We Are the Snuffle-up-a-gus' three

I seems as though we've been sick forever! But actually it's only been exactly seven days. Which is quite enough for me, I'm ready to feel healthy again.

I don't know about you but when I'm sick I want soup! I don't just want it, I crave, NO I NEED soup!

And when I say soup I don't mean some Campbell's chicken noodle. I want some homemade soup, preferably in the veggie variety.

So this afternoon i set out to make this very yummy, considerably quick Curried Cream of Leek soup.

It's a spicy one, but that only help to clear out my sinuses and soothe my scratchy throat. Maybe you should try next time you feel your tonsils a tickling! 

Curried Cream of Leek

1 Large leek

4T Butter

1/4 onion or dried onion flakes

2T flour

2 Cups vegetable of chicken broth

1/3 C Cream

2 T Golden Curry Sauce mix

2t Sriracha Sauce

2t Cayenne pepper

Sat & pepper to taste

Only use white and light green parts of your leek. Slice in half lengthwise and then chop into small sections.

Sautee leeks and onions in two T butter until translucent. Stir frequently.

Add flour and mix together. Add remaining butter, stir until melted.

Add broth, stir. Add curry and stir until curry is dissolved.

Add The remaining ingredients and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Enjoy.

Do I need to spell it out for you?

SCRABBLE!

                                     GIANT scrabble tiles are now available at T&F! 

I just wanted to make that little update. I've been diligently working on these for a good bit of today and have neglected to get ready 

for our church picnic....I have a clothes pin holding my hair back....I'm going to go fix that.

Happy Saturday.

Hi, I'm Holly and I Have a Candle Addiction.

So here's my issue, and tell me if I'm alone in this.....

I love for my house to smell good, which is hard sometimes; I live with all boys. Even the animals are boys, but even though I am way out-numbered in my own home I feel like it should not exude that weird corn-chippy smell that boys seem to carry with them. (Disclaimer: my husband does not smell rank, don't get me wrong, however his shoes and p.t. gear does and that's fine. I just don't like those smells to over power my house.) 

So I do my best to clean regularly, keep the stinky things washed and all but I really just like there to be a pleasant, festive smell on the breeze and it really makes me feel good to have some candles burning in the house. BUT, since I am such a sucker for candles AND I'm a little bit of a bargain hunter it kills me when there is an inch left in the candle jar that won't burn due to a lack of wick. That seriously wrecks my moment, it usually means that I get kind of smug toward all candles and I say something like "curse you bath & body works, see if I buy any more of your delicious smelling candles when you bombard my email inbox with your 2 for 20$ coupons!" But don't you know the next time I'm at the store I'm buying another candle....And so goes my vicious candle love/hate relationship. 

Weeeeeeeeeell, I have come up with a brilliant solution and it is seriously so obvious that I can't believe it just hit me. I'm so sure someone has probably come up with the same idea and just forgot to tell me.....or maybe the candle companies had them silenced...whichever you choose to believe. 

Here's how it works,

you just need all your fabulous smelling candles that won't burn anymore but have some wax life left in them, you probably want to use the ones that smell similar. For instance when I took the pictures for this DIY the candle I used were,

Vanilla cinnamon brulee

French vanilla

Coffee

Hazelnut cream

Vanillla cream

Spiced cider

So I had this like fall foody and drink thing going on.

You will need to put a few or one of the glass candle holders in a sauce pan or skillet at a time, pour a little water in the skillet (enough to come up past the wax remaining in the candle holder).

Boil the water, the wax will melt.

choose which jar you will pour the wax into. I chose one of my candles that had burned out and that meant I didn't even have to melt down the wax for that one.

Pour the melted wax into your chose candle jar. If you pour them one at a time and wait for the previous layer to cool you get a neat little layer candle. You can help the cooling process along by blowing gently on the wax, that will cool the surface and you can then pour on your next layer. 

When you have added as many layers as you want you are done!

 To use this little wick-less candle use a candle warmer to release the scent into the air. If you don't have a candle warmer you can totally use the warmer plate on your coffeepot, works just as well :)

Eye See.

A little project Eye have been working on..

Okay that was bad, but bear with me...

I wanted to make a sign that was a little different than the usual. And just like these others this will be added as a customizable sign over at my Etsy shop within the hour.

I wanted to make something a little unique and fun and I think this may have been just what my gallery wall needed.

The sign reads:

Tompkins <3

Est: July 30 2011

Staf. VA.

For anyone who can't read the sign due to the font size or the funky slant and filter of the camera (these are silly little interesting things I do to distract from the bad picture quality, however it probably doesn't help).

So look for this over at Type&Form, also exciting upcoming news regarding T&F. 

Stay tuned.

Autumn Welcome

We are welcoming Fall with our porch decorations!

Inspired Accessorizing

                                               

     I would say that I strive for our living room to be a mix between modern urban utilitarianism and vintage rustic prairie. Wether we are actually achieving that vibe is      subject but you should know that was the initial intent.

Our living areais mostly furnished, really what we are missing are the strategically styled pieces and accessories that will make the room feel complete. So, once again like our dining room inspiration board I have created a visual shopping list of accents that I think will bring personality to our living area.

Today I was excited to find mounted deer antlers! Using the cow skull as inspiration I 
found some silver spray paint and went to town. I think they turned out pretty spectacular, it cost me 20$ for some jazzy antlers wich is about 150$ less than the cow skull, so uh, yeah I'm happy :)

The Most Important Things...

My Dining Room

  My dining room inspiration board.

My Dining Room by holly-claire-tompkins on Polyvore

Am I alone here or does anyone else get shoppers adrenaline? 
I'm so serious, I can have so many ideas about the items that I need to buy but as soon as I step foot in those stores, see those sale signs and smell that "new" smell I'm lost in a daze of pretty, shiny, sparkly and funky.

                    My adrenaline kicks in and I start running from shelves to racks and I end up with a cart full of items I never had intended to acquire and I have very little recollection of it.....and this is how most of my "stuff" shopping trips can turn out if I'm not careful so I've devised this lovely little inspiration board to help me reign in my shopping craze.

              I made my board on Polyvore which is kind of cool because on the Polyvore site I can see where all of the items come from, however this does not mean that I will buy any of these items specifically. Most of these items are for inspiration alone, and cost more than I would spend on the entire room makeover put together. I guess you could say that I have wine taste on a beer budget....a very cheep beer budget......like "dollar beer night" budget.

All joking aside though, I think I can make this work.
I already have a few of these items on hand...
The whole room design is based on the china in the lower right hand corner, Alex's Grandmother gave it to me and I absolutely love it! It totally gave me a good excuse to use pink in our house!!
The chairs in the upper right hand corner are extremely similar to the dining set we have. I'm in the process of painting our dining set black ( I'll have to let you know how that goes in another post) and reupholstering the chair cushions grey with silver nailhead trim.
We already own a square version of the black mirror pictured, And we have a campaign dresser that will only need a coat of white paint. 
Hopefully I'll have some good updates soon on how our room makeover is coming along.

The Big Three

The boy is growing as we speak!!!

Here is your long awaited and a week belated three month update!

Enjoy these lovely supplemental photos.

Green Tomatoes

I think I may have mentioned before thatI have an absolutely BLACK thumb, as in I cannot keep any plant alive......except that does not apply to tomatoes apparently.

Back in the spring I bought four tiny little tomato sprouts at Walmart, in hopes that I may be able to grow some nice plants. My tomato plants produced one tomato super early in the spring and then NOTHING all late spring/summer and I was pretty sure I had killed all but one of the plants.

WEEELL, little did I know that as we were moving into our new home my tomato plants had decided that they would grow out-of-control!

Alex and i went over to the old house on Friday to dig up my tomato "plant".....which while I wasn't looking turned into three tomato "plants" with about a thousand green tomatoes on them. 

Now, it has gotten into arctic temperatures here in KS and it's already frosted, so I decided to go ahead and pick all these sweet little green tomatoes and take advantage of everything they have to offer.

I plan to introduce the husband to fried green tomatoes later this week but I also wanted to try pickling the smaller tomatoes. I LOVE pickles, I also LOVE tomatoes; green tomatoes already have such a great sour/tart zing to them that i thought they would be perfect to pickle and boy was I right.

I was inspired by the pickling recipe over at A Beautiful Mess but I've made a few amendments.

1TBS Salt

1 1/2TBS Pepper Corns 

1TSP Sugar

3 Cloves garlic

1 Cup Vinegar

1 Cup water

1TSP Dill Weed

The smaller and tiny tomates I pickled whole, while I sliced the medium ones. I packed quart sized jars with the tomates, added spices. Then I added the cup of vinegar followed by as much of the water as I could, topped with a lid, shook until the salt dissolved and left in the refrigerator over night and these puppies were ready to go!