Category Archives: decorations

A Wintery 1st Birthday

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My adorable nephew Corey just celebrated his 1st birthday. While we weren’t able to be in Canada and celebrate with them, his mom Deanna sent along some photos. I knew I had to share them with you so you could see a 1st birthday through the eyes of a  new mommy. Enjoy!

This past December we celebrated our son’s first birthday! I was pretty darn excited to plan for this event; I think I started designing the invitations in October!

corey invite Seeing that our Champ wasn’t really into anything in particular, I had thought a winter themed party would be appropriate and fun. We had decided to only invite family members to keep it somewhat intimate and hopefully not too overwhelming for Corey.

The planning went pretty well. We had established the menu and cake in advance so no need to stress, right? Wrong! Stress is a funny little beast. Having never really decorated a cake before I would highly recommend not piping a cake the day of the party!! Lesson learned for next year.

cake and surrounding objectsThe finished product! This occasion was my first attempt at making a cake and ‘piping’ a cake…how hard could it be, really? Ace of Cakes makes it look easy….yah, well I’m no Duff Goldman and my first cake looked a bit rookie..practice makes perfect I guess. I made a banana cake in the shape of the #1 with cream cheese icing. It was pretty delicious actually ( I’m hoping the taste made up for the presentation).

birthday vinylWe were debating on putting up a ‘Happy Birthday’ sign and decided that this one would be perfect. Everyone would see it and it would be subtle at the same time.

buffet of foodThe Smörgåsbord. Seeing as we had decided on a winter themed party, we thought it would be fitting if we served up food that somewhat complimented our theme. Candies, chocolates and finger foods were high on our menu list.

crackers and dipI’d have to say the most fun (and maybe the most delicious) treat on our table was the pine-cone-shaped-roasted-almond-cream-cheese-bacon-dill-pickle dip. You may think that food combination is a bit crazy, but all I’d say to that is don’t knock it until you try it. I think this presentation made up for the cake.

rice krispie treat snowflakesA fun spin put on your run of the mill regular rice krispie square. The only downfall would be the base product is not like cookie dough so you can’t re-use the treat base once you’ve cut your shape out. I tried and the rice krispie pieces cracked and crumbled.

hot cocoa barOur winter themed party sported a hot chocolate and apple cider bar. I had read about this idea on a website and thought it was a fantastic one. I mean who doesn’t like chocolate and when you can add marshmallows, whipped cream and more chocolate to it, it’s like heaven in a mug!

corey looking at cakeUltimate cake test. After singing Happy Birthday, we divvied up the cake and gave Corey his first piece ever! He studied it for about 2 seconds and then devoured it … with both hands! He didn’t stop plowing the cake into his mouth until he was finished.

eating cake

One hand would not suffice.

corey stuffing face with cake

He likes it, he really likes it!

opening presentsPresent time. Corey really wasn’t into opening gifts this year so I did the honors.

party gangThe party gang!

Doug and CoreyI’m pooped Dad! Playing with presents and eating cake is tiring.

Thanks for sharing Deanna! Can’t wait to see what you have planned for Corey’s 2nd birthday!


The Gift of Words

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I’m sure you have all seen the subway art that has been floating around. I have wanted to attempt this for the past year but never did. I decided that my dream present for Christmas would be a Silhouette machine which would help me make the subway art. My wonderful husband took my ever so subtle hint of leaving the website up and mentioning there was a sale going on and surprised me with one for Christmas. I was thrilled but a little nervous at the same time. I have the habit of really wanting something but once I get it I wait and wait to open it. I thought about it, studied it, pondered it some more, and eventually was ready to try the machine last week.

I decided my first project would be a birthday present for my sister Kelly, who’s birthday is today. Not sure if subway art correlates with Kelly’s taste or not but I’m pretty sure I’ll never know since she lives 800 miles away.

I asked Kelly to email me her top places, foods, holidays she thinks about when she thinks of New Orleans. It’s our hometown so I knew she would have some special places she associates with it.

Here’s her list: Commander’s Palace, street car, beignets, Jazz Fest, City Park, Mardi Gras, & 5 Happiness. I took Kelly’s ideas and added to them.

I first started by painting an 11 x 14 canvas gray.

Next I chose some of the words I wanted to use. I typed them into the Silhouette program for sizing and then printed them out on vinyl. After a few more steps I carefully peeled away the paper and attached the vinyl words to the canvas. Here’s the I don’t think I’ll ever finish shot halfway point.

partially completed subway artThe work in the beginning was tedious but I eventually got the hang of it and moved at a quicker pace. Once I finished putting on all the words I modged podged it so it would have a protective covering.

Here’s the final product:

final subway art product

Kelly, this is going into the mail today for you. Hope you enjoy it. Happy Birthday!

I think this would be so much fun to do with other cities, places you’ve visited, holiday themes, etc. I would like to do one which lists every street my husband and I have ever lived on since we were kids.

If you could have a piece of subway art, what would be on yours?

Sew Wrong

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I have no idea how to sew correctly.

I do not read tutorials. I do not read books. I cannot read a pattern.

I simply look at pictures and try to copy the idea.

Sometimes it turns out. Sometimes not.

I bought some fabric in October from City Craft but had no idea how I would use it. I just loved the animals with the mix of red and green. I eventually settled on the idea that I would make some Christmas place mats.

Measuring is also too much of an extra step for me.

So I took an old place mat I have and placed it on top of the fabric I was using. I then ironed over the edges of the fabric. I made some rudimentary cuts in order to create some corners. I did the same thing for the back piece of fabric.

I then pinned the front and back pieces together and sewed them together.

placematNot pretty, awful craftsmanship, unbelievably ugly corners but… I had 4 place mats done.

Problem was I wanted 6 place mats. Since I didn’t buy enough fabric I had to think of an alternative design. I settled on a small strip of the animals down the place mat. I needed some sort of border between the 2 fabrics so I bought some red ribbon to go down the sides. You can see how it turned out.

other placematI was pretty proud of these place mats until I washed them. My abysmal sewing skills made themselves abundantly clear. Part of the animal fabric came out from under the ribbon and instead of 6 rectangles I now have 6 oddly shaped place mats.

Have you ever had any sew wrong moments?

Christmas Pics: A Little Late

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I realize this is late but I figure better late than never.We managed to decorate our house a bit for Christmas so I thought I’d show you some of the pictures and a few of the activities we did.

Here’s our Christmas mantle. I decided to go with a red, silver, and blue theme. I thought those colors might be a nice change from the typical red and green. The JOY letters were stuck on the wall until they came crashing down one night at 3 am. They have been sitting on the mantle ever since. I bought them at JoAnn’s, painted them red, and modge podged them with glitter.christmas mantleI took a frame and hung snowflakes in it. I placed it next to my Pier 1 glitter trees. Boy oh boy I wish my sister still worked there. The only thing I bought bedsides the JOY letters were the blue ornaments.

left side of the mantleThese are a couple of branches I took and spray painted white. I hung various blue ornaments from the branches. I placed some white and silver Mardi Gras beads inside the jar to keep the branches stable. treeHere’s our cheap and easy Christmas card display. I wanted to create this elaborate yarn and metal display that I have floating around in my head but it never happened so I’ll keep that in mind for next year.

christmas card holderI took a 3M Command Strip (which failed to keep my JOY letters up) and placed them on the wall. I took strips of ribbon, punched a hole at the top, and hung the strips. We then hung the cards with clothespins.close up holderGetting ready to visit Santa. Alex was feeling very sick that day so only Caroline and Andrew went. Turns out they were only willing to look at him and neither one would go close to Santa.before going to see santaMaking gingerbread houses – yes, it’s a pre-made kit, they loved itmaking gingerbread house

Watching A Charlie Brown Christmas as a family.Who knew I had six chins?

The Action Nativity SetnativityA wise man watching from the trees, ready to attackaction nativityEvery day Andrew would move the figures around and have a whisper dialogue with them. I desperately tried to hear some specifics but never could get close enough. All I know is that one day the wise men were on their sides, the animals were on top of the stable, and baby Jesus was behind the trees.nativityFamily photo I took of everyone before we went into the ICE exhibit in Grapevine.ervyoneHope your holidays were wonderful!

Tree Update

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Well, I thought since it’s been a week since I posed the real vs. fake question I’d give you our decision. But first I must say this was definitely a hot button issue with you guys. I promise we took all arguments into consideration and weighed the pros and cons.  It appeared to be almost a split argument between Northerners and Southerners. Of course those demographics are a bit different than what you might think. I put our Canadian readers in the Northern catergory while Chicagoans were the majority of southerners.

And our decision was…..

christmas treeCan you tell?

We went with fake.

We got a good price at Dillard’s for our 9 ft tree and I have a little more piece of mind when I sleep now. I always worried our real tree would catch on fire in the middle of the night. I have taken more than my fair share of trips to check on trees at 3 am. (I’m very aware that I am neurotic so no need to comment on that.) I’m also excited to deal with less tree needles. Of course, we managed to bring some of our previous tree needles into our new house. This is due to the fact that last year I just threw the tree skirt full of needles into the Christmas bucket.

Surprisingly the boys didn’t care one way or the other about the tree. They were just excited to put up the tree and decorate it.

For my family who may not be in favor of my decision I will have this waiting for you when you get here.

Kid Art Display

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When our kids were in preschool we had a tremendous amount of artwork coming home. Andrew actually still has a ton of artwork coming home. I wanted to display their work since they were so proud but wasn’t sure what to do.
 
In our old house we hung two of these IKEA magnetic boards. This system worked okay but we quickly had 3 layers of artwork on the board. I would surreptitiously remove artwork every couple of weeks.
 
Sometimes the pieces went into scrapbooks while other times we would place them in the recycle bucket. Somehow the day the artwork would go into the recycling bucket was the day the boys insisted on ransacking the pantry where the bucket was kept.
 
Of course, they would come marching out, “Why was this in the recycling bucket?” I always pleaded innocent and said, “Your dad must have put it in there. He has no appreciation for fine art.”
 
So once we moved I had the same predicament. What to do with the artwork? Well we went back to the great Swedish wonderland and found these. They are actually curtain hangers. We bought 3 of them and placed them up on our playroom wall. I love it and I think it gives the artwork it’s proper respect.

Kids Wall Art DisplaySo far Andrew has allowed one piece of artwork to replace another each time a new one comes home. If he ever resists I know what I’m going to do.

I’m going to walk straight to the recycling bucket in the garage all the way to the garage and place the art in there myself. It is 4 ft high and out of his line of sight.