Tag: blogging

Blog link up

Friday Favorites: February 19, 2016

On By SaraIn Spotlight, Uncategorized3 Comments

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week 🙂

I’m really excited to share these links with you..I found quite a few that look really great! But first: I started my 365 Photography Project! This is my favorite picture from this week (today actually)

The photo prompt for today was “Cover.” Now, you might be wondering why I photographed an old notebook. Well…this notebook is actually one of my most prized possessions. It is a recipe book, handwritten by my mom. It was started in 1993 and has every recipe she cooked that I liked, from then (age 5) to when I moved out right before I turned 17! It’s pretty amazing and I absolutely love it. I actually plan on doing the same thing when I have kids. Just looking at it makes me smile, makes me feel loved.

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Day 4 – “Cover”

And now, on to the awesome links from this week! Enjoy!

Recipes
Cabbage Ginger Noodles from Naturally Ella – I have just recently started cooking with fresh ginger and I love it! I can’t wait to try this!
Lemony Soup with White Beans, Kale and Pasta from A Cup of Jo – This sounds delicious! And I have to agree with her…I love any soup with beans 🙂
Pineapple Coconut Smoothie from The Iron You – This smoothie makes me wish for summer. I really want to try this one! I have never used pineapple or coconut in my smoothies, so I’m looking forward to trying something new!

Home and Decor
Water Gardens from Robinne Weiss – Their water garden turned out wonderful!
LZM Home: Photo Wall Collages from Le Zoe Musings – I love how they pulled the two collages together! We have a lot of empty walls in our home that I’m currently trying to pull together and would love if ours turned out this nice!
A New Home (And a New Bed) from A Cup of Jo – Can I just say how much I love her style!? While we are not currently looking at getting a new bed, I never thought to order one online. I will have to keep that in mind when we do look at getting a new mattress 🙂

Art and DIY

Creations, Magnolia & Cotton Wreath from The Painted Apron – I love making wreaths, but I haven’t made one of this style before. I love how she breaks down how she put it together and it looks beautiful!

The Problem Of a Creative Creature from The Richness of a Simple Life – The search for creative outlets in life can be difficult and I love Niki’s take on it!
DIY Diamond Shaped Book Shelves from A Beautiful Mess – I absolutely love this bookcase! I have wanted built-ins pretty much forever, but there is no way that we can put those in here. These though?! These we could do! Would it be overkill to put these in two rooms? Cause I kinda want to 🙂
Take a Seat: How to Make a Budget-Friendly Bench in Under an Hour from Paper & Stitch – So cute! And I love the idea of using a carpet piece on part of the bench!

Fitness

Top 10 Fitness Bloggers to Follow from Semi-Sweet Tooth – A couple of these I’ve heard of, but most are brand new to me and sound great! I’m looking forward to checking them out more!
Health & Fitness: Splurge & Save from The Fitnessista – Love this list! I pretty much agree with everything on here. 🙂

Life and Family

You Don’t See My Sad – That Doesn’t Make My Happy Fake from This House Is Our Home – I really love this! I have always been bothered by the idea that someone is being “fake” by only showing the positive or not getting involved in hot topic debates online. I hate getting into those things and I am definitely not going to complain about my less-happy stuff online. Anna does a great job talking about this!

Blogging and Business
A Color Story Filters: Shifting Colors from A Beautiful Mess – I’m still learning a lot about photography and photo editing, so this was a great read!

Have a great weekend!

Sara (1)

Friday Favs: February 12, 2016

On By SaraIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Hey everyone! I hope you are having a wonderful week! In all honestly, my week wasn’t great. I caught a pretty terrible cold and didn’t do much more than lay on the couch for most of it 😦 But I feel like I’m on the mend now and can’t wait to get back to life as normal! Sadly, being sick means I pretty much took zero pictures this week, so I have no favorite picture of the week. I’m looking forward to next week’s though! I’m starting a new photography project on my birthday!

Recipes

8 Ways I use Frozen Produce from 100 Days of Real Food – While not a recipe exactly, this has some great tips (one of which I had to learn the hard way!)

Spicy Skillet Hoisin Chicken from The Slender Kitchen – I don’t think I’ve actually used hoisin sauce before. I should change that!

Cheesy Chicken Broccoli Shells from The Recipe Critic – Cheese, pasta and veggies?! I’m all about this one 🙂

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower from Damn Delicious – I haven’t had roasted cauliflower before, but I do love cauliflower and garlic, so I can’t imagine this being bad!

Marinated Kale & Chicken Bowls from Pinch of Yum – I’ve never marinated kale before! In fact, as an ingredient, I haven’t used kale a lot, but I’ve enjoyed it when I have. And her pictures just make this dish look mouthwatering!

Home and Decor

Glitter and Gold Valentine’s Day Mantel from Organize Your Stuff Now – Oh how I wish I had a mantel…I’m not big on Valentine’s Day, but this decor is beautiful!

Fitness

The Mind-Body Connection – The Importance of Focusing on Toning Moves from Organize Yourself Skinny – Great article overall! One point that she points out that I love is to take every move slow and focus on form. When I was in physical therapy that was one of the things they stressed and that I’ve seen a lot of people slack on.

Fitness Social Media: Beyond the Six Pack Selfies from Lazy Girl Running – You all know that I am pretty much in love with Kayla Itsines’ and the BBG community…and there are a lot of six pack selfies on there. I’ve met (online) a lot of great ladies through there. That being said, I love this article!

Life and Family

Snow Shoe from Barefoot Blonde – This is too cute and sounds like so much fun!

My Book Came!!! from Uncustomary Art – I love how you can just feel the excitement radiating from her post! I can’t imagine the feeling of holding proof of all of your hard work coming to fruition.

The Complete Budgeting Guide: How to Make a Budget That Works from Making Sense of Cents – A great guide from a great blog!

I Married a Blogger from DIY Playbook – Ok, this is actually just one post in a huge loop. I would definitely check out all of them. They are pretty entertaining, informative and just…cute 🙂

That’s it for this week! I hope you enjoy the list! Did you find anything neat this week? I would love to hear about it, so leave me a comment below!

If you haven’t yet, don’t forget to enter into the Jewelry Giveaway! It ends on Tuesday!

Giveaway

Sara (1)

 

Friday Favorites: January 22, 2016

On By SaraIn Spotlight, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Hey everyone! Welcome to my new (hopefully) weekly series: Friday Favorites! This will be a weekly roundup of my favorite blog posts and articles that I find throughout that week. I hope you like them!

Fitness

7 Tips for Working Out In The Morning by Oddly Lovely

Getting Back Into Fitness by A Girl, Obsessed

Recipes

Gluten-Free Chicken Marsala by The Lean Green Bean

Slow Cooker Honey Soy Chicken by The Recipe Critic

Slow Cooker Cheese Stuffed Turkey Meatballs with Zoodles by Persnickety Plates

Spicy Chipotle Turkey Burritos by Pinch of Yum

Easy Quinoa Pizza Bowls by Gimme Some Oven

Grilled Cheese with Balsamic Onion by Naturally Ella

Slow Cooker Mongolian Chicken by The Recipe Critic

Art & DIY

DIY Brass Handle Marble Tray by I Heart Organizing

Home & Family

52 Dates to do This Year by Friday We’re In Love

Currently by Iowa Girl Eats (this is a really cute idea for a post!)

The Coffee Bar by The Small Things Blog

Friday Eye Candy: Closet Organization by A Thoughtful Place

Life and Blogging

16 Steps to Make This Year the Best Year Ever by A Fresh Start on a Budget

Cheers to Two by Venus Trapped in Mars

What IS the Value of a Blog? by Venus Trapped in Mars

Enjoy! Not many links this week, but I hope to do a bigger link up most Fridays. What do you guys think of this new series? Have you found any really great links this week?

I would love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment below!

Sara (1)

DIY Macro Photography Studio: An Easy Tool to Improve your Photos!

On By SaraIn Art and Crafting3 Comments

Are you working on your photography skills? I know that I am constantly trying to learn and improve on my skills in this area. I still have a long long way to go, but I do think I’ve been doing a bit better. One thing I realized I needed was a portable neutral background for photographing smaller objects. So I found this DIY Macro Studio and decided to make one of my own!

Supplies needed:

  • large plastic white tablecloth
  • pop-up laundry bag
  • staples and stapler
  • 1 sheet of white poster board
  • scissors
  • marker

This project was really inexpensive and I already had the pop-up laundry bag at home.

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I started out by roughly tracing the sides of the pop-up laundry bag on the tablecloth. Keep the tablecloth folded over once to increase strength. You need to trace the top and both sides, totaling in 3 separate pieces.

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I then cut out all three sides, leaving the ends intact.

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Cut out all three sides on the pop-up that you are replacing with the plastic tablecloth. The laundry bag in this picture is upside down.

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Then insert the poster board and staple it into place, trimming down what you don’t need on the sides. Then staple the tablecloth to the sides and top of the laundry bag. I forgot to photograph this part, sorry. I will admit that I had a bit of difficulty getting this part down. I ended up stapling in the middle first and then working out towards the sides.

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And it’s done! I still need to work on some better exterior lighting, but I’m really happy with how this turned out. Especially for such an inexpensive project!


I think that this will allow me to really improve my macro photography! I’ve mostly used it for photographing my jewelry so far, but I can’t wait to use it on some other projects as well!

What do you use for your photography? Have you built any backgrounds or props that you love? I would love to hear about your experiences, so please leave a comment below! I’m always looking for new projects!

Sara (1)