A few more Halloween pics...

So I took a few more pictures of the Halloween decor in the kitchen.

 The cake stand it the one I painted a while back... and added orange pom pom trim.  The bottles I got at the DI...(the purple ones) and then I found some labels online.  (I had to paint them with a little ink/paint/water combo to make them not so bright white.)

 This is a little bit of a bird's eye view....looking down.  It's hard to see the black twigs because they are black... but they are in an antique mason jar filled with black beans.  The clock is an old clock I bought from a garage sale...(it didn't work and they wanted $1 for it...I have a thing for clocks) so I thought I'd add a few vinyl bats on the front and make the clock read 12 o'clock.

 Here's Hank.  The raven.  He's hanging around in his cage.  (Also hard to get a picture of.)

And just another view of the bottles.  (The 2 in the middle are empty Watkins Vanilla bottles that I kept, and the taller one in the back I got from the DI for $1.50, added a label and then painted it with a little  ink/mod podge...it worked well to look like an old bottle.

So there's the kitchen Halloween decor.  Still working on the mantle...(it's just not falling into place this year...not sure what's up.)  Going to be working on the front door too.

Halloween decor

So if you know me, you know that I LOVE Halloween.  Not the super scary gross Halloween.  But the fun with pumpkins and costumes Halloween.  This year's decor was a little more on the scary side...but not gross scary.

I had a lot of fun putting it all together.  I've been collecting stuff for the past couple months, and some of it was from last year.  My kids like it...so I guess that's all that matters - right?

In our kitchen I have a fabulous Ikea dresser.  It houses place mats, mail, paperwork...etc, and in the bottom drawer is where we keep all the winter hats (touques for my Canadian peeps), mittens and scarves.

On the wall behind the dresser is my chalkboard wall with a calendar.  I love this wall!  It's so nice to be able to see the month up there.  And starting about a year ago, I've been decorating the top of it.  Every month a different theme.  Mainly based on the holiday at hand, but also just some fun stuff when there is not a major holiday.

Here's a little of what it looks like right now...(at least part of it.)

 I hung some awesome Martha Stewart coasters from my chandelier in the kitchen.  So this is looking through that at the wall.

 And my FAVORITE part of it all is these fantastic vinyl bats!  My amazing friend Lori (and best piano student...don't tell the others) cut these for me out of vinyl.  I have no idea how many there actually are, but I love them!  They start at the top of the wall and go onto the ceiling. My kids freaked out when they saw it!  (G told me the Halloween decorations this year were "Epic"...all thanks to these bats!)

And of course the owl is "Winston".  He's a screen I made last year and I loved him so much that I painted on my wall.  So he's a permanent fixture up there, but looks especially at home with all the Halloween stuff going on around him.  (That piece of ribbon hanging down is a bird cage with a black crow inside...his name is "Hank".)  (We like to name all sorts of things in this house.  Keeps it interesting.)

More pictures to come.  I took a whole bunch, but didn't like how they turned out... so will try again and post more soon.

Still here!

So life has pretty much swallowed me up this week.  Nothing of the life threatening type, just constant busy.  I've tried to make this blog work... and I'm still going to.  It's just that this week got away from me faster than I could even blink... and here we are at Friday...(technically it's still a couple hours away when I am writing this) and I couldn't tell you how I got here.

So my promise (more to myself than anyone else) is to get back on the horse and get blogging again.  Monday is a new day.  A new month.  A new beginning.  And I can't wait to post all my fun Halloween decorations!

See you in a few!!

Wedding Planning

So, my darling, little sister...(she's going to love that) is getting married!!  YAY!!!  And for the big event, I  get to be her wedding planner.

Like her "official" wedding planner.  Not just her "helpful-whatever-you-need-me-to-do" sister.  But a real wedding planner.  And I couldn't be more excited!

If I could look like this...I would.




(Headset and all.)








But in the mean time I get to do all the arranging of meetings for possible venues, dress shopping appointments, and all that fun stuff.


She told me that I could blog about her wedding and the things I get to do... so keep checking as I get more involved...there will be more fun stuff to blog about!
(NOt sure why the font is wonky OR there are big spaces....)

The girls room

So today I thought I would take some pictures of the girls room.  Their room is the master bedroom, but we decided that they needed the space more than we did, so switched rooms.  And I'm SOOO glad we did.  Their room works better and I LOVE how ours turned out...(that's for another post!)

So this past spring we painted the walls a light gray color...(which is the same in the top part of our room too), and moved them in.  I didn't do a whole lot of decorating in it until about a month ago when I decided it was time to get that room done.  

Here are pictures of the room...(sorry if the pictures are crappy...it's my camera...).  I tried to hit all the things in their room.

This is the view from the door.  This little tent is new and the girls LOVE to play in it...but it's not up all the time.  (But it matches their room so perfectly.)

The room has tall ceilings and two big windows.  It was really fun to do the wall above the little Ikea bookshelf.  I really like how it turned out.  Most everything on that wall I made.  The mailbox is from a cute little store just down the street called, "Just a Bed of Roses".

This is a frame I found at thrift store in California and brought home.  I sprayed it yellow and just put some scrapbook paper (that already looked like lined paper) in it with some chipboard stickers.

I love using embroidery hoops to create things.  This is some turquoise linen with a screen print of a frame.

This is a letter that my great aunt wrote to her friend when she was eight years old...(the same age as Gracie.)  She died when shortly after writing this letter.  (Not really sure what the cause was.)  She was in third grade and had excellent cursive writing.  We thought it would be neat thing to add to their wall.  (I have a whole box of her school work...which is really neat.  The best part is that she liked to draw flappers... and did so in the back of most of her work books.... kind of funny I thought.)

This is an owl screen that I made.  I actually named him 'Winston", but since this is a girl owl I'm not sure what to call her.  I made this by taking pages from an old book and sewing them together on my sewing machine with hot pink thread.  Once I had a piece big enough, I staple gunned it to a canvas that I had.  Then I added some fabric flowers to spice it up.  I LOVE how this turned out!

The fabric banner is at the top of this wall is made with just a bunch of scraps that I had.

I also love books...(like my kids) so I bought the "Velveteen Rabbit" book from the thrift store and framed the cover.

This is a HUGE frame I got at the thrift store (42'' x 30'') and I sprayed it white.  Then I added some chicken wire that I sprayed blue to it to make an art board for the girls to display their stuff.

This is just a little frame that I loved and sprayed it turquoise and printed a little saying on some scrapbook paper.   And the other one is a little sign that my sister designed for Lucy last Christmas.  I just cut our the oval and mounted it on a piece of wood with some scrapbook paper and some ric-rac.  The cute clock is from ROSS...(the new one that just opened up the road.)

So there's my virtual-ish tour of the girls room.  (Sorry for a huge amount of pictures.)

Reading is cool!

So I have a little book worm in my house who can't get enough to read.  She's currently on a "volcano" kick...(not sure exactly why) but reading is reading...right?

I've made just about everything in the girls room...(room tour coming really soon) and I wanted to put something over her bed (on the top bunk) that would appeal to her and speak to just her.

So I came up with a "reading is cool" theme and got to work in my little craft room.  And before I knew it...(while watching The Glee Project on hulu.com) this is what I came up with:

(Not the best of pictures)

Basically I just took a scrap of fabric I had and sewed the words on.  The words are felt.  Then I cut out a branch out of another scrap and sewed that on.  Added an American Crafts bird and some leaves, then a scalloped edge from pages from an old book.

I love doing "hoop" projects like this.  You can put literally ANYTHING on it and it works...LOVE IT!

Back in the swing of things...

So we had a houseful of sickies this weekend...including an overnight stay in the hospital for one.  BUT, never fear.  We are doing much better now and hopefully we are back in the swing of things...

Ok.  So I bought this funny little stool thing from the DI.  It was a children's stool...(I think) but I took the little legs off of it and made it into a cake stand.

It was just plain wood.

Then I spray painted it black.

So once it was black I had all these grand ideas of stenciling something fabulous...even bought a Martha Stewart stencil thingy...just for this project.  But once I tried that stencil on it, I didn't like it AT ALL.  So I painted the top white, taped off stripes, then sprayed it black again.
The result:

I just glued on some orange pom pom trim that I already had, and VOILA!  A fun Halloween cake stand.  (Look for it in my Halloween decor!!)

Spice it up!

So I had my "Fourth of July" front door wreath thingy up until about 2 weeks ago...(I know...totally NOT cool), so I whipped up a little cheery framed thing to replace it.

I just sewed a few pieces of fabric together and then cut out the word "hello" out of felt and sewed it on top.  I already had this framed painted turquoise... so it was a pretty easy project to do.  I liked it like this but I thought it needed some fabric flowers somewhere to "spice it up" a little.  So this morning I got out my glue gun and a pile of scraps and got to work.

So I just made some fabric flowers, added some in felt, cut some fabric leaves and added some pom-pom trim... and here's what it looks like now.

(P.S. I stil haven't found my camera that the 3 year old took and lost...nice...so all pictures are taken on my phone...oy!)

I'm gonna do it...

Ok.  So I have fallen into the "Pinterest" trap...(and by "trap" I mean the mindless hours that can be spent pinning your own stuff...checking out others boards...becoming followers... it really is exhausting)... but to make amends with myself, I am going to try to duplicate a couple of things I have pinned.

Here they are:

I love this sign.  I love what it says.  More importantly I love that it's a big sign.  I've always wanted to make one... so it should be fun.  And these jars...really, how cute are those!! So stay tuned as you will see my version of these awesome crafts!  (P.S. I tried to find who took these awesome pictures, but no luck.  Sorry.)

Halloween Past

So I've been thinking about Halloween costumes for my kids.  Not too sure what they want or what I want.  So I went back to last year's costumes.
Here's one at my sisters with my niece who was a "50's girl"...(and this was one of the good ones I have of all of them.)

The little girls do not have a good picture of them in their costumes, but they were little birds...(these are from when we went to the school for their parade...oy!)

(Don't they look so happy!! )

Gracie wanted to be a "girl from India".  I have a friend from India and we did a lot of stuff for girls camp last year to do with India, so she was hooked.  I did my own "henna" on her hands with s brown sharpie...(my friend Amanda started me off) because I thought that real henna would be on there too long... but little did I know how hard it would be for sharpie to come off!  (Oh well... I LOVE how she looked!!)

Carson wanted to be a cowboy, so thanks for my "owner-of-authentic-cowboy-attire" friend Chyrese, we were able to borrow some wranglers, a shirt and a hat.  Carson was in seventh heaven!

 Not too sure what we will do this year.  Maybe some flowers, or cupcakes... who knows what I will come up with...(the little girls don't have much say in what they are yet!)  Gracie has said a few things...so we shall see!

Shirts

So I really like to make shirt for my kids.  I've made one's with homemade screens, but I especially like making ones with felt.  I usually make them for their birthdays... and with Lucy's birthday coming up, I thought I would post some of my favs.