Living Room - 2012 Show Us Your House Series

Welcome to our 1892 Colonial home in Maine!  Come in and make yourself comfy but don't mind the dog hair.  Our two pups like to help whenever the camera comes out.  

We're lucky that several period features were retained over the years like the pressed tin ceilings and wood trim work.

I found the Capiz mirror and turquoise glass lamp at Pier One.  They sell a different Capiz mirror now but they're still selling the same lamp.

Brewster fell in love the moment this comfy rug was unrolled.  It's the L.L. Bean rectangular 5'x8' chenille rug in Blue Meadow.  We live within an hour of their flagship store in Freeport, ME.  I found it deeply discounted at their annual Home tent sale.  It pulls together all the blue and green colors that I love.

The two club chairs with blue ticking stripe came from L.L. Bean too.

I love the textures on the love seat...

But it's not too precious to use everyday.  Everything can be tossed in the wash!

A daisy chain quilt that I made last year was intended for the living room but it's still hanging out in my craft room.   This reminds me that I need to bring it down to the love seat.  :)

I participated in Kelly's Show Us Your House series in 2010.  You can go here to see what my living room looked like back then.  I also shared more details about paint colors and what not before.

Visit Kelly's Korner to see lots of 2012 Living Room Tours this week!

Show Us Your Life - Favorite Holiday Recipes

Kelly's Korner hosts a weekly Show Us Your Life series and this week's topic is Favorite Holiday Recipes.

Since I've already shared tutorials for my favorite holiday recipes, I'll talk about them here and link to the full tutorials for you.

Simple Handmade Chocolates 

These tasty bites only take 7 ingredients and everybody loves them!  

They keep well so they're excellent to make ahead, pack up in small cello bags or little treat boxes (drop one each into mini cupcake baking cup liners before putting in box), and then hand them out to friends, co-workers, neighbors, unexpected drop-in visitors, etc through out the season.  I add in some of the super easy Candy Cane Kisses Pretzel Melts (I made a few hundred of those this morning!) to add some color to and stretch our gifts of handmade chocolates even further.

The best part is that you can easily change the filling flavoring extract and use your favorite(s).  My preference is to make them peppermint (these do not have the toothpaste-like flavor/texture that some peppermint candies can get!).  Jake's mom always makes her family's favorite flavor - maple.  You can also split up the filling dough before you add the flavoring extract and make multiple flavors from one batch.

Go here for a full tutorial and you'll learn all the Jordan family secrets to making these yummy chocolates.  :)

Rudolph Cupcakes

These are fun to make and kids of all ages love them.  Jake's mom always makes these for her annual cookie swap party.  I've made them a few times now and they've been a party hit.  I did a Moose Cupcake version with brown M&Ms and chocolate animal crackers this summer. 

Please go here for the Rudolph tutorial.

Head over to Kelly's Korner and link up your own favorite holiday recipes this week.  Plan to come back next week and join the 2011 Christmas Tour of Home hosted by Kelly and The Nester.

I love seeing how every one dresses up their home for the holidays.  So far we have our Christmas tree up (a real Fraser Fir again) and decorated it but I haven't had a chance to take photos yet.  It looks pretty much like last year's tree though since I used the same ornaments.  I think everything else will be out of our Christmas bins by the end of the weekend.  Have you decorated and/or started your holiday baking yet?

Show Us Your Life: Connecting Non-Mom Bloggers

Kelly's Korner hosts a weekly Show Us Your Life series and this week's topic is Connecting Non-Mom Bloggers.  If this is your first visit to Welcome Sunshine Home, come on in and get comfy!  Don't mind the dog hair...

I'm Alison. I love quilting, DIY home projects, picnics, board games, long walks on the beach...Wait.  This is starting to sound like a personals ad.  Since I already have a loving husband and two dogs that dote after me, allow me to start over my introduction by sharing a special birthday limerick my sister-in-law, Melissa, wrote in my honor:

There once was a girl named Alison
Who thought DIY projects were oh so much fun.
From morning 'till night,
They're her heart's delight
She won't rest 'till Stewart's outdone.

This limerick was copied from A is for Alison where Melissa also shares some mildly embarrassing stories about me. Any who, Melissa (aka author M.J. Fifield) is also a "Non-Mom Blogger" over at My Pet Blog.  She writes about writing novels, tv, life, books, work, etc and is the reigning queen of proper grammar.  Ok, I'll stop now before this turns in a personals ad for Melissa.  :)

So, back to me now.  Hmm.  I think I'll wrap this post up by sharing some of my favorite Welcome Sunshine Home posts.

 My hometown

View Larger Map

Sunset Beach Picnic

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe Mantle 2010

Simple Handmade Chocolates

Brewster Update - A dog's story

Gift Wrap and Ribbon Organization Wall

2010 HGTV Green Home - Cape Cod

Laundry, Recycling, and Mud Room

Gorgeous and functional!  The floor to ceiling cupboards, shelving, and island made me swoon.  When Jake and I toured the house, I couldn't resist peeking in all the cupboards and drawers.  They even 'staged' laundry!  :)

Thanks for stopping by and come again soon!

Show Us Your Life - Guest Rooms

Kelly's Korner hosts a weekly Show Us Your Life series and this week's topic is Guest rooms!  We currently have two of our five bedrooms setup for guests so I'll share both today.

The main guest room is actually the house's master bedroom.  We moved into our guest room in January because it's sunnier.  Now we call this room the "master bedroom, er, I meant guest room.  Ugh.  You know the aqua one." most of the time.

Jake repainted this room from 'bonjour beige' to these pretty aqua colors in spring 2009 for my birthday.  I love color and Jake's an enabler.  :)  

Did  you notice our subtle accent wall behind the bed?  It's simply two shades darker than the other walls.

 We switched the rooms in January but I still use the walk-in closet in here.  Yup, there's a (small to today's standards) walk-in closet in our 1892 house!  Oh happy day!  I'd show it to you but we're in the middle of reconfiguring it.  No peeking!

This room has one of two old radiators in our house.  We've considered making radiator covers for them but there are so many other things on our to-do list.

The bed frame and dresser in here were thrifty finds.

Here's a closeup of the texture on the art above the bed.  It doesn't translate well on camera but I like the warmth it brings to the room in person.  

Max and Brewster like to sneak in here and lounge around.  From these photos I'm sure you'll understand why Jake calls her "Jumbo" and why we decided to get a king bed this year! :)

Let's take a quick stop by the next room.  Our secondary guest room is called "the blue room" around here.  As you'll see it hasn't changed much over the years.  It doesn't get much use but it has often become a dumping ground storage area when we're working on a DIY project.

Here's a cell phone photo from August 2007.

The next photo is from my old Kodak easy share in 2008.  This room holds a mix of baseball stuff, beachy things from when we lived in Old Orchard Beach, travel souvenirs, and other random stuff that we didn't put somewhere else in the house.

Photo from my pink camera taken in June 2009.

Want to see more of our home?  You can check out our living room, master bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and office/craft/sewing room.  Next week's topic at Kelly's Korner is bathrooms.  

Thanks for stopping by and come again soon!  :)

  

Halloween tricks and treats!

I don't blog about work often but I made some treat bags for my team that were super fun to give out.

Who doesn't get nostalgic about ring pops, pixy stix, pop rocks, smarties, dum dum pops, plastic spiders, skull rings, and more?  The majority of my staff who hadn't experienced them yet that's who.  Well, we corrected that pretty quickly today!

My absolute favorite moment today was the looks on their faces when the pop rocks and Pepsi combo started exploding like fireworks in their mouths.  Priceless!  hehehe  My second favorite moment was earlier in the day when I overheard a coworker friend say to them, "Have you had pop rocks before?  No?  They make your head explode."

I'll be making smaller versions of these bags for our neighborhood Trick or Treaters and am planning to put the honesty candy bowl out for the sixth year running.  I replenish the treat bowl every half hour and we haven't run out of candy yet.  The kids can help themselves to as many treat bags as they'd like in exchange for not ringing our doorbell (and thus triggering Barkfest 2010).  The pups kept me company while I put together these bags last night...

Do you get many trick or treaters at your home?  What do you give them?