{Sweet Parties} Look Whooo’s One!

One of my dearest friends’ second daughter turned one a few weeks ago and Andrea asked us to create the invitation and some fun paper products for the party. We were delighted to be involved! You may remember that last year, Andrea asked us to create the owl notecards for Tate and we loved them so much that we designed some invitations too.

Andrea wanted to use the owl theme for Tate’s party, which I thought was just perfect! We customized one of the invitations to add a few pictures of cutie-pie Tate. {I thought I had taken a picture of the invitation in the daylight but alas I didn’t, and the ones I just tried to take do not do the invitation justice…so we’ll skip the invitation for now.}

There was a delicious spread of food at the party, including chicken tenders from a local restaurant we all love and a hot dog bar! How perfect is that for a kids’ party, right? Andrea had a ton of bright yellow flowers around the house; she put lemons in clear vases for added pops of color. And I love how she used clear mason jars to hold the colored flatware and napkins – so clever.

For the party favor, Andrea ordered those crayon rolls {bottom right picture in collage} in a fun owl print. I keep Molly’s in my bag and it’s come in so handy. Best.party.favor.ever!

Tate’s big sister Rae helped out with the decorations, making owls out of painted toilet paper rolls, fabric scraps and googly eyes. I thought I had a picture of them, but I don’t…trust me, they were so cute and Andrea said it was a fun craft to work on together. Rae also painted on the glass doors in their kitchen. It was so festive and I am sure she had a blast doing that! {I forgot to ask Andrea how easy that was to clean up.}

Andrea, thanks so much for asking Beverly and I create the invitations for Tate’s party! It was fun to work with you as always, and it means so much to have the support of our friends. Thanks, too, for including my little family in the festivities – we had a blast!

{Sweet Parties} Ella Kate’s Whale Party

Amanda, one of our favorite repeat customers, recently contacted us about doing a whale-themed invitation for her younger daughter’s fourth birthday. {Want to see the other collections we’ve done for Amanda? See here and here. We also did the cutest Halloween cards but I don’t think I blogged about them!}

She wanted to use hot pink and navy {LOVE!} and fun prints {like chevron!}, so of course we couldn’t wait to get started. Amanda is super fun and easy to work with and we couldn’t be more appreciative that she keeps coming back to us!

How stinkin’ cute is that watermelon cut to look like a whale? So very clever.

Thanks again Amanda for asking us to create the invitations and other items for Ella Kate’s 4th birthday party! Everything looked adorable, especially the birthday girl!

{Holidays} Easter printables

I finally have our Easter printable collection available in the shop for you!

Beverly created a banner, place cards, cupcake toppers, a sign, and stickers for you to download and print. Use all or some of the products to create a fun and festive atmosphere for your Easter celebrations.

{my sign is printed, cut to size and mounted on two pieces of coordinating cardstock}

The place cards can also be used as food label tents if you’re planning on serving Easter lunch or brunch buffet style.

The cupcake toppers would be cute in muffins before church or in carrot cake cupcakes after lunch! And I love to use the stickers on clear Solo cups for sweet tea {or maybe white wine??} for the afternoon egg hunts.

Find the full collection here, for just $5! I’ll email the files to you. Then, simply download and print the files on white cardstock. Cut and use however you need for your Easter celebration.

Pleasant Distractions

In between filling orders, responding to clients, playing with Molly and grading papers, I’ve been slowly decorating for Easter. I finished a second Easter egg wreath, this one for the front door. The grass is a bit more unruly than my other one and I’m chalking that up to two things: 1) I was in a hurry to get this project finished and off the kitchen counter and 2) I bought the cheapest grass I could find and it’s super thin and lightweight, so it doesn’t stay tucked in between the eggs! I’m getting ready to break out the scissors and just cut those dangling pieces off.

I also totally copied Jessica’s mantle {kind of}. I went right to Target the day after she posted these pictures and got some more eggs and hunted down the pinwheels.

However, there weren’t enough of them for me to get three for each vase, so I just grabbed one and have totally forgotten to look every time I’ve been back to Target since. So they look a little lonely just sticking out of the vases on each end of my mantle, but they’re more spring-like than what I had up there, so they’ll do for now!

And…that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

On a kind of related side note, surely I’m not the only one who thinks Easter candy tastes the best? Maybe it’s the pastel colors or something. I don’t know, but I can’t.stop.eating.it. Especially the peanut butter M&M’s.

They are definitely tastier than the primary colored originals.

{Introducing} Four New Collections

Our successful year continues with so many new custom designs to share with you. Just this past weekend, there were four birthday parties we created custom designed invitations and more for. I am working on getting the items in the shop and am hoping to see some pictures from our clients soon! We have such kind and creative customers and I know all of these parties were fantastic.

First up is our new Sweet Soiree collection. A sweet pink, white and black color scheme with an Eiffel tower graphic created the perfect theme for Anna’s party.

Jack’s mom Emily contacted us months ago and we’ve been oh-so excited to share his par-tee with you! This golf themed invitation is high on my list of favorites!

Then there was Elle’s painting party. I love the pink and orange color combination – this invitation just seems happy and I am sure the party was as fun as the invitation!

And how cute is this vintage Curious George invitation that we created for Curious Declan?

Check out the shop for these collections and more!

Be sure to stop by later this week; we customized our owl invitation for a sweet friend’s second daughter’s birthday party this past week and Jim, Molly and I helped them celebrate. Andrea threw a super fun party and she took lots of pictures that I can’t wait to share with you.

A little love in the kitchen

Jim and I have a very colorful, fruity accent tile in our kitchen. I have tried to embrace the fruit and first the kitchen was yellow and now it’s red, but I’ve totally changed my mind and now want to paint the walls light gray. But in the meantime, I’m always dreaming up ways to enjoy my time in the kitchen and minimize the fruit tiles. While I was mopping yesterday, mine and Jim’s first dance song came on my iPod and I immediately stopped what I was doing to create a sweet piece of art for the kitchen.

I’ve been playing around with some new fonts that I wanted to see in person, already had the frame, and it took just a few minutes of tweaking the spacing but not I have a daily reminder of the magic of our wedding day. This little print makes me smile and *bonus!* covers up a few of those tiles.

The best part was Jim was a little concerned that I had hot glued the frame to the tile {not drilled into the tile, but hot glued. What does this say about me?}. His concern is not out of line {The hot glue gun was on the counter because I was working on another Easter egg wreath and I am a former classroom teacher – we used to hot glue *everything* to the cinder block walls! And I may or may not have hot glued some trivets to the kitchen cabinets to hold my recipes for the week.}. However, I had picked up some of the 3M picture-hanging strips at Target and they were super easy to use.

So now I think I’m going to buy a bunch more of the frames and just line them up along the backsplash…what do you think?! {Just kidding! Kind of.}

Spring has {already} arrived

Happy spring!

I don’t know about where you live, but my daffodils have bloomed and are already spent! Two of my tulips popped up today, which I thought was particularly fitting for the first day of spring. It’s been so warm here that everyone is already in dresses and sandals, and I actually broke out the white wine the other night – it was quite refreshing on a warm evening.

I decided I’d better get on with my Easter decorating before the holiday came and went. I dug out my spring bin from the attic, surveyed the goods and made a quick trip to Target and Michael’s after I dropped Molly off this morning. I have a bit of crafting to do {don’t worry, it’s not much!} and then hopefully I’ll have some fun pictures to share.

I did get down the Easter egg wreath from last year and Molly was SO excited to see it when she got home from school. She kept saying, “Is that for me?! Did the Easter bunny come?”

I hope to share some pictures of the house decorated for spring/Easter with you this week, and I want to share a print that I whipped up this morning in between emails and mopping!

Oh, and I almost forgot! We get the sweetest emails and pictures from our clients {you truly make our day when you do this, by the way!} and often moms or shower hostesses will blog about their parties. Sometimes they share their blogs with us and sometimes we happen to stumble across them. About a week or so ago, one of our clients convo’d us via Etsy to tell us she blogged about the baby shower she hosted using our grey & yellow sunshine collection. Her post was *so* sweet and it reaffirmed that we love what we do! Thank you Jenn for your kind words!

PS – Want to see a cute girl in an Easter dress?

{Introducing} The All Aboard Collection

About a month or so ago, Courtney, a friend of a blogging friend {whom you might remember from these invitations here and here}, contacted us about creating a train-themed invitation and cupcake toppers for her son’s 3rd birthday party. We had so much fun creating the proofs for Campbell’s party because we haven’t done a train invitation yet. Beverly and I were almost giddy with excitement at how cute we think the invitations turned out!

You can find this collection the shop now! Thanks so much Courtney for asking us to create these special items for Campbell’s party, and a special thanks to Jennifer for the sweet referral.

Oh, the projects…

Oh, the projects I am dreaming of now!

Look what my UPS man dropped off tonight:

I currently have no idea how to use this machine, and to be perfectly honest, I’m a little intimidated. There are a lot of bloggers in blog land who have used the Silhouette machines to create all kinds of awesomeness, like this and this.

I’ve seen numbers and quotes on stairs, and for some reason that idea really intrigues me. I could label every bin in our house. I’m thinking a house number decal on the door would be fabulous. Oh, the wheels are turning.

But first, I have to figure out how to use this baby! Stay tuned for lots of fun pictures to come.

Maybe.

 

New knobs? A nightstand make-over.

When Jim and I bought our new king-size mattresses in January, I got new bedding that was night and day away from what we were using, so now I’m slowly playing catch up with the rest of the room. {Well, and I also want to move our bedroom upstairs, but that’s a completely different post. So I’m trying not to do *too* much work in the room we’re in now. You know, just in case…}

Anyway, the nightstands we’ve been using were in my college apartment many years ago and I’m almost positive they were in Beverly’s apartment before that! While I’m not against hand-me-downs {especially Beverly’s! She has a pair of chairs I’ve been coveting for years and although she pacified me with a different set of chairs, I’m still waiting on the other ones.} The nightstand on my side was super small and had only one drawer; I’m all about multi-purpose furniture these days, so I decided to dig out a small chest that was in my closet, paint it and put it bedside.

I neglected to take true before pictures of the chest. But, it had been a piece of unfinished wood and I’m pretty sure it was blue before it was black. I took the throw pillow I got at West Elm to the paint store and tried to match it but the pillow is much more bright/mustard-y than I realized. So I chose a paint that’s similar, but not as bright. It’s quite buttercup-ish if you ask me!

Those are the original knobs I picked out at Home Depot years ago, when I first painted the chest. I can’t even remember where I first used the piece – in college or my first place. Mom, do you remember?!

I’m currently obsessed with all things glass/acrylic/lucite, so I made a trip to Hobby Lobby on Monday when I saw their knobs were 50% off this week. {The glass knobs I bought for the chest in the family room set me back a pretty penny, but shhhh! Don’t tell Jim!} Anyway, I tried them out on the top drawer today. What do you think?

It’s not love at first sight, but I definitely like them better than the current silver ones. Thoughts?

I don’t think I’ve shared the pictures of our new bedding, so I’ll have to do that next! Maybe I can convince Beverly to take pictures of her house and we can both do little home tours. I don’t know about you, but I always LOVE to see others’ homes.

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As part of the bedroom facelift, I purchased new lamps. Mostly because one of our beloved Pottery Barn wall sconces was broken when someone tried to move the mattress of the old bed by himself. Alas, they don’t make the silver/nickel finish anymore. I contemplated buying one in the current catalog and then spray painting both of them (the new one and the old one that wasn’t broken) but couldn’t bring myself to do that. Then, West Elm had their lighting sale and I got two coordinating lamps for a steal. Anyway, so now I have one random Pottery Barn Western Arc wall sconce in the nickel finish just hanging out on the wall. It needs to come down, but I’ve been too lazy to do it. I listed it on Craigs List, but so far no one has jumped at the chance for one wall sconce. I can’t imagine why. If you or someone you know needs this sconce, let me know and we can work out a deal.