sincerely yours, dena

For my husband’s birthday this year, all he wanted was for me to make him a Cornhole court. So with help from a friend (a lot of help) we put together his very own bags court. I still have to finish the final step of painting the Patriots logo on the blue box and the Green Bay Packers logo on the green one. This game is super fun and is best played with a beer in your hand.

A few suggestions in construction:
- I used MDF instead of plywood on the top. It’s cheaper, smoother and precut at home improvement stores
- Triple sew the seams of the bags. A lot of pressure is put on the seams during the game. I found myself running upstairs with broken bags during the party fixing them
- If you can’t find corn (which I found at Lowe’s later) I used beans.

I got my cornhole plans from cornholecornhole
You can get free plans from cornhole-game.com

Both site give a history and rules of the game.

We have a lot of weekend guests… A LOT! I personally would rather sleep in a bed rather than an air mattress so I wouldn’t expect any less for my guests. I am on a constant cheap bed hunt. My favorite sources are yard sales and craigslist.com. This bed was a steal! I got the frame from a moving sale for $50 and I got the box spring and mattress for $40 from craigslist. The fun coastal sheets were a good buy from Renys.

I have been pining over the mudrooms in the Pottery Barn magazine for years. I finally have a mudroom of my own that can handle a large piece of furniture but I haven’t won the powerball yet to afford it.
During my yard sale travels this summer I’ve procured 2 wooden pegged coat racks for a $1 each. This along with 3 unfinished shelf hangers from A.C. Moore ($9) and scrap wood leftover from the construction I hacked together this pottery barn inspired mudroom coat shelf in a night. I have to say that I’m pretty damn proud of myself.

In my previous house (with no stairs) I clocked how many steps I took in a single day and it turned out that I walked on average 5 miles a day just in my daily activity. Now on top of that, I’m training for a marathon and my new house has two sets of stairs. So needless to say, I get enough exercise in a day, no need for unnecessary trips up and down stairs. To keep my house organized, I put baskets at the top and bottom of the stair cases and it’s expected that passersby’s grab anything within the basket and take it either up or down with them. It saves mucho time and mucho steps.

My family has started this tradition of running the WhistleStop Marathon & Half Marathonevery October. This year it’s my turn to join in. So in between my crafting adventures I’m throwing in a little half marathon training.

Here’s my training schedule.

This is a low impact and quick game that fulfills the “games” requirement at a shower but at the same time is fun and everyone can play. The basic gist is that you ask the groom 10 questions. Make a game card with the 10 questions and have every guest take a shot at what they believe the answers are. Then you read thru them out loud and have the bride give a shot at them. The guest with the most correct answers wins a door prize.

The best part of eating mussels is dipping the bread in the garlic sauce. Here’s our friend Julia’s recipe that’s so super yummie:

- 1 head of garlic (yes, the whole head)
- 1 small white onion chopped
- Maine Mussels (Maine is the best after all)
- Dry white wine
- 1/2 stick of butter

Simmer all the above in a covered sauce pan until the mussel shells open. Serve with a french baguette for dipping. Don’t eat any mussels that don’t naturally open up on their own!

My new favorite thing in card making is hand stitching with embroidery floss. My mom and I got really into it last Christmas break when we found some stencils at our fav craft store in up north Wisco. Since then, it’s definitely become more popular. I did a little web fishing and I found makeandtakes.com which had this super duper cutie tie pattern. It was fun and easy to make. So easy that I did it during a Friday night girlie wine night. Sorry, Doug for spilling wine on yours….

Click here to download the pattern

When we go to the beach we always write the date and the beach name in the sand and take a picture. That way when it comes time to scrapbook we can introduce the pages within the picture. It’s especially fun when it’s my nephew Eric’s first time on the beach.

I’ve got a lot of windows on the front of my new house. I heart window boxes full of flowers but it’s going to be an investment when I do so I want to make sure I do some investigative work first. A few weekends ago we were taking a walk around Charlestown, MA and I started snapping photos of all my favorite windows. I got tons of great ideas incorporating real, dried and plastic flowers. My favorite idea is putting a starfish seashell in the window.