Thrifty Thurday

Hey there! Just thought I'd post a quick thrifty thursday. I've been super busy in my shop this week and didnt have much time to plan my out fit. I thought I'd post this cute skirt I found a while back. I'm thinking of color blocking it with a hot pink top. I just love black and white, since it's considered a neutral you can wear just about any color with it. My favorite part about this skirt besides the fact that its houndstooth (one of my favorite patterns) its got this beautiful lace detailing. Let me know if you have any other ideas on what I might pair this skirt with. :)

♥ Raven

Happy Tuesday!

So How was everyone's holiday? Did you enjoy your time soaking up the sun and eating waaay too much like I did? :P  Albert BBQ'd every day this weekend complete with fresh veggie sides and cocktails. I feel so blessed to have a BBQ chef in the making as my husband! We kinda just hung around the rest of the weekend, went to a parade and walked around at the town craft fair. I'd say a pretty great weekend! My oldest Jordan wanted to have s'mores so we lit a campfire and hungout there just about every night. We had so much fun just camping out in the back yard.




Here's the low-down on the beer we tried this weekend: Moose drool was awesome, a little dark for me but still smooth. Lucky buddha was a lighter smoother beer. I would buy it again. Fox Barrel was fair. If you like a sweeter/fruitier beer, you'll probably like this one. It's made from 100% pear juice. the Bootlegger was a bit too stout for my taste. It's more for those who prefer the darkest of dark beer. That was the only ones I personally tried. I'll try to get the husband to leave his opinion on the rest. :)



Hey there! Just wanted to let everyone know I have moved all my wooden pendant jewelry to it's own etsy shop. I feel like certain things in my other shop were clashing so I figured I'd change things up a bit. You can find all the wooden jewelry here! http://www.etsy.com/shop/campfirecreations01?ref=si_shop

DIY Ombre shorts

Hi just thought I'd share a little DIY on how to make your own ombre shorts.

 Here's what you need:

1 pair of old jeans cuttoff to your liking or old pair of shorts

1 large bottle of pure bleach (i just used the $1 stuff from the store)

a large bowl that you can throw away when your done

gloves to protect your skin from the bleach

hankercheif or painters mask to cover your nose and mouth if you are sensitve to the fumes of bleach.

 Make sure you do this project outside! Bleach is extremely strong and wear a protective mask such as a painters mask if you have sensitive lungs. Bleach can cause chemical burns! Please be careful!

That's it! Now just pour enough bleach in the bottom of your bowl to cover the bottom of your shorts, about 1/3 of the bowl or so. Now dip the bottom 1/3 or so of your shorts evenly into the bleach and lie them against the side of the bowl so that they will stay put for about 2 hours. Check every 30 minutes or so to make sure they are bleaching in an even pattern, move them around a little if you need to. Once you get the bright white you want, very carefully remove them from the bowl and wash them out outside first if you can with a waterhose or something. After you get most of the bleach out, wash them by themselves in your washing machine on regular cycle.

old jeans

DIY Friday!

Good Morning Y'all! How is everyone today? I've been working on a new project using shippping pallets and I thought I'd share the details. I've been trying to find a unique headboard for the bedroom, but didnt feel like shelling out big bucks for one in the store so I decided to make my own. First I measured out a pallet I got from my husbands business to match the same width as the bed. Next I washed it down and stained it with a dark stain. I only stained the very front of the boards, I wanted to mix the dark wood with the light. I let that sit for a few days outside because lets face it no one wants to sleep with their head in paint fumes right :)  So anyways.. a couple days later I brought it in and placed it behind the bed. I decided to go ahead and put it in it's spot before I put my finishing touches on it.

I wanted to make it personal and I wanted it to reflect our personalities. I purchased a few colors of acrylic paint for about 1.00 each in a few different colors. I also had some stencils which I used  for some of the lettering. I made my own sponge stamp from a peice of shipping sytrofoam I had lying around. This worked great and I'm already thinking of how else I can use these stamps.



My styrofoam stamp



headboard before I began painting it




I poured my paint onto foil and used it like a stamp pad. One thing I found out... less is more with the paint if you put it on too thick it will run. I recommend pressing it in the paint and then stamping the side of the foil to get off some of the excess paint.




I wanted to do a few triangle patterns along the top and bottom of the headboard.




After I finished the triangle patterns I picked out a few different colors of the acrylic paints and used the stencils along with some hand painting to do some lettering.





So this is it! I'm pretty freakin excited about the end result. The colors came out great and it really adds some personality to the room.





If anyone tries their own pallet headboard, I'd love to see their results! :)

Good morning! How was everyone's weekend? I had a great weekend and Mother's day. The mister and the kiddos spoiled me all day, and we had a great time visiting with the fam. I will admit I'm having a hard time getting going this AM, I think I'll put on some Ozzy and do a short workout to get my heart pumping! After all the calories I ate yesterday I can afford to burn a few...okay alot :)

Saturday we went thrifting and I scored a new owl to add to my collection, he's huge and really heavy! I'm not sure I really like the paint on him though, I'll probably end up painting him some other color to go with my decor. Either way he's a cutie!

And my most favorite find of all... 10 new vinyls including this Emmylou in perfect condition.  got them 5 for $1! what a steal!

Here are a couple of my latest creations. All of the pendants are hand cut, sanded and painted by me. Stop by the shop and check them all out http://www.etsy.com/shop/ravensnesttradingco?ref=si_shop

Building a home yourself

I have noticed so many of people these days looking for a more sustainable way of life. So many of us were affected by the economy fall. Were all looking to save money, but still be happy. I thought I might share the story behind my house in hopes to inspire some of my readers to embark on their own adventure of building their own home. I sort of inherited the land that I have now. I haven't always lived here, in fact while my husband was in the Army, we lived all over the place. Then about 7 yrs ago my mom gave us about 2acres of her land, and we decided to build a house ourselves. Building yourself, allows you to start small and build on as you can afford it. We started out with a 16ft x 24ft house. It was very small, but only took us about 6 months to get it completed . We live out in the country so there are not any building regulations. For those of you considering building in the city, be sure to check your build codes before you begin! We used a simple pier and beam foundation which is a pretty cheap way to go and much easier than pouring a cement slab foundation. I would be happy to go more into detail about how to use this process for you foundation if you have any questions. We ended up with a two bedroom one bath home. Being that it is so small we are able to keep it heated and cooled easier and were able to spend more on better windows since we used less money on lumber. That was about 5 yrs ago. Since then we have added on one more small bedroom of about 10x8 and are now adding on another room of about 12x14, which will allow us to open up our living room and give our kiddos a bigger bedroom. The greatest part about all of it, NO RENT, no payments of any kind. We don't have a bank or landlord taking half our paychecks. It's such a great feeling of freedom. Actually the best part for me is now that we dont have to pay rent or a mortgage, I'm able to work from home at my own pace and spend everyday with my kids.  We are always looking for new ways to live off our land more. We have a garden full of veggies and I think I might even do some canning this year. We also have a couple ducks and 6 chickens that provide us with eggs.
The point here is anyone can do it. It takes some hard work at times, but the freedom of being out from under so many bills is worth every bit. You can find many things for your house construction for free. Start asking around, many people have windows or doors even sometimes decent lumber just lying around that they would be more than happy to give you. Another great way to find free lumber is shipping pallets. I will be doing an entire post on how we are reusing the lumber from the pallets to construct this new addition to our house. The best way to find them is to ask large manufacturing companies in your area. Most places just break them down and throw them away. you can find brand new lumber on most of them including 2x4s.
I think the only things we laid down a large ab=mount of money for was the septic system, which we paid for out of tax return. We did our homework and shopped around for the construction of it though. We got several different bids from different people before we chose one. In the long run we only spent $3500 for the whole thing including labor, where as some companies wanted as much as $6000 for the same exact work.
 I will tell you a little secret on how you can make due until you can afford you septic system, look into a thing called the incinolet. It's an electric toilet, I know it sounds crazy, but If you live in an area where it may take you several years to get a septic system done you may want to look into this alternative, we had one for two years before we got out septic put it, and never had any problems with it. Here is a link to their website: http://incinolet.com/    The company is great and they will help you figure out exactly the model you need.

 If anyone has any questions at all on how we have built our home I would be happy to answer them and help you on your journey any way I can :)

Pieces of Home:

 Just a couple of pics of our living room, small, but it's home....

On another note, everything you see in these pics was either free, something someone was going to throw out, or it was thrifted, including the couch which I picked up for $50 at a thrift store! It has some pretty throw pillows that go with it, but for some reason throw pillows annoy me....  In fact I have furnished pretty much our entire house this way. I should really do a post on how to decorate your home with thrift store finds, maybe even make it a weekly thing, hmmm......

Good Monday Everyone! How was everyone's weekend? I had a pretty good one. Saturday we began the foundation to the new addition to our little home. It was so exiting seeing something that started out as an idea in my head actually come to life. I love knowing that this addition will benifit all of us, and give us all more room to grow. We do all our construction ourselves, which save us tons of money, and allows us to take our time and build whenever we have the extra money to. I grew up as a carpenters daughter. I spent just as much time behind a scroll saw as I did an oven. I am so thankful for the things I learned from my dad. He was an incredibly creative, artistic person. He did not use canvas and paint to express his artist side but rather, any old peice of wood he could find. He could see past the old dirty lumber lying in a stack, and could transform it into and amazing peice of art. On one of our many fishing trips, he came accross some old oak lumber that had washed up on the shore. He took it home, sanded it down, made some table legs from cedar, and created a new dining room table. My mom still has it in her house, it so beautiful.
 For the longest time, I have been doing a little soul searching myself. We lost my dad almost 12 years ago to cancer, and that left a giant hole in my soul, I think. I have a great life and a wonderful husband and kids, but I still feel like something in my life is missing. Once I opened my etsy shop a few years ago, I really started searching for what it was in life I really loved doing. It has always been hard for me to stick with one thing. I will start creating something, get half way through it and end up hating it. I went through this cycle for about a year or so. I tried everything from sewing to selling vintage, but nothing felt right. I had always thought about selling jewelry, but it has been done so much and its so hard to stand out from the rest. One day I got this crazy idea to use natural material in my work, and it paid off, I was actually happy with the results! I'm now fine tuning my ideas and have began selling my work in my shop. I finally feel like I am doing what I was meant to do, and I feel so at ease when I'm working with wood, I guess it's just in the genes :) I guess that goes back to what I was saying about being so thankful I got to learn so much of my dad's trade. Most women never get such a chance, and I hope my work would make him proud if he were here to see it.

hi there! I hope everyone is having a great week so far! Ive been working on tons of new things for my shop, and i've been soooo busy, I havent been keeping up with my blog the way I wish I could. Here's a look at what I've been working on and there are many more like it to come :)

thrifty thursday!

Hi everyone! I've decided to start something new here at the nest. I'm going to post pics of something I bought via the thrift store for my thursday post. I just love thrifting, not only is is good for my budget, but I find all kinds of very unique things for my home and my wardrobe! I'm kicking it off with a dress I found for $2 and a cute shirt that I love to wear when it's a litlle chilly out.