Americana Decor

I absolutely LOVE Americana Décor! The 4th of July is my favorite Holiday and time of year. There is nothing more cheerful than red, white, and blue! Here was my mantle this year:

 My friend, Ami, and I found these wooden "Proud To Be an American" craft sets at a place called Wood Connection. It is a super fun store! We got together and made them and I am in LOVE with it! We mod-podged the different scrapbook papers onto the letters and the stained the sides of each with a dark stain and added some fun textured ribbons. LOVE!

 My daughter, Cali, really wanted to make something too so I got her this set of flip-flops and she painted them all by herself! The tutu flowers with jewels turned out adorable!

I love Summer! Hope everyone had a chance to enjoy theirs as much as we did!

Colin's Green Dinosaur 3rd Birthday Party!

For Colin's 3rd Birthday he really wanted a Green Dinosaur Birthday Party! Here is the announcement I made for it. I let him pick out what he wanted on it and he really liked these dinosaur guys :)

I really wanted to attempt his birthday cake myself, but being pregnant with contractions, I needed to eliminate some of the stress and so that meant the cake had to be it. I have this awesome cake lady who I have had do cakes for me before and she is amazing! I just sent her a picture and she created this from it! Love her!

 One thing I was NOT going to give up on was this DINOsaur tail! I had seen it before, but wanted to make one for him to wear on his birthday! I found this tutorial on tatertotsandjello.com and it was really super simple. He loved it and wore it almost the whole day! We had also just put in a new sandbox that we hid some dinosaur bones in for the kids to dig up! That was the best part of the party! So much fun!

 I found this FREE Dinosaur Party printable at lovelyliving.com that made things super easy. It had all the banners, birthday hats, and straw flags as well as a whole lot more that I ended up not using. I used the idea from celebrationsathomeblog.com to add spikes to the back of the Dinosaur hats! I also made up some cute signs for all the table items that matched Colin's birthday party announcements. Everyone loved the Dino Droppings and Dino Bones! The Droppings were Junior Mints and the Bones were small straight pretzels with a mini marshmallow on each end dipped in white chocolate! Mmmmm. Those were yummy to make and went suuper fast!

Colin had a super fun Green Dinosaur Party and was in heaven the whole time! He even still refers to everything green as "like my Green Dinosaur Party" such a funny kid! Happy Birthday Love!

Paper Medallion Bouquet

The end of Preschool was quickly approaching and I didn't have anything special for Cali's teachers. Cali had them for 2 years and they are good friends of mine, so I wanted something really special for them. I found this idea on createcraftlove.com and they turned out super cute for her to give her teachers! The website has all the instructions and they are super fun to make!

 You just take a strip of fun paper and fold it like an accordion and glue it on a stick! Then you take your wooden nickel and add a cute circle of paper on top of that and you're done!

 Cali wanted to make them with me and she did these all by herself! She is such a little artist!

 Here she is with all the flowers for her teachers!

A special thanks to her teachers, Mrs. Lisa and Mrs. Sham, for 2 wonderful years of learning and growing for my sweet baby girl! You ladies are awesome!

Canvas Wall Art

I have been wanting something for Cali's walls that matched her bedding I made for her to help with the finishing touches in her room. I had a canvas laying around I found a while back at DI and I came up with this:

I covered the canvas with the main focus fabric from her quilt and added frills with other matching scraps. Then I found a wooden "C" that I painted turquise and sprayed with a little glitter spray paint, which is my new favorite thing! I can't wait to see it up in her room!

Cali's 5th Birthday- A Mermaid Party!

Cali chose a Mermaid theme for her birthday this year! She has also fallen in love with the color turquise, so I thought it was perfect!

I designed this invitation for her mermaid party and sent them around to her friends and then changed the time to 7:00 and gave those to family. Yes, we did 2 parties in one day! Alot of work, but at least I didn't have to decorate twice, and yes I would!!

 

The cake alone was quite the adventure! I have never done a cake before, let alone used fondant! I know, I'm crazy! Needless to say it took me an entire day and into the evening to make this masterpiece! I found the inspiration from bubblynaturecreations.com and the tutorial from bubbleandsweet.blogspot.com. I made the ruffles out of fondant and yes, I colored each layer separately so it got darker as it went down. What a pain! Haha! The topping is graham cracker I put through my food processor. I got the pearls (white sixlets) from Zurchers and Cali and I made the chocolate seashells with a candy mold. She loved helping out!

 The inside was also colored turquise! And it tasted so good too!

 The goodie table

 Cali and I made some Mermaid posters and fishies to hang all over

 I made chocolate cupcakes with a turquise buttercream frosting topped with our candy seashells we made :) YUM!

 I made the kids Cali's favorite, PB&J shaped like fishies! And of course Cali's favorite snack to go with it, GOLDFISH!

 I also made a blue jello fishbowl with sweedish fish swimming around in it! Didn't quite turn out like I wanted, but it was still fun!

 I LOOOve Candy! A party isn't a party witout CANDY! We have blue gumballs, turquise jelly bellys, and turquise and white sixlets!

 We made some seaweed with streamers and bubbles with opaly-white balloons

 The kids jumping in the fishbowl tramp

 and fishing in the pool!

 I also made Cali a fishtail mermaid tutu skirt with toole

 Blowing out the candles!

 Happy 5th Birthday, LOVE!

Pillows for Cali's Bed

So....I finished Cali's quilt, but since she has a day bed she needed alot of matching pillows. I made the 4 standard pillows for the back with a ruffle around the edges and made 3 decorative pillows for the front

 This one was my favorite! I love how it just poofs out! I used 2 different fabrics for the ruffles and a ribbon down the center to tie it all together finished off with top stitches down the ribbon

 This pillow just has a ruffle down one side with a strip of fabric over it. I finished it off with a gathered flower that I have yet to add a jewel to

 This one is also a fun one. I took 2 long strips of brown fabric and gathered it on both sides and attatched to a strip of pink fabric and top stitched over it. I am also planning to add 3 smaller fabric flowers together on the top right corner of this one

I love how the pillows turned out and Cali's just loves her new bedding!

Cali's Quilt!

My daughter, Cali, has a pink room. Bubble gum pink. Pink, Pink. All her decorations are the same as when she was born: blessing dress, pink baby blocks, baby pictures...you get the idea. I was worried it might be a little too little-girly for her, since she is almost 5 now. I decided I wanted to splash in some HOT pink and some turquise, since those are her 2 favorite colors. I made this quilt for her bed, making sure it wasn't too difficult or time consuming, since she is only 5 and could possibly ruin it :). I fell in love with the fabric and also have been working on 7 coordinating pillows to go on her day bed. I am so happy it is finally finished and she loves it!

Love you baby girl!

Loveable Baby Gift

One of my good friend's daughter is having a baby girl and I wanted to make something special, but I only had a couple days to do it in. I have made dozens of these "Girly Skirts" before, so I knew it would be a familiar project. I had some extra charm packs in my fabric bin, which I like to collect, and a coordinating fat quarter, which I also like to collect. If you are at a fabric store and love certain fabrics, but don't have anything in mind for them, just pick up a charm pack or fat quarter or two and stash them away for a day like this one, when I didn't have time or want to go to the store to pick out fabrics. This particular charm pack was one of my favorites and I was so excited to use it! Since this was a newborn size skirt, I just used one long row of squares and added a strip of the coordinating fat quarter to the bottom and used it for the waistline as well. I threw in some elastic and it was done. I wanted something cute to add to it, and what is better than a matching headband? I got some elastic and covered it with the same fabric and used a couple remaining charm pack squares, cut and sewn into short strips and twisted into a circle, to make the flowers and I just stitched straight lines through it in different directions until it was secure. Soo easy, I don't know why I haven't done this before! Anyways, it turned out super cute and I whipped through it all uninterrupted in about 2 1/2 hours. Whew! Thank goodness for hubbys on days like these.

Congratulations on your sweet baby girl! I'm excited to see her!

Colin's Party

Colin's Thomas the Train Birthday Party!

Here is the goodie table full of yummy treats! It has the cake, cupcakes, Sweedish fish, blue and red gumballs, M&Ms, licorice, and taffy! All of Colin's favorites! I used a white tablecloth on top, so as not to drown out all the bright colors, with a blue tablecloth around the bottom. I also added some balloons around the edges to make it more playful

Here is the candy! On the left, I used a Blue bucket with white polka dots to fill with licorice, Colin's favorite. In the middle, there is a glass jar that I glued onto a candlestick, filled with sweedish fish, and added a blue bow with toole. On the right, I jsut used a plain old jar from Tai Pan and filled with blue gumballs and added a bow with blue ribbon with white polka dots. YUM!

 So, for the candy on this side, I did some of the same things as the other. On the right, I used another bucket to hold taffy, the jar in the middle is also glued onto a candlestick with a rafia bow, and the left jar is just a fun jar I found with a light blue lid that I used to hold the York Pieces to add some more blue to the candy

 Here is my cupcake stand with all the yummy cupcakes on it :)

 I made chocolate cupcakes this time with flufffy white frosting (From my Better Homes and Gardens red checker cookbook). I added some extra almond extract to the frosting to give it an extra yummy flavor as well as blue food coloring and sprinkles. For the topper, I found a cute Thomas picture on the internet and shrunk it waay down and cut them out. I used one on the front and one on the back and glued them together with a toothpick in the middle

 I found this glass dome at DI a while back and decided to make it into a cake stand. I also found the glass vase and plate at DI and glued them together. I think it looks super cute with the glass dome, especially after I added a blue dotted ribbon on top!

 I would love to say I made the cake, but I would be lying....I badly need to take a cake decorating class. I definately lack in those skills. BUT I did find this amazing cake lady who made this not only super cute, but yummy cake. She did out of a butter cream frosting and smoothed it out like fondant. She put it on a larger board and made the track go around the outside on the bottom. The very best part is the tunnel on the side! She dug it out a little and made the track come out of it as a place for Thomas to sit. Colin absolutely loved the tunnel! Soo Cute!

 I found this idea on Pinterest! It is just my vegetable cans covered in scrapbook paper for utensil holders! So cute and practical and costs almost nothing! Find it here

 Another Pinterest idea! I talked Paul into making this track with electrical tape for Colin to scoot on with Thomas the train! All the kids loved it! Find it at maddycakesmuse.blogspot.com

 I found these cute lanterns at Hobby Lobby and just love them! So cute!

 Last, but not least, comes the ballon streamers! My favorite new idea! You just blow up the balloons and use a needle and thread to make them into a garland to hang! It was a pretty breezy day, and they didn't go anywhere! Great idea if you don't want to go get all your balloons filled at the store!! Find it at agirlandaboy.com

 I had so much fun with Colin's birthday party! All the wonderful Pinterest ideas really came in handy! Thank you Pinterest, Cakes by Deanna, Tai Pan, Hobby Lobby, DI, and a great husband to help pull the whole thing together!

Happy Birthday to my sweet little boy, Colin, who just turned 2!

Easy Backpack

For Activity Days, we decided to make these marthastewart backpacks for all the girls to wear at our daycamp we have coming up in June. The girls made these at our activity and they all did so good especially since most of them had never used a sewing machine before! There is a really easy tutorial on the Martha Stewart Link above. Love these!

I don't have a backpack right now to take a picture of because the one I made for example is set aside for one of the girls, sorry. This is the fabric and we followed the tutorial, but just made the ropes longer than in the tutorial since it is meant for a toddler. I love these and they are so easy, the girls made them themselves in 15 minutes!

We found this super cute fabric at Hobby Lobby! Love it! I am so making one for Cali!

Thanks to the Activity Days girls for the super fun activity!