Now I know my ABC's

You may (or may not) have noticed that I took an indefinite blogging break. Multi-tasking is so not my thing these days. We’ve been living one day/experience/moment at a time, nothing more nothing less. I have, however, been posting a handmade alphabet letter a day on my kid friendly craft blog so if you have children who are into paper, glitter and glue or if you could use a letter refresher before belting out a performance of the A-B-C song, you should really stop by. (The letter M might be my current favorite, what's yours?) I've also been sharing picture book recommendations that you simply can’t miss. I can hear you biting your nails over anticipation at this very moment so I won’t take more of your time. Don’t forget to say hey.

Oh yes, and I just might have a few goodies up my sleeve in the nearby weeks to come so stay tuned.

Marshy Mallows

December, day 8, we made homemade marshmallows as part of our 2009 activity advent. We haven't really stopped making them since.

For activity advent day 13, we gifted some of these goodies to our neighbors.

We've made vanilla, peppermint and almond flavors...i diggin' on the almond. If your holiday agenda simply won't tolerate another to-do, consider this project your new year's resolution.

winter wonderland

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to create a Christmas dinner table center piece. I decided to do winter terrariums because I do love terrariums so!

I made some season appropriate woodsy scenes using dirt, rocks, moss and a couple different woodland creatures like bears and moose and of course a bit of authentic fake snow!

Sometimes, when it comes to crafty projects, I get these, (what I think are) really fantastic ideas but then when it comes to executing those ideas I end up with something that looks like my 3 year old son created. This time I got lucky and ended up with something I actually like the look of.

Now these winter wonderlands adorn my home and will be here all season long!

A Very Merry UN-Birthday to You!

Summer has been good to me this year and to say thank you to the sunny season I thought an official goodbye was in order. What better way to say so-long than to throw a party?

Lucky for me my friend Melanie is a born party planner and is always up for sharing her merrymaking skills when it comes to festivity coordinating. So we teamed up to have an end of summer UN-Birthday Party Bash.

Due to limited space I knew we would have to have a limited guest list which is the hardest part, who do we invite—or worse—who do we not invite? Jon had a great solution to this problem which was to perform a “pass-it-on” invitation-giving system. Melanie and I each choose a couple at random to invite. Both of those couples were given two invites to pass along to a friend of theirs and that friend was to pass the last invite to a friend of theirs. Make sense? I was super stoked about this plan but I have to admit, as the party date drew near I was feeling a little apprehensive as the adolescence in me began to take over, ‘What if the guests hate the theme? What if they don’t like me?’ were among the juvenile thoughts that entered my mind. Perhaps I am not as social as I’d like to think I am? Thankfully we ended up having an awesome guest list and they didn’t even seem to mind when the pouring rain threw us out of our own outdoor party forcing us to finish the celebrating in a somewhat squishy, not perfectly clean, basement.

Fortunately we had gotten in a good game of musical chairs and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey in a more spacious outdoor space. Once inside we had a couple more games, a white elephant gift exchange being one of them, (you can’t have an Un-Birthday party without gifts)! And of course we had UN-birthday cake made from rice kipsie treats.

As usual, one of my favorite parts of the party was designing and prepping the invitations beforehand. When it comes to birthdays, I couldn’t think of something more iconic than the pin-the-tail game so I rolled with that.

Each invite was hand assembled into a gift card tin which contained 3 pieces; the invitation, a felt donkey tail and a blindfold. (thanks for your help Melanie!)

The donkey tail had a magnetic back which enabled it to stick the tailless donkey image on the front of lid tin.

The blindfold was also made from felt with an elastic attached for wearing.

Once all the parts were in place we tied it off with a simple ribbon bow to make it look like a present (UN-birthday party, remember?)

The same donkey image was used to create party gift bags which the guest filled with candy on their way out at the end of the party.

All-in-all I was quite pleased with the way things turned out. Even though the before and after shots of what the rain did to the outdoor photo op secction was pretty sad looking, the spontaneity kept things silly and carefree.

Well, I guess it’s on to fall season party preparations…my favorite!

Life Lyrics

I know, I know, this blog has had a heavy hit in the random category lately. That is why I thought I would post a little project that I actually created a few months back but just barely did anything with.

At the end of the summer last year my grandma (aka “little grandma”) had given me a bunch of her olds games that I use to play with at her house when I was little. As I stared at all the miscellaneous game parts I became enticed to create something from some of them. Because I loved the look of the worn, wooden pieces from a very old game of Jenga, I decided to use the rectangular blocks as my main ingredient. The other ingredient was my much neglected wood burning tool which I used as an inscribing instrument. What resulted is the first piece to a series I am calling the “life lyrics project.”

In it’s entirety the message reads: “How very special are we, just for a moment to be, part of life’s eternal rhyme.”

If that sounds familiar to you it may because you have seen the 1973 animated version of Charlotte’s Web. The lyrics are from, Mother Earth and Father Time which is a song written by the Sherman Brothers for the movie. The line I used for the project just really inspires me.

I am glad I finally took a whole five minutes to get this on the wall, now I just have to fill up all the empty space around it. Stays tuned for more about the “life lyrics project” and guess what else? There is another giveaway in the works—I bet you can’t wait…mom…dad…anyone?

We've Gone Green...as in food coloring

So, when Jon and I had our first little bundle of joy we just couldn’t wait for him to turn three because all the cool toys said 3 years +. Now that Hendrix has hit that lucky number we realize we failed to account for the crazy that comes with the age of “toddler.” It is fun though to see him get really revved up about things like Leprechauns.

Our March issue of Family Fun magazine is pretty much torn to shreds from Hendrix’s obsession with all the St. Patty’s Day paraphernalia featured, including THESE leprechaun traps which you can bet we will be making before the “BIG DAY.”

Because Hendrix was so bonkers over the mini mischief-makers, I thought I’d add some subtle leprechaun sightings to the mix. After a little sticky-back craft foam, a baby jar lid and a green washable marker, a leprechaun shoe print stamp was born.

We have been stamping tiny little green cobbler feet on every washable surface in the house while leaving behind a few chocolate gold coins for Hendrix to go crazy over, not to mention a little green in all of the liquids in the house such as the toilet water. We’ve just about milked our green food coloring dry.

Originally, the only thing I had planned to do for Saint Patrick’s Day this year was to make green eggs and ham like my mom did when I was a kid. It surprisingly takes a lot of work to be community of leprechauns in addition to being a mom. This has been a fun little adventure but I'm not sure I will have the energy to do this every year; seriously, I might just throw up a rainbow.

Having cool friends who ask me to guest post on their awesome blog is my fave!

My friend Melanie runs the sweet blog known as, You Are My Fave so you can imagine my excitement when she asked me to be a guest poster for a couple days while she is on a mini vay-cay. Although my posts could never live up to her daily dose of awesomeness, I made a humble attempt by sharing THIS tutorial on picture transfers and THIS post about something that inspires me.

After you subscribe to Melanie’s lovely blog, if you haven’t already, you are going to wonder how you went through life without it! Yep, I totally know this girl in real life—(I am hoping telling you that will up me on the coolness scale).

V-Day Love Garlands

We had a few special valentines to send this year so we decided to make some love garlands out of felt, ribbon and buttons. Considering we have a three year old little Hendrix and because it is insanely affordable, felt is the craft-drug of choice around here.

Garlands contained special love phrases such as, “Loving You,” “I Love You,” and “Hello Lovely.”

We actually made an extra one to hang in our own home. It’s sort of nice having a little love reminder every time I go through the entryway in which it hangs. In fact, I think I may just leave it up year round.

Faux Forest

Sometimes, when my to-do-list is lengthy, I become suddenly enticed to go on a cleaning spree. When I have downtime, I am much too exhausted to do any house tidying! I also have a talent for becoming magically motivated to create meaningless projects when I have a million important things to get done. This is why I was able to fabricate a little homemade wallpaper project that I have been meaning to put together for the last few months.

My inspiration came from a birch tree wallpaper by Cole and Son that I saw in a kitchen of my dreams a couple years ago. As a temporary alternative to being the owner of the imaginary forest, known as "Woods Wallpaper", I substituted wallpaper with wood-grained pattern contact paper. Not quite the same but an improvement nonetheless. I am thinking about adding a little woodland creature peeking out of the branches, perhaps an owl, what do you think?

I Just Can't Get Enough: Fancy Window Displays

One of my favorite things to be inspired by is a smart and fancy window display. I suppose any display really, with or without the window. The fun thing about a window display though is that it is like the package design for something you can open and then actually walk into. In fact, one of the things that I anticipate most about opening my own real life, three-dimensional little boutique, (paper boutique most likely), is that I will get to create my own store displays on a regular basis. Because the only thing I like more than being inspired by the perfect display is to create one myself with the hope of inspiring someone else.

(portfolio show display-when I discovered my love for displays was not just a crush.)

Lee/Orndoff Invite

This project was a wedding announcement and invitation to an evening reception. Kaisa and Kyle, the couple, wanted their invitation to be unique and appealing without being over the top funky. They wanted their guest to expect a fun and inviting celebration come wedding day.

Beyond trying to integrate this feeling in the design, I incorporated their wedding colors which were berry red, a slate/charcoal color, white and a hint of teal. The main inspiration for this invite though, was from the brides’ modern-meets-vintage wedding dress which had a beautiful lacey overlay, (hence the doily-like graphics), on a contemporary cut gown.

The printing process was 4-color off-set and also involved a custom dye-cut in the finishing process. The dye-cut was needed to create a rounded corner fold out panel with two slits in the flap which was the housing for an insert and/or a wallet size photo.