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A Pretty Happy Home

Life, DIY and Random Things That Make Me Smile

  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
  • Shop
  • Projects
    • Cleaning
    • Clothing
    • Colonial Farmhouse
    • Crafts
    • Decorating
    • DIY Projects
    • Holidays
  • Adventure
    • Moving to Ireland
    • Living in Ireland
    • Visiting Ireland
    • Travel
    • Family and Parenting
    • Humor
    • Learning
  • Privacy Policy
  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
  • Shop
  • Projects
    • Cleaning
    • Clothing
    • Colonial Farmhouse
    • Crafts
    • Decorating
    • DIY Projects
    • Holidays
  • Adventure
    • Moving to Ireland
    • Living in Ireland
    • Visiting Ireland
    • Travel
    • Family and Parenting
    • Humor
    • Learning
  • Privacy Policy

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happy list

Happy List: #248

Hi! Welcome to the Happy List. How’s everyone managing these days? If you need a listening ear, you can always message me here. I probably won’t have any answers, but…

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March 11, 2022
Food

Would I Make It Again? Chicken Rigatoni with Vodka Sauce

I don’t want to brag, but I’m no stranger to cooking and baking with booze. Do you remember my whiskey cake? And the Peppermint Schnapps Chocolate Cake? So when I…

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January 22, 2018
Ireland, travel

Travel: Belfast with Kids

When we were considering a move to Ireland last year, we took a bus tour through Northern Ireland. Our bus stopped in Belfast for approximately one hour. Long enough to…

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March 15, 2017
  • Family

    Dreaming of a Lake House

    June 15, 2015 /

    I’ve said for a long time that my “forever” house is somewhere on a lake. I envision a place with a big deck and a screened-in porch. A place where wet feet are always welcome and towels hang on the deck railing. A place where my grandchildren will come and visit during the summer. I can picture them laughing while they jump off the dock and go for a swim. Maybe after dinner they’ll get out the fishing poles and catch a huge fish. We had one of those days today. You know the ones? A day where you just want to freeze time for a moment because it is so…

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    annisa 0 Comments

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  • Food

    Flour Sifter Hack

    June 12, 2015 /

    Warning: This post contains bad lyrics, cheesy rhyming and unnecessary descriptive details. You may want to avert your eyes. I totally understand. When my husband and I got married, we received many wonderful wedding gifts from our friends and family. Since we were really young when we got married, those gifts were definitely helpful in setting up our house. One of the items we received was a flour sifter. I’m pretty sure it came bundled with some other baking supplies, but I cannot remember who gave me that gift. I feel bad about that. I also feel bad that I only used the flour sifter a dozen times. Okay, it was more…

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    annisa 1 Comment

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    Pane Bianco with Basil, Sausage & Sun-Dried Tomatoes

    June 10, 2015 /

    An alternate title for this post could be everything sounds better in Italian. Pane Bianco. If you want to hear it pronounced, click here. What is pane bianco? Well, in English it means white bread. See? I told you it sounds better in Italian! In this case, it is fancy-schmancy looking white bread filled with deliciousness. I stumbled upon the website Never Enough Thyme…When Lana’s Cooking the other day and could not get her recipe for Pane Bianco out of my head. I mean, look at it! It’s gorgeous! Here is my dough all rolled out and sprinkled with fresh basil, sun-dried tomatoes, sausage, garlic and an Italian cheese blend.…

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    annisa 9 Comments

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  • Food

    An Unsponsored Blue Apron Review

    June 8, 2015 /

    I read a fair number of home and lifestyle blogs and lately you don’t have to try hard to stumble across a Blue Apron sponsored post. What’s Blue Apron? Blue Apron is a meal ingredient delivery service. They deliver pre-measured ingredients, along with the instructions on how to cook an entire meal consisting of a main dish and side. From what I can tell, they have a 2-person program and meals for a “family,” which is about 4 people. I have a friend who uses Blue Apron and she received a free meal trial to “gift” to a friend. Peer-to-peer marketing at its best! She gifted it to me. So, Blue Apron…

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    annisa 0 Comments

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  • decorating

    Dining Room Built-In Shelves

    June 5, 2015 /

    Today I thought I’d show you how I’ve styled our dining room built-in shelves. I love the fact that our home has these built-ins, even though I struggle with what to do with them. Oh, the irony. Using what I had on hand, I currently have this neutral and blue scheme going on. It’s not very dining-room-ish, but I think the table in the middle of the room kind of gives people a clue that this is where the meal consumption occurs. Uh, oh. There goes my sarcasm again. Moving on… So, you see all of those pretty blue, cream and polka-dotted books? Those would be all of my husband’s unattractive computer books…

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  • learning

    Kindergarten Sight Word Flash Cards – Free Printable

    June 3, 2015 /

    I’m a mean mom. I make my kids do reading, writing and arithmetic during their summer break. My son just finished up Pre-K and earlier this year I noticed he was starting to put sounds together and showing interest in learning how to read. So, we dipped our foot in that water and lo and behold, the little stinker knew more than he was letting on! He’s started reading the Bob Books, but I asked his Pre-K teacher about what sight words he would need to know or would learn next year in kindergarten. For some reason, I imagined she would give me a handy deck of flash cards to…

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    annisa 7 Comments

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  • decorating,  DIY,  Makeover,  Paint

    Repairing Nicks and Scratches in Linoleum or Vinyl Flooring

    June 1, 2015 /

    If you were to play that game “which of these things don’t belong,” well, the flooring in our kitchen would definitely win the prize. It does not fit in with the gorgeous wood floors throughout the rest of the house. It is a big sheet of chipped, scratched, dinged and maybe-burned linoleum. I really have no idea what could have caused so much damage to one section of flooring. While this was not the overall ugliest linoleum I had ever lived with, it was certainly the most damaged. I couldn’t wait to tear it out. But then I couldn’t decide what to replace it with. So, I sat there staring at…

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    annisa 6 Comments

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  • travel

    Travel: Fort Walton Beach and Destin, Florida with Kids

    May 29, 2015 /

    School is out for the summer in Georgia! Thank goodness. I don’t know who was more tired of homework, me or the kids. Who are we kidding? It was totally me. I documented the occasion by taking a picture at the last bus stop of the year. I’m sure my daughter loves me taking pictures while an entire bus load of kids looks on. So, how did we kick off summer? By going to the BEACH! We have spent the first full week of summer break soaking up the sunshine in Fort Walton Beach and Destin, Florida. We built epic sand forts with help from Daddy. Mommy left this task…

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  • DIY

    Kitchen Refresh Part 7: The Reveal

    May 27, 2015 /

    Have I kept you waiting long enough to see how our kitchen refresh turned out? I’ve been living with it in a final-for-now state for a little more than 2 weeks. Remember how it looked before? I know, I know. Try and contain your jealousy. Not everyone can have sticky, puke green-colored cabinets. Ready for the after? Here’s that same corner now. Much better, right? I’m so glad this house presented the opportunity to paint the bottom cabinets black because that might not happen again. It’s my favorite part about this little refresh. The black paint works like magic and almost makes my black appliances disappear! The other thing I’m so…

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    annisa 11 Comments

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  • Uncategorized

    Technical Difficulties

    May 26, 2015 /

    Of course the day I am away from the computer ALL DAY LONG is the day that the website goes down for who knows what reason. Thanks for hanging in there with me. After duking it out with our hosting provider, everything is back up and running now. I think. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow with my regularly scheduled post because IT’S A GOOD ONE! I’m happily uploading photos now! Share this:

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    annisa 0 Comments

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