Saturday Morning Happy

A lazy Saturday morning here before the joyful chaos of the day starts...I am sharing this post ultimately because this just makes me smile...

I took the girls to Color Me Mine over Christmas to paint some pieces. This is the large mug I created and it makes me happy, simple and fun memories. I've been sadly aware of just how fast time is passing with Graci talking a lot about her thoughts on middle school next year and it just all seems so impossible to me but I also know it is just a part of this incredible life. Thus why I'm taking some time this morning to just stop and enjoy. Please excuse me but I need more coffee... :)

Friday Cards

I've been inspired by blog hopping this week and created a few cards as a result...

My first inspiration was from Laura Fadora's Doublestick Heaven. I embossed a letter background stamp in white and used various Distress Inks to blend together a rainbow of colors. Mounting it on black really makes the rainbow pop! I used my Silhouette to print the word Love and then cut it using the fill tool and removing cut lines around my word, modified, and cut. I heat embossed the you in white on black and made it into a little banner. A few silver sequins finished my layout for the card and I'm excited to mail this one for Valentine's Day!

Next up is this sweet thank you...

I used a heart stencil from Stampin' Up and embossing paste to add texture just like Kristina Werner did on her card. I'm not a big fan of cats so I decided to use the whimsical ballon dies and matching stamps from Simon Says Stamp to finish off my card after I added rows of the stamp from their January card kit in SU's Island Indigo, Coastal a Cabana, and Primrose Petals. The thank you is a Papertreyink Ink die cut.

And finally, a simple card I found on Pintetest after doing a Stampin' Up search that I screenshotted a picture of and cannot find the source. The white card front was embossed with a large polka dot folder from SU and I used a banner die from SSS, a few die cut leaves from SU and the detailed one is from a Phrase Play die from Papertreyink. A few embellishments and mounting it to Calypso Coral card stock from SU, sweet and simple...

That's it for now. Happy Friday, friends! I'm off to a college basketball game to watch Graci dance at half time. Hope you're doing something special, too! 

Master Makeover

So, a few weeks back I made some updates to our master bedroom by purchasing a new duvet and freshening up our old drapes. All was good with that but as I reviewed the photos I had added to the blog I knew I would love a warm gray color on the walls and had seen an idea of fun framed monogram letters with an ampersand in between on Pinterest. Eric was in Vegas for work, kids were busy with friends, why not, I can paint a whole bedroom, move furniture, remake, get a few odds and ends, and come up with a fresh look for our room in, say, one weekend or less, right? Right!!!

I picked Dovetail by Sherwin Williams, love, love, love how this turned out! Found a giant rustic ampersand at Hobby Lobby for half off, and spray painted the old E and S in a soft aqua and sanded them so the edge looked worn and framed them with gray barnyard frames, buy one get one free from Michaels...

A fur throw from TJ and a few more pillows from Target that happened to match perfectly. I splurged and got two new lamps that had worn wood bases and cream linen shades. I also found a weaved piece of art that just happened to be the perfect colors to add interest to one of the walls...

I am loving the look and it even got the stamp of approval from the guy who sleeps on the E side of the bed! That's it for now but I'm working on wrapping some twine around an aqua vase, a slice of wood with a sweet sentiment on it, and a sign made from old pallet wood that will have all the important dates of our life together on it. Can't wait to call this room complete and start thinking about what I might need to freshen up next!

Valentine Wreath

Happy weekend! I'm heading to Nashville for the work week so trying to get life at home organized while I'm away but I wanted to do a quick post to show how I upcycled my Christmas wreath for Valentine's!

I honestly spent 20 minutes on this project, although it took me all day because every few minutes I made breakfast for the girls' sleepover, picked up, took Addison to piano, planned lunch, made lunch, you get the point, typical Saturday at our house, that's why I love the weekends because even with all the fun routine life stuff, I still have time to finish something!

The Christmas wreath was still on our front door and it was in such great shape so I figured I could snip off the pine cones and red bow with wire cutters and decide what to do with it. I found pieces of red and pink felt and die cut several to layer, these sparkly pink sequined gems from my stash, I think by Prima from at least 4 years ago, matching pink flowery ribbon, and I hand cut four triangles from a piece of canvas and used acrylic paint to make my hugs and kisses red. 

I attached all of the pieces with a hot glue gun so that this wreath could last another month or two and add a little love to our front door!

And for those of you who live in freezing temperatures like I do, once the hot glue is hardened, this will stay put even in the cold temps. If you still have that wreath up from the holidays, dig into your stash and repurpose it for another season! So gratifying and cute! :)

Fresh Look Fast

We've lived in our home for almost eight years and while we love so many things about it, including our incredible neighbors, our needs have changed since the girls were babies and our family has been craving a fresh start so we purchased a lot to build on recently! We're very excited but are realistic and know it will be a year or more before we actually build. However, I'm still craving something fresh but don't want to invest much due to the situation so I was on the hunt for some bedding for our master bedroom and came upon a clearance at West Elm that was perfect!

Loved the modern vibe of this reindeer duvet with accents of peach rose. We had NO peach of any sort in our bedroom, it was all chocolate and aqua but I put the duvet on with accent pillows of peach rose and stone and didn't love it. I could've bought new lamp shades to match and new drapes to make everything pop but remember, I wanted to stick to little cost here. So, I decided after moving my aqua lamps to our bedside tables, from elsewhere in the house that soft accent color would work. So I spent an hour or more digging through TJ Maxx and Target for drapes but couldn't find anything I loved and reviewed my current drapes of silky aqua and chocolate. I then went to the fabric store and found some beautiful stone colored silk on sale and a fun bit of cotton that was close to that peach rose color. And here's where the fun began...

The large piece is my previous drape panel. I literally cut the gray silk an inch larger on three sides, leaving the bottom edge just slightly longer than the original panel. I folded over, pinned edges in place and straight stitched left and right sides.

I left the bottom alone, they will drape on the floor so why bother, right? You could stitch this or be lazy like me...I won't judge! :) Next I pined the peach strip, ensuring its folded edge overlapped about a quarter inch over the gray. Be sure to pin through all fabrics on the panel here because remember the top gray hasn't been secured yet. Once I folded over the top edge and pinned, I stitched the stripe onto the panel directly over the gray piece.

And here are my finished fresh drapes...

Still need to add a few little accent pieces but for around $100, I have a fresh new look for our master bedroom and it was so easy to do! I literally spent more time searching for new drapes (and didn't find any) than I did actually creating custom ones to match my bedding.Just love when things come together easy peasy! :)

Project Life, Month by Month

Another project I'm excited to have in the books...my project life for 2014! I loved doing this concept with weekly spreads for 2013 but knew how much work it was to keep up with and complete. After considering everything else in life and the chaos of keeping up, I had decided against the project entirely for 2014. But then I discovered the concept of doing one monthly spread instead of weekly on Elise Blaha Cripe's blog . And the second week of  November I decided I was in!

Some months I had only taken a few pictures, and others, like December, we had countless events, parties, Christmas recitals and dance performances, celebrations with family and friends, baking, New Years's, etc. The months where I had just a few pictures I had more fun with the design elements of each pocket while months like December were mainly pictures with a few simple design elements like labels.

 Left page

and right for May.

I used different colors and designs for each monthly layout but kept the concept the same. For example, the top left pocket always had the month labeled. I used up a ton of papers and embellishments from my stash to finish my album and because there were only 12 layouts versus 52, I have room for 2015 and maybe 2016 all in one album!

I won't show you my entire year in this post but here's another favorite from July...

You really can do project life and capture all of the special moments, whether they are captured with your camera or phone every day or just once or twice a month! I just love when something that seemed impossible can be tweaked to be totally doable!

Happy Saturday!!!

From the Herd

The new Stampin' Up spring catalog is out and seriously, so, so many cute stamp sets! I created lots of cards over my holiday break and wanted to share this one I made for my nephew who is turning 9 this week! He loves helping my brother on the farm so I knew he'd appreciate this one for sure!

I stamped the main image from the stamp set and used watercoloring with various stamp pads to color the entire scene. Then I cut a Polaroid out of white to stamp the caption on and posted it on with some washi tape onto a gum all green card base.

This set comes with corny captions like, I know it's "pasture birthday" and from all the "party animals"... so fun!

My Favorite Staycation Yet!

Today the girls went back to school and I went back to work. It was sort of bitter sweet but as I was catching up on laundry last night I said to Eric that I knew it had been an incredible break because between my two girls they had just one load of laundry from the entire break. This is because we spent so very much time in our pajamas! Crafting, watching movies, baking, hanging out, the lack of laundry completely defined my favorite staycation yet! I always feel so relaxed and reconnected with my life and all the things that truly matter after my holiday break of typically two weeks but it is always good that I feel ready to get back to reality, too.

As promised, I've got lots of fun projects to share but for today, just wanted to stop by and show you a layout I put together last night after the realization  my laundry caused. I adored this picture of the girls in their new Christmas jammies with Lainey I had taken. Yes, I got lots of great pictures under the tree and doing fun activities and lots of family members and friends, but looking through them all, this is my favorite picture of our entire holiday and I wanted to capture that simplicity!

I used the Studio Calico Park Ave. kit and a few pieces from older kits. The washi tape with Decembrrrrr and get cozy were just perfect for this page!

And one more of  an embellishment I created by clustering a few pieces together.

Cozy for sure! Funny thing is, the girls went to school and I did work but a blizzard came through suddenly so the girls got out today at 12:30 and I picked them up soon after! Dance was cancelled tonight and we all are at home, cozy in front of the fire once again! Am wondering if we could be so lucky again tomorrow? :)

Christmas Card Book

Happy New Year! I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends and rang in a new year ready to be filled with faith and joy! I haven't checked in on my blog since the holidays started but have been busy with my family and just relaxing and enjoying the little things, however, I've been crafting LOTS with the girls and have some fun projects to share.

First up, my holiday card binder book I've been making since 2011. I originally found this idea from Dawn McVey and adored the idea of holding onto all those beautiful pictures and cards we all get throughout the Christmas season. What do you do with all of those after the season? This is an easy and fun way to hold onto those memories and handwritten notes.

First, decide what size you'd like your book to be. Next, take one of the thick cardboard boxes from all those shipments of gifts and using an exact knife or box cutter, carefully cut the covers for your book. I made mine 8.5" x 6." Cover them and decorate as you wish. This year I kept it really simple but some years I die cut shapes, embellish, etc. and I always use my Silhouette to cut the year out for my front cover. Once those are done, pile up all of your cards and pictures and use a hole punch to put two spaced punches through them all. You may have to work in batches depending on how many cards you have...

This is what it looks like from the inside. I like to attach backs that are blank together with adhesive and if some are mismatched I use various papers and embellishments to finish it off.

Here is my 2013 cover...

It's so fun to have these little treasures to look back at each year, they really make me appreciate the fact that time goes by so fast and help me to remember to live for the moment more! Sounds like a perfect resolution for 2015! :)