Happy Birthday My Love

To the love of my life, Happy Birthday!! Thank you for giving me the two greatest gifts in the world! 

Shone Foto

For their very first birthday present Mark gets the girls a pearl bracelet. We make sure to get picture of the girls wearing them at their newborn photos. 

Eliza 2010 EJ Photography

Emelia 2013 Shone Foto

Wonder Week 6, Mental Leap 1

Oh Mental Leaps-I have not missed you!

Tutorial Throwback-Feather Tree

Hello Ladies...and I am sure a few Gents! Here is a Valentine's Day Tutorial, a bit late!

I sneaked out of the house the other day while Eliza napped and Mark played video games, to swing by Michaels. While checking out I saw a "floral arrangement" on SALE for 49.99!! What?? I can TOTALLY make that! So I did!!


Small disclaimer, this tree does not photograph well! I did it in every light, with pro camera and camera phone, it just doesn't capture the awesomeness of the feathers. I SWEAR it is SUPER cute!!

Start off with supplies-

Styrofoam Cone
Feather Boa, or 2 if you buy a big cone
Ribbon
Embellishment
Candle Stick
Hot Glue

Start out with your cone, side note-you can not spray paint Styrofoam, didn't know that! So move on with your cone with whatever color you bought. Take a boa and find an end, trim the extra rope they use so it is flush with the feathers. Take your hot glue and put a large bead at the bottom of the cone.

Lay your cone down with the feather boa coming toward you. Do a string of glue along the bottom and roll the cone toward you gluing the boa to the cone.

Now take the boa and wrap it tightly around the cone, glue every once in a while.

Now if you want to use 2 colors like I did, start the next boa from the top. Sorry I have no picture for this, I didn't plan to have to use two boas and had to run to the store and was flustered when I got back.

As you come to meet the 2 boas in the middle you can choose to keep them completely separate or swirl the top one into the bottom feathers to combine the colors.


Take your embellishment and attach it to the top, mine was a pick so I just stuck it down into the cone.

Next is the ribbon. Here is a great way to make a bow.

Start with a long piece of ribbon

Fold both edges in to meet the middle, do a dab of glue and keep them down.

Now cut two long pieces of ribbon, these will be your tails.

Flip your folded piece over and glue each tail to the back

Now cut a small piece that will wrap around the middle.

Glue it on the back, wrap it around the front of the ribbon, between the two tails, pull tight and glue on the back again.

Perfect bow without the tying!

Glue the bow to the top of your tree.

Now take your candlestick and you can choose to attach it to the bottom of your cone, or just rest your cone on it. I decided not to glue so that I could do a different cone each holiday and just reuse the candlestick.

You are done! This took me less then 20 minutes and I love the funky way it looks.

Tutorial Throwback-Valentine's Day Love

Thanks for stopping by this week. I have a very easy, cheap, and cute tutorial.

It is nothing original, I have seen a lot of different variations, but I just love it!

Isn't it super cute?

Supplies:

Paper Mache Letters-lots of different sizes at Joanns
Scrapbook Paper
Paint-I used regular paint, spray paint would have been better if it wasn't 10* outside
Hot Glue
Spray Adhesive
Pencil

Start out by painting the edges of your letters. Make sure you paint a little bit on the front around the edges in case your paper doesn't fit perfect...am I the only one who can't cut straight?

Let them dry, I actually did two coats. While drying, go work on another project!

OK they are dry...next step. Lay your scrapbook paper face down, you don't want the pencil on the good side. Also lay your letter face down as well, don't want the shape to turn out backwards. You can now trace the shape. Try to line it up with an edge, less to cut, and it leaves more room in case you need to do it twice...again am I the only one who can't cut straight?

Once your letter is cut out spray your letter AND paper letter and lay them together. I decided not to use Mod Podge as it gets very wet and the paper tends to wrinkle. I am sorry but I don't have a picture of this step. I was too scared to have evidence of using spray glue on my kitchen table!

The glue dries fairly quickly but to ensure it is dry and not going to move on you, go work on another project!

Everything all dry? Great! Time to assemble the letters. You can do it however you want, just remember you need the bottom letters to be flat and even on the bottom so it can stand up. There aren't too many variations but here are the two I was debating between:

Obviously I picked the lower one! Once you have it how you want it glue it all together. I started by gluing the E to the V then the L to the V then the O to the E and gluing the O to the L by "caulking" it. Once it was dry I flipped it on its belly and glued the back all together, anywhere two letters touched I glued the seam together. If I had popsicle sticks I would have glued those on for support as well...but its cold out so we don't eat popsicles right now.

And here it is, in Eliza's bedroom. This is the space we put her holiday decorations. Santa came down and LOVE went up!!

 

Emelia Says Hi at 1 Month Old!!

She takes after her sister, she is a talker!!!

Emelia-One Month Old!

Emelia Michelle,

You are one month old! I can't believe it. Today you smiled for the first time at Mommy, Daddy and sissy. You gave us each our own genuine smiles. I absolutely love how much you react to your sister. When you hear her come into the room your eyes start going a mile a minute looking for her! She makes you smile the biggest smiles!! 

Someone Is A Big Girl!!!

For a few weeks Eliza had been mentioning getting her ears pierced. When we would go to the mall we would go past the little shops and offer to take her in but she always said it would hurt too much. 

We never wanted to push her into it, especially because I know she isn't good with pain, so we would just say "OK, if you ever want it done, let us know".

The day came this week, she decided the pain was worth it. We tried a few days to get them done but we had a few snow storms and were stuck at home. 

Saturday we were able to find a place that was open. It is a cute little girls salon where they have parties and can get your hair and such done.

Eliza was aware of the pain but negotiated a new Princess out of the deal if she didn't cry.

She picked out some pink star earrings and hopped up on the chair. They marked her ears, had me double check and then we went for it. Luckily they had two girls do it at once or I think we would be rocking only one earring.

Before they even did it, I was already crying. Not at the big girl moment, but the fact I knew she was not prepared for the pain. 

She cried, definitely cried. One of the guns got caught on the back of the earring so it took an extra second and an extra pull on her ear. But this place is on their game, they were ready and waiting with a lollipop. That definitely helped. They then offered to spray her hair with glitter...getting better..and even let her go up to the big runway mirrors to check it out...tears were gone!! 

She pulled at my heart strings and convinced me she needed a new unicorn stuffed animal they had there as well. We snagged a set of blue butterfly earrings for the future as well.

I am so proud of my big girl! She loves to check herself out in the mirror and even had to announce to her classmates at school today that she had new earrings. All the girls wanted to come see.

Good Job Liezy!!