

We ended up just boiling the hot dogs since the rain kept us from grilling them, but they turned out just fine! I did a lot of the prep work (cutting & washing) the night before so all I had to do was pull the toppings out of the refrigerator a few minutes before we ate. The chili and baked beans I threw on the stove about 45 minutes before it was time to eat, just to warm up. I made the cole slaw the night before so the ingredients could be mixed together and it really soak up all the flavor, and I made the desserts the morning of our soiree. If you're looking for an easy an inexpensive way to have a cookout then a hot dog bar is definitely the way to go! I enjoyed being able to visit with everyone a little more instead of having to cook everything up until it was time to eat this time. 

The dessert bar is the last little bit. I made white chocolate and caramel blondies and chocolate chip cookies and my best friend, Kathleen, brought over cheesecake. Yum!

Despite the weather working against us, we still had a great time and enjoyed having everyone over. We are beyond thankful for our group of friends, and love throwing dinner parties with them!

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OUR SUMMER SOIREE | 2016