What do you do when this is how you feel?
You turn to a resourceful friend who can direct you to links like
to help prevent this....
from happening again.
Happy Humpday!
Easter, Easter, Easter. I love the idea of making our own Easter Baskets and after the success of last year I have already begun to gather for this year. Not only was this super cost effective last year, but having control over each and every item given to our sweet child set our minds at ease.
This year I was struggling with the candy overload that always comes with holidays and came up with the idea of putting cars in the eggs instead of candy. So I went onto ebay, my own personal vortex, and found a lot of cars. Perfect! If you haven't ever bought things in "lots" you really ought to give it a try. True, you might end up with more than you need (ahem, 150 ties later...) but this can be solved two ways. One, you go in one it with someone else. Two, you save the excess for one of the other holidays needing items such as these (birthday, stocking stuffer, Happy Spring Day, etc...)
So at this point these lovely items will grace our sons Easter Baskets:
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| Cars!!! We will split the "lot" with a good friend. |
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| Vintage Books |
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| Mini Containers of Playdoh, we will split this set up as well. |
Have you started thinking about Easter? Follow along as we share more ideas, tips and tricks!
We made our Thank You cards for Christmas this year and loved how they turned out. Using some gold and silver cards that were heavily discounted right after the holidays we decided to adorn them with a banner theme.
Using cardstock we cut out little banner shapes.
Then stamped them with the word Thankful.
While these dried we cut pieces of Jute and glued them along the top of the card.
We thought the Jute made them less holiday and more shabby-chic.
We thought the Jute made them less holiday and more shabby-chic.
After the ink had dried we glue the little banner pieces right under the Jute line. Voila!
These were inspired by the ever so lovely crafts found here
on our Pinterest board.
Happy Crafting!
A woman I deeply admire has an amazing set of systems and collections. Among them she has collected enough dishes to feed an army in style. When asked about her approach to collecting so many and keeping a cohesive look she said that when she was in high school her mother told her to pick a color for her dishes,
any color,
and simply stick with it.
Her color is blue. And she has stacks and stacks of beautiful mismatched dishes in all shades of blue.
Inspired I came home, took stock of what I loved and decided to pick a color:
Green.
So hopefully someday someone will admire my collection and ask the same question. It is all about steering our passions into productivity isn't it? Do you have a color for your dishes? Happy Saturday!
That is what Baby Love Hollars when he wants to watch this and do the dance (well, our version of the dance). There is something so wonderful about sharing the classics with my kiddos. I am so grateful that my parents exposed me to some of these gems!
Come on, Do the Tapioca with us!
Anyone have those moments? We do all the time. Start telling a cute kiddo happening and poof! It is gone as quickly as it came. Unfortunately so much is happening right now that tracking it all is very difficult. Baby Love is so amusing and we don't want to forget an antic or episode. Which is why we are in love with these following items and look forward to seeing how they help us document our very documented little proteges.
Simple, easy to use, colorful and all in one place. Can't wait to show this to our grandkids someday.
Purchased this for Kevin for Father's day and can't wait to have the adorable pages filled.
And TONS of these!
We have stacks of these all over our house and whenever a memory comes to mind or is created, we run to scribble the date and details in short hand (heaven help the translator). These will be pasted all over that lovely journal that was purchased awhile back and has only a handful of complete entries.
How do you document your little ones precious moments?
The winter really wears on the creative soul in the Pacific Northwest. So I thought I would share with you in pictures what I am loving right now. What is LIFTING my soul during these grey days!
1.A thoughtful gift from some sweet friends to make our popcorn nights even sweeter.
2. A hardworking man taking a moment to enjoy the pleasures of a piece of fiction (via our new kindle)
3 & 4. Lovely glass pieces for my collection from an incredibly thoughtful Aunt who knows my love of all things tiny, glass and entertaining centered pieces.
We love eating as a family, especially now that Kevin is home more and able to participate. One little conundrum I kept running into however was the fact that Baby Love was still managing to get some food on the tablecloth. And with laundry being in the basement and my FAVORITE thing in the world to do <sarcasm> this made me a little more than annoyed to have to keep switching out the tablecloths.
So....I came up with this solution of using a napkin as his place-mat and letting it hang over the side like so:
Pretty brilliant if I do say so myself! And effective too boot. Hurray for easy fixes!
Look what I found at Goodwill yesterday! It can be a chair
or a rocker.
And the handles make it super sturdy for a little one to pull up on.
All it needs is a little paint and it will be good to go!
A sweet treat made even sweeter by seeing some old friends (read haven't seen them since the year we got married, which was a long time ago) at the same Goodwill. An excellent Monday if I say so myself!
Hope your week is off to a great start!
Look who's in the water!
PS
A few more pictures :)
For Baby Love's Birthday Thank You's I wanted to add a little personal and appropriate touch. So I decided to try a trick I saw where you use a potato to create your own stamp. Well, I had an apple and no potato, but it still turned out and I was elated to add these adorable little mustaches to the backs of the envelopes!
I would add a note of caution to be careful that your design isn't too complicated, those apples can be stubborn! This took a few tries before I got it just right, but it sure beats finding and buying the right stamp.
Here's to another thing off that lovely Pinterest list of mine!
I think we will always post when these come to our email boxes, because they are by far the BEST deal. It is the same deal as the one we blogged about here. The coupon code for free pages is:
GIFT3570
And ends:
FEB 6th
Happy Photobooking!
A few weeks ago my sweet friends husband came home to us sitting on the couch pondering what to do with a gift of delicious walnuts. He chimed in:
"Walnuts?
Here, let me have one".
And he proceeded to snag one of the walnuts and use it to rub the wood chips and discolorations on their coffee table. Puzzled we just sat and watched.
In a minute he stood back and beamed, the spots were almost gone!
Amazing!
So I came home and tried it with what I had on hand,
a pecan.
And it also worked. This is one of the moments where the solution is so frighteningly logical, yet not instantly assumed. Of course it works because it is just like the oil you would purchase in the store. But you might be like me and not think to use what you have on hand, so I thought I would pass his wisdom along. Here is some photo "evidence" from our coffee table.
Before (closeup of problem spot, but it was this bad all over):
After:
PS the photos don't do it justice!
