Enjoy Life

Grateful Every Day.

 

Anyone who really knows me knows that Thanksgiving is the Holiday I like the least. Okay, I've been known to actually say, "I hate Thanksgiving."  I know, it sounds horrible, but the fact of the matter is that I am grateful every.....single....day.  I might also dislike Thanksgiving because something ridiculous always seems to occur on that day.  Kind of like the curse of Thanksgivings past.  Having said all that I do cook a full Thanksgiving Dinner for friends and family and partake in the traditions of the Holiday.

A couple of years ago, I decided to embark on a Fall project with my immediate family.  It was probably done during the month of November and I have to say it is one of my most treasured posessions.  For the sake of  a name we will call it the "Grateful Project".  I originally saw this concept on another blog and thought what a great idea.  I asked my family to write something on a piece of paper that they were "grateful" for.  We did this every night after dinner or before heading off to bed.  

I simply purchased a 16 x 20 picture frame and poster board.  Cut the poster board down to size and placed it in the frame with the glass in the back.  This allowed me to hang the frame while the project was going on and have access to write on the poster board.  When the project was complete we flipped the glass to the front.  

Every evening, we would take a black marker and simply write in our own words and handwriting what we were grateful for.  After about 10 days of doing this it began to get tricky.  What were we really thankful for that no one had said yet, besides the obvious, what could we come up with to top another family member.  

At the time my kids were 10, 7, and 2.  It's fun to look back at not only what they were grateful for at that time in their life but also at their handwriting.  

I have decided this year to take on this project again (this time inserting the word thankful).  After 4 years are we grateful for more? Is our cup full?  What will my 6 year old be grateful for and how will she embrace this project differently from when she was 2?

Every day we teach our kids to be appreciative but some times it's so easy to say what our friends do or the first thing that comes to our mind instead of taking the time to give it some thought.  When you sit back and take a moment to really think about your blessings and where you have come from that is when it is truly Thanksgiving.

Some things my family wrote in 201o:  love, peace, Steelers football, pilgrims, sisters, sunshine, Sewickley Academy, teddy, happiness, friends, clean water, smiles.....  What are you Grateful for?

 

Frozen Birthday . Part 2 . Food & Games

 

When I host a party I spend a lot of time making sure that everything is just that way I want it.  I have ideas in my head of what I want or how I want something to be but I am also open to roll with the punches and try very hard to keep in mind that most parties I host are for my children and their vision can be (and most of the time is) totally different then mine.  

My strategy: Keep it Simple. Easy. Done. 

 

Keeping it simple, I placed a plastic colored table cloth over my island, ran a strand of white lights and tule down the center to create the food table.  I am lucky to have an electrical outlet in my island to make this happen.  I found an idea on pinterest to cut styrofoam balls in half to use as card holders snowballs.  The adorable place tags were found on etsy.

 

Frozen Food:

Olaf Noses: Carrots with ranch dip

Elsa's Icicles: String Cheese sliced

Hans' Frozen Hearts: White Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Sven's Antlers: Large Pretzels

Anna's Berries: Grapes & Blueberries displayed in small plastic cups that I found at the dollar store.

Marshamallows Snowballs: White Chocolate dipped marshamallows covered with blue sprinkles

Kristof's Frozen Punch: Blue Hawaiian Punch and Sprite *Note that the only place I was able to find the BLUE Hawaiian Punch was at Wal-Mart.

 

Arrival 1:  I created a photo station and used the instamax camera to take a photo of each child with the birthday girl and then we did one group photo.

Arrival 2: After a picture was taken the guests sat at a table and created shadow puppets that I made using a silhouette file and candy sticks.  

 

Games: 

Pin the Nose on Olaf: I found a vinyl cling of Olaf and cut orange noses out of construction paper.

Freeze Dance: We played the Frozen soundtrack and paused for the kids to "Freeze!"

Ice Stacking:  I spent the prior week creating these really cool and large ice cubes to play a stack the ice game.  I really wanted to do this outside but the weather was not cooperating so we did this on my kitchen floor.  The kids loved it but it didn't last long because the ice was so cold!  If I did it again, I would have had them use their ice to make one large castle not individual stacks.  It ended up being a lot of work for 5 minutes of fun.

Elsa's Missing Glove:  Hide a blue or white glove and the kids must find it.

Ice Necklaces: I found clear & ice blue diamond gems at our local craft store and had each child string them into a necklace.

Kisses Guessing Game: One of the games I always seem to have at our parties is the guess how many game.  I bought cookies n' cream hersheys kisses (blue wrapper) and put them in a plastic container marked, " Some people are worth melting for".  Each child had to guess how many kisses were in the jar and the winner got the jar of candy.

All of the games were a success and the kids had lots of fun.  I like to remember the age of the audience, who are you throwing the party for?  When it comes to younger guests, they need lots of movement or up/down activities.  A stagnent party makes for a boring party. 

Thanks for stopping by!  I can't wait to share my next post when I talk about a teen party idea.

As always drop me a line if you have any questions. 

 

\

 

Frozen Birthday . Part 1 . The Cake & Favors

Turning 6,

For my daughters 6th Birthday we were consumed with all things Frozen.  At the time there just wasn't any Frozen themed party supplies out but I was okay with creating our own style to capture her special day.  I like to keep things simple and sometimes I find when companies make themed party supplies I tend to throw everything and anything into my cart only to get home and say, "What the hell is all this crap!"

The Cake:  This design idea came from a pin that I found on pinterest, but other than a photo I had nothing!  I ordered the crystal clear steps (not white) and rock candy from Amazon.  Despite the poor reviews the rock candy was not broken and was nicely sized for it's purpose.  I have specific directions at the end of this post on how the cake was created, simply!

 The Party Favors:  Hello, beautiful!  This is the first time I utilized my silhouette to make party favors and Ms. B and I couldn't have been more pleased with the end result.  The pattern: "3D Design round fancy purse"

The pattern:  

The goodies:  Keeping with the color scheme; stickers, eos lipbalm, Lindt truffles, and a rainbow loom bracelet.  The rainbow loom bracelets were made by my older daughters which was a nice way to have them get involved with the party.

Cake Directions:

(1) White frosted Half Sheet Cake 

(1) White frosted small round (baby smash cake)* 

(1) White Frosting

* Crystal Clear Steps

* Light Blue "Cotton Candy" Rock Candy

* White Rock Candy

* Sugar Ice Cream Cones

* Frozen Characters

* Dowels & Scotch Tape

* White Edibile Glitter

*Heres a trick/tip: I like to decorate my children's cakes but don't necessarily want have time to bake them.  Order them from your local grocery/bakery iced but not decorated this provides you with a clean canvas.  For this frozen cake, I ordered the cakes ahead of time and picked them up the day before the party.  Our local grocery stores make a small round cake for a baby's 1st birthday known as a smash cake.  *The smash cake is what I used for the round portion of this cake.  It is not a typical round (it's smaller) than what you would just go and by out of the bakery case.

The Ice Cream Cone Mt's: I made these the day before so they had time to harden.  Lay out a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet and simply use the tub of white frosting to frost all the way around.  For an added touch, I added edible glitter for cake decorating.  This added touch gave it a shimmery snow look.  Perfect touch!

The day of the party, I placed the small cake on top of the 1/2 sheet cake.  I did not have to transport my cake so no dowels were used.  Then, I put the stairs in place keeping in mind where I was going to place the characters.

The Ice Mountain: I had some wooden dowels left from another cake and taped them to several of the rock candy sticks to add some height to the ice mountain.  I then just staggered the rock candy by placing the sticks/dowels directly into the cake.

I placed about 3 of the ice cream cone mt's on the cake and then put a couple around the cake.  I sprinkled the loose rock candy (that had fallen off during shipment) around the edge of the cake, a small bit on top, and shavings on the steps.  I then sprinkled some of the shimmery edible glitter around the top of the cake to give it an "icy" feel.  The last thing was to put the characters in place.

I had a lot of fun creating this photo from a picture that I originally saw.  I hope these more specific directions help you.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

*Note: the one thing I found was that the cake was hard to move because of the rock candy inserted into the cake was top heavy.  If you are having this at home, I would create it wherever you plan on serving the cake.  If you are transporting the cake, I would put the rock candy mountain on once you arrive (it only takes 5 minutes).

I'll be back in the next couple of days with part 2 & 3 of the Frozen Party theme.  Including games, food, decorations.

Happy Creating!

 

 

3 layouts, 1 kit

As a mom, I don't allow myself to indulge in creative free time.  I'm not sure why and it's definitely something I need to work on because I know that when I allow myself the freedom to do something for me that I feel refreshed.  On Mother's Day (yes, I'm just now posting, don't judge!) I got up early and spent the morning in my Studio watching my favorite movie, StepMom, and making some layouts using the Studio Calico Camelot Project Life Kit.  

I had a stack of photos (that were similar in content) and the Camelot kit that I had opened but not done anything with.  I subscribe to the Studio Calico monthly Project Life Kits because I love them but lately have realized that another one comes before I use the prior months.  The other issue I have is a need to buy stamps and then NEVER use them but I love them and ALWAYS have good intensions.  I decided to see if I could put the content to use on these scrapbook pages and thought limiting myself to certain supplies would move things along.  Keep it simple.

1. Camelot Project Life Kit

2. Acrylic Stamps (Ali Edwards & Studio Calico)

I'm not going to go into detail about each layout but after I was done I noticed that even though I used white cardstock for all of them and that they had similar content they were all unique.  I love that.  

I also love that I have captured my children in their world with their things right now.  I wonder if my mom has photos of my world at their ages.  Hmmmm............

 

Layout 1

 

 

 

 

LAYOUT 2

 

 

LAYOUT 3

 What do you buy and never use?  Do you belong to a monthly kit club and the kits pile up with good intentions?  How do you carve out time for yourself.  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for stopping by.  

Project Life Tuesday . Catch up of sorts

Reality:  I'm completely caught up to week 21.  After week 21, I have pictures printed to week 28 and some sporatic journaling between 21-28.  Not too bad!  I am obviously not doing a good job of keeping up with my PL on my blog but hope to catch up over the next couple weeks.  

 Week 11: I am continuing to use Ali Edwards Weekly Lines Brush Set for my weekly date.  I love the look of this but most importantly I love that I can get one more photo in on the page.  As of late, I seem to have more photos than pockets.  I am pretty commited to the Design A pocket pages.  On occasion, I will utilize other Designs to add to the Design A but I haven't been able to get myself to totally switch.  

Page 1: I used a quote from the Studio Calico Set (sorry I don't know which one) and also this cute Status: circle for some journaling when I literally ripped off the door handle to my car.    I also love that it was warm enough to play hopscotch, blow bubbles, and do sidewalk chalk yet there was still snow on the ground.  

    

Page 2: A couple more 3x4 cards from Studio Calico along with a cork arrow.  I continue to love to use the "white space" on photos to journal directly on the photo.  Note:  After asking my mom and aunts when they got gray hair and/or glasses with none of them being able to tell me, I decided that I would document my gray hair so that my daughters would have an answer.

 That's a wrap.  Below is the two page spread for week 11.  Keeping it simple is great.  

 Week 12: This is the left side of my week, capturing St. Patty's day and those nasty little leprechauns.  A couple of ideas:  When there is a lot going on in a photo change it to black and white.  For me, I find it puts the focus on what's going on in the photo and not all the business of the background.  Here, I wanted to focus on the mess on the floor left by the leprechauns.  Another idea, capture in your current album a throw back photo or then/now.  As you can see in the 3x4 pockets, I had taken a photo of my kids in their St. Patty's day attire a couple of years ago and then had taken the same photo this year.  Wow, does this capture how they have grown.

The cute saying and cards were freebies from Rebecca Cooper.

 Thanks for stopping by.  I'll be back tomorrow with 3 new layouts.

I'm linking up today with The Mom Creative.

  

Project Life Tuesday . Weeks 9 & 10

 

Week 9

My favorite part of this weeks layout are the bottom photos that are numbered 1, 2, 3.  I took these photos one after the other, this is what all my kids were doing at the same time after school.

 

Left Side:  Added stamps directly to white space in photo. 

 

Right Side: To document that my daughter was sick, I took a photo of the things she asked for and that I used to make her feel better than wrote the list in the white space.  I also included a shirt tag to document a purchase made for my teen.  

Week 10

I'm not 100% finished with this week (I have to add a bit of journaling) but wanted to go ahead and share it.

 

I included a Design E page protector that I just cut in half. I had two stories that I wanted to tell this week that were longer.  I sized the pictures on my computer and printed them at home.  I love how this turned out.  It reminded me that while I'm trying to capture all the little details sometimes I need to include bigger stories.

Thanks for stopping by.  

 I'm linking up today with The Mom Creative.

 

 

Project Life Tueday . Week 7 & 8

Well something happened last week and I just couldn't get my act together.  Maybe it was becauase I was sick on the couch for 4 days.  I did manage to sit down on Sunday evening and complete both weeks 7 & 8.  

Keeping it simple with the Jade Edition and Studio Calico

 

Week 7

Week 8

Linking up with 

 

List with Friends - Week 8

Things I miss about my babies

 

1. sweet baby breath

2. wrapping the tiny fingers around one of mine

3. watching them drink a bottle

4.  the weight of their bodies on mine as they drift off to slumber

5. fine baby hair

6. tiny shoes

7. kissing little baby toes

8. soft cries

9. facial expressions/ smiles while they sleep

10. folding tiny clothes.

 

Project Life Tueday . Week 6

 

Keeping it simple and easy this week.  Lots of journaling:  I did not take a photo per day but I did journal every day which was a nice change.  In 2013, most of my pages were photos and "remembering" journaling.  

On Sunday night, I pulled all the 3x4 cards out from the  Jade edition and each day I would jot down what happened.  Sometimes it was the end of the day, sometimes as I walked through my studio.

The day of the week stickers and 3x4 filler card are from a Studio Calico kit.  

I also plan on adding an additional page of just photos from a weekend camping with my Junior Troop but to protect their privacy, I have decided not to include it here.

Linking up with 

 

Project Life Tuesday . Week 5

I feel like a broken record but I just love this project.  My life is crazy busy with three girls, husband, work, volunteering but PL allows me to capture it in real time.  Love that!  

What's working for me:  I leave my book open and out on my desk.  I print my pictures with my Epson PictureMate 300.  I work a little on it all week and finish it up on Sunday with a commitment to myself to post the full spread on Tuesday!

 

Left Side:

Right Side:

I wanted to focus on details of the girls lives right now and loved the outcome of using the wood letters.

Thanks for stopping by.  

 

I'm linking up today with: