MIA Again

Well, I haven't posted on here since May.  Once again life has gotten incredibly busy and there just hasn't been time to blog.  :(  But there are all kinds of exciting things on the horizon that will definitely require a blog post (or 10)! 
First, we are looking for a new house!  After 10 months of living in an apartment I can't wait to finally have my own house again where I can paint and garden and do anything I want!  I approach house hunting just like I do everything else in my life.  I agonize over details and over analyze everything.  So to keep us organized in this house hunt I purchased a super cute binder, color coordinated notebook, and color coordinating pens.  :)  We started with 63 houses on our "prospect list".  We lost a few of these due to them selling before we even looked at them.  But we were able to trim about 40 from our list just by driving around and checking out the neighborhoods.  We're VERY picky about finding the right neighborhood and a lot just didn't pass our standards.  Finally last Sunday we were able to start looking inside some houses with our realtor.  And I think we may have already found "the one"!  We still have a few more houses to look at just to make sure we do our due diligence but we definitely have a front runner.  Once we make an offer (and it gets accepted) I'll post pics of the new "baby".  If we get the house that I'm talking about it will truly be a blank canvas that I can't wait to get my hands on!
Also, its time to start planning my niece London's birthday party again!  I can't believe she's already turning 3!  She is the only child/niece (or nephew)/grandchild of the family so this is a BIG event for our family and we pull out all of the stops!  This year we're planning a Pumpkin Party since her birthday is in October.  So if you come across any fabulous Pumpkin Party ideas please pass them along.  I've already got several notebook pages of ideas but I can always use a few more!  And if you want to check out all of the London related events you can see them here:

Paris Poodle Baby Shower

1st Birthday Princess Party

Candyland 2nd Birthday

Pickles & Ice Cream

I co-hosted a Pickles and Ice Cream shower for a fabulous friend last summer.  I always meant to create a post about it and share some of our ideas and pics but I just never got around to it.  Now another friend is hosting a Pickles and Ice Cream shower and she asked about some of the things I did for this one.  So I figured now was the perfect time to finally create this post.  I had a really hard time coming up with ideas for this shower so if anyone else wants to borrow any feel free!

Snacks:  I made cupcakes baked in ice cream cones and topped them with cream cheese frosting (colored blue and green) and finished with sprinkles.  My co-host dyed Nutter Butter cookies with green food coloring and put them in little bowls of ice cream.  So cute!  We also had a local bakery make petit fours with the baby's name on them (Tip for displaying these:  line a cookie sheet with color coordinating tissue paper).  We also served marinated mozzarella, nuts, monogram chocolates, and pickle cookies (see below for details on how I made the chocolates and cookies).

Decorations:  I bought a few yards of some "pickle green" fabric at a local fabric store for the table cloth and an additional yard of blue and white polka dot fabric to bunch in the center of the table.  The centerpiece was a diaper cake that I made.  All of the ribbon came from Hobby Lobby.  For the cake topper I used feathers (also from Hobby Lobby) and a wooden "G" I got in the unfinished craft wood section at H.L.  I painted it blue and then added little white polka dots to it.  The gorgeous flower arrangements were blue hydrangeas, white roses, and green spider mum's.  My co-host has an amazing eye for flowers!  The arrangements were my favorite part of the shower decor.  She found the lime green vases at Hobby Lobby as well.  We used green, blue, and brown plates, napkins, and plastic cutlery.  Early in the party planning process I stumbled upon green waffle cone glasses at T.J. Maxx and snatched them up.  I wasn't sure what I was going to use them for but I ended up putting the plastic cutlery in them.  I thought it was a cute touch!

Favors:  I am SO proud of these!  I needed a cute, budget friendly favor idea that would tie all of the shower elements together.  I started with ice cream cones.  These are about $1 for a box of 20.  You can't get more budget friendly than that.  Then I purchased "G" "W" and "S" candy molds (the baby's initials).  I think you can find these online fairly easily.  Mine came from an awesome store in Little Rock called Vanness.  I bought green, blue, and brown chocolates from Hobby Lobby and melted them in a candy making bottle.  You can get these really cheap in the cake decorating section of any craft store.  Then I filled the molds with the melted chocolate and let them set in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.  For the final component I took sugar cookie dough and colored it green with food coloring.  I rolled the dough for each cookie into a snake shape.  I baked them for a few minutes until the were just getting crispy on the outside but still fluffy in the middle.  As soon as I took them out of the oven I "squished" the edges so that they looked the pickles and then let them cool.  I filled the ice cream cones with green and blue shred and then put the cookie and chocolates inside.  We set these on trays by the guest book so they served as additional decorations and then people could take them as they signed the book on there way out.

I LOVED how this shower turned out and it is probably my favorite party theme that I've ever had the pleasure of working on.  It was a challenge but totally worth it and it forced me to have to get creative.  I'm always more pleased with projects that make me think outside of the box.  Hope you enjoy!

Baby Love

Its been a long time since I've posted anything on here!  I've had a little time to get a few projects completed but with working 2 jobs I just haven't had time to post any of them!  But I made a few things for some friends of our's baby shower last weekend and wanted to post them real quick.  I'm on a pretty tight budget right now but really wanted to give the expactant couple some cute things so here is what I came up with and how much each of them cost, in case you're on a budget and want some ideas too:

Sock Cupcakes:  A friend of mine posted some pics of some sock cupcakes that she had made a few months ago and I've been dying to give them as a gift ever since.  I think they are so cute!  The package of socks was $6, the cupcake liners were $1.50 (and I still have about 140 left), and the box was $2.50 (1/2 price last week at Hobby Lobby).  Total cost=$10.  These don't take very long to make either!

Monogram Onesie:  I'm a sucker for cute, monogrammed onesies.  But they can be so expensive at boutique shops!  So I decided to create my own.  The onsie was on clearance for $1.  The rhinestone "J" is an iron on transfer from Hobby Lobby (so easy!) for $.99.  The ribbon is from Hobby Lobby and it has elastic in it so it has a little give ($2 during 1/2 of ribbon week, I think).  I used Aileen's Fabric Fusion glue to glue it to the onesie.  Total cost of project-$4.  This one takes a little longer because gluing the ribbon is very time consuming.

I made a similar onesie for a co-worker's baby shower a few weeks ago (and was in such a rush to finish it I forgot to take pics) only I didn't do the trim around the front and arms.  Instead I bought some of the hair ribbons that have the little "bird beak" clip (I have no idea what its really called) and clipped them to the shoulders of the onesie.  It was also really cute and way less time consuming.

Diaper Cake:  I've made about a million of these now but I still have fun doing it and they never cease to get a favorable reaction.  I'm not thrilled with how this one turned out but, like always, I was down to the wire on getting it finished and didn't have time to do some of the final touch ups that I wanted.  The instructions on these are a little lengthy so I'm not going to post them but it anyone wants to know how to make it just e-mail me or leave a comment and I'll be happy to share.  The package of diapers was $8.97 (I only use Pampers Swaddlers because they have the softest look to them and its easy to hide the design on them.  Also, I don't ever use Newborn size diapers b/c a lot of babies are born too big to fit into them.  I only use size 1 or 2).  The ribbons are an assortment from Hobby Lobby and they were all 1/2 off.  I already had the polka dot ribbons.  The toile ribbon was $4.  The thin pink and brown ribbons were $1.99.  The wide pink ribbon was $3.50.  I have a lot of all of the ribbon left.  The feathers were also 1/2 off at Hobby Lobby and cost $1.99.  The J is from the unfinished craft wood section in H.L. and was $.99 (and I HATE how the damask fabric I covered it with looks on it.  I think it looks like camo).  The damask fabric came from the remnant bin at H.L. and was $2.  I used a paper plate as the cake board.  So the total cost was about $24 and I still have lots of ribbon left to use for other projects.

I've got several more projects that I've done around the house lately and hopefully I'll get a chance to post some pics of them soon.  But until then, at least I managed to get these up!  :)

Linking to:

Pretty, Pretty Peacock

I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to do a peacock themed mantle for the summer.  I was so excited to take down my Spring/Easter mantle though that I couldn't wait to get started on it.  So I decided just to go for it.  I'm sure I'll think of some other way to decorate my mantle in a few more weeks.  But right now I'm SO in love with this one!  Take a look!

The large peacock feathers came from Hobby Lobby.  The green and blue flowers I had left over from my niece's Candyland Adventure party. 

The blue glass vase I also got at Hobby Lobby for 40% off of $7.99!  The flower arrangement were also pieces from London's Candyland party.  Because the flowers were so bold and glittery I felt like they needed a vase that was a litle neutral.  I didn't have anything like I was wanting so I wrapped one of the cream colored vases that I used in my Winterscape mantle in a brown napkin and tied it with a silver ribbon.  The candles were the same from my Easter mantle.  I tied a brown ribbon around them and secured it with a decorative tack.  The candle is an old cream colored one that I had some discoloration on it.  I put a coat of glitter on it and then hot glued green/blue glass pebbles on it.

I also created a candle from another old discolored candle that I had.  I hot glued a green ribbon on it and then glued turquoise sequins on it.  The plate came from Wal-Mart and was only $1!  I used blue/green glitter glue to decorate it with swirls.  The candlestick holders were clear glass ones I had bought at the Dollar Tree a few years ago.  I painted them with Topaz metallic craft paint.

I'm so happy with how it turned out!  I reused several elements from my previous mantlescapes so it was a very affordable mantle.  The only two things I purchased were the peacock feathers, the blue glass vase on the end, and the blue/brown vase pictured above from Kirklands (on clearance for $4.99).  I feel like this mantle is the perfect punch of color balanced with the rich, dark browns that I love so much.

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Final Easter Post

I definitely took on more Easter projects this year than I ever have before.  And I'm exhausted!  There have been many late nights this past week working to finish everything in time for Easter.  My last and biggest projects was to create my own versions of these fabulous Upcycled Easter Baskets that I saw on Sweet Something Designs blog.  They were made from containers of Crystal Light (or in my case Great Value).  I thought they were the coolest project and I happened to have 4 containers in my pantry.  So I made Easter baskets for my mom, sister, aunt, and boyfriend's parents.  You can see all of the steps by clicking on the link to Sweet Something Designs.  Here are my finished projects:

And here are some pics from the best part of my Easter:

The Hop-a-Long Easter basket was a hit.  As was the lip gloss and nail polish that it had in it.  :)

Linking to:

Follow Me Friday

I'm participating in The Trendy Treehouse's Follow Me Friday blog hop again.  I got a few followers last week and I'm so excited!  So I'm going to give it another try.  If you follow me I'll follow you too!  But now I have a problem.  I've some how ended up with 2 Follower boxes and I don't know how to combine them.  If anyone has any suggestions please let me know!  I'm still new to this "Advanced Blogging" stuff!

Hop-a-Long Easter Basket

My 2 year old niece (who is the apple of my eye) is all about Toy Story right now.  She alternates between being Woody and Buzz every day (well, in between being some other random characters).  I wanted to do something special for her Easter basket and decided to make her a cowgirl hat Easter basket.  I found a cute little brown cowboy hat at Hobby Lobby.  Its kind of a foam material.  But it's small enough that I think it will fit her little head.  I had some pink polka dot ribbon and pink boas at home so I just bought the big pink sequins to decorate it with.  I hot glued everything onto the hat and then turned it upside down and stuffed it with pink grass and goodies.  I think it turned out adorable and can't wait to see her this weekend to give it to her!