Joyful Abode

After a camera mishap (half of my pictures were GONE! WHY!?), I managed to photograph all of my napkin sets for the shop. These are gorgeous hand-painted sets of 4 napkins each, with several different color schemes so you can find your perfect match!

Annum is my year-of-seasons design, with a tree from each season. I have 9 different color schemes, so be sure to check them out!

My other design, “Wipe your hands!” is more lighthearted, with a pair of colorful hands on each napkin.

Each set is folded prettily and tied with a satin ribbon at the top, ready for gift-giving.

Remember to use coupon code BLOGFRIEND for 15% off!

Ooh… things you haven’t seen before!

Embroidered kitchen towels: 

Hand Stamped Market Totes: 

Also available with: “One Earth” “Reduce. + Reuse.” and “Not Plastic”

I LOVE the new shop! It’s so quick and easy to add new things that maybe I’ll finally get all of my inventory into it!

Subscribe to the Shop RSS feed if you’d like to keep up with new product updates. And don’t forget to use the coupon code BLOGFRIEND to get 15% off of your purchase.

I’m off to photograph napkins now!

I’ve been working hard, and I’m pleased to announce the new Joyful Abode Shop! Of course, it’s not totally full of everything I have yet, but it’s on a good start, with military stationery (birth announcements and moving cards), recipe cards, zip pouches, and crocheted accessories! Here’s a sneak peek.

And as a special gift to you, my loyal blog friends, use the code “BLOGFRIEND” to receive 15% off of your Joyful Abode order at the new shop! Just enter the code at checkout.

Enjoy!

So, things are looking a lot nicer around here, as far as home decor goes. Now that we’ve finally been home for a couple of weeks, we’ve gotten some pictures on the walls and everything!

Check out our guest room! Who wants to come visit??

The lamps don’t match, but that’s kind of lower priority right now.

One of our dining room chairs lives in here (and matches nicely). The basket on the dresser is full of soaps, lip balm, toothpaste, and other goodies for our guests. The dresser drawers (except for one) are empty for our guest’s clothes!

The elliptical machine lives in the guest room now (we’ve been going to the gym more than working out at home, now that we’re so close to it!) The beer bottles are gone now too (sent to my brother-in-law who brews beer, for recycling).

It’s a good thing the guest dresser is empty, because the (really big) closet is full! The right side of the closet hosts all of my Joyful Abode inventory. Blankets on the top; napkins, kitchen towels, grocery totes, accessories, and stationery on the next shelf; and lots and lots of aprons hanging up. On the floor, I have my light box stuff and my show kit.

The left side of the closet has some display and shipping things, plus all of my kids’ books, teaching books, and piano music. Plus about a million empty hangers.

The dining room is still waiting for the table we ordered… so we can seat 8 at the table and have nice dinner parties. But… I’ve recovered the chairs!

The chairs are covered with Modern Flora fabric designed by Jessica Jones for J.Caroline Creative. I chose 2 fabrics (peapod and herb) and did 4 chairs in each.

I also have fabric to make curtains for the dining room, also from Modern Flora. They’re “green sprig.”

Of course I also have plans for coordinating art in the dining room. Because it’s fun to do!

This is the left side of the dining room (if you’re standing in the front doorway). Our kitchen island has been re-purposed as a bar/buffet in the dining room. It’s so deep, too, that we’re able to display some of our family pictures on it without taking up the area we need for serving.

The baby gate is for the dog, of course… but she can climb over it now, so that’s no good! It still keeps her in the kitchen if we are home and keeping an eye on her, but she has to go into her crate when we leave.

This is the little hallway type thing leading into the kitchen. I guess technically it’s part of the kitchen. I strung up a clothesline for my favorite aprons here, so I can still see them every day!

More kitchen…

And more… no pictures of the inside of the pantry, but it’s HUGE! I’m not sure how I feel about the aprons as curtains here… it worked better in the old house with taller windows. Maybe I’ll take them down and make a simple valance or cafe curtain.

Zora’s crate is in the kitchen (in the little hallway part, across from the apron clothesline), since we spend a lot of time in there. She seems to be getting to like it.

Here’s the living room (those orange stickers are from the movers… we took them off since taking this picture). The TV console is our same entertainment center, with the top part taken off. Eventually we’re going to get one custom-built. It’s a pretty small living room.

This is our back patio (off of the dining room). On the table are my little herb seedlings from Meagan. I’m going to move some of them to bigger pots soon!

That’s enough for now! I’ll bombard you with more later, I’m sure. Right now the room that looks the least-finished is our bedroom… mostly because we’re still waiting for our bed to come, we don’t have a set color scheme yet so art is in limbo, and, well… I guess that’s mostly it.

So, here’s the timeline: We drove to Meridian May 16th, lived in the CBQ (base hotel) until May 25th. We lived in our empty house until the movers brought our things June 2nd. Then the guy was in California June 3-5 while I unpacked. June 6, we drove to South Carolina to stay for a week. June 14th we drove back to Meridian. June 15th, we got our puppy. 2 weeks later… we’re unpacked and settled, with the puppy mostly trained! Whew!

The plants are (mostly) thriving! I took these pictures several days ago, and they’re already outdated!

The first two plants (left) are my tomatoes. They both have had little flowers but no tomatoes yet… The left one looks kind of sickly compared to the right one, and I’m beginning to think that those two may benefit from larger pots. Next is the cucumber, which has grown even more and now has tons of yellow flowers! Today I saw bees buzzing around it so hopefully there was some pollination going on.

The far right is my zucchini plant. It’s doing great! It has several little zucchinis and one of them is ready to be picked any day now.

I actually had a dream about it last night… that I picked it, and then I wanted to taste it, but it was so good (and smallish) that I ended up eating the whole thing… nothing left for the husband, and I felt kind of guilty about that. haha.

On the left here are the two peppers… a bell pepper and a banana pepper. They’re not doing so hot. The guy thinks maybe we’re overwatering them… In the corner is the Japanese eggplant, which is doing pretty well! It’s grown a lot and has a lot of flowers on it, and one little eggplant!

The main problem with it (and the cucumber and zucchini) is that it seems to be watered more than once a day because it uses the water/it’s so hot out. The whole plant visibly wilts in the meantime… which I know is not a good sign.

Does anyone have any experience with these plant watering balls or other tank systems with outdoor plants? I know they’re supposed to work well with houseplants, but I think I’d need a huge one for these outdoor plants, with how hot the Mississippi summer is!

We also got 4 long planters from my mother-in-law, and planted green beans in them! They just sprouted a couple days ago, and look like they’re doing okay, as far as little tiny seedlings go. I hope they grow and produce a lot of beans! Mmm.

So I probably should’ve written sometime in the last couple weeks about this… but so much was going on! First, we went to South Carolina for a week, and since then we’ve been settling in and getting our newest family member used to the way things work here.

About a week before we went to SC, we went to the pet store to buy puppy things. We were planning on finding a dog while we were in SC, but instead adopted one the same day. Zora (previously named Belle) was there with the East Mississippi Animal Rescue and she captured our hearts! We went to lunch to think about whether to get her or to wait for one in SC, and decided on Zora.

This is Zora on her adoption day:

The girl who was fostering her told us she’d keep her until we came back from South Carolina, and get her spayed while we were gone, too. I couldn’t stop thinking about Zora through the whole trip!

When we got back, we went to pick her up. The poor girl had stitches from her spaying and fleas to boot! Not comfortable at all. The next day, we made a trip to the vet and got her stitches out, flea killer stuff, puppy shots, and all sorts of other good stuff. Zora was MUCH more comfy after that.

Zora quickly warmed up to the house and became more confident, and now she prances around the house with a pop in her step! She loves her chew toys and works hard for treats.

She loves tummy rubs and will play fetch when it pleases her to do so.

So this is what she’s been working on in a week and 2 days of training… we’ve been working on sit, down, stay, wait, roll over, shake, “crate”, go potty, and walking on a leash. Yesterday we added “spin around” but she doesn’t quite have that yet. Want to see how smart she is?

I told you I’d let you know what we did with the leftover chicken and veggies from our fajitas!

This was really just a thrown-together idea but it ended up tasting so delicious we’ll definitely repeat it.

Cook some spaghetti noodles until al dente.

Meanwhile, take the leftover chicken…

…and chop it up.

And go find your leftover veggies. Mine are onions, green bell peppers, and mushrooms that I cooked in a tiny bit of Worcestershire sauce, some soy sauce, and lots of lime juice. Forever. Because that’s how I like my onions and peppers. Sauteed to death.

By now your pasta is probably finished cooking. Drain it and return it to the pot.

Toss in a little olive oil (or sesame oil would be really great, but I didn’t have any). Throw in your vegetables and chicken and stir/toss until everything is heated through.

Add a bit of soy sauce, and more lime juice if you want. But at this stage the soy sauce is pretty important.

I also threw in some sliced black olives at the last minute, because I love them.

Dee-licious! You can’t really tell, but the noodles are coated in a delicious sauce made from the vegetable juices, the olive oil, soy sauce, and lime… fantastic! If you want, you can also pre-make a sauce by mixing soy sauce with a little water and sugar if you’d like, and stirring in corn starch before you drizzle it over your noodles. That’ll make it a little thicker. But this tasted delicious just as it was!

Goodness, I’m making myself hungry…

We made these fajitas when we still only had one pot and one pan, and the movers still hadn’t come with the rest of our goods.

I forgot to take pictures of the veggies cooking, but I’ll tell you about it. First, I cut up 2 onions and 2 green bell peppers, and sauteed them (along with sliced mushrooms) in batches in my little pan. It took a while, because I really like my peppers and onions cooked to death. I added a tiny bit of Worcestershire sauce, some soy sauce, and lots of lime juice while they cooked.

As each batch finished cooking, I put it into our pot over low heat to stay warm. Then I cooked the chicken, also with soy sauce and lime juice.

I warmed the flour tortillas over the steam from the chicken, for a few seconds on each side. Then, our fajitas were ready to assemble!

Just flour tortillas, the chicken, veggies, fat-free sour cream, cheddar cheese, and salsa!

Wrap it up, and enjoy!

These were really, really good.

And tomorrow I’ll tell you what delicious concoction I made from the leftover chicken and veggies! Stay tuned!

How easy can it get? Cut up some chicken and cook it in a pan, then throw it into one of those bagged Caesar salads. You know the ones… the lettuce is already cut and washed, and it includes the croutons and the dressing.

Of course, it’s much more economical to make your own salad, but if you’re cooking in a mostly empty house and your salad spinner and all of your colanders are in storage, this is a good option. You could also do this in a hotel room or anywhere really. A lot of grocery stores also have pre-cooked chicken (either chicken tenders or whole rotisserie chickens) that would be an alternative if you aren’t able to actually cook on a stovetop.

We also had corn on the cob on the side. Delicious!

We tried to keep up with the movers as they unwrapped each of our belongings from the copious paper, cardboard, and tape. We really did! But it’s hard to put everything away as it’s unpacked when we’re still not sure where everything goes!

So… some of it was somewhat organized-ish when the movers left, but our house was mostly enveloped in chaos.

I didn’t cook dinner. We totally ordered pizza, drank red wine, and watched Ice Age. Then we tried to put some things away, but ultimately passed out before much got done.

The dining room.

The kitchen. *deep breath* … keep in mind that every dish, glass, pot, pan, utensil, serving platter, EVERYTHING needs to be washed before we can use it. The packing materials aren’t exactly clean, and our things have been in storage for about two and a half weeks. Gross.

Living room:

Office / craft room:

Master bedroom:

Guest bedroom:

Keep in mind that this is the third time we’ve moved in less than a year! We’re getting to be quite the professionals at unpacking and setting up a household in a matter of days. This time, I’m left to do the dirty work alone since the guy is spinning around in California (actually today he’s not spinning… he’s coming home). Things are starting to look better, which is really good… we’ve only had our things since Monday afternoon/evening, and I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made since taking these photos. Yes, you’ll get to see it soon enough!