My attempt at pottery barn plaques **FINISHED**

I actually finished these weeks ago, but I haven't had time to post the pics yet. These did take some time to make but I LOVE the finished product! Well worth the time and effort and I actually like my version better because the only ones PB offered were for girls.

My attempt at pottery barn plaques

I have found some wall plaques for Rees' playroom that I adore, but there are two big problems. 1.) They are in girl patterns 2.) they would be $157 + shipping. I hate to spend that kind of  money for playroom decor that will probably change next year!  So I got to thinking.... I can make those. So here is what I want my project to eventually resemble

and here is what I am starting with :)

This is a board that I purchased at my local hardware store for $10.20 and they cut it to my specs (which I borrowed :) from Pottery barn for free. So they next step is painting wish me luck!

Rees' new obsession

For months Rees has begged for paint. Every time we pass the craft isle at Walmart he says Rees needs that mom (the paint) and I have avoided it for this long, but he caught me in a soft moment and I said "sure" so that was all he talked about all the way home. We went out to the patio and away he went, he had most of his Toy Story book colored by the time he was done. I must admit it wasn't actually that messy, I should have gave in sooner :)

4th of July

I hope everyone had a great 4th...our family sure did! We had a great day swimming, eating and then we had a beautiful fireworks display although I am sad to report my pictures sucked. I was not as clever as my dear friend V to research the fireworks procedure for taking good pictures so I wound up with 100+ stinky fireworks pictures. Oh well there's always next year! But back to the good parts of our day, the food was at the top of the list. Potlucks are my favorite I love eating other peoples food as a matter of fact I hardly ever eat what I take to a potluck just because I want to sample all the other new foods. I'll share what I made with you because all the recipes got rave reviews and they are definitely festive and super delicious. I will be making these again in coming years!

Brownie's & Berries Dessert Pizza 

Yumm-o you gotta try this one the recipe is HERE

Red, White & Blue Poke Cake

This one was my favorite. Recipe is HERE

Layered Summer Fruits with Creamy Lime Dressing

So Delicious  Recipe can be found HERE

I love these gift baskets

My best friend from high school is having her first baby in a couple months and guess what... It's a GIRL!!! I have had the time of my life buying for her. Little boy stuff is cute, but little girl stuff is out of this world cute! I can't help myself. I'm so glad I have a boy or I would be bankrupt LOL! For Easter I made these cute CANDY BUCKETS so I had the idea to try it out with baby stuff and I think it turned out adorable. I have a matching laundry basket with a liner to embroider the babies name on and it's filled with the cutest outfits I have every seen! I threw sensible out the window when I was shopping and strictly went with outlandishly cute instead :) I am so incredibly happy for Linds & Jon I know they will be amazing parents and I wanted her to have a special gift from us so I think I'm on the right track!

Okay now I'm off to embroidery land I'll be sure to share the outcome of that in a few days. LOTS to embroider wish me luck!

Happy Easter!

Our Easter has been a lot of fun. We have made a bunny gingerbread house, colored eggs, hunted eggs, deviled eggs and we're getting ready to go to our family dinner. Here's how our egg coloring went.

Our bunny shack

I bought this gingerbread Easter bunny house over a month ago and have been looking forward to making it with Rees all month. I already decided that it didn't matter what it looked like that it was the experience that I would cherish. And experience I got! From start to finish this project was fun/sugary/hilarious/wonderful and did I mention a ton of FUN!!! I let Rees do everything. To my surprise he was really into it. I didn't figure it would keep his attention as long as it did and he even took his daddy right to it when he got home from work. Although he ate for of the decorations than he put on the house, but that's okay he had a lot of fun.

Easter Goodies

I was at a really cool store a couple weeks ago and saw these beautiful Easter candy arrangements. I instantly fell in love with them, so I asked what the price was and to my surprise they were $60. So my first thought was .... I can make that for much cheaper! So I hunted up some supplies while I was in Huntington and here's what I cam up with

Isn't it cute? this is one that I did for Rees so the candy is stuff that we likes. I know it's a pink pale but there is a good reason for that LOL! I made 2 when I made them the first time and I thought I don't need both so I took them to my store and sat them on the counter to see if they would sell. Well they did immediately and I had 4 special orders come in too. One was for a boy one (which was Rees') so since I already committed to making them I gave his up. He's only two I hope he won't notice :)

Day - 33 A trip to the fabric shoppe

As you have probably noticed if you follow this blog I am highly addicted to crafting. It's like my drug. I get on crafting binges and just can't think about anything other than my next craft fix. LOL, with that said my "next fix" is a quilt for Rees with his name appliqued on it. So cute, relatively easy and an absolute must have for him. Being that we do not have any place to purchase fabric in our little town now that Walmart is not carrying fabric anymore (not that it was good fabric anyways) I ventured to a neighboring town to go to their amazing fabric shoppe. When you walk in the door it's like your walking back in time. It's so old school and wonderful. I'm not a huge quilter or anything, but I do LOVE collecting fabrics. Unfortunately they didn't have the fabric line I was looking for,but I found me so amazing Christmas fabrics on sale that I had to have. See what I mean about addicted? Who buys Christmas fabric in February? Just thought I would share my treasures.

Day 28 - Birthday planning!

First of all are your children getting mad at you like mine is me for carrying your camera around a lot? I am sorta well lets just say obsessive about this 365 project (I want to print my blog as a book at the end of the year) and it's to the point now that Rees says No mama NO when I have it around my neck LOL. Guess I'm going to have to take pictures of some other stuff and give him a break from time to time. I didn't take ANY pictures of him all day. We went to the doctor this morning and got some shots so I thought I would take it easy on him and not stress him anymore for the day. 

It's almost that time of year again. Rees' Second Birthday!!! I LOVE to throw his parties. Well at least the first one was a ton of fun. I love doing parties, but with all we have had going on the past couple of years I don't get to do it anymore so I just put all my energy into one party a year... Rees'! So I picked my theme with Rees' help of course. He chose "ta-cors" or as we would say tractors. and what better colors to go with than yellow and green of course! I found all my decor and now I am starting on the hand made stuff. I swear I get other stuff done during my day people I just stay up really late working on all my fun projects :) I dusted my cricut off and started making circles for my banner. Oh, pitter patter goes my heart here comes all kinds of hand made stuff!!! How I wish I had the BIG Cricut, but my small one will work I suppose! Next comes invitations. I have to get Rees in the studio and get some good Birthday shots. This is seriously better than Christmas to me! This year Rees will know what's going on too so that will make it even better! The cake I had made last year was amazing, but this years is even better. I just can't wait. Did I mention it's six weeks away? I like to get a jump start.

Day 16 - Oh how I love my iphone

I was never really a cell phone person as a matter of fact I'm still not really, but I just love all the cool stuff that iphones do. I use it all the time. I love making wallpapers out of my scrapbook embellies and using them on my iphone. Here's the one I using for Valentines Day. If anyone wants to learn how to do it I have a tutorial on one of my other blogs you can find it HERE

I tried really hard to get my son to hold this in his hand so I could get the picture that way (ya know creatively) but he wouldn't have any part of it. About the third time he threw the phone I decided it probably wasn't worth it being as I just replaced this phone last week. 

Day 15 - My favorite things

My top 5 favorite things
(material posessions, we all know family is my very favorite thing in the whole world)
1. ANYTHING digital. Camera, Digital scrapbooking, blogging
2. My embroidery machine
3. My craft room
4. Ribbon *random I know, I just love though :)
5. Photography

Here is a collage of the room that brings my a huge amount of enjoyment. This is where I run away to during Rees' nap time. He's not allowed in here, this is mama's playroom :)

Day 13

I promise I do more than just craft everyday with that said I just have to share pictures of a V-day wreath I made today. I was having problems finding something to put on the front door that wasn't just one of those hearts with the shiny metallicy stuff so I seen a couple on other blogs that were cute so I decided to combine a couple of things to make one that was perfect for me. For under $10 I made this adorable fabric, tulle, ribbon wreath.