pineapples and sunshine

if i wasn't so freakin lazy, i would find a before picture of our front porch. instead i will explain that it was white with "red bricks" painted on it and it looked nice when i first moved in and it still looked nice till a few years ago when we had to have our retaining wall fixed, i mean rebuilt. we had the guy also fix some of the front porch and he did an awful job- cosmetically. i mean, the concrete wasn't smoothed down so it would stick out like a sore thumb and since he didn't know how to make it look like "red bricks" the patchwork stuck out like a sore thumb too. going on the advice of my female parental and husband, i went and painted it grey. i thought light grey would look better than dark grey so this is what i did sunday evening.

i like that its all one color but i don't like the color. i should of gone with my gut instinct. i can see the outcome in my head and this is exactly what i thought the grey would look like though not as blue. it demands too much attention and i want it to blend with the house. i think black would look cool but i'm going to go with white. why not just keep it since we want to move? because i still live here and have to look at it everyday.

my kitchen swap partner got her goodies the other day and left me the best comment. she loved my goodies and would of given me 10 hearts out of 5 if she could. she said this was her best swap ever! i aim to please. this is what i sent out to her. she loves red + gingham. the apron is a plain kitchen aid apron- very heavy. i took out the strings and added red gingham ribbon. got her some baking tools that she requested, since shes a baker and cooker i figured she probably already had a lot of cooking utensils, and i made her recipe cards that was stamped with "from the kitchen of TINA", and i covered a photo album with red gingham fabric and stickered recipes on there. i just hope they stay on. i also added some spices that i didn't think a lot of people used on a daily basis, still bummed about the savory salts that i posted about before.

and this is what i sent out for the first name swap. she has the prettiest name and nickname. i hope she likes what i sent her. i had a lot of ideas but had to take in consideration the weight issue since i was shipping it over seas to france. ooo lala theres a small tote bag with her name on it, i wish now that i had stitched her name instead of doing an iron on, a scrapbook with embellishments so she can document her vacation. she loves the sea + ocean so i picked this out because of the colors and if she never had scrapbooked this is so simple that she will be able too. i also made her a bracelet with her name on it.


again, i think i will take a short break from swapping. they get to be expensive plus i have one for september. she lives in singapore and this will give me some time to find the goodies with no other pressures.