Tulips~N~Lace

This past weekend my husband and I both had the day off, so we decided to go for a little drive to try out a restaurant that we have been hearing about. If you are ever in the Boise area you should take a little drive to Hidden Springs, Idaho.  It is such a cute little, out of the way town. Here are a couple pictures of the buildings.  This first picture is of the restaurant we ate at :)  It is called  Dry Creek Mercantile! I love taking pictures of scenery and fun little places. Aren't these pictures so pretty?  It was such a  beautiful day this past Saturday. Perfect weather for an outing... I love the colors of the trees changing for fall and the grass is so green here. Some of the buildings of the town... This is an overall picture of the restaurant... This is a picture of the front of the restaurant.  They also sell a few items since the nearest stores are about 30 minutes...

Every Labor Day weekend, we go camping at Wallowa Lake State Park in Oregon.  I don't know about you, but I love camping and, of course, if you go camping you must enjoy s'mores. It's the best part : ) I found a recipe on Pinterest for homemade graham crackers so I thought I would give it a try. You start out with flour, brown sugar, baking soda  and salt (I forgot to get a picture of that) And then you add honey, milk, vanilla and butter to the mixture... It starts to look crumbly like the picture below... Here is the honey and milk mixture before I added it to the rest of the dough.... I love my stand mixer :)  It makes baking so easy... Here is a picture of the dough once it all starts to come together....  Now for the fun part, you get to roll out the dough like you would if you were making sugar cookies... I use a square cookie cutter so they are all the same shape.  No guess wo...

Now that you have had a tour of the inside, I  thought you might like to see the front of the house :) Another view of the front of the house (the yard is really coming along) And of course now for the fun part :) picture of the food table...I am starting to get it all set up! Nathan couldn't wait for the guests to arrive so he is snacking on some of the food.... I made a fruit flag (since the 4th of July is so close I thought I would do a red/white/blue theme.. This is a Red Velvet Cheese Ball,  it was so delicious!!!! Since we are having an open house, I thought it would be fun to make sugar cookies shaped like a house... My Mother and Father-in-law got us an  Edible Fruit Basket....Isn't it pretty? Nathan was being funny while we were waiting for the guests  (he kept sneaking food) Here is our friend Kristina and her baby Kobe  playing with some toys :) ...

We decided to have an open house to show off the house now that we are starting to get settled a little bit.  So I  thought I would post some pictures and let you have a virtual open house tour with me :) This is our guest bedroom, all set up and  ready for visitors... This next room is my craft room.  It is a work in progress, but slowly getting put together. This is the living room (notice the clock above the fireplace?)  My parents bought it for us since they live to far away to come to our open house :)  That was so sweet of them. Here is our guest bathroom :) And of course, the kitchen :)  I am decorating my kitchen in a coffee theme and red appliances. This is our entry way... As you come in our front door, immediately to the left is our stairway to go up to our bonus room. These are the signs at the top of the stairway :) Here is our game room... ...