Sometimes, I wish I were artistic.
I mean, I know I’m crafty (that’s why I have a craft blog!), but when it comes to drawing or painting, I’m just not good at it.

Which, is really too bad because I dream of having original artwork all around in my house. Thankfully, my good friend Mallory is great at art.

She has been great at art since she came out of her mom’s womb, I’m pretty sure! I remember in high school, she was always doodling on our math worksheets and it made me so jealous. Her doodles were always perfect and beautiful and all around great. Mine? Well…They looked like crap.

Anyway! Mallory gave me one of her flower painting the other day and it is amazing.

I love everything about it. I especially love the colors she used and how there is so much texture. I just can’t stop staring at it over on my wall.

Aside from amazing flower paintings, Mal does amazing portraits-of people AND dogs. I swear, getting my dog’s portrait done by her is on my to do list.

She is very reasonably priced, and I love the flare she adds to each piece.
Seriously, you need to go check her out.

http://malloryrobin.com/

Be prepared to be amazed.

(Mal compensated me with a flower painting to do this review. BUT, she didn’t tell  me anything to say. I just genuinely love all of her work and know that you guys will, too!)

****Giveaway Closed. Congrats comment number 55, Jonnie!****

I didn’t send out Christmas cards this year. Want to know why? Because I’m lazy. That’s why! I was too lazy to write my address on each envelope. Pathetic, amirite?
I thought about ordering address stickers, but with the hustle and bustle of the season, it just didn’t happen. So, sadly, no Christmas cards for us!

Here’s the thing, though. After the Christmas season was over, PSA Essentials contacted me about their custom stamps! As I browsed their site, I fell in love with the cutest custom address stamps ever. I knew that those stamps would be the cure for my laziness. Or…My mail laziness, anyway!

Luckily, PSA Essentials was nice enough to send me a stamp of my very own to try out.

But wait! It gets better (does that sound like an infomercial? Oops!…But, seriously, it gets better!)
All PSA Essential stamps are peel and stick-Meaning you can peel certain things off of your custom stamp and replace it with images to match the season or occasion. So brilliant.

See? Here’s a Christmas tree alone on the left, and with a cute little border on the right.

Or, here’s just a simple monogram with a cute border.

OR! Check it out, a cute little flower with my address around it.

I love that I can customize my stamp whenever I feel like it. So, I can ditch my address and use the stamp for something else. Like, say…Crafting maybe?

When I first received my stamps in the mail, I was a little worried about a few things.
1-Would the stamps lose their stickiness?
2- How the heck would I change the ink color?
3-Wouldn’t it be messy to peel the stamps off once I was ready to switch them out?
4- How would I get the peel and stick stamp to be centered on the stamp body?

Luckily, none of those were even a problem.
1- Despite peeling and sticking the stamps over and over again these past few weeks, the stamps are still as sticky as ever!

2- The PSA Essentials site has great videos that show exactly how to change the ink out. I felt silly for even being worried about it!

3-The stamps were a breeze to clean off. I just used a baby wipe and they were as good as new!

4- This nifty little guy helped me line up the peel and stick stamps so they were perfectly centered.

This product is seriously awesome.
I tried to find something negative to say about this product, because this post makes them sound too good to be true, right? But, I couldn’t even think of one thing I would change.

Annnyway.

One (1) lucky US or Canada resident will win their own personalized PSA Essentials stamp ($30 value)!

Want to enter?
-Become a follower of the PSA Essentials blog or become a fan of their Facebook and leave me a comment saying you did. If you do both of those things, leave two comments.

And, that’s it! Easy, right?
Giveaway ends on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 and winner will be contacted via email.

Good luck!

**This post was sponsored by PSA Essentials, but all opinions were mine. They didn’t tell me anything to say!

I’m so glad you guys enjoyed my screen saver from last week! I’m thinking of making a few more…Any quotes or patterns you’d love to see? Let me know and I’ll try to get ’em up here for you to use as wallpaper.
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Anyway! I have been loving Instagram on my phone lately. It’s just so convenient. Especially for taking pictures of my baby. I’m addicted to it!

Unfortunately, all of my Instagram pictures usually just stay on there because…Well…What else am I going to do with them?

Luckily, my sister gave me some Instagram magnets from StickyGram for Christmas. I fell in love with them. So, I decided to DIY some of my own to give to grandparents.

It was super easy. All I had to do was find some magnets (I just used magnetic ads that I didn’t need anymore), print off my Instagram pictures, trim the pictures, modpodge them to the magnets, trim the excess magnet, and stick them to my fridge.

Who knew that stainless steel fridges weren’t magnetic on the front? Not me!

Don’t know how to print off pictures from your phone? Just go to your photos and click the little box with the arrow.

Then, click on “email photo” and email the picture to yourself.

From there, just print it off of your computer.

OR

You can go to FollowGram and link up your Instagram. All of your Instagram photos will automatically go onto your FollowGram account and you can just drag the photos you want off onto your desktop..

Do you have Instagram? Follow me @teandbaby. I’d love to follow you back!

Hope that helps!

Have a great weekend.
My husband has something exciting planned for my birthday (tomorrow) and I can’t wait!

**Warning: This post is probably too long to be considered healthy**
*reposted from my fam blog.
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Lately, I have been finding myself on my phone. A lot.
I feel like I’m always writing back to emails, checking blogs, texting, or whatever else all through the day.

I love that I have all of those things right at my fingertips. What I don’t love? The fact that it’s so easy to just “check something real quick”, but then end up on my phone looking around way longer than I needed to be in the first place.

So…I decided that my phrase for the year would be “be present”. This phrase applies to so many areas in my life. I feel like I show up to things and participate,  but I’m never fully there because I always need to “check just one little thing” on my phone. Been there before? Tell me it’s not just me?

I’ve noticed this happening more and more. So…I decided to make a little screen saver for my phone that says “be present”…That way, when I’m on the ground playing with El and get the urge to check my phone, my phrase for the year will be right there in my face and hopefully I’ll decide to be more present in what I’m doing, instead of checking my phone.

And, I also decided to put it on this here blog so that you can use it, if you’d like.

And, here’s just the plain chevron, if you don’t like the whole phrase thang.

Don’t know how to use a wallpaper on your phone? Easy! Just double click the picture you want to use and then choose “save image”

If “save image” doesn’t show up after you double click, just take a screen shot of the image you want to use (click the top button and the middle button at the same time, like in the image below).

                           

After that, go to your pictures on your phone and the image you chose (or screen shot) should be in there. Just click on the picture to view it.

Theeen click the little icon that has the arrow coming out of a box.

And click on “use as wallpaper”

After that, you’ll just want to scale the image to fit your screen and click  “set”.

Then, it’ll pull up a menu like this where you can choose where to put the image.

I decided to put the one with words as my lock screen and the plain chevron as my home screen, but I mean…You can use them however you want. It’s your phone, after all.

Taadaaa.