Baby Hicks!

Finally I can post these sweet pictures! I was honored to help the Hicks' share their exciting news to their family and friends by having a "secret" photo shoot. What an exciting time for them and I am already SO excited to meet baby hicks! 

Hope you enjoyed these pictures as much as I did while taking them! Thanks again for letting me help you share your exciting news!

Homemade Laundry Soap

I have been wanting to make some homemade laundry detergent for a while now. I got a recipe from my friend - Deanna - and she loved it. I had to wait for my detergent to run out and it finally happened! I don't think I have ever been so excited to run out of detergent before. 

My mom [really mother-in-law, but we don't do 'in-laws' :)] is in town for thanksgiving and was going to make some with me and we decided to split the cost and just half the detergent since it was the first batch for both of us.. Just to make sure we like it.

Here is the recipe. 

1 - 4lb 12oz box of Borax

1 - 4lb. Box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

1- 3lb. 7oz. Box of Arm & Hammer super washing soda

1 - 3lb. Container of Oxy Clean

4 bars Fels Naptha bars [grated]

2 [large] containers of Downy Unstopables - choose the scent you'd like. 

Mix all the ingredients together in a 5 gallon bucket and you're ready for your first load! I put mine in a glass jar and added a homemade label. It is easy to split to share or to store for later. 

Use 1-2 Tablespoons full [depending on the size] on each load.

My first load using the laundry soap is in the dryer and I already know I am a huge fan.  It smells so good. I can't wait to fold my towels. [that may be the first time in the History of ever that anyone said that]. 

Enjoy my friends and be sure to thank Deanna for sharing it first. 

Lauren's Bridal Portraits

Let me introduce you to my friend Lauren. She is beautiful. One of the most genuine people i know with a heart bigger than you can dream. I was blessed to get to help share her story. 

Here are a few of our favorite shots. 

we only had about 20 minutes of great lighting because the sun was setting ... fast. but we worked quick and got some great shots.

new found love

What do you get when you try to start a blog at one of the busiest times of the year for you? a blog that waits for a year between posts. sorry about that, y'all. But the plus side to that is.... I have a lot to fill you in on :) 

One thing you should know by now - I like to do a little bit of everything. seriously. David tried to limit me to just 3 hobbies and I just couldn't choose, so I decided to do the only rational thing when you already have too many hobbies, I added another hobby to my list. This time it was photography! 

I have always wanted to be good a photography or get in to it, but never really spent time studying it or learning about it, let alone really trying it. I wasn't really trying to get in to it this time... it kind of just fell into my lap. you see... my friend Lauren was getting married within a month and they weren't going to get engagement pictures taken. Of course, I wasn't going to let that happen [everyone deserves to have pictures of them with their other half and have a chance to share their love story]. David and I received a nice camera for our college graduation present from his parents and I volunteered our time to go and take some pictures of this beautiful couple. I spent some time studying about my camera, the lighting, and found a great place for the couple that seemed to be perfect for them. We did our first engagement photo shoot for about an hour and had a blast.

Lauren and Alassane are seriously the two most genuine people that I know and they make the most beautiful couple. Their love was evident in just the little time we interacted with the two of them and I am so excited to see how God uses them in their marriage to one another.  Here are a few photos from the engagement shoot. 

Needless to say, I feel in love with helping others tell their story. I am enjoying doing more photo shoots and learning more about my camera.

add photography to the list -- or maybe it should be called 'story telling.'

my cup runneth over.

There are many things that I enjoy in life, but one that that I absolutely love is making our house a home with the love of my life. We bought our first house in March of 2012 and have had a lot of fun making it our own. We have AMAZING friends and family who used part of their spring break to help us get the house ready to move in... even though it meant deep cleaning, taking the popcorn off ALL the ceilings in the house, painting the walls and kitchen cabinets, and deep cleaning some more.

Did I mention how awesome our friends and family are? I mean seriously. My friend Bekah painted my favorite wall in our house. check it out for yourself. 

 

Bekah. you are cool.

 

Bekah. you made our wall cool. 

David and I have enjoyed getting our house ready to move in and couldn't wait to move out of our one bedroom apartment to our new [2 bedroom] house! 

Not long after we moved into our house, we added a sweet puppy to our family! After much discussion we decided on the best name you could give to a puppy in a Bond family. Agent. Agent Bond. Let me just tell you, this dog is precious and a perfect puppy for us!

he has brought so many smiles, laughs, and lots of love to our family.

 

One of my favorite things was being able to create new things for our house with David. Here is one of my favorite ones that we did together...

 Now it hangs in our sunroom [the one with the chevron wall].

This painting will always be so special and have so much meaning to me. Not only because it's one of our favorite verses, but because of the memory we made when creating it! 

One thing that I have always wanted is a wall map. a map of the world that takes up the whole wall. Turns out... D did too! so we made it happen. I love, love, love it! 

It's perfect. 

We've spent a lot of time decorating... and then re-decorating... and then re-decorating again. Its a big decision to figure out where you want things. It's a even bigger decision to decide what to hang on the walls... which is why it has taken us until this past weekend to get things on the wall. I am pretty excited about it though. Definitely worth the wait. 

 

 It feels a little more like home each day. 

love seeing this canvas each morning. I am so in love with that man.

[sorry, I can't help it]

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I absolutely love making our first house our home with my husband. I mean, this is our first house. one that we will remember for the rest of our lives. As much as I love making our house a home with David, its not about the house, paint, projects, maps, and decorations. It's so much more than that. I have gotten to spend so much quality time with D because of all of the projects and we have made so many memories creating them together. David and I love to do things together and we have found that, even though we can both do it on our own and it would be fine, we are so much better together and it puts a lot more meaning behind things when there is a story behind it. So yes, I love our new house and all of the things inside, but take them all away and my heart would still be full. 

the best gift

David, my husband, has been helping me a lot lately with new house projects... I love staying busy, making things, and spending time with D so my bucket is pretty full. Last Saturday he gave me the best gift -- 3 hours of his time to do anything ... without complaining! This may sound like a lame gift to some, but it was perfect for me!

You see, I can't sit still. I have tried, but it drives me crazy. David enjoys his Saturdays and his days off and like anyone else can use those days for rest, but me -- I have to be doing something! Even when I am watching a movie I have to be doing a craft, grading papers, or making lists of some sort. I am nonstop, so D giving me 3 hours of his time on his day off was a perfect gift!

I had to think really hard about what I wanted to spend those three hours on, but i finally decided to make a craft that we had been talking about for a while. A shape of Oklahoma - our state - out of pallets!

We found a good picture of the state of Oklahoma, figured out the size that we wanted it to be on our wall, found the ratio to make it mostly accurate , and began measuring and cutting the wood. This project took about 2 hours from start to finish and the final product looks better than we thought... I'll let you decide what you think about it.

  

The finished size is 4ftx17in. We thought about sanding and staining the wood, but decided to leave the original raw look. I love it. Our next pallet creation will either be the shape of Africa... or a head board. I still have an hour of D's time left :) 

Shaped states and countries are now for sale on my etsy page.

and so it begins...

I am going to give this blogging thing a try. I am pretty excited about it actually. I have always been a fan of blogs, but a little intimidated by the thought of actually starting one... until now :)

I suppose I should start off with telling you a little bit about me! I'm Bethany... a first grade teacher, a youth pastors wife, a trying entrepreneur, and lover of life. I have been married to the most patient, loving, and good looking man in the world and I am blessed to be called his wife! We just bought our first house in April 2012 and we have a new puppy named Agent!  

I hope to fill this blog with posts of our new house projects, crafts, decorations, and just life in general. I love to make anything and everything and have a little bit of ADD when it comes to new projects so... I apologize in advance.

I hope you enjoy it! 

Check out my etsy page here -  Tied With Twine