Bits and pieces of our never ending handmade and DIY projects and parties will end up here!
Eat, Drink and Be Cozy
Sometimes you just need a little something to fill those weeks between Christmas and Valentine’s Day decor. This is what you’ve been looking for, friends! Have fun with your very own FREE printable of this Eat, Drink and Be Cozy chalkboard art!
DIY Dry Erase Morning Checklist
Another FREE printable headed your way to help kick your morning routine’s butt! Hope this helps you as much as it did us!
Frozen Brrrrrrrthday: Parts 1 & 2
We still can’t get enough of Elsa around here! We have two Frozen Birthday Party posts to share with you. First: DIY Frozen Decor & Food. Second: Frozen Fun. You’ll find lots of inspiration all for $100!
Woodland ONE-derland First Birthday
This party was so much fun that it took several posts to share all of our goodies! You’ll find the whole she-bang here with links to our other DIY projects within. Enjoy!
A Daniel Tiger Birthday
Host a grrrr-ific party with some amazing FREE printables and inspiration found on our Daniel Tiger Birthday post!
A Very Potter Shower
Have a HP fan in your life? This baby shower theme was magical! Find out how to pull it off here with FREE printables and all!
DIY Easter Egg Banner – Burlap & Baker’s Twine
Hoppy Easter! Find out how to make this adorable Easter egg banner out of burlap and baker’s twine with this tutorial.
DIY Valentine’s Day Mantel – The Greatest of These is Love
Love is in the air! And so is chalkboard art! You’ll find a fabulous FREE printable of this engineering print right here.
DIY Mason Jar Piggy Banks – Give, Save, Spend
You’ll find an awesome tutorial about how to make your own Give, Save, Spend Mason Jar piggy banks in this blog post. There’s even a FREE printable!
A DIY Pirate Treasure Hunt – Part 1 and Part 2
For more information about how I made the clues, the map, the treasure chest and what our kiddos found you can click here is Part 1 and Part 2.
Matey or Lady? A Beach Gender Reveal {with FREE Printable}
For more information and printables for your very own beach or nautical gender reveal, here you go!
Oh the Places You’ll Go – A DIY First Birthday Party
Want some Oh the Places You’ll Go ideas? Click here!
Smooches or ‘Staches – A DIY Gender Reveal Party
For more about how to throw a gender reveal party like this one, check it out here!
DIY Meaningful Map Project
For more about how I made this latitude & longitude map project for my hubby, click here!
DIY Recycled Hearth Shaped Crayons – A School Valentine Gift Idea
For step-by-step instructions and more info, click here!
Frozen Valentines {with FREE Printable}
Are your kids obsessed with Frozen like mine? Here are some FREE printables for Valentines Day if so!
Whooooo’s One?! — Owl Birthday Party
Today I thought I’d share our littlest girl’s first birthday party. I am a big fan of big first birthday parties. SO much happens in the first year of a little one’s life so I say celebrate it!
I’m also a big fan of theme parties…those who know me well are probably rolling their eyes right now. That’s an understatement. I all caps LOVE theme parties. When she was born, Nora was given an oh-so-special homemade owl quilt by my dear hubby’s Aunt Chris. It’s a masterpiece and deserved a whole party designed around it. So, for Nora’s first birthday we had a hootin’ good time at an owl themed party!
My sister Stevi (a graphic designer) helped me make these invitations. J’adore!
Here’s a picture of the quilt. You’ll notice it’s the background of the invitation pictures, too. Gorgeous, no?! Aunt Chris is truly an artist.
I asked if Aunt Chris could send me the scraps from the owl quilt and got my wonderful MIL, Jan, to help me make a onesie to match. I just traced & cut out Aunt Chris’s design onto the pieces of scrap fabric. Then Jan told me about this nifty product called Wonder Under. Sounds a bit naughty, doesn’t it? Turns out it’s this magic stuff that makes fabric stick together without sewing it! You only need an iron! Talk about up my non-sewing alley.
Jan and I cut the Wonder Under in the same shape as the owl then she ironed everything together onto a long sleeved onsie. Obviously, I’m no seamstress or there would be much more technical expertise here….words like me “seam” or “selvage edge.” Eeek! Those things scare me. I was looking for a quick, easy way to make a shirt for baby girl to wear once. Wonder Under did the trick! I had more than enough with 1/4 a yard from our craft store.
Jan (aka: Nini to the kids) also took some of the leftover fabric and made this sweet bib to match. She’s got mad skills.
For Nora’s hairbow I tore approximately 1/3″ x 2″ strips from the fabric scraps and knotted them around an alligator clip. I’ve since learned to make better hairbows. I’ll post a tutorial about those later!
Next, the decorations. I made a DIY Happy Birthday Burlap Banner. The method to my madness deserves it’s own post as well. Let’s just say you need a quick trip to your local craft store and an evening to yourself. Check back soon for further instructions. You’ll notice that I added more scraps of the fabric as ties between each letter. I told you I love me a good theme party!
Moving onto the centerpieces. Where do owls hang out? Trees, of course! We have tons of beautiful, old trees in our yard. Those trees drop lots of branches. Those branches make for awesome art projects, these centerpieces included. For the centerpieces I just gathered up bunches of fallen branches and put them into Mason jars. The Mason jars were from my grandmother’s collection and added special meaning to the big day. Their aqua tint was perfect with the owl quilt!
Speaking of aqua, my favorite part of Aunt Chris’s quilt is all the colors. Seriously fabulous.
I wanted to bring a lot of them into the decor so I searched high and low for colorful owls to use in the centerpieces. I found these! They’re technically bookmarks but I just cut them out, taped a looped piece of raffia to them, and hung them on the branches. Wait. I should say my SISTER did all that. Somehow, she always gets those jobs. Thanks, Stevi! It takes a village. Anyway, centerpieces — check! (Just watch your eyeballs when you sit down) 😉
I wanted a little something for all the big kids at the party to do while the grown-ups chatted. I loved this idea from Parties for Pennies. I had a basket of toilet paper tubes, squares of tissue paper, colorful googly eyes, wings cut from the quilt fabric scraps, decoupage, glue, and paintbrushes. I made a “how-to” sign in Microsoft Word to place on the craft table. And away they went! You can see the carnage below. I only got a picture of the table after the owls were made. There’s one hanging out in the background of this picture. Whooo-whooo!
Then came the food. We had a kid friendly menu including things like mac-n-cheese, meatballs, and of course CUPCAKES! Tying in the owls again I used this picture from Cutest Food as inspiration. I made dark chocolate cupcakes topped with vanilla buttercream icing (see my post about Nora’s second birthday for the recipe). My nephew, Zack, helped me open up Oreos to use as the base for the owls’ eyes. I know, Oreos are not the most natural or organic food but what they lack in homemade goodness they make up for in googly-eyed appearance! And they’re delicious! (Ooof, the dietitian in me just shuddered.)
When the Oreo halves were in place I added two chocolate M&M-type candies from Whole Foods as the pupils. What I love about these candies is that 1. they’re all natural and 2. they come in a mix of dark brown, yellow, orange, and pink. Perfect for the colors at this party! We smooshed one more on its side into the buttercream for a perfect beak.
Because we have some nut allergies in our circle of family and friends I skipped the slivered almond part of my cupcake inspiration picture. They still turned out great, though! Note: If you’re using a cupcake stand, the big, owl eyes may not fit next to each other. We just made every other cupcake (that we put on the stand) without the Oreos.
Nora wasn’t feeling all that great on her first birthday but she was a sport despite that! With all eyes on her she tentatively tried out her cupcake, thanks in-part to help from her big sis. Happy first birthday, sweetheart!
I Resolve to be Present – Memory Jar
Happy New Year! It’s a great time to be alive! Unlike most, I don’t usually make a lot of resolutions in January. I know myself well enough to know that I need to be motivated to change and that the New Year doesn’t change my motivation much. It tends to take something larger. Something bigger than the dropping ball. Something that reaches deeper. Something that grabs my heart and tugs. Hard. That tug happened on my oldest daughter’s 5th birthday.
She turned 5 this November. I cried like a baby. Now, I get it. This is a milestone birthday that a lot of parents struggle with. Why is 5 such a magic number? I don’t have the answer to that but I do know that 5 made me reevaluate how I am spending my days. I’m not sure I liked what I noticed.
That’s why this year, I resolve to be present. I’m often distracted. I say “hurry up” a lot. I’m always thinking of the next thing — What needs to be packed in the diaper bag? Will I have enough time to run an errand before dinner? Oh yeah, what are we having for dinner? Tomorrow it’s supposed to be rainy so make sure Eva’s rain boots are by the door. On and on and ON.
Our life with three kids 5 yrs and younger is moving fast and I struggle to keep up. It’s not as if our children are involved in after school activities or have overly-packed schedules. In fact, the opposite is true with such little ones. It’s just that I’m not always taking the time to pay attention to the day-to-day things. Someday I fear I will look back on my children’s lives and realize all of my distractions and “hurry ups” mean that I forgot to imprint their little voices in my brain. Or the funny way Eva put on a talent show that day. Or how Micah loves to eat the lint off the carpet. Or how Nora will only sleep with sunglasses on these days.
Eva’s 5th birthday brought into sharp focus how fast the years are flying. I’ve heard it said about parenting that the days are long but the years are short. I couldn’t agree more! When I really thought about it, I realized that the next five years will go by even faster. And the five after that faster yet. And before I know it, I’ll be driving away from her college dorm with tears streaming down my face. I realized what a small percentage of her life is spent at home as a little girl. I don’t want to waste those moments with any of my babies. Therefore, I resolve to be present.
One way I’m going to do that is by keeping a Memory Jar. I was inspired by this picture I found on Pinterest. I love the idea of jotting something down daily, even if it seems like nothing important happened that day.
However, I know that if I run out of paper I will likely forget to keep writing things down. Therefore, I cut a big ol’ stack of papers today. Want to know what a stack of 365 papers looks like? This.
They’re about 2″ x 4″; small enough to fit through the mouth of an awesome quart sized Mason jar. It’s an aqua one from my grandmother’s collection which makes this project even more special. It will have the honorable job of holding our years’ worth of memories.
I’m ready to be present. I’m ready to capture the day-to-day moments that seem rote and mundane but are knitting the fabric of our family together. I’m ready for 2014. Are you?
