new room & some color inspiration

bottom line: i have fallen in love with these colors and i'm moving into a new apartment!!

well i will have lots of opportunities to be creative when decorating my new room in my new place.  and right now i have purchased several vintage accessories for my room but my main focus is creating the bed.  i have bought a vintage wooden toolbox for the foot board and a window with shutters for the head board.  i have my colors but my dilemma is which color to paint what.

i'm thinking i will leave the window white, paint the shutters coral (like shown below) and paint the toolbox the pastel blue.  my bedding is yellow green with a vine pattern.  i've already started stripping the paint off of the shutters and it's not as easy as i thought it would be!!!  but in the end i think my room will turn out great!  :)

♥macknezie

three is a crowd =)

click on image to enlarge and all images are mine :)

if you can't tell, i have an owl collection.

i have scoured all of the local peddler's malls, antique and thrift stores to find more owls to add to my growing collection.  

the truth of the matter is, the "search and find" is the best part of collecting.  yes i love looking at owls but i also love hunting them! it all starts when i walk in the doors of a store that contains many old things that fills my nose with that unique smell of "antique."  it's like a large "I Spy" book.  sometimes i leave a store with bags of owl collectibles and other times i leave empty-handed.  but hey, i know that i have given the store a valid search.  i go into every booth unless the booth is filled with leather chaps, britney spears caricatures, food, or booths which have seriously been abused and are so empty that i can't see how the owner pays the rent on the space.   i'm sort of obsessive when i collect, so it may not be for everyone but if you haven't tried collecting anything, i would give it a try!! but i just love the hunt and the feeling of success when you find a really cute something that would fit with everything else in your collection with its own unique flair.  

recently this has been how i have spent my free time, but lack of money has me pulling the reigns on what shops to go into for fear of spending too much on something that i just HAVE to have.   :)

so until the next post on my owl finds, i bid you good luck with your own collection!!!

♥ mackenzie

the diy fabric flower project

well it's diy project time.  i need to spruce up some shoes for a friends wedding.  here are the shoes in question:

click on picture to enlarge

as you can tell they are very simple but hey they were $15.00 and i could use them as an excuse to get creative, so here i am.  i'm thinking about making some diy fabric flowers to either place on the first strap towards the sole of the shoe or the outside area of the heel strap.  i can't really decide which but i might be able to tell once i see it.  here are some links to some other bloggers who have posted pictures and tutorials on some different kinds of diy fabric flowers.

okay so this one doesn't have a link but i like the looks of these, this collage came from this blog.

this flower is made from cut circles stitched together, i found this here.

 unfortunately the best tutorials wouldn't allow me to use their pictures so check out these links!!! the first (which i will probably use) can be found here. And the second can be found at this.  i hope my $15.00 shoes will turn out to look like $30.00 shoes!! haha
i will post pictures soon!!!

♥mackenzie

stress

the thing about stress is that everyone has it.  some handle their stress in different ways, but for me i don't really deal with it.  in my world stress is a book that sits on a shelf, containing every imaginable task in my life and when i read the table of contents i get so overwhelmed realizing that the book never ends.  cheesy analogy but its my blog and i can say whatever i like.   :)

anyways, whenever i get overwhelmed, i try to look at one task at a time and then slowly allow myself to focus on that one event.  however this usually ends in my mind wandering from that chapter to the rest of the novel again. so then i turn to scripture where Jesus, all-knowing, speaks:

 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?"

"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own."

-Matthew 6:25, 27, and 34

i am mainly posting this for myself but if you are ever feeling stressed, just remember these words.   they're good advice! if you get caught up too much in the stress of your tasks you won't be really taking in life when worrying doesn't gain you anything.

♥mackenzie

the art of bokeh

in photography "bokeh" is the aesthetic quality of the blur.  this technique is used to make the subject stand out. 


i recently found a d.i.y. bokeh made out of construction paper on pinterest.  as a photographer i found this project along with the newly found technique very intriguing.  i have always seen this used in modern photography but i have never understood how to create the effect.  i have learned that the right lens does a lot because the more aperture blades the better but i am still going to try this on my nikon standard lenses.

as you can tell i'm a beginner.  i often like to fool around with my camera until i get the desired effect, however i will be doing further research on this technique. maybe i will post some of my own trials here soon!!! :)

♥mackenzie