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!