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.

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!

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!

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.

Painting the old bench

Ever see things on pinterest and get motivated to do something?  Then have a huge fail in making it look like you saw on pinterest?  That's what this post is about.

We have an old nasty bench in our backyard.  I don't know when it was built, I imagine from the first owners (we're the third), but nothing much has been done with it.  While I would like to spend $600 on a really cool one I saw on One Kings Lane, I don't really think that's in our budget anytime soon.  Man I want everything on that site.

Yep, nothing pretty.  don't mind my ghetto hay as I weed the back area.  It's a jungle out there, I'm in the process of getting it weeded and mulched.

I hate this bench.  I really wanted to break it down and get a nice iron one, but then I saw some cool ideas on pinterest.  So I bought some paint.  and painted the whole thing.  I originally painted it all white, but thought that was a little bright.  I used the below paint from Sherwin Williams in marshmallow (or something like that).

I used my cricut to cut out the word Welcome and glued it down so I could get a stencil - like  i saw on pinterest  hahahah....FAIL.   That didn't work out so well.  

So I made a few touch ups.

And now it's not perfect, but it's much nicer.

Birthday Party!

I love this page because it's an overdose of pink. And all the elements just came together so well. To me, at least. :) What I don't like is the 7th sticker I used. At the time I thought it would be really cool to use up all those extra stickers I just can't get rid of. It's not. It's stupid. :) this is probably one of my trusty page layouts, background color in a small, busy print, and then a complementing, monochromatic color for the backing on all the photos. Then letters in a different color to make it pop a bit.

Month 2 page

I bought these cute month stickers so that when your baby turns a different month, you put the sticker on and everyone knows if she's 1 month, 2 month, etc. Unfortunately, I didn't order them until after her 1 month birthday. So I started at two months. I want to incorporate them into every month page for her baby album, so this is two months below.

I bought the stickers on etsy from this lady: http://www.etsy.com/shop/babycakesdesignco

I don't know her, but I thought it would be nice to send some link love her way. :) They are a little thin and flimsy, so not something you would keep on all day long because they would get all yucked up, but just fine for what i'm using for.

The little squirrel (her nursery is woodland creatures themed because I have a squirrel obsession) is from the Create a Critter cricut. First time i used it even though i've had it for almost a year! I used some cute paper from Archivers, can't remember the brand, that had little animals on the background, then some greenish paper with orange on top of it. I also did type a lot of stories from when she was two months old. What she was doing developmentally, etc. Took me a few times to get it the right size for space I had.

Ignore the mess in the background of the photo. I've been too lazy to put all the stuff away. Plus, this way I can sit down and get started right away!

Ugly Scrapbook Page Fix

I'm working on my daughter's scrapbook and I created a page I hated. Ug. Hate when that happens. Here's the before to the right.

Just so blah. I'm sure I was rushing when I created it. But now Josephine is down for a nap and I keep thinking about this page. So I had to make some changes.

First I changed all the journaling. The green text right on the patterned paper didn't do much for it. I picked a green that stood out some, but wasn't crazy and swapped the ink to black. I always want to use colored ink, but i always end up going back to the black ink. Am I the only one?

That made it a lot better, but the play ti

me word area was pretty dull. I should have picked better colors. But since that was a cricut I rented from the library, I didn't want to rerent it and redo it. The paper it's on came in a large pack, so there was ano

ther page with this same design. I cut out the larger star, then taped it to yellow paper and cut out the same star. Then I glued it down so it had a little extra something on it. Take a look at the below for the final one. Hope you like it more like I do!