Thursday, May 30, 2013

Burlap Dry Erase Calendar

Happy Summer! 

I don't know about your family, but even though my house is always busy, it seems to get about 10 times as bad in the summertime.

I made a dry erase calendar over the winter out of an old poster sized frame. It was a plexiglass frame instead of regular glass, and it seemed to work for a few months. 

Turns out, DO NOT use plexiglass for a dry erase board. 

Over time the writing etched itself into the plexi and now it's in the trash....


So, I took myself down to Hobby Lobby and looked around their Clearance section. I found an ugly print in a large frame and took it home to tear it apart. It was originally priced $79.99, but I got it for $28.00 (score!).

I also bought a roll of burlap and drew out a calendar grid on the burlap itself. I bought the burlap at Hobby Lobby, but my husband informed me that I should have bought it at Lowes. He said that they have huge rolls that were much cheaper than the $12.99 that I paid. I may be checking that out in the (near) future.

Before closing the burlap up inside the frame, I put some white scrapbook paper between the burlap and the back on the frame.

When I was done I put it all together and batted my eyelashes until my hubby hung it on the wall for me. 


I filled in all of the dates for the month of June by writing on the outside of the glass, and now I'm ready to fill it up with a months worth of activities. :)
 


Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Eureka Springs Vacation Recap Part 2

As I was saying in my previous post, my husband and I took a quick trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas last weekend.. and we had an amazing time! 

In my previous post, I left off with our visit to the Blue Spring. 

After the Spring we went back to the room to decide where to eat. Eureka Springs has no shortage of food options at all. I had pinned a blog post on Pinterest to give me a jumping off point, but everything sounded amazing.

We settled for a German restaurant, probably because of all the time my hubby spent in Germany. So, we took the trip across town to the Bavarian Inn. I had the wiener schnitzel and my husband had the Jager Schnitzel. The restaurant itself was very nice and quiet. The first thing I noticed was the "Please no cell phones" sign when I walked in the door.  My husband really enjoyed his meal. I thought mine was good, but I will also say by the time I was in the middle of a full blown sinus infection, and I could taste nothing. That being said, I feel like I probably missed out on a lot of that experience. It was still a delicious dinner, I would recommend trying it out!

When we got done with dinner we took a trip down to Beaver Lake. On our way to the lake we noticed a sign for the Dinosaur Park. The park itself is shut down, but the dinosaur statues are still standing. Here is the giant spider that hangs out at the entrance! I did some looking around online and the Dinosaur Park was once a big tourist attraction, but it closed own after a fire a few years ago. While driving the rest of the way to the lake we saw a ton of dinosaur statues hidden amongst the trees. I wish I had gotten a few more pictures!



Anyway, we continued our way down to Beaver Lake and watched the sunset. It was a pretty chilly night, but still a beautiful view.






After the sun set, we drove down the road a little ways to the dam. There is a little overlook area out there and we weren't the only ones that thought to go take pictures. I did however, get a few. 





That was the end of our first night, we ran back to the hotel room and crashed. All of the excitement was pretty exhausting!


When we got up Sunday morning we decided to grab some breakfast before heading downtown for more sightseeing. We went down to Myrtie Mae's which is apparently a favorite of the locals. There was nothing fancy about our eggs and hash browns, but let me tell you it was DELICIOUS. I would definitely stop in there again!

After breakfast we drove downtown to sight see some more. 
Since it was only about 8:30 AM, it was still very quiet downtown, and we had most of the streets to ourselves!

We paid for parking, which was $5 for 4 hours. I don't think it was a terrible deal. There is free parking downtown, but it is quite a walk to the local businesses. This parking lot is right in the middle of it al.

Here is a friendly reminder to pay for your parking fees!


And here are some of the random shots I took downtown. There are a ton of fun statues around town.



We stopped in at Basin park and took a quick picture. 

Mixing modern with old?



Love this sign. It made my day.
















So, despite the fact that I was battling a sinus infection the entire time, all in all we had an amazing trip. Eureka Springs is a great place to just get away from all the busy and crazy and just take a little bit of time to relax. We hope to make it back out there again someday! 

I have to say that my favorite thing thing to do in Eureka is just wander around downtown. Have you ever been to there? What was your favorite thing about the town?