A trip to inspire

I just got home from a very fun trip to the craft capitol (IMO) of the world...Utah. My main goal, other than visiting my family was to shop and hit as many craft and decorating stores as possible. And boy oh boy, shop we did!!!

A bad picture from Rodworks. My mom took this picture of the cute window dressing. It's swags of fabric hung from drawer pulls. It was ADORABLE. Everything about this store is adorable and I wanted everything!

Love the carrots. They are orange gauzy fabric with raffia inside. Soooo cute! They were hung off the side of a shelf with a length of ribbon. Buckets were also hanging from the ribbon. Again, soooo cute!

These pictures are both from Tai Pain. I LOVE the hanging frames with ribbons, glass jars and all manner of Spring fun stuff hanging from them.

We also went to Roberts Crafts, Real Deals, the Quilted Bear, Archivers and IKEA.

Oh, my other goal was to eat as much as possible.

YUM!!!

Apothecary Jars

I love my apothecary jars. Because I have decorating ADD-I change the fillers out very often. (So far I have changed them 3 times this year) There are so many things to put in them.



Faux gords and candy corn for fall.



Vintage Christmas ornaments and grapevine balls.



All things heart for valentines day...the possiblities are endless.



Since Vday is over and it's a little bit until the next holiday...I needed an in-between filler. While Christmas shopping this year, I saw some super cute lettered ceramic balls. I loved them. Unfortunately I didn't love the $30 price for 20 of them. I saw Joy make these cute ones and set out to make them myself.



Joy spray painted wooden balls and I was going to do that, but I'm lazy. So I took plain white ping pong balls (found in the Target $1 spot) and stuck on some letter stickers.



I think they turned out great! And I saved $26. Now if I could just keep my kids from getting in the jars and throwing them at each other.

These linky parties are so fun!

Happy V day!

Have you tried Picnik? It's a fun, free website to edit your pictures. Love it! It's super easy! I made our Valentines there.




I just took a regular old snapshot of my kids- changed it to black and white, bumped up the contrast and put a heart frame around it. Then wrote our message using the text option and stamped the doodled heart on. Easy. Then I had them printed in 1 hr (cuz I'm impatient like that) at Walmart and sent then to our family.


My husband thinks this picture of our kids is goofy, but I love it. It's so them right now. My oldest is going through the awkward, can't smile decent stage. My girl is just getting over being sick and is going through the not liking her done hair stage. And my wee man constantly has messy hair, which I love on him and only wants to wear his brother's soccer jerseys. This is a great picture of my lovies.






I also played around with the collages on Picnik and did this one. They are pre-made and you only have to drag and drop your pictures in.

Happy Valentine's Day!

ideas from friends

I LOVE blogs! I get sooo many great ideas from others while perusing the internet.

Becky Higgins had this great idea on her site for love notes! So cute!

I made some to give to friends and used the idea for my family. I love seeing the notes my kids leave for each other.

I thought this idea to paint a crock pot with chalk board paint was absolutely genius! To paint mine, I taped off the handles and temperature thingy, used spray on Kilz to prime it and rolled on 4 coats of chalkboard paint.

My friend Emily (she doesn't have a blog) has a meal calendar like this up at her house. She just changes out the stickies. So smart.

I printed off a blank calendar from Word, laminated it and glued magnets to the back. Then I took flag stickies and wrote dinner ideas on them. (BTW: FFYS means fend for yourself. It's for busy nights when we are running kids around and just make chicken nuggets or a sandwich)

The idea for this wreath came from Idea Room. It's such a great blog chock full of MANY crafty ideas. She made a Valentine wreath out of red felt.

I already had all of my Vday stuff out when I saw her red wreath. So I made a green one for St Patricks Day.

I love all the great ideas everyone has!

XOXO

How about another inexpensive and easy love day project?



Here are the super labor intensive instructions.

• Have a 2x4 cut down at Lowe's or Home Depot into 4 inch blocks.
• Paint the blocks red.
• Sand the edges.
• Put stickers onto the blocks.

Wall-A! Easy and cheap. Just the way I like my projects.

ABC I {heart} U

I saw this cute little picture at Target and LOVED it, but I wanted a bigger one.


I used an 8x10 blank canvas, letter stamps and black craft paint.


I was going to go with random placing of letters, but it looked funny. (that's what the K O A is at the bottom which I painted over it with white and turned it the other way) So I did abc... in order.



At the bottom I stamped I heart U in red puff paint and then sprinkled it with really fine irredecent glitter. I then glued a red polka dot ribbon around the outside edge of the canvas.

I am linking to:

Love day deco

It's been over a month since I have blogged and I have many excuses. I had a hard time getting going after the Holidays. Then I got really sick (like 2 different antiobiotics, pain pills and an almost course of IV antibiotics sick). Then we've had a few snow days with the kids home from school. Then my son had a birthday, etc, etc. Add in some school and Primary obligations and that is where I have been.

I feel almost on top of things finally and think I may be able to blog again. My goal is to update twice a week. I would really like to do more than that, but let's be realistic...it will be surprising if I can do 2 per week.


I have decorating ADD. I am always changing things up and moving things around. Bringing out different decorations for every holiday makes me so very happy! Here are valentine's day touches around my house.

Here is a close up of the candle. I took a plain, white candle, wrapped a ribbon around it and pinned on a few embellishments from my stash. Easy peasy!