Wedding Day Emergency Kit

A couple friends of mine are getting married soon, so I put together a little wedding day emergency kit for them.  It's filled with things that I thought people might need on their wedding day (and things I needed on my wedding day!).

I ordered a small bag from my friend who does Thirty One bags and had their new last names embroidered on the side.  There are a number of items in there:
- packet of tissues
- water bottle
- mini wine bottle
- small lotion
- mini deoderant
- hand sanitizer
- compact mirror
- shout wipe
- body tape
- disposable razor
- nail file
- altoids
- tampons
- pads
- bandaids
- lip gloss
- perfume sample
- bobby pins
- disposable toothbrush

I'm sure there are lots and lots of other things you could include, but that's about all I could fit.  I would have liked to have added snacks, hair spray, and a few other items.

For the wine, I added a note that says 'In case of drama: 1. open 2. drink', because we all know that weddings can bring out the worst in people.  And the best too!  :)

The finished product which was then wrapped up super cute, but hopefully they find it helpful!

Prayer Board

In our house, we already have one prayer board we keep in our kitchen.  It's a chalk board I bought from Ikea, nothing fancy, we keep a list of all the people we're praying for on it.  Usually at night we do a blanket 'we pray for everyone on the board' but sometimes we get more specific.  I like that it just keeps those people on the top of our minds to every once in awhile check in with them and make sure they're okay.

I wanted to set up one in our bedroom to put on the dresser by my bed to hold a couple prayer cards that we've been given from a priest as well as from a couple marriage programs we participated in.  I also have been taking prayer requests from church to pray for someone in the parish who was requesting it and wanted to be able to put it up there.

Here's the issue: We're on a mega budget.  Baby coming, doing some major construction in the basement, and trying to not go broke means we're a bit on the saving side.  Luckily I had a little magnetic board that someone gave my daughter which she was never much interested in, so I hijacked it and took it for my own.

I used some plain old scrapbook paper and cut it down, cut out some letters from my cricut and voila!  A new prayer board.  I need some not so kiddie magnets, but eh, that can wait!

The colors match our bedroom, at least until I can finally afford to get some new curtains and bedspread from one kings lane!

Carnival Theme Baby Shower

Recently I helped to host a pink carnival themed baby shower.  Let me say the hardest part about this shower was getting people to understand that it was carnival themed, not circus themed.  Circus is elephants and ring leaders and bears, carnival is more games, cotton candy, and ferris wheels.  Which is why it is very pink.  When all else failed, I just said go for pink!  :)

Cute striped straws are always a hit!  You can get them pretty cheap in bulk on Amazon.com.  These i bought were actually kind of flimsy, so I'd say look for some that are a bi more sturdy.  But the striped straws I think are a conversation starter and just a nice touch that shows you paid attention to details.

This was the modge podge gift I made an earlier post about.  People could write notes to baby and Mom and add them to the appropriate box.  The sign I made said:
'Write a note for Baby as she grows
And
A note for Mom on evenings she doesn't doze.
Something encouraging or something light
to help make her night!'

Don't knock the rhyme, I came up with it myself!

What an amazing cake, right?  Holiday Market in Royal Oak (here in Michigan) did a great job of sticking to the theme plus adding a few things that one of the future Grandma's wanted (but wasn't really in the carnival theme).  Turned out amazing, and tasty too!

 I wish I had something on my cricut that was carnival themed, but I didn't, so i just did a basic banner for the new baby!

Overall, I think it turned out really well, but most of all I hope the Mom it was for liked it!

Since at the time I was pregnant, my husband decided this was the last party I could help throw because it was just too exhausting doing it plus trying to prep for our new baby!  Next time, maybe I'll just order cute stuff from zulily rather than make it myself!

Birthday Invitation

We hosted a very small get together for my daughter's birthday, but I still wanted to do a theme.  We chose garden party!  I made the invitations with the Storybook cricut cartridge, but otherwise pretty low maintenance.  Being pregnant, in the middle of a renovation, makes you kind of lazy for other things!

Maybe one of these days zulily will have another buy $20 get $20 free type deal for a card store like mixbook since I'm assuming for at least a year I'll be feeling a bit overwhelmed caring for two kids to make these kinds of things.

Striped Cat Quilt

One of my very dear friends is expecting a little girl - almost any day now!  She painted the nursery in pink and white stripes with a scene of a carnival.  I kept trying to find a pattern of something carnival-ish that I could incorporate a black cat into, but I couldn't find anything I liked.

So I just scrapped that idea and did a pink and white striped quilt with a cat and bird on it.  Why a cat fascination?  My friend has a black cat I wanted to incorporate into the quilt!

A few of the fabrics I used I found at Joann's, easy enough.  But I couldn't find a pink I like!  I found those at a store in Brighton called Creative Quilt Kits.  The backing is the same fabric as the inner stripe that is off white with brown and pink.

The lighter pink fabric has little squirrels and owls and other animals on it.  The off white fabric around the stripes has little brown birds on it.  that's why I decided to go with the little bird flying away and the shape of the cat.  I found both just by doing a google search for those items.

For the binding, I kind of messed it up.  Oops, I was trying to entertain my two year old while working on it, so it's not perfect, but as long as it stands the test of a small child, that's really all that matters, right?

I use regular cotton fabric, one day I'll try one of these really nice fuzzy fabrics like some of the blankets I see on Zulily that look so soft and comfy!

Modge Podge gift for a new Mom

I recently helped to host a friend's baby shower (more on that later) and instead of a regular guest book, I suggested two boxes - one labeled Mom where people could write a note to her for those days when it was really tough.  Like those 3am late night diaper changes and the baby just cries and cries.  Ug, not looking forward to that again!  As well as one labeled baby that people could write a note to the baby to read one day.  She liked that idea, so we went with it.

I'm not a big fan of guestbooks, here are two other things i did for friend's baby showers:
- actual scrapbook pages where people wrote notes on the scrapbook page and then it went into baby's scrapbook
- frame where people signed the matting.  That's what a friend had done for their wedding, so when the baby shower came around, I thought, what a good idea to go with that!

Her baby shower and baby room were pink and white, so I wanted to keep with that.

I took a trip to Joann's and found little brown box set that would fit index cards.  The plan was to modge podge scrapbook paper on them to make it fit the theme.  But then I found a really cute pink metal lunch box so I picked that for the baby one.  I thought it was cute and would probably stand the test of time a little better.

For the Mom one, I found pink and green scrapbook paper that said 'Mom' and variations of the word Mom all over it.  I already had the modge podge, sponge, etc at home.

I put the mod podge all over the box, then added the paper and cut it to the appropriate size.  I think I used three or four sheets to do it, mostly because I added it to the inside, and then on the sides cut out squares to cover the seams.  I should have taken better photos.  

I also found little wood letters that I painted black, spray painted with clear spray and then glued to the top.  

For the baby lunch box, I bought vinyl sticker paper in hot pink and white and used the Storybook cricut cartridge.  White was the shadow option and hot pink was the regular letters.  Can't really see the white well, but I thought it added a little something to it.

This is the note I created for my friend's shower so people knew what it was for.  Don't judge the rhyme, I made it up myself and I am definitely not a poet.  :)

It said:
Write a note for Baby as she grows
And
A Note for Mom on evenings she doesn't doze.
Something encouraging or something light
to help make her night!

This was the set up at the shower with the two boxes open, note cards for people to write something on and put in there.

 I was happy with the way it turned out, I hope my friend is too!  Too bad I couldn't find something pink and white striped on Zulily, but oh well!

Best Friends - Dog and Baby Scrapbook page

I created a page for my daughter's scrapbook of her and our dog.  She loves the dog way more than the dog loves her, I think.  Though Minnie probably appreciates all the food left all over the house!

This was one of those pages that I created at home and therefore couldn't go and buy whatever paper I wanted.  It actually worked out well, I think, I used up some paper I probably didn't think I would use and the page turned out pretty cute!  I used a bright green for the background and then the green with white leaves as an accent.  Yellow, dark green, and tan helped with adding a bit more color.  

I like the yellow around the picture in the top left, it's my favorite photo, so I feel like it highlights that photo.

Along the sides is where I journaled on tan pieces of paper, another way to use up all those scraps I can't bring myself to throw away!  

'Minnie & Me' is from the street signs cartridge and the 'Best Friends' is from the Jasmine cricut cartridge.  I love the stripes behind 'Minnie & Me' this page turned out really well, if I say so myself.  :)  

Ignore the ugly couches in the background, it's before we could afford to buy new furniture.  Babies are expensive!  Hopefully one of these days we'll be able to find something awesome at Art Van Furniture or One Kings Lane and save a little bit of money!

Frog Baby Shower

I hosted a baby shower for a friend of mine who didn't know if she was having a boy or a girl.  I decided on green with frogs because they painted their nursery green.  It was the shower that I had made the frog quilt for!

Sadly, I didn't take any photos until afterwards, so it doesn't look quite as nice as it had been.

My mother in law picked up the little frog inflatable i had on the drink table, but what I really liked were the green and white straws that I found. So cute!

We played the poopie diaper game where you put a melted chocolate bar in the diaper and then everyone has to guess what kind it is.  We had two giveaways in the brown bags, one tea themed and one spa themed.

This was the first diaper cake I ever made!  There has to be an easier way to do it, but I was happy with the way it turned out.  Obviously I have a little frog and also have daffodils out the top.  Our daffodils had FINALLY come up even though it was almost May.  The weather finally cheered up here in Michigan just in time for this shower for my friend's family to fly in.

Cake was so cute, green polk a dots in a light green around the sides and a green frog on top.  

I made the banner with my new cricut - street signs cartridge for the triangles and the same for the lettering.  The frog is from create a critter.  I hung it up with green ribbon and mini wooden clothes pins.

I just realized that none of these photos show the nice new paint job I did!  I'll have to do another post on that.  It was grayish - blueish - white and now it's some nice shades of brown.  It will just be nice to have a large rug to cover up the terrible grayish blue carpet and then eventually get a hanging light since it's so dark in there at night.  A few months ago One Kings Lane had a really gorgeous rug on sale I thought would look good, so now I'm just hoping to find another one like it!

Frog Quilt

This Saturday I'm hosting a friend's baby shower.  She doesn't know if it's a boy or girl and didn't want a theme that was overly froo-froo.  So I picked frogs because they painted their nursery a very bright green.  Or as her husband said - Kermit the Frog green.  And that answered what I should do for her quilt!  I knew I wanted to try something a little different than the Noah's Ark one and preferably easy because I need to start work on another friend's baby quilt as well.  Why I keep signing myself up for so many projects, I don't know.

I thought these little squares that were about 8x8 inches would be easy to sew.  Well, not really, they were hard to get exact (I'm not so good at the measuring exact part yet) and then sewing it together so that all the seams matched up.  Thankfully my Mother in Law was there to help so it didn't turn out too bad.

The goal was to put frogs on all the squares, but I got a bit lazy.  My favorite part: the one with the tongue catching the bug!  I feel so creative for coming up with that.

I wasn't going to do a border, but I thought it looked a bit unfinished, so I added the red border.  All the fabric is from JoAnn's.

My other favorite part, the super cute turtle, bug, and frog fabric for the backing.  The other bad idea on this quilt - putting a border on the back.  Ug.  Trying to get the borders on the front and back to match was impossible.  They're not quite matching, but they're close!  Hopefully my friend won't mind.  It doesn't look bad, but I want everything to be perfect.  I have to remind myself it's only my second quilt.

Now my next project is to finally finish the stupid guest bathroom that mocks me every day.  I want to find a nice painting or something for that room to finish it off from One Kings Lane.

Bachelorette Party Page

I made a scrapbook for my friend's wedding process - the bridal shower, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, and the wedding itself!  It was a lot of work, but fun and I'm glad I was able to do it.

My favorite page out of that entire scrapbook was for the bachelorette party.  The paper was silver glitter since we all wore sequins out.  It was kind of a pain in the rear to get everything to stick to that paper, but I bought some sticky dots called Zots for Bling and those little suckers keep everything on.  wish I had discovered those sooner in my scrapbooking life.  oh well.

I used two different cricuts to get the 'South Haven' and 'bachelorette party' words, sadly I can't remember which ones.  I think bachelorette party was from Tie the Knot.

What I love most about it though is the pictures of everyone's heads (or shoulders and up) on the left hand side.  I think that turned out the best!

My first quilt ever!

I've always wanted to make a baby quilt and luckily my mother in law does quilting, so she helped me create one.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Let me say the only reason it turned out this well is because my MIL helped.  A lot.

I knew I wanted do a Christian themed one for a friend of mine and Noah's Ark seems like a pretty basic, not too crazy idea for a quilt.  The thing about the arc and animals on here, it's not a quilting pattern, but a free stained glass window pattern I found online.  Stained glass window patterns work really well for quilting because when cutting glass, it's hard to do lot of little corners like it is in quilting.

I found all the fabric at Joann's and I think it turned out well.  I was really torn on how to pick 'good' fabric for a quilt.  I washed, dried, and ironed all the fabric first, except that of the arc.  Which I should have done as well because when I washed it after it was finished, the fabric shrank and came out of the stitching.  ARG!  I had to go back over it.

The sun with the shape of the cross stitched through it was my idea and I think I'm pretty fabulous for coming up with it!  :)

Check it out and let me know what you think!!

What's in a Name? Scrapbook Page

Our daughter is named after a couple family members and I wanted her to know who she was named after and what that person was like.  In her baby album, I created pages for each of the people she was named af

I found some photos of those people from when they were kids to adults, typed up a little bit of info such as favorite colors, favorite flowers, activities they liked, and some of my memories of them.  I think it's a nice little way to remember those people since they have passed away.  Not the most amazing layout pages, but I like the idea!

The one for my Mom, I even found a small old cross stitch that was just sitting in a box and added it to the page.

Water Baby Scrapbook Page

There's nothing too special about this specific page other than I just like the way it turned out.  I struggle with looking at other people's scrapbooks because all of the really cool, artsy ones usually have one photo.  And to quote Sweet Brown: 'Ain't nobody got time for that!'.  I mean, just one photo?  Either I'd have to start taking way better photos that encompassed everything, or my scrapbook would be way huge.

this is a page from when we did a toddler swim class with my daughter and at this same time my husband decided to sport a porn mustache.  I warn you, it's not a good look for him.  I think I used the Cricut at the beach to the make the mermaid.

I think the page turned out super cute.  I love the way the title looks and adding the orange background around the area I journaled on white paper made it pop a bit.

Tracking Baby's Travels

This is another fun page that I created to show our daughter all the places she went in her first two years.  I was originally only going to do the first year, but I thought I'd keep going. Probably will stop after two years since I'm running out of space to write things!  I got the idea when listening to a teenager tell her Mom all the places she's never been and the Mom was saying - we did that when you were younger!  You just don't remember it!

Now I have proof!  I had big plans for cutting out a super cool map of the United States, but then I found this sticker.  It was actually a bit of a pain because all the states are separate, but it was faster and easier than all the other plans I had.  I marked with a sticky jewel where she had been and then wrote where and the date.  Plus, a lot of the photos are in the scrapbook as well.

On a side note, remember those little Calico Critters?  When I was growing up and playing with them they were called Sylvanian Families.  I loved these little things so much.  I had a ton of them.  My favorites were a little mouse I named Bartholomew and a beaver who I named Misty.  Or maybe that was her given name, I can't remember.  I'm hoping they're all at my Dad's house and I can get them up here soon since we just got a doll house for our daughter.  I bring it up because Zulily has them on their site and it is taking all my self control to not buy them.  We're trying to budget right now.  :(

Hand Print Memory Page

I don't think I blogged about this one, but awhile ago, before my daughter turned one, I traced her hand on a piece of paper because she was figuring out this pen and ink thing and I thought that it would be interesting.  Well, soon it became pen and skin and clothes, oh well, she's washable right?  But it gave me another idea, what about cutting out that little hand we had traced?  Originally I had different plans, but I saw the things on pinterest with the Mom and Baby hands.  Rather than doing paint, I also traced my hand and my husband hand, cut them out, and added to scrapbook paper!

Goodness, look at that tiny litte hand, where does the time go?  I like the paper version better because paint is a little messy and I think you would have to use a lot to get it to be a really good print.

The darkest purple is my husband.  Which leads me to defend my hand in the middle - I have long fingers!  I don't have man hands!  At least, no one has ever told me if I do.  And I've always heard I have long fingers.  Hmm...now to stare at my hands and wonder why they are almost the same size as my husband's......

Like Mother, Like Father

I'm finally starting to wrap up my daughter's scrapbook (yes, she's almost two and yes it was for her first year), I want to post some of the pages I love.

I'm not a huge fan of how this page turned out, but I love the idea.  What I did was find photos of me and photos of my husband when we were close to her age and put them next to photos of her.  Strangely she doesn't look like either of us, but more like my sister-in-law.  Go figure.  :)

Sorry for the terrible quality of these photos!  Ignore out nasty carpet we can't afford to replace yet.  We're working on it!

On a side note, I rented a cartridge called Sweethearts from the library for a friend of mine's wedding album and I love that cartridge.  Here's hoping to find it cheap on Ebay or Zulily will feature it on their next Cricut shop.  I highly recommend it for weddings and bridal showers, it's better than the other ones I've tried.

Memory Game

I'm struggling with blog posts because I have a ton of half done projects.  Ug.  I hate that.  Everywhere I look are things not quite finished.  But I'm trying to remain positive because I'm slowly working on a few of them now and hopefully will have them done soon!  Of course I have a ticking time bomb- I'm pregnant due end of August, so whatever isn't accomplished by then, probably will wait 10 years.

But hopefully now that it's Spring (even though the weather is still very winter), I'll be motivated to get moving.  Winter always makes me sluggish and depressed.  Though you think I'd take all the time trapped indoors to get projects done.  But no.

So anyways.  A friend of mine was telling me that she wanted to find a memory game for her daughter, a premade one, but not one with characters such as sponge bob or Disney.  I get it, I don't like inundating my daughter with characters either.  Even though I think everyone else does.  I want her to make up her own mind, or as close as possible, to what she likes rather than commercial.  Oh geez, am I one of those Moms?

I was motivated to get my cricut out and cut some little animals out from my Create a Critter cartridge to make a cute memory game.  Check it out below.

i think they turned out pretty cute.  I was also excited to play with my daughter since we can always use new winter time activities.  All she wanted to do was pull the animals off the cares, so that game ended quickly.  they were pretty fast to make, did them in probably an hour or two one evening while my husband entertained our toddler.

the projects I'm motivated most on are to finish a Noah's Ark Baby blanket I've been working on FOREVER (so close to being done too!!!), My daughter's scrapbook (two pages left!!!), and the dining room.  Basically everything about the dining room.  Repainting, decluttering (hahahaha, why do I always set that goal when I know it won't happen??), changing up the mantel, and a new rug.  Just need some money now so I can get one of these fancy rugs on One Kings Lane.