A Beautiful Mess

A Beautiful Giveaway with Agustav

We’re so excited to bring this giveaway from Agustav! The beautiful shop specializes home furniture all centering around this very simple and unique design. The company is owned and operated by a husband-and-wife team with a passion for furniture design that they wanted to share! They make bookracks, nightstands, and coatracks. You HAVE to check them out!We’re giving away a piece of furniture of the winner’s choosing from Agustav ($240 dollar value)! To enter, visit their site, pin your favorite item to Pinterest, and post a link to that pin in our comments. Giveaway is open until May 21, and the winner will be contacted shortly after. Good luck! xoxo. Elsie + Emma

P.S. All ABM readers can get a 15% discount off products from their Etsy shop, Old and Cold with the code ‘BEAUTIFUL15’!

A Beautiful Mess Giveaway Rules

A Beautiful Mess App is in the iTunes Store!

We are so, so excited to announce you can officially download the A Beautiful Mess photo app from the iTunes store! Just follow this link or search "A Beautiful Mess" in the app store. We're kinda freaking out over here, because it just went to #1 on the iTunes chart... before we even had a chance to blog it! What?? You guys are amazing! Thank you so much for your support and excitement! We're completely blown away. 

To download, you'll need iOS 6 or later, and you'll need to be connected to wifi, as this app is pretty packed with features!

Here's a little more detail on what the #ABeautifulMess app can do!The app comes with fourteen cute photo border options that you can recolor to your liking!

You can add, move, resize, and recolor custom text to your photos in your choice of font!

We created several pre-drawn doodles you can customize, resize and add to your photos! 

And the app has a whole bunch of cute and fun phrases written in my handwriting to choose from!

That's not all. There are also filters and backgrounds that you can use to create cute notes and messages! 

We've worked really hard to make this app for you, and we hope you love it! Once you've gotten to play with it, be sure to tag your pictures with #ABeautifulMess, so we can browse through all your beautiful creations! So excited to see how you'll use the app.

One last thing, if you like the app, provide us feedback in the iTunes store (via ratings and comments). We really appreciate it and would love to hear what you think! xo. Elsie + Emma

P.S. For questions about Android, cost, icon design, etc., see our FAQ post here. And if you run into any technical issues feel free to email our developers: contact AT rocketmobile DOT co

Lemon & Chia Seed Pull-Apart Bread

Trey has been bugging me to make something with chia seeds. He will suggest recipe ideas every now and again. Some are really specific (and urgent/brought up often) while others are as simply stated as something like, "Hey you should make something with chia seeds." To which I was like, "You mean like chia pets? That's more of a DIY idea don't you think." But no, actually he was talking about eating chia seeds. Turns out, they are super healthy for you.So I bought some. And then two months went by without me thinking of them again. And then I started dreaming about pull apart bread. I just love all the layers! I had plans to make something with poppy seeds and lemon. And as I was looking around my cabinets for poppy seeds, I saw my forgotten bag of chia seeds slouched over in the corner. And that my friends is how this bread came to be. A planted idea, a forgotten bag, a dream of bread... it's all very Inception like, no?

No, nothing like Inception? Like at all? Ok cool. Let's just make bread.Lemon & Chia Seed Pull Apart Bread, adapted from here. 

1/4 cup warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chia seeds
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup milk
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the filling:
3 tablespoon melted butter
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons lemon zest

Dissolve 1 teaspoon of the 1/4 cup sugar in the warm water. Stir in the yeast and allow to sit and foam/bubble for 5 minutes. In a bowl combine the flour, the remaining sugar, salt and chia seeds and stir together. Melt the butter with the milk over low heat until just melted and then remove from heat. Pour in the yeast mixture and stir. Pour in the butter mixture and stir. Add in the eggs and vanilla and stir in. Now use your clean hands to lightly knead the dough into a ball. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover and allow to rise for 1 hour.In the mean time zest a few lemons. Use your hands to press the zest into the cup of sugar, releasing the oils.

When your dough is ready punch it down and then roll it out on a lightly floured surface You want the dough to be about 1/4 inch thick. Brush the melted butter over all the dough. Sprinkle the lemon sugar over the dough evenly. Cut the dough into long strips, so that the width of the dough could easily fit in a bread pan. place the strips over each other and then cut into squares. Place all the squares in a lightly greased bread pan.Bake at 350°F for 32-35 minutes until the top is golden brown, but the center is no longer raw. Allow to cool for 5-8 minutes before you try removing it from the pan.This bread is best when served warm. Yum! Serve alongside coffee for a breakfast treat or a late afternoon snack. :) Enjoy! xo. Emma

Monkey Lamp Makeover

The folks over at CB2 sent us their adorable monkey lamp to try our hand at ReStyling! Monkeys (specifically, chimpanzees) are my absolute FAVORITE animal in the world, so when I saw this I got super excited. Here's what I did:I used a white oil pastel to create a simple, messy scribble pattern in four rows all the way around the lampshade. I tried a couple other mediums first (paint pen and paint) and oil pastel was by far the best. You can really see the lines and it's easy (and fast) enough to mark with that you can create a pattern that feels truly random. I love how it turned out!I knew that for my own home I would love to keep the monkey white, ranther than painting him a bright color. So to add some color I added a couple blooms, he makes a pretty cute little flower vase, don't you think? I love that these can be swapped out and matched to different seasons and themes! I think I will try a few air plants next.When the lamp is illuminated you can barely even see the scribble lines, which I love. It has two completely different looks. 

I had so much fun with this challenge, and now my one last decision is which room our new monkey gets to live in. I'm thinking guest bedroom! Thanks so much CB2. 

Happy Monday everyone! xo. Elsie