Girls' Night

Friday, September 5, 2014

Girls' Craft Night 

 Rachael, Malu, Rena Jean, Noelle. Friends for two decades. Wow.

 We are always good at documenting our activities.

Also, apparently Rachael missed the memo to wear black.

Here is my cell phone shot of the darling pumpkins I made that night. Eric helped saw the sticks for me.

I Made That!

Remember Girls (Crafting) Night? Rachael requested (again) that we go to As You Wish for our night out. Poor Rachael, she has been trying to get us to do this for over a year (maybe 2?). So we finally went in August.

I am not a painter. So I wanted to do something simple. I had seriously planned to pick a small thing to glue a magnet on for the fridge. But all of their add-on trinkets were silly or holiday related.

so I picked this mug (tumbler? it has no handle).

I found this awesome speckly paint for the base, and then I just wanted it to be sorta shabby flannel-looking. (I don't know if that's actually the word I want..) This way it didn't matter that I can't make a straight line to save my life. It was intentionally a little wobbly. Can't you tell?

And I chose colors to match my green kitchen.

 I started this wreath on our Lawlor Girls Weekend LAST YEAR. Not even kidding. I wanted to do a fall colored yarn wreath. But that was as for as I got. I couldn't decide what embellishment to put on it after I finished wrapping all the yarn. Then it was Christmas time and I never even hung it up.

In the middle of August I realized it was almost time to get out my fall decor. (YES! Isn't that what determines cooler weather? decorating for fall. Duh.) Which meant I needed to make a decision about finishing this wreath. I looked up a lot of felt flowers and chose to make these easy rolled up ones. It cost me $1 for my 4 felt colors and then I realized Rena Jean still had my glue gun. So I didn't actually finish it until the first weekend of September. (Not bad for me.)

 I used this video tutorial for cutting out the flowers. They are super easy. I had planned to do it two-tone like hers, but I guess I made mine too small or something, I still really like it though. And the leaves I just free handed.

I'm so happy to have something fall-colored on our door finally.

Next year I will probably hang it with a different ribbon. This is what I bought for it last year, but I want something wider to stand out more.

Fresh Flowers

Mom Julie sent me home with one of the flowers from Kaylee's centerpieces at the reception. It's always fun to have fresh flowers in the house.

 I whipped out my cake plate.

Then I got out the super cute table cloth from the bridal shower and thought I was just so smart. 

Kaylee's Bridal Shower

Elise and I gave Kaylee her family & friends bridal shower at Grandma Lara's house.

 Here is the almost-finished table. The plates that go on that three-tiered thing were heating up in the oven.  We had a grey, yellow, and white theme with birds. Also, notice the monogrammed napkins? That wasn't me though, they were a gift to Kaylee and there was no black in her wedding colors, so she brought them to the shower.

I was quite proud of my centerpiece. Did you know that when covered like that apparently lemons put out a lot of moisture? When I did my test run at home I came back to find the apothecary jar all fogged up. I had to prop the lid on a high lemon to let out the moisture.

Elise stayed up til 3 AM making this banner and the other hanging fans over the table.

 8-6-11

 Kaylee saw this shirt over the summer and got all excited about it, she was with her cousin Kristina who then went and bought it for her. 

 I gave Valetter her first taste of paper.

 Ha. She makes me laugh.

 See her face? She was quite excited about and didn't share very well.

 This is Eric's youngest cousin, he is one month older than Valette.  I think his name is Jarod. (?)

I told Grandma Lara that I wanted to take a picture of her with Valette when the shower was all finished. I am so glad to have these opportunities to document our history.

 I love Grandma's face in this photo. She just looks so pleased.

On the Wall

So I bought this frame at Goodwill for $2 before I was pregnant. I had other intentions for it, but this is better.  My before picture is actually step 2, it was wood colored.

Spray painted white:

 (that shadow is lexi walking into my picture. again.)

 I removed all the hardware (you know, the staples that hold the back in, and the wire of course), hot glued ribbon at what I estimated to be the 1/3 point and painted clothes pins with the brown from the stripes.

 And added a little bling to each one.

Then it sat on the wall for 4 months with only this ONE picture because I hadn't gone and printed any of the meeelion pictures I've taken of Valette.

Finally:

I love how it turned out. Her room makes me happy...it will make me even more happy when I finish decorating it.  Someday.

Fresh Flowers

I recently purchased these vase/jars and wanted to display them with flowers for their photo shoot. (They aren't for me, they are to sell.) So I went to Trader Joe's and got some sunflowers and big gerber daisies. It was fun to have flowers in the house for a week.

The sunflowers got moved to my living room entry table and the gerber daisies stayed on the kitchen table as a center piece.

We had family over for dinner on Sunday and it was nice to have a fresh center piece for the table. Although it got taken off when we were eating cough*casey*cough, but what do you do? There wasn't really room for it.

Isn't that the coolest triangle shape?!! When I first put the flowers in it I thought I would have a hard time parting with this vase.

Happy Weekend Project

I just want to let everyone know that there is a new store called Romy at the Santan outdoor mall thing, and it was't crazy expensive--probably 5 dollars more for this than a knock off target dress would have been. Eric bought me 2 dresses the other night. (isn't he so amazing to me?) This is one of them, unfortunately you can't tell it's a dress because I forgot to ask Eric to take a picture for me. It is an awesome black and white knee-length dress that is longer in the back. I love it. And it's very comfortable. Sorry, the sleeves were extra.

This is my new love seat recliner, and you can see a little of our new couch behind it. We got a great deal, so we also bought a tv stand from the same place. Our new family room is looking really good, now I just need to decorate the walls =) This photo was actually of our way cute accent table, my mom bought it for us as a late birthday-Christmas-anniversary-New Home gift. The tv stand is black, so it helps to tie in the room. We love it.

To the project:

Eric and I have been talking about putting my violin series up in our black-and-white bedroom since before our wedding. This weekend Eric got really excited and was the force behind me getting the whole thing done in only TWO days. We needed 9 frames, and had only one from a wedding gift, so we bought the other 8 at multiple stores. They are all different; I didn't want matching. I am also proud to say that only two were over 10 dollars. Woohoo.

This is the arrangement I came up with on the floor:

You have my permission to ignore my toes when you blow it up on your screen.

Here is the finished product on the wall, I have to say--it is way hard to take a funky shaped arrangement and reproduce it on a vertical surface. Also, I hate washing the glass and trying to place the photo straight in frames with mattes. I was lucky enough to have a ton of help from Eric and Kaylee though. Thank you thank you.

Please click on it and tell me what you think. The violin is mine, these photos were done in 2007 at ASU, they were all developed and manipulated in the darkroom by me. I tell you, a darkroom is addicting--if only it was more cost efficient to have one of my own ;>

Eric and I already decided that the big, highest one needs to go right some, but it has really annoying hanging hooks on the back and we decided to do it a different day.