Gifts and Cards and Labels Oh My!

I am now in that time of my life when weddings and baby showers are things that I attend frequently. Actually the number of weddings that I attend has been greatly reduced but now all the people whose weddings I have attended over the last few years are moving on to the next stage of their life and starting their families.  I love to attend both events because I take any chance that I can get to be creative and make something for someone.

A few weekends ago I attended yet another baby shower.  My giant stack of burp cloths is actually getting pretty small now so I might need to make a few more.  I have been having fun lately designing cards using my Silhouette Portrait.

I now have the designer software and my favorite feature is being able to turn anything into a sketch design.  For this card I used a baby carriage shape I found in the store and made the wheels into a sketch design and used a metallic sketch pen to sketch it onto kraft paper.  I then cut out the rest of the shape on a pearly baby blue paper and glued it to the card.  I sketched the the "congrats" onto some textured card stock and glued it to the card.  I drew the string for the banner by hand and then cut out the flags of the banner from washi tape.  I also put a piece of washi tape at the bottom.  I think it turned out so cute!

In July I attended a wedding and I shared the tutorial of how to make a heat transfer monogram for napkins with the Silhouette software in this post

I attended another wedding last weekend and made another set of heat transfer monogrammed napkins for the bride and groom.

For this set I used a gray fabric with a sparkly silver polka dot pattern.  I tweaked my monogram design slightly for this set by using a different block letter font and making the last name initial larger than the first name initial.  

Along with the napkins I bought silverware of of their registry.  It was the perfect gift combo.  I made a card with purple card stock (purple was one of their wedding colors).  I cut this beautiful cake design from the Silhouette online store out of silver paper.  Then I sketched the cake stand and the congratulations with a silver sketch pen.

You may have noticed my new sewing labels in a few of the pictures above.

My new blog logo and header design inspired me to redesign my labels.  You can check out my post on how I made my original sewing labels here.  I used the same process to make these but the Silhouette designer software gave me the freedom to use any font and any shape and make it into a sketch design.  I made the house by just using the line tool and then changing the line to a dashed line to make it look like stitches.  It was so simple.  

There should be some posts on home diy in the near future.  I have all the supplies to work on a project today, the fabric for our bedroom curtains is on order, and I just bought a bunch of paint samples at Home Depot on Thursday for the office.  I am excited to get back to it now that school has started and I am done with my beginning of the year preparations for teaching.  

Putting Plans Down on Paper (or in the Blogosphere)

Even though I haven't completed many home projects lately which explains the lack of posts lately my mind has been bubbling over with ideas.  I find it helpful to write these ideas down otherwise I feel that I will forget them.  Today I thought I would share some of those plans with the blog world. So back in December I wrote this post on three big projects that I wanted to complete by the end of this summer.  I have been working on project #1 closet organization for quite sometime now and I feel that this one will probably continue to be a work in progress.  Organizing takes time yall!  But here is where the project is at now:

My 2nd project was to redo my dining set.  I successfully completed this project before Easter so that it would be ready to seat my family for Easter dinner.  I LOVE how it turned out.  

My 3rd project was to take out the carpet on the stairs and upstairs west bedroom and hallway and refinish the wood floors.  Unfortunately this project won't be happening.  I didn't trust my diy skills on this one so we had a couple of floor refinishers come out and do bids.  It would have cost us around 6 grand and we just weren't willing to pay that for a project that was merely cosmetic.  And boy were we glad that we decided not to because a month later this happened:

Yep that is an entire sheet of shingles sliding off of our roof.  We had a pretty crazy wind storm that loosened up some of our shingles.  You can see another sheet of them that is buckling and ready to slide too.  Another sheet of them also slipped off of another part of the roof.  Currently we have tarp over those two spots but we have had roofers out to give us bids.  Insurance is paying for a hefty chunk of our new roof but we do have to pay some out of pocket so we are glad we didn't decide to redo those floors.  It will be nice to get a new roof that will last for 30 years.

Okay now for all those ideas bubbling in my head.  If you want to pin images from this post please go to the original source for the pin.  First up, the office.  Currently the room is purple and I love purple but it is just too saturated and dark of a purple for my liking.

For the walls I am thinking a pale mint like these inspiration pics

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I would also like to buy a cheap dresser at a thrift store or garage sale to store sewing patterns and other craft supplies.  Above the the dresser I would love to have a memo board like this one:

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Next up, our bedroom.  So I did some work with this room over the last year giving it a new paint color, redone furniture, new bedding and a curtain rod.  Currently it looks like this:

I would love to paint the closet doors a dark brown or black like this:

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I have been wanting to add curtains for a long time but I haven't found the right fabric until now.  I love Premier Prints, they are seriously the best.

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Unfortunately other people must love it too because it is currently unavailable.  But I've waited this long so I can wait a little longer! 

When I was in Target awhile ago I snapped this inspiration pic for my lamps.

Currently my lamps look like this:

But I would love to update the shades with a stencil and maybe even paint the base.

Lastly, I need a way to organize/display my always growing collection of watches and I love this diy jewelry display project from Iheartorganizing:

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So those are some projects that I would like to tackle in the near future.  Those projects will certainly keep me plenty busy.  Check back later this week for a handmade gift post.

What I've Been Up To Lately

Warning: This is going to be a super random post with a bunch of unedited photos.  Definitely not my usual kind of post.

So it has been quite awhile since I last posted.  I've been busy...but not with house projects (but I do have a few little projects to share in this post).  At the end of July I went on a trip with my parents and siblings that we take every year to visit our relatives in the Southern Midwest.

I was born and spent the first 7 years of my life in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I still have quite a few relatives living in the area including grandparents.  It is always fun to go back and visit.

One of the coolest places in Tulsa is the Philbrook Museum of Art.  This beautiful mansion was turned into a great museum.  One of the best parts of the museum is the gardens.  Last year the gardens were closed because of a big storm so we came back this year to just visit the gardens.

This year we added some different sites to our trip with a little detour into Arkansas and Missouri. The above picture is of the War Eagle Mill in Arkansas.  It is a beautiful place.

Later we travelled to Branson, MO and visited Silver Dollar City.  It is a theme park with lots of rides and some old time craftsman and artisans.  I got a chance to take some artsy photos with my iPhone.  

I also took some time to meditate, haha.

Music nerd alert!  One of the highlights of the trip for me was buying this mountain dulcimer at Silver Dollar City.  Buying an authentic folk instrument in the Ozark Mountains is super exciting to a Kodaly trained elementary music teacher.  I can't wait to play it for my students.

After Branson we went to Kansas City and watched the Royals play the Twins.  I am fans of both teams so it was hard to pick who I wanted to win.  I went with the Royals for this one since I was on their home turf.

Shopping at antique stores has been a part of our trips for the last few years since my dad started collecting antique oil cans.  I love to shop at antique stores and it is always fun to see what funny things you can find like this lovely "flute."  I did pick up a few items for myself including this silver plated pitcher.

When I came back from the trip my living room featured not one but two couches. I should of taken a picture but I didn't, wah wah.

Our old couch was just way too big for the space.  The chaise lounge piece cut off the flow from the living room to the stairs and addition.  So we decided to downsize.

The living room looks so much bigger now!  We even have room for another chair or 2 now. I am really happy with our decision to downsize.  That old couch, while comfortable, just didn't fit the space.

Since I've been back I have been super busy with getting my classroom ready for the school year. It is hard to believe that it is so close to starting already.  I know this is a blog about my home but I want to share some of my school projects anyway.

My first project was to reorganize my teaching material binders and make some cute binder covers and spines.  I used Pixelmator which is a Mac program similar to Photoshop.  I use this program to edit all my photos for this blog too.  I would love to have Photoshop but it is so darn expensive.  This program has many of the same features but is much, much cheaper.

I also used the program to make some new hall passes.  I love owls and there are lots of them in my classroom.

I've also been working on some file folder games that I bought on Teachers Pay Teachers for music centers.  I made the envelopes that will hold the "game" pieces with my Silhouette.

This spring I had a parent who was doing work study hours cut out and laminate some rhythm manipulatives for me.  For some reason the half notes didn't get laminated so I laminated them and have been sorting them into bags.

Before I left for our trip in July, I completed some small projects in our home office.  I found some cute houndstooth wrapping paper at HomeGoods and decided to mod podge it on to the magazine holders that contain my Better Homes and Gardens magazine collection.  I also made some labels with adhesive vinyl and my Silhouette for the shoe box containers in my craft closet.

Phew, that was a long one.  Once school gets started I hope to have some time again to do some house projects.  I do have a baby shower and wedding coming up in the next few weeks so I might have some more homemade gifts to post about in the nearish future.