Monday, January 28, 2013

Invitation

I've been busy sewing 4 dresses. I finished them yesterday, but I haven't gotten a picture of them yet. Hopefully I can get that done today or tomorrow. Anyhow, in the meantime I'm gearing up for birthday season at our house. We apparently have 2 magical months around here. 2 of the kids have birthdays in January and the other 4 are in March. By the end of March we are SICK of cake. But, it creates kind of a crazy month planning birthday parties though! Kade just turned 10 a few days ago, and due to a bad weather forecast we postponed his party until this Saturday. I just ordered his invitations from Costco and will pick them up this afternoon so we can get them distributed. I've gotten lazy. I used to make every invitation by hand with my scrapbook supplies. I just don't have time for that anymore. Thank goodness for Costco and their 13 cent 4x6 prints! I design the invitation on the computer and then send the file off to be printed. So much easier!
So, here is my creation for Kade's Mythbuster style birthday party invitation (I'll try to get pictures of the party and post that next week with all of the myths and such that the boys will be recreating and testing):


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Alternative to a curtain rod

The windows in this house are so odd. In my front room and formal dining room I have 2 banks of windows. The front room has windows in the corner. Yes, I could do a 90 degree angle curtain rod, but one side of the windows is almost flush with a wall that pops out. There isn't even any room for a curtain rod at all unless it ended "in" the wall. So, for a year I have had no curtains in that room (although let's be real, I don't have curtains in any room!), but it hasn't been a huge problem because we have nice plantation shutters on every window in the house. While in Arizona for Thanksgiving my sister had an interesting curtain treatment that I decided to copy. I added a medallion behind the hardware to make it pop a bit more and to help it be stronger. I'll do pictures of the entire curtain later, because I need to fix them (how is it that I measured AT LEAST 5 times and they aren't the right length??). But, for now here is my alternative to a curtain rod.
My corner windows
A close up of the medallion and hardware. My alternative to curtain rod.


See the wall that starts at the edge of the window? Seriously, a man has to have designed this house!

I have 3 medallions per curtain panel.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Let's get started!

I love to make "hair pretties" for my girls. It is definitely one of the perks of girls, getting to dress them up to the nines. For some reason I was feeling like I had nothing super cute in a basic black, so I decided to solve that problem
When I sat down at my sewing/craft table I saw my leftovers from a project I did just before Thanksgiving. I had made a dress for Maylee to match a dress that Alissa had (I bought the exact fabric from the company for this exact purpose). They are very distinctive dresses with lots of bright colors and I knew I didn't have anything in the hair pretty buckets to truly do them justice. So, I added another set of flowers to my workflow. I think they turned out fabulously.
A few days passed and it was Saturday night. I knew exactly which dresses I wanted the girls to wear to church the next day, and I knew I needed to make another set of flowers to go with their dresses that they had gotten for Christmas. They are beautiful solid blue and blue plaid super fancy dresses from Gymboree. So, I pulled out some solid blue fabric and set to work. The gold and sparkle buttons were a good pop of color, but it wasn't quite enough. I rummaged through my stuff and found some gold birdcage. I loved it!

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

A new year, a new blog, a new goal

This last year I have come to a realization that I am a creative person to my very core. I've always known that I was creative, but I found myself getting depressed almost a year ago. We had recently moved to Southern California and for several months my life was all about packing, moving, unpacking, getting kids into new schools, etc. I did some introspection and came to the conclusion that I couldn't even function without an outlet for my creative side. I quickly made a floral arrangement for our new house and life got so much better.
I make an effort to find the time to make something quite often. But, I could probably be more effective with my time. So, my goal for 2013 is to do some sort of a project once a week. If I am a happier person then that should translate to a happier home for my wonderful husband and six children. So, join me as I make this journey.