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!

Magnet Board

Paul helped me make this new magnet board for our kitchen! I love it! Especially with my new fork and spoon art!! Paul and I decided we wanted new BLACK appliances in our kitchen and I wanted to be sure and take care of them and prevent as many scratches as possible. I am a "Put everything on the fridge" kind of person, so I needed some place new to put everything....

 I found the frame at DI and painted it black. The metal was from Home Depot and we used a thinner board behind it to protect the metal from getting dents in it. It works GREAT in my kitchen!

 I love including Paul in my projects because when he gets excited about something it gets done FAST! Thanks babe!

Hot/Cold Packs

My oldest sister, Janeal, is exactly 14 years older than me and we share a birthday, so we consider ourselves twins. She pretty much raised me, since my mom went back to work full time from the time I was a year old. She was born with cerebral palsy and wasn't supposed to survive, but if she did she was supposed to live her life as a vegetable, not able to take care of herself or do anything. With alot of hard work and therapy she was able to crawl and eventually walk with the help of a cane. She also was able to graduate from college and eventually marry in the LDS temple and give birth to 2 sweet boys. They are now 15 and 17 years old! She is such an inspiration to me of hard work and determination. She is not able to work, because of her disabilities, but unable to qualify for disability benefits. She would like to earn a little money to help her family and is selling these cute hot/cold packs she is making. They would be perfect for anyone with aches and pains or would great gifts for family members or for Chirstmas!

Her friend she makes thes with has a 14 year old grandson who has Brittle Bone Disease and recently broke his femur. After surgery, nothing helped with his swelling including the cold packs the doctors gave him, but these cold packs are the only thing that reduced the swelling and relieved him of that pain. They are not selling these merely to make money, but because they truly believe in the product!

These rectangular ones are 4 in. wide x 9 1/2 in long, and 5 in wide x 10 1/2 in long. You can buy them individually, or in a set. Smallest to largest, they are $6 and $8 or $13 for the set

These squared ones are all 5 1/2 in wide and 6, 6 1/2, and 7 1/2 in long. You can buy them individually, or in a set. Smallest to largest, they are $5, $7, and $9 or $20 for the set

If you would like to buy any, you can email her at pulsatron2003@gmail.com to make a purchase. I am really excited to help her with this and hope you like her creations, they are super cute!

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!

Teryaki Bacon Wrapped Chicken Skewers

Soo, my friend Jessica told me about this recipe and it has become my husband's favorite so I have used it several times since! Love it! You just dice your chicken into 1 inch chunks, wrap in bacon (not the expensive, thick bacon, just the cheap thinner stuff or it will overtake the flavor), and feed it onto your skewer alternating with pineapple chunks until it is full. I actually was out of bacon this time, but decided to make it anyway. Then, you brush on any teryaki marinade with your basting brush (my friend and I both like the Mr Yoshidas marinade you can find at Costco or Sams) and sprinkle a good amount of brown sugar on top. Cover and refrigerate for a couple hours or whatever time you have. I also like to put vegetables on skewers for a side and this time I diced zuccini and rolled it in melted butter, or olive oil, and then mixed parmesan and bread crumbs. Grill it with your chicken and it's soo yummy! Serve with rice!

4th of July Burlap Pillow

So, 2 things I have wanted to make from Pinterest for the 4th were the Burlap Wreath, my last post, and this pillow that wasn't supposed to be burlap, but I wanted it to match my wreath. I used the same burlap from my wreath and cut it into strips, used a basting stitch to gather them together, then sewed the strips onto a piece of fabric the size of my pillow form, which was 12 x 16. Then, put right sides together and stitched around the edges and left a few inches at the bottom for turning. Finish your opening on the bottom and you're done! Find the tutorial on thislittleproject.com.

4th of July Wreath

As I have previously mentioned, I LOVE the 4th of July! My friend and I got together to make these wreaths out of red and cream burlap and a blue fabric with stars on it. I hve seen it with denim and it is really cute, but I fell in love with the stars :). You can find a tutorial on thescrapshoppeblog.com. We used the big straw kind of wreath beacuse it was thicker, and covered it with a red ribbon, because you will see inside through the burlap. We cut our fabric and burlap into strips and ran a basting stitch through it to gather it up. The tutorial lady did it by hand, but why take the time, right? It feels like you have to be super careful gathering the burlap wen you start, but soon realize it is pretty tough and wont fall apart as easy as you think and you can whip through the rest pretty quickly. Then you just hot glue it on starting and ending in the back since you will see though the burlap, and ta da! A beautiful one-of-a-kind 4th of july wreath. If you hang it on your door, beware it fades quickly, but the faded look is kinda charming to me :)

Good luck and let me know if you try it!

Best Way to Cook Zuccini and Carrots

I found this recipe for zuccini and carrots on voraciousvander.com and it is so yummy! There are lots of different ways to try it, so I did mine a few different ways to see which way we liked it best. After I tossed my zuccini and carrots in olive oil, I tried some in paprika and parmesan, garlic powder and parmesan, some with lots of just parmesan, and then I tried one of my own and added French's Fried Onions. They were all so delicious, I couldn't pick a favorite! A couple days later, I tried grilling them and that time I mixed equal parts of breadcrumbs and parmesan and they were so good! My husband and I decided eating zuccini as our vegetable at dinner is our new favorite, which is great! Especially since we have had an abundance all of a sudden from neighbors and our own garden has started producing as well! You should see our freakishly ginormous carrots too! Mmmm! Gardens are so rewarding!

Try it out! There are so many options for our vegetables!

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!

4th of July Pinwheels

I love the 4th of July! It is probably my most favorite holidays! So, when my friend wanted to make some of these pinwheels in 4th of July Fabrics, I was ALL IN! We first picked out 6 inches of 6 different, but coordinating fabrics. We also got a yard of double sided fusable interfacing, wooden dowells, and buttons. You cut 6 inch squares from each of the fabrics and the interfacing and iron a coordinating fabric onto each side. Trim with pinking shears, or leave straight, or do a combo of the two, which is what we did. Mark you center and cut from each corner in about an inch from the center. Make some holes, one in the center, and one on each corner making sure you cut all on the left or all on the right on each corner so they are all the same. We used a scrapbook setter to make the holes. Fold in each of your "holed" corners to the center and secure with a brad. Glue a button onto your brad and a wooden dowell onto your back and you're done! Super easy!

Thanks Natalie for the idea and fun times!

Wedding Book

Paul and I have been married for 10 years this August and we never got a formal wedding book! I decided it was time to make one for our anniversary this year and have it bound in a book. Here is how it is coming along...

I am loving it! I think I will do a separate book for our receptions as well! Once again, I use Polaroid My Memories Suite for my scrapbooking and I love it! Definately recommend it!

Twin Baby Girls!

My sister-in-law just had twin baby girls and she was having a hard time finding outfits that matched, but were different. I decided to make her these reversible matching dresses so each baby could have 2 matching outfits by giving each one dress! One side was turquise and the other was pink each in different patterns! I found the tutorial on blog.polkadotbug.com. Check it out! Super easy!

I am so excited for Sara and Kate to wear them!! Congrats guys!