Babies!

I think I've made it pretty clear how head over heels in love I am with Jack, and being a mom.  It is seriously the best thing that ever happened to me, and I LOVE talking about it!  So when my friend Michelle told me she was pregnant (while I was still prego, too) I was so excited for her.  After having Jack, I was even more excited for her.  I think she was honestly sick of me towards the end there of jumping around with excitement everytime I saw her, exclaiming "I AM SO EXCITED FOR YOU! IT'S GONNA BE SO GREAT!"... she's a good sport.

So I've been trying my best to not be a pest (haha that rhymed) and not asking her every day if shes having contractions.  So I stalked her Facebook page instead.  Ok now I just sound creepy, I wasn't sitting there hitting the refresh button all day, but I did check a few times, once I knew she was at the hospital!  Then once I knew little Emerson Rose had entered the world I literally had to sit on my hands and wait patiently before writing to her to ask when I could come visit.   2 days after she was born I couldn't resist and my fingers feverishly sent her a text, and we set up a time that was good for her. 

Of course I couldn't go empty handed, so I made a little something.  I started with a mish mash of goodies from my craft supply:

 And added some decals from this project... and made this!

I left the hair and eye color blank because I wanted to wait until I saw her and could be sure!

She is just precious and I am so thrilled to see my friend have that mom-glow that I promised her was on it's way and made all that end-of-pregnancy-awfullness worth it! Welcome to the world, little Emerson Rose!

Glass Magnets

As soon as I saw this idea on Christina's Adventures I couldn't wait to go get the supplies and try it out.   I was telling my sister, Amy, about it and she wanted to give it a shot, too.  So Sunday afternoon we set off for supplies and got to work.  As usual I forgot to take pictures as we went... and I feel even more silly because I had an extra set of hands, so taking pictures would have been a sinch!  Oh well! We varied from Christina's suggestions a little here and there.

Here is what we did:

We decided on a portion of the scrap book paper we wanted to use and cut out a piece a little bigger than the stones.  Then we mod podged the stone, slid the paper on to where we wanted it to show thru and let them dry.  Once they were dry we carefully cut the excess paper off (easier than you think) and hot glued a magnet to the back.  We saved that part for the end and did all the magnets at once, placing a heavy book on top while they set.  Christina used gorilla glue.. which I've never used before.  I'm guessing it's more heavy duty, so if you are worried about them separating, you may want to use that instead.  We decided to take a walk on the wild side and risk it. 

Aren't they cute?  Like typical girls, I was jealous of the cute cartoon character ones Amy did, and she liked the way mine looked. 

Brittany, I put this picture in just for you, see the owls????

This was way fun, and way easy!  I think these will be great office xmas presents considering I just joined a new group and don't know anyone.  Who doesn't use magnets?   Plus it was so fun to have someone to craft with.  Not that I don't appreciate Josh pretending like he is as excited about something as I am when it comes to crafts... but having someone to chat with and get new ideas from was nice!

My first furniture redo!!

Ok, so it's not monumental... I didn't find this beat up gem of a way super cool dresser for $5 in the back of some store and make it into the most beautiful thing ever... but it's a start!

There is a thrift store a few blocks from work so I've stopped in a few times just to see what they had. It's not the best thrift store, in my opinion it tends to be a little over priced but I still go in, hopefully every time anyway. Well finally it paid off. I was scanning the shelves over the typical things and I spotted this little guy:

(Yay for being lazy and using my phone to take pictures.... Hi Gismo!)

Admittedly, I think it's cute as is. But alas, I don't live in a cabin in the woods, so it really doesn't match our decor. The best part: sticker price $5.99 WOOHOO! I was so excited I could have skipped to my car - even I saw my inner nerd shining thru.

I decided this piece was going to go into our room. Let me just take a minute to say, our bedroom is the most neglected room in the house. There is no design, no anything. It's a functional room with a bed, dresser and nightstand. But it becomes the dumping storing grounds for all the things in our house that don't have a home. There are piles in every corner. I've managed to keep them somewhat neat at least, but I walk in the room and just sigh. I actually have an official plan of what I want to do (an inspiration post is in my near future) I just need the money fairy to come visit our house first. So I'm hoping if I start on the smaller, less expensive things and make them into the future color scheme it will annoy me enough to just suck it up and do it all!!

Back to my project. Once the kiddos were asleep I got to work. I gave it a light sanding and wiped it down, and then taped in the inside because I definitely don't have a steady hand when it comes to edges! First I did a few coats of black, then painted the back panel white. Pretty simple!!

I was impatient and wanted to take a picture so a few more touch ups have happened since. I'd love to have it all on the wall with cute things on it but I'll just have to save that picture for when the whole room is done.

Stockings & Quilts

This weekend, the Joanns flyer came in the mail (swoon!).... with allll of their black Friday sales and coupons to boot. By the third "look at this!" to Josh I had received enough eye rolls to know the excitement was limited to my side of the room. Besides a personal Cricut getting marked down to $69.95 (seriously?!) and all their holiday items 50% off (woohoo!) the biggest sale for what I already need is on fabric. Kali really wants to make a rag quilt which uses flannels. To give you an idea of the deep sale... regular price on all flannels is $5.99 and up. This weekend all flannels are $1.29 a yard! Are you for real? So I think I'm going to put a "kit" together for her so she can make one. I am so excited!

I'll also need to pick out some super cute Christmas fabric to make these babies:

I was so excited when I just "ran" into Joanns for a "minute" last night and all the McCalls patterns were on sale for $1.99 (regular price $15.95... I LOVE a good sale!) and they still had the Christmas one I wanted with the super cute stockings. Now, patterns scare me. I am still such a beginner that I get confused. Just ask me about the curtains I am making for Jack. My biggest downfall is cutting. The whole measure twice cut once thing, should be measure about 50 times, have someone else check it... ask if they are sure.. again.. and then make them be the ones to cut, for me. So hopefully these are a success! The nerd in me is SO excited for our family to have matching stockings! Is it weird to buy enough fabric for another one in case Jack ever gets another sibling? (Josh turned white when I asked this, hahahahaha!)

So I think Joanns is just about the only place I am going to brave Friday morning.. I just can't pass up those fabric sales!!

I'll keep you posted.

Menu Board!

I've seen a bunch of variations of these popping up in blog world, so I just had to give it a try. Every Sunday after the girls leave for their mom's, Josh and I sit here staring at each other hoping the other will decide on dinners for the week so we can hurry up and get the grocery shopping over with. I end up scribbling meals on a paper and throwing it on the fridge. However, my OCD h-a-t-e-s lots of clutter on the fridge. Perfect excuse to craft!

This came together easy peasy quick. I got the frame at the Dollar Tree for yep, you guessed it, a dollar. Scrap book paper and cardboard letters were a fun find at Joanns. 10 minutes later, viola! Our menu board.

Like my artistic "ooo I'll take pictures by the fire" shots?

Baby Shower Fun

This weekend did not go as planned. I had to go and get sick. I've actually been fighting a cold and it came to a head this weekend, totally knocking me off my feet. So I am totally disappointed to report I did not make it to Jenny's (Josh's sister) baby shower. However, I do some things I can share.

Josh's Aunt Harriet enlisted me for help on a project. Jenny requested a candy table and Harriet wanted something cute for guests to be able to use to put candy in. I googled and found these adorable pail kits at Michael's... even came with labels to print out "it's a girl!" Puuurfect. Well silly me waited until Friday night to go get them. Josh, Jack and I trekked into Michael's only to realize the pails were TINY. Like.. how about a gumball or two and that's it, tiny. Silly me should have paid more attention to the size ratio printed on the box! duh.

Hmmm.... enter panic mode! I did remember walking by mini Chinese food take out boxes... so I showed them to Josh and asked how we could make this work. Twenty minutes later we had a plan. What would I do without him?

These cuties only took about an hour to assemble all together. I haven't heard how the shower went yet, but I hope they were a hit!

More on what we made for Jenny, to come.

Shelving fun!

So within a few weeks of Jack being born we officially out grew our home. However, we have it in with the landlord (love you Dad!) so we are going to stay here as long as possible while saving up to buy our (hopefully) "forever" home. So what do you do when you run out of room? Go up! No, we aren't adding a second story... but we have vaulted ceilings with tons of wall space just begging for something... shelves!

Our living room serves as our central command station... tv, computer desk, sewing desk, and the most perfect huge fireplace that happens to sit smack dab in the center of the only solid wall in the room. It's long and narrow and totally awkward but it's our livingroom! Josh's biggest pet peeve is his small computer desk becomes dumping grounds for all odds and ends (thanks, girls!) and he can't get to the basics - his pens, notepads, etc.

Light bulb! I can work in an excuse to go to Joanns AND solve the problem! I found this cute shelf and thanks to a coupon got it for $10. Some black paint helped it match our decor and in a few hours Josh was a happy camper!

I'm itching to think of something cute he can hang from the hooks... or I guess we could be practical and hang headphones and other computer cords up there.. but that wouldn't be cute. :)

Update (excuses for no pictures)

So... I half wrote a blog entry last Friday with the intention of plopping in some pictures - once I took them. Now it's Monday, I took the pictures but they haven't made it to the computer yet... and everything I wrote about on Friday is now in the past tense.

I NEED MORE TIME!!!!

I was a busy bee crafting big time this weekend and it kills me to not be able to share. But, they are a gift for a shower coming up so I can't spoil any surprises. So next Sunday I can show you!!

So this last weekend:

Was Josh's 30th birthday! We are bit low key so Josh didn't want a big party. The girls wrapped gifts for him, we had his favorite breakfast, and his parents took us all out to Bucca di Beppos for dinner. I think he felt kinda loved by the end of the day. :) I also made my self-proclaimed famous cheesecake. Naturally I forgot to take a picture, but there might be one slice left in the fridge I'll snap a picture of!

Next weekend:

My oldest sister, Katie is coming into town! She lives up in San Jose and hasn't met Jack yet! We are all very excited for this to happen. Since we all have separate plans for Thanksgiving... this will be a rare time that we are all in town and free, Pattie jumped on the chance to do a "mock Thanksgiving" a week early. So we'll all head over to my parent's house Saturday and hang out. I've informed the ladies of the house that we will be doing a fun fall craft. Selfishly - this is one I have wanted to do since I saw it weeks ago but have had no time. So I decided to squeeze it into our visit!

Sunday is Josh's sister's baby shower. I am just so excited for her. She has an adorable son who is 5, and such a boys boy. So, naturally, I am thrilled she is having a girl. She needs to balance out their house a little with some princess skirts and tea parties. :) So as I said before I"ll show you our gift to her after she sees it next week! However, I also offered to help Josh's Aunt Harriet with something for the party. Jenny (Josh's sis) requested a candy table at the shower. So we needed to come up with something cute for the ladies to put their candy into. We decided on getting little white pails and decorating them. I love the idea - now I just need to hurry up and do it!!! Luckily Joanns sells a kit to make just such things... shh don't tell! Shortcut!!

On top of that there is work, Jack, dogs, laundry, chores, dinners and much much more to take up my time!! I promise to get those pictures uploaded and show you a few things going on in our world!


TTFN!

Our Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Here is our little guy in his first costume... he was such a trooper! It was a REALLY warm costume, and he runs hot like his daddy as it is... he put up with pictures and visits with grandmas and grandpas!

What a weekend! I am pooped! Right now, we only see Josh's girls on the weekends. So when they are here, we jam pack a lot into our days sometimes. This weekend was no exception. Saturday we picked out our pumpkins, made cookies to decorate and of course carved our pumpkins. We also had to watch the Shrek Halloween special and the Charlie Brown Pumpkin Patch Classic. Here are some highlights:

I have never made cookie dough for cookie cutters... so I went onto the trusty allrecipes.com website and found this recipe. I made it in the morning before we headed out to run errands and by the time we were ready to make cookies about 3 hrs later, it was good to go. They were super yummy too, so I'd highly recommend the recipe!

Once they cooled, we were good to go with decorating.. the best part. These cookies ended up NOT being passed around to family after Kali and Mackenzie had such a good time licking their fingers after every single cookie. LOL we'll keep our germs in the house thanks!

As a side note I had a moment of brilliance after we put the last batch of cookies in the oven. Mackenzie is a difficult, picky eater. It's a daily battle. Well since we already had the table covered in flour, we decided it would be a great night to make pizzas. I was rolling out the dough for the girl's pizza and thought hmmm.. yep! You can use cookie cutters on pizza dough! The girls loved it! I was so tickled at the idea, the next morning we had Halloween shaped pancakes too.... (enter Josh's eye roll here). Hey at least we got our money's worth out of the Halloween cookie cutters!


Anyway, onto the pumpkins. Every year I egg the girls on, to get the biggest pumpkins they can find. I always do this in a moment of stupidity, forgetting that I live in a house full of sissies who refuse to touch 'icky pumpkin guts'... so after I gutted 5 (ugh!) pumpkins, they were ready to carve!

Jack helped!

Halloween Candy Jars

As Halloween got closer I knew I wanted to do something small for the people I work with. Nothing major, just something fun to make them stop and smile for a second. I saw this idea for Halloween candy Jars on the Sassy Sanctuary blog. I changed it up a little to meet my needs, but the concept was the same!

This was such a simple project. I just bought mini mason jars, and some glass paint. Here's where I pulled a "megan" and goofed. It was a last minute decision to get the glass paint so I grabbed what I thought was black and headed for the line at Joanns. Once I got home, I realized I picked up "pewter" instead! I was able to come up with a quick fix: once the glass paint dried I just went over it all with black acrylic paint. No one will ever know!

I traced the discs from the lids on the back of some left over fabric scraps I had from this project and "mod-podged" them to the lids.

Next I painted the outside of the lids black. This is when I realized it would have been totally worth it to invest in a can of spray paint (if I recall, the tutorial I pulled this from made the same comment!).... 50 coats of acrylic (ok maybe like 5) paint later, there were still some spots showing through. I tied a ribbon around it and called it a day!

(Yay for finally remembering to use my camera!)

Sneak Peak of Projects This Week

So there are 2 main projects I am working on this week and they aren't done but I'm itching to share. The first project is top secret and I feel like I'm running of risk of even sharing but I'm about 99.9% sure the intended recipient doesn't read this blog so I think I'm good! I will hold off on revealing the full details until she's seen it. But... here's a tiny little clue!

The colors are a bit distorted (that bottom left fabric is extremely pink, not orangish as it appears here) but thats because I keep being lazy and using my iPhone to take pictures instead of getting my big girl camera out. Maybe some day I'll get with it! I can't wait to see how this turns out!

I am much more excited about the first project, but my 2nd project is fun, too...and its for Halloween so I've spent the last 2 nights working on it instead of the first. Here's a peak... I'll do a full post on the finished product once I actually finish!

I have a few other projects that I plan to do that I haven't even started yet. This includes curtains for Jack that I got the fabric for, cut the wrong length and had a minor melt down over, recovering Grandma Tino's patio chairs, and my good friend Chrissy has asked if I can recover her patio chair cushions as well! If only weekends were more than 2 days!!

Pretty Flower Wall Art

I'm starting to wonder if I'm creating a Friday night ritual. I spend all week finding crafts I want to try that come Friday afternoon I'm bursting at the seams and the Joanns & Michaels coupons I get each week are burning holes in my wallet. So Friday night off I went... first to get supplies for a top secret project I will be able to share after November 14th! Second, I got the goodies to make this cute flower wall art I found the tutorial for on Christina's Adventures. I will admit, it looks very home made, and I coincidentally wish it would have turned out more the color of the tutorials, because it would have matched our new bathroom much better! But all in all, I am pleased, and Kali telling me repeatedly how much she just loved it and it was so beautiful sure made my head large enough to keep it! Plus, it was so inexpensive to make, I could easily try for a new color.. maybe once I get a cricut. (in my dreams!)

Just for Brittany... here are my step by step (sorta) photos!

First I just painted a piece of thin plywood I got at Joanns.

Next I made a stencil heart with construction paper and traced it onto the back of some cute scrapbook paper I found, and cut them all out. My hand was killing me by the time I was finished. Oh how I long for a cricut...

Next I determined where the center of the board was and used a clear bowl to trace a circle around it so I could use it as a sort of guideline on where to start gluing the hearts down.

Then I got busy gluing. It's worth it to use a hot glue gun because the glue allows the hearts to stick up a little bit making it not so two dimensional.

Tada! I love the shimmer to the paper... I just wish the purple was a bit more muted. I picked out a fun button at Joanns and plopped it in the middle to finish her off.

All in all it came together in under an hour, fun Friday night project!

Yummy Pot Roast Stew!

So last night I did all the prep work for a Company Pot Roast Cooking Light recipe I wanted to try. It's very similar to a crock pot stew we probably all grew up with, but since we are doing Weight Watchers it is really helpful to be able to have the nutrition info right there so we can calculate the points. The prep work was way easy (the meat has to marinade so you are better off doing as much as possible the night before) and was able to pretty much dump it all in the slow cooker this morning, put it on low and crossed my fingers. Nothing is better than coming home from a long day, getting out of the car and smelling a yummy dinner coming from the open window. Anyway, it was a definite do over... perfect for the rainy day we had today!

Side note.. we are NOT mushroom fans, so we completely omitted that step in the recipe, and it was still great!

Yummy Soup!

I don't know what came over me last night, but I made 3 meals! bah! It started with my chili recipe that I make all the time. Once I got that going, I realized that I had got a butternut squash about a week and a half ago so I had better do something with it soon or it was going to go to waste. So I yanked that bad boy out along with a recipe for Butternut Squash Soup I had been wanting to try. I figured it would make for a yummy lunch today. So I'm realizing I need to get better about taking pictures along the way. This was my first experience man handling a squash and needless to say I could see Josh's smirk from the other room as I dropped that slippery sucker a few times while trying to peel it! I took a picture of my end result and it looked like orange pudding. (festive, at least!) So here's the Cooking Light picture.

Since this wasn't my dinner, I didn't get a big ole bowl and dive in but man after one taste I wish I hadn't eaten yet! There is just something about it where I could pick up the whole pot and just slurp it down! It's not too sweet, the perfect amount of savory and waaaay smooth and creamy. Perfect for this rainy cold weather (that I love) that we've had all week!

If you are going to try to make this, I will say that I didn't measure out my squash and think I had more than it called for (and I may have thrown in an extra carrot & onion piece or two), so I ended up adding the entire carton of broth, figuring I could let it boil down if it was too watery. It turned out great!

The third meal I put together was a pot roasty-stew looking thing that I set up to cook in the crock pot all day today. So I just did the boring prep work last night so I didn't have to get up even earlier than the ungodly hour I already do!! It smelled awfully yummy already when we left for work this morning. I can't wait go home tonight and try it! If it was a success, I'll post the recipe tomorrow.

Happy Thursday!

Halloween Rag Wreath

When I found this Halloween Rag Wreath on the Sassy Sanctuary blog, I fell in love! It is so cute, and extra perk: it was way easy!! (Side note: There are like 50 things on the Sassy Sanctuary blog I'm dying to try... check it out when you have a minute, so many cute things! )

I loved it so much, I actually made 2. The first one turned out adorable, and Pattie (aka Nana!) seemed to agree so it felt right to hand it on over and make another! I skipped the black bow on both because I could not find cute black ribbon anywhere. 2 weeks before Halloween?! Whats up with that.

The process is really easy. These handy wire wreaths came in a few sizes, but having 4 rows really lets you get the wreath looking full. I bought 2 and a half yards of each. (Sassy's blog actually suggests 1 and a half but in Joanns, I was SURE it was 2!) So I had LOTS left over, hence my making two! Anyway, cut them down to 1x6inch strips and just begin tying them to the wreath... I was lazy and single knotted, but if you have the patience you'd probably be smart to double knot them so none slip out! After each row I'd change which fabric I started with so the pattern was random throughout.

After you paint your letters (I wished I had some glitter to add to them!) hot glue a bobby pin to the back to act as a hook, and you can secure them to the wreath. Way fun!!

Apologies for using camera phone pictures... not enough hours in the day!! I snapped these quick shots this morning while Josh was loading Jack up in the car and then we were off!

This was the wreath I ended up giving to Pattie.

This one ended up on our front porch!

I love Halloween! :)

Spooky Halloween Jars

I have been impatiently waiting for the girls to arrive this last weekend so we could try out a new craft I had found. I found these painted luminaries from Crafts By Amanda. Once I saw how simple they were I figured we had to try them out!

If I was more on my game, I would have pictures of the process including showing the girls having fun painting, but..... I forgot. :) We ran out of tea lights so not all are lit, but you get the idea! Super cute!

These came together really fast. All you need is some mason jars and acrylic craft paint. Side note: I was kind of surprised to find that Joanns didn't carry mason jars... however, Ralphs (next door to our Joanns) had them, 12 for $10. Not too bad!

Back to the jars. We did one layer of paint. I agreed with the blog I pulled this from that they looked more authentic and spooky to not be perfect and solid colored. I really like the way the glass still shines thru on some parts. Once the paint was dry we used a sharpie to draw on faces, then filled it in with black paint. One coat of a shiny sealer later and you are good to go! I love the way they turned out!

In other news, we went to the Calabasas Pumpkin Festival this weekend. The rain stopped for a few hours so we really lucked out. It was a blast!! Here are some pics: