Jamaica Part 2!

Hello, and welcome back to our Jamaican Honeymoon!

On our second full day, we signed up for snorkeling. We were very lucky that we were able to go because, most days the water was too choppy! On Tuesday morning, we lucked out! This was Georgie's first time snorkeling!!!

When we saw the name of the glass bottom boat that would take us out, we smiled, knowing his mom was coming with us!

 Here's Georgie in the water! In anticipation of this trip we ordered a waterproof digital camera. Best decision ever made! Our Kodak Sport camera jumped right in the ocean with us!

Our view of the ocean floor!

Self Portrait!!!

It was difficult to have our picture taken under the water because the waves were moving us around!

Snorkeling checked of my honeymoon bucket list!!! 

Happy on the boat ride back to the beach!!!

We did not spend much time over at the Royal (see the first Jamaica post if you're lost!).At that property, they have a private island where you can swim, eat, drink and it has a Thai restaurant. We had to venture over and check it out!

This is the boat taxi that takes ya to and from the island!

Our view of the resort from our beach chairs!

Georgie and I in paradise!!

Here's a little all inclusive tip: using mugs, like ours in the photo above, gets you a bigger drink that stays cold/frozen longer than those pesky plastic cups! Big thanks to Eric and Kerri for that wisdom pre-vacation!

I'll leave you today with some pictures from the Tokyo Joe's restaurant! It's Japanese cuisine with an animated cooking show!

 

There's part 2! Coming up in part 3, Dune Buggies and our outside the resort experience!

Jamaica!!!

Most of  you already know, but recently George and I traveled to Montego Bay, Jamaica for our honeymoon! We had a fantastic time soaked up the sun for sure!

Our travels to get there is another story altogether! A story for a different post! Let's just say we won't be flying Delta again anytime soon.

Back to the happy memories....

We stayed at the Sandals Carlyle Inn in Montego Bay, Jamaica. This is the view from our balcony. In Montego Bay there are 3 Sandals properties, the Carlyle being the smallest. It only has 52 rooms and had one pool and whirlpool. Also, it's located across the street from a public beach. This differs from the other two properties, Sandals Montego Bay (MoBay) and Sandals Royal Caribbean (the Royal). These two locations featured hundreds of guest rooms, long white sandy beaches, many pools and bars and dining options.

The reason we chose the Carlyle is because of the Stay at 1, Play at 3 feature. It's no secret that I am frugal :) and the Carlyle was much less expensive for a week than the other properties, but we'd had full access to them as well! The catch? Well, none if you ask me! Others might say the 10-15 minute shuttle ride between the properties is a catch but I didn't mind. For us, in fact, we loved being in the hustle and bustle of the bigger hotels when we wanted to, but always had the option to come "home" to our quaint inn.

Now more pictures:

These two are the beautiful ocean across the street from the Carlyle and our view of the bar/amphitheater/gardens, from outside our room.

Here is Georgie and I enjoying some drinks on the beach our first full day. Here, we are at Sandals MoBay, where we spend most of our time. And FYI, I wore that hat all week and got MANY compliments on it :)

This is the catamaran boat at MoBay, we were scheduled for a Sunset Cruise on Valentine's day, but it was too choppy. :(

This is a view of the beach and the picnic tables during lunch.

Come sundown, those picnic tables are elegantly dressed and lit with candles to transform the beach into the Stewfish restaurant. Georgie and I had the privilege of dining there on Valentine's Day and had the best meal of the week. I had steak and he had lobster bouillabaisse.

Here we are during our Valentine's day dinner!

Below you will see some more pictures of MoBay....

This is a view of the lunch counter where you could get pizzas, jerk chicken, burgers, quesadilla's - one day they even made me chili cheese fries :). This is also where they cook dinner for the stew fish!

This is a better view of the water sports equipment. Those small boats with the sails, they are called Hobie cats.

Funny story: on the day we went snorkeling, we had about 30 minutes to kill and one of the lifeguards talked us into taking a hobie cat ride. He assured me he'd be taking us out! So we donned our life vests and got ready, we took our seats on the boat. At the last minute, he kicked me off and said he was giving Georgie a lesson!!! A few minutes later they came back and George looked confused but excited! I hopped on and away we went! The lifeguard was giving us instructions from the beach and when it was time to turn around and come back, oh my!!! Georgie pushed the rudder arm when he was supposed to pull, the sail switched sides and over we went! Not being the best swimmer I knew he'd be worried that I was okay so I immediately started yelling "I'm fine I'm fine!" The rescue boat came for us and he successfully talked Georgie through it to get back to shore.... I road in the rescue boat!

Hanging out at the pool/swim up bar at MoBay!

I spent a lot of time hanging out on this raft while Georgie pushed me around! Behind the camera is a swim up bar!

That's where I'll leave you for today!

On the next post, snorkeling, the Royal Private Island and more!!!



DIY Bulletin Board!

While out shipping with my bestie, Miss KT, we saw this bulletin board at Target and swooned.

Instead of dropping the $20, I thought, "Hey, I bet I can make that!"

First, I picked out a spot in the house where I'd like to hang my board and took some measurements. The wall was 13" wide so I thought 10" would make a good size. I went to Goodwill and looked for frame that would be 10" by whatever! And there was this little beauty for the low low price of $1.50

I then went to Ben Franklin and picked out some fabric! I'm in a very yellow mood lately (must be thinking about the Jamaican sun!).

The buttons are from Ben Franklin as well and I chose 1" grey colored gross grain ribbon from the dollar store.

First I hot glued some pillow stuffing (leftover from ring bearer pillows!) to the face of the frame for padding. It occurs to me now that I failed to take a picture of this step. DIY Blogger of the year, people, I know!

Then I cut my fabric out and layed it face down on the counter top (so the "inside" is up) and put the frame face down on top of that.

You can almost see the stuffing underneath!



The next part, Georgie helped me out so you might want to grab a friend for a 2nd set of hands. I pulled the fabric tight over the back of the frame and used a staple gun to secure the fabric to the wood. Having a wood frame was very helpful to the stapling process. If you had a metal frame, you'd probably have to use glue and it would much more difficult to keep the fabric as taught. After yous staple the first side (I started with the long sides) make sure you pull the fabric very very very very tight to the other size. This is where the 2nd set of hands helps. 

When it came to the short sides, I folded the fabric like I was wrapping a present and after I stapled, I cut the excess off all the way around.



Looks fluffy like a pillow! Now, time for the ribbons! I cut and layed out the ribbon in several different patterns and nothing felt quite right. I decided to stick closer to my inspiration and use a much thinner ribbon like the target version. So I ran up there to check out the original pattern and snap a pic, and buy some thinner ribbon. I just used gift wrapping ribbon but I would suggest buying something more heavy duty from Michael's because the stuff I used was very delicate. I did stick with the grey color though.

I just love the yellow and grey color combo, don't you?

:) Hopefully this is not my last "hey I can make that" post.



Frosted Glass Candle Holders!

Big shocker here, the following post is brought to you by, PINTEREST!

I had seen a picture of these candle holders many many times, but never actually repinned it. Therefore, this is a project that I did blindly, rather than follow a tutorial. Most of the time, I follow a tutorial and link back to that page during my post, but sometimes, I like to wing it! See how bad I can screw up without directions! This one seemed fairly straight forward so I jumped in!

I decided to make 2 different styles of "Frosted Glass Candle Holders" One style with a rubber brand stripe look and one style with lace. I bought the vases and rubber bands at the dollar store! Then I got some lace trim from Ben Franklin!
The key to this project, frosted glass spray paint!

For the rubber banded holders, I just had a little fun arranging the different sizes and shapes of the bands on the glass.

For the lace covered, I had to do a little more planning. I needed to make sure the lace layed flat on the glass and the trim I bought was a bit pleated. I realized that I could cut off the top strip and the lace would lay flat on it's own.

Here are my lace vases ready to go....



Then I took my vases and paint headed out to the garage!

Georgie always taught me to spray about 6-8 inches back from the object and use small side to side motions.

The paint sprays on rather glossy but gets more frosted after drying time.

The next day....

Please bear with my ridiculous photography! I need a serious lesson from my fave photographer!

The rubber band style turned out really well, it's unique and funky but subtle at the same time. The lace variety is cute but not very noticeable. I'd love to redo them with a wider pattern lace, see what that looks like. Maybe I'll spray over the frost with glitter or something to see if that makes a difference!

Either way, I'd say a successful first run!

What do you think?



Yarn Vases

I really love yarn. It's so soft and cozy, like a sweater. :) I have seen the "yarn bottles" posts all over Pinterest and really wanted to try them. The basic point is to cover beer bottles in yarn and use them for vases.

Would you believe that after repeated requests for my husband to drink bottled beer, he keeps only drinking canned beer! Completely unacceptable! I mean what is this world coming to when you can't get your husband to drink bottled beer for you?

Instead, of using beer bottles, I ventured off to Goodwill and picked up three miniature bud vases....

The purpose of these vases are to be decorations for an upcoming St. Patty's day party, and I just so happened to have some green yarn left over from my Christmas Yarn Wreath!!!I also bought a multicolored lighter green yarn, just to shake things up!

Turns out, wrapping yarn around a bud vase, especially one that is ribbed on the outside, is not very easy. I tried many ways to get started, it's a good thing I had lots of yarn and hot glue peels right off glass. :)

The winning method ended up being to stand the vase upside down, and tie the yarn as tight around as I could.

Then, I wrapped yarn around 5 times and pushed it down towards the first ring. The rhythm that worked was loop five times, bunch them down. Make sure to use your non-looping hand to hold the yarn down, that stuff is slippery.

Once I got midway down the neck, it went pretty smooth. Until I got to the wide bottom. I told you, yarn is slippery! Once I got to the point when the yarn would continuously slip off, I squeezed a round of hot glue as the very bottom and ran a circle of yarn around it, then glued and ran another. That usually made a nice surface between the neck and bottom to spin yarn until your hand falls off.



 I love the way they look like they are wearing sweaters! Sweater Vases!!!!

Now, I need to learn some new types of flowers to fill my vases, any suggestions?

***Two days after I wrote this post, I happen to see a new pin for yarn bottles and checked out the tutorial. Turns out, I'm kind of blonde :). If you cover the outside of the vase with Mod Podge, as you go along, the yarn sticks right to the vase, you can even use more than one color yarn on a vase this way! - In hindsight, it seems really easy and super obvious. If you don't have Mod Podge or don't want it to be permanent, my way still works, but it's more difficult. Rolling eyes at myself all day today.***