Baby Shower Invitation

Do you remember me?  It has been so long since I blogged but life has been a bit crazy to say the least.  If you want to know more about that you can read about it here:  Coping with Guillain Barre Syndrome as a family.

While I haven't had much time to blog, I have had time to create.  Just recently I created this cute sea shell themed baby shower invitation.  I had never done a sea shell theme anything so it was nice to try something new.  I used My Digital Studio to create it.  If you don't already have Adobe Photoshop Elements or other photo editing program, then I suggest trying out My Digital Studio. It is super easy to use and they have tons of tutorial videos at their website to help.  You can try My Digital Studio free for 30 days and the trial gives  you full access. Pretty cool, huh?

The colors I used were:

Whisper White for background

Calypso Coral 

Bermuda Bay

Tempting Turquoise

Only Orange

(They are all Stampin' Up colors)

Stamps and Embellishments:

Celebrate any day decorative frame (stampin up)

Little Additions element 3 (stampin up)

Sea Shells and Sea Shells 2 were from an Etsy shop TanglesTreasures

Starfish from thepaperpegasus

Fonts

Modern no. 20

Mongolian Baiti

Centeria Script Demo

I found that to color the shells in Stampin Up colors, I had to use the black and white shells and colorize them.  I think it came out well, don't you?

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Alice in Wonderland Crop: Madhatter Tea Party

This past weekend was a whirlwind for me. I ran the Lunar Rendezvous 5K Saturday morning and then rushed home to host a 14 hour crop with some amazing women in my home.  The theme?  Alice in Wonderland.  I liked the movie as a kid but fell in love with it in 2010 when it came out again.  I really enjoyed putting this on together.  Right now I am just sharing the pictures.  I'll put together the how to's and supply list later this week.

No Madhatter Tea Pary would be complete without top hats.  I made these top hats using my Silhouette and a cut file from the Silhouette store for a 3D leprechaun hat.  You may recognize the stand as party of my centerpiece from the Breakfast at Tiffany's party. I looked for ways to display the hats in a box or something but the headbands and the bulkiness of the top hats made them fall over.  I finally gave up and just put them on the branches...an accidental good idea.  The frame has a quote from the movie. It is the exchange between the Madhatter and Alice. He asks if he has gone mad and she says yes but all the great ones are.

I love decorating for parties but I try to keep to a tight budget.  I try to buy things on clearance or on sale.  Dollar tree is one of my favorite stores. You have no idea how much you can get from the dollar store if you learn to think outside the box.  I also use my 50% off coupons at Hobby Lobby and Michaels and I always start out in the clearance section.  That is where I found these mugs. They are tea cups per se but we don't drink tea in our house so I bought coffee mugs.  I wanted a colorful party so I bought them in colors I knew I could use in my home everyday.

They were a dollar each at my Hobby Lobby in the clearance section.  the saucers (I wish I took a better picture of those) are from Tuesday Morning. Again they were in the clearance section (4 of them for $3.00). The feathers were $1.49 each at HL on sale.  All the flowers came from the Dollar Store.  The cut outs inside the top cup were from Cloud 9 Designs. Hurry she has them on sale for $1.99 for the whole package, She had a 3D hat, teapot, teacup, clock invitation...just go see.  I have about 7 frames that I bought from Ikea for about 1.99 each.  I keep them around and change out the displays. For this party I used digital paper from Rhonna Farer Urban Junque kit from Twopeasinabucket. I can't find it there anymore but it is beautiful colorful paper.  In MyDigitalStudio I created quote pages using Urban Junque.  Here is a close up of one.  

Frames with quotes are a great inexpensive way to decorate a party.  

I also saw on Pinterest that someone stacked three mini top hats that reminded me of the lopsided cakes...so of course I had to make them. Behind them you will see the vase my husband gave me for mother's day and it has dollar store flowers inside it. 

Surrounding the parameter I had the evil Queen of Heart's soldiers.

I made these guys from foam board that I found at the dollar store and cardstock.  I just love them.  Again, I used my Silhouette and cut out the hearts, letters and feet.

I forgot to mention Goodwill...another great place for finds. I found these little white cups there.  All 5 were $1.60 in total.  As soon as I saw them, I knew I wanted to stamp faces on them. I have a set of faces from PeachyKeen.  I love their stamps.  They turned boring white cups into cups with character.  

And finally, while at Tuesday Morning I came across this teapot and I couldn't resist.

You guessed it.  Alice in Wonderland Teapot and Sugar bowl.  Now I don't usually buy anything over $5.00 for a party, unless I plan on using it again but I just couldn't resist. It was perfect.  As luck would have it, one of the gals at the party was going to throw a tea party for her daughter and she bought it from me at the end of the night.  I also gave her all my Alice in Wonderland specific decorations to use at her party.  I am glad they are going to a good place to be used and appreciated.  As opposed to my bonus room that has become the storage place of parties of the past.  I kept the sugar bowl as a souvenir.  And I sent each person home with their own mini top hat.

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Breakfast at Tiffany's Crop

This past weekend I through a Breakfast at Tiffany's crop.  I had so much fun doing the decor for this one!  Of course my first source for ideas was Pinterest.

Source: trinketsinbloom.com via Rozette on Pinterest

Each person received one.  This one is actually in a Tiffany blue box.

Similar to the one I saw here.

I had a family emergency the weekend before so I didn't have time to paint the boxes properly, so at 4 am the morning of the crop, I found some acrylic paint in my scrapbook stash and mixed a few colors to come up with Tiffany blue.. (here's to not throwing anything away even when you haven't used it in years). So here is my version.

The box on the left is an actual box that is Tiffany blue that my husband bought me years ago to go with my scraproom.  ( I have a wonderful husband who buys me things for my birthday that I will actually love and use.)  The box on the right is a box I purchased at Hobby Lobby for $1.49 and painted.  I stuffed the bottoms with the plastic bags from the table liners, then I put tissue paper on top.  Each box had three sizes of bling, a tiara from Party City and either either some of my costume pearl jewelry or some pearl strand I found in the ribbon section at Hobby Lobby.  Here is a close up of the inside.

I also found this cute wedding gown cut on the Silhouette store.  It wasn't quite what I wanted so I tweaked it just a bit.  Once I had it just like I wanted, I was able to cut three per 12x12 black cardstock.  I then used the same technique that I used at the baby shower, to make the dresses stand up.  You can see the how to HERE.

I also pinned this wonderful centerpiece that I had to try. I couldn't find the directions to it and I have not done a floral arrangement before so I did my best.

Source: weddingwire.com via Rozette on Pinteres

Here is my version:

And no, I did not paint my art niche for the party. It just so happens that the color I chose as an accent color throughout my whole house is Tiffany blue (see previous posts).  I took apart a Christmas ornament for the bling on the branches.  I bought the flowers at, you guessed it, Hobby Lobby. And BONUS they were 50% off.  I already had the vase and the branches.

I also made a Tiffany Blue punch.

I used Blue Hawaiian Punch, a large can of pineapple juice and pineapple sherbert....oh and spike with your favorite liquor if you want.   

Everyone was given given a Tiffany blue gift bag for their trash, a Holly Golightly mask, a tiara and a luggage tag.  Cheryl, the creator of our scrapbook group found them at Michaels.  They had Holly Golightly on one side and we decorated the back side with our names.

I look forward to these crops each month. Sadly, I will not be hosting again until July.

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Boston Marathon I will finish the race

  Tax day.  If you asked me yesterday in the morning what I would have journaled about, I would have said about my dread of the tax day.  But by the end of the day, my focused had changed.  No longer was I worried about taxes.  Now I wondered about the Boston Marathon and all those people injured.  Or worst... those that were killed.  I have feared running...can I finish, did I train enough, am I going to be the last one in?  But never, never in a million years would I have thought "Am I going to die?"

And I still won't.  I am a fighter I am an American and we know no fear but fear of The Lord.  NO other shall control me.  So tomorrow I will run for Boston. I will do my best to represent...no matter how slow or how short...I will run the race that is set before me.

No one will take that from us.  Let the media speak of fear but we speak of hope and strength.   I will run today with Boston on my mind.

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Dresser Redo

Leave it to me to take on more than I can handle.  This is my first real make over of any furniture.  So what did I decide to do?  Well, I decided to take all my bedroom furniture and an armoire out to my garage and paint them all at once.  At the time of the decision, it made sense.  They all needed to be primed and most pieces were being painted the same color.  And on top of it all, I decided to blog about it. I made a promise to myself a few months ago that good or bad, I was going to blog my results of things I tried. Ouch!

One of my  first pins on pinterest was this one from Censational Girl:

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Source: centsationalgirl.com via Rozette on Pinterest

I must have pinned it the first time about a year ago. I say the first time because I have pinned it several times since then.  (You know that awkward moment when you just finished pinning 4 or 5 things only to discover that what you were looking at was one of your own boards, so you basically repinned yourself?  yeah been there, done that)
So this is the first piece that is complete.  I know, I know very Martha Stewart like.  I didn't even realize it until I put in the drawers. (You may have noticed that we also painted the walls...finally.  After 7 years of the same builder off white, we committed to Maison Blanche from Sherwin Williams.)

I followed Censational Girls advice and used her technique.

I first removed the handles and filled the holes with Elmers all purpose wood filler and sanded it.

(Yes, I was scared when I saw my drawers in this state). I am not sure if it is suppose to look this bad at this point, but YOLO!!!.    Once I did this I primed my with Zinsser red can (yeah  just look for the red can.  It comes in red, gold and blue and Censational girl prefers gold then red but we only have red in the local stores

).

Now, I do not know if they are suppose to look so smooth but there they are. (Can you see all the pieces of furniture back there?  I count eight drawers in this shot alone. I primed each piece twice, sanding between coats.

After priming, I painted the dresser Swimming from Sherwin Williams and I don't remember the white color but it is a pure white. I'll update this post when I find it.  After painting, I used Minwax  Polycrylic in Clear Gloss but my husband didn't think it was glossy enough so we sprayed it Lacquer High Gloss clear from Rustoleum.  It gave it a little shine but not like we wanted it.  After further review and research, ok so one day while mesmerized by Pinterest, I discovered this pin.

Source: thelittleblackdoor.blogspot.com via Sandra on Pinterest

So my next project will use this paint from Benjamin Moore. It is a water based paint that acts like an oil...who knew?

Then came the scary part....I had to drill holes for the new knobs. I have a tutorial for that also.  I love the knobs I found at Home Depot from Martha Stewart.  They are substantial. That is to say, they are heavy and feel like quality pieces.

And yes, I did discover after I put the drawers in the dresser that the knobs are not center on the vertical but only on the horizontal.  I measured them 6 inches from the bottom of each drawer, per a suggestion in my research. I think they should be center...oh well.

 Maybe it is more Tiffany Blue?  I have more pieces to finish and share. Pin It

My DIY elephant

Well if you were to ask me, you would open wide and try to fit the whole thing in your mouth.  You would remain lady like and not choke.  Oh, you know you will choke but you try anyway.  That is how my "Yippee! I am finally getting a new mattress became "Oh no, what have I done?"

You see, 17 years ago, before I was a mother or a wife, I purchased a queen size mattress.  Oh, how life has changed since that first night I slept on it.  The things we have shared.  Those late night prayer sessions when I was looking for guidance.  A soft place to lie when my daughter was little and slept with me because of the monsters under her bed.  The late night conversations I shared with my husband. Yes, it has served me well.  But time has not been nice to queen.  She has become lumpy and unreliable.  She gives me pain at night and no rest.  So after many years of debating on whether or not we should get a new bed, we finally take the plunge and buy a king bed.  And that is the start of my horror story of how to eat an elephant.

Let me set the scene and  introduce you to the main characters in my story:

The old  mattress:

My old bed frame:

The wall in my daughter's room:

The master bedroom

The dining room

The bedroom furniture

Do you see where I am going with this?  Do you see the elephant in the room?  Over the next few weeks I will introduce you to each character individually.  I will share the good, the bad and the ugly...and there is plenty of ugly.

And remember, it all started with one mattress purchase.
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Lollipop Topiary

Pinterest has been a lifesaver. Well maybe not a lifesaver but definitely it has added flavor to my life.  I saw this lollipop topiary on Pinterest and had to try it.

You can see the original pin HERE.  But it didn't give any directions on how to do it, so I thought I would create one.  Here is a list of items you will need:

• 6 inch styrofoam ball
• big bag of dum dums or other lollipops ( I bought mine at Sams)
• a chunky candlestick (mine came from Goodwill and that I switched candle holders)
• hot glue

Insert lollipops into stryrofoam ball.  Leave room at the bottom to hot glue ball to candle holder. (I just kept inserting lollipops and then every once and a while I placed it on top of candle holder to see if I needed more lollipops)

Once you have all the lollipops inserted in the ball, hot glue ball to candle holder.  You may have to hold it for 30 seconds just to make sure it holds.  

It is extremely easy to make and took very little time.  I watched TV while I made mine. I would have spray painted my candle holder white but my daughter wants it in her room and wants it to remain black.

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