You know you’re a blogger…

Last weekend my in-laws went to visit Tim’s grandpa. Tim’s grandparents have downsized from their large home to a two-bedroom apartment in a retirement home. So Tim’s parents picked up some new furniture from Ikea to help his grandpa finally organize a pile of office equipment in his bedroom.

When my mother-in-law came back, I asked her about the new set-up since I was curious how the Ikea items worked. Then I asked if she took a picture. She paused for a minute and then basically said “why would I take a picture?”

At that moment I realized being a blogger (even a sporadic one) means you take pictures of a bedroom corner. Because someone surely would want to see a before and after…

Pirate Princess Party part 2

Back in November I posted about Isabelle’s birthday party and showed you the invitations I made. Thanks to Pinterest I was able to come up with fun decorations to make too.

We started out with a sign to welcome everyone. The balloons lasted all of 10 minutes because it was so windy out.

My first inspiration was to make tissue paper poms for the ceiling. This are super easy to make and give some fun to a room.

I saw on Pinterest an idea to make PB&J sandwiches in the shapes of crowns. You have to have sandwiches at tea parties!  (My only mistake was to have the cupcakes on the table ahead of time. None of the kids wanted to eat their food first!)

I made white chocolate strawberries with pink sprinkles, had pretzels and then I didn’t take a picture of the cheese. I found a crown cookie cutter and used that to make cheese crowns.

Finally, I made cupcake wrappers in the shape of crowns thanks to Stampin’ Up!. Since I had just spent a lot of time cutting out little princesses for the invitations, I decided to go quick with a circle punch for this one. I’m actually considering making up packs of these to sell on etsy or something.

Here is the completed table ready for the tea party. I didn’t do too much here with pirate decorations. The cost was starting to add up.

For party games we played Hide and Seek, had balloons out for the kids to throw around and did a “treasure hunt”. I hadn’t found anywhere in town to buy chocolate coins in bulk, so I had my sister-in-law in California mail me a bunch from WinCo. Then I found these cute treasure boxes at Hobby Lobby to use for collecting coins. Then we had a coin hunt. I wanted make sure that we had enough coins to not have kids miss out on collecting and we probably had too much! Here is a picture of Isabelle finding her treasure.

I didn’t end up getting pictures of the fireplace. I found some cute treasure maps for the boys party bags and had a bunch extra so I taped them up on the fireplace with some balloons. If it hadn’t been so windy, we probably would have played some more pirate games outside.

Finally, my cousin runs a custom cookie shop out of her home and made these amazing crown cookies for everyone’s gift bags. They were so fun to have!

I think that’s everything! It was a fun party, it’s always fun to create things for parties, even if it gets pretty chaotic making it all.

 

Homemade Gifts: Mug Rugs

For my two sister-in-laws I made Mug Rugs for Christmas. I first found these this past summer and knew they would be perfect gifts. I have a couple of friends that may also see these appear in a gift sometime. So what’s a mug rug? It’s an oversized quilted coaster meant for your mug and snack, like this:

There have been a lot of tutorials going around the internet. I ended up really liking this one I found on Sew, Mama, Sew!

Mug rugs are great for your scrap pile because you don’t need very big pieces. I made two for each sister. My plan originally was to make 4 and have two different patterns, but crafting with two kids proved to be a bit challenging.

Here is the completed set of blue mug rugs.

Here is the pink/purple set.

They were so quick and easy. I think it actually took longer to cut the pieces and hand stitch the binding than it did to even sew everything together.

If you want more ideas for mug rugs, here is where I got started.

 

Family Memory Game

Two years ago my friend Sherry posted this post about an Old Maid game she made for her grandkids. I filed it in my brain as a memory game and waited for a good time to make one.

This Christmas I was pretty excited to finally figure out how to make a set for my niece who turned one in October. Since our family is all over the country we try pretty hard to keep each others faces in front of our kids. Isabelle regularly Google Chats with everyone so when we get together no one is a stranger. Now it’s Ellie’s turn!

After seeing what Sherry did and checking some things out on Pinterest, I came up with my own version. First I decided to have two individual pictures of each family member. There are 11 of us so far (baby cousin #4 will get his/her addition next year!) so I had 22 pictures. Thank goodness for Facebook- I was able to get most of my pictures without hinting to her mom and dad what I was working on.

I sized all the pictures to a 3×3 and then printed them on white cardstock. I made two copies for the matching portion. I then cut colored cardstock and fun scrapbook paper. I glued the scrapbook paper to the back of the cardstock and the pictures to the front of the cardstock. I also used a corner punch to round the edges and make it look nice. Then I took it to Mardel’s and had it laminated.

Add a fun box and you have a fun family game!

Here’s a portion of the finished product, it’ll be a while before she will play a real memory game but for now she can just have fun looking at everyone.

 

First Christmas: A comparison

The fun thing about having another kid is re-creating pictures we took of the first child. I’ve actually only done this for Christmas so far.

Here is Isabelle on her first Christmas. She was 5 weeks old and I think only a couple presents were hers.

Four years later here is little sister Adelynn, three months old, on her first Christmas. That chubby face gets me every time!

DPP Day 19- Sisters

You know that your baby sister likes you when she looks at you like this.

 

For even more December Photo Project, click here.

DPP Day 18

The fun thing about being with family at Christmas and playing board games is that you end up with pictures like this.

For more December Photo Project, click here.

DPP Day #16

In preparation to be a flower girl soon we practiced with sponge rollers. I wanted to see how it all turned out before we tried it the night before the wedding.

Totally brings me back to my childhood:

For more December Photo Project click here.

DDP Day 13- First Santa Pics

Yes, these two pictures are officially the very first pictures either girl has with Santa.

This Santa was a city utilities employee handing out energy efficient light bulbs who happened to be right in front of Pottery Barn kids right when story time ended. Good thing he had candy canes too!

 

For more pics go here.

DPP #9