Sunday, November 30, 2008

It's time to decorate for Christmas!

I have lots to do but here is the wreath I made. I decided to work in Pink since my new niece would be here for the first time this Thanksgiving and I was hosting a shower for twin girls the weekend after Thanksgving in my home! It adds a nice touch I think and is a bit fun!

Happy Decorating!

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Baby Shower for the TWINS!

I had a great time hosting a shower for my twin, who is having twins! Here are two collages that I made of the decor!




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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Baby Shower for McKenley!

I so enjoyed being able to help my sister-in-law celebrate the exciting arrival of her new daughter, McKenley. This is my first personal experience with adoption and it is really an amazing experience! Scrambling with no real plan is rather interesting and NOT what I am best at but I think I and her friend Normia pulled it off with only a few weeks notice! This shower was hosted at Normia's home and I really enjoyed just showing up with stuff and throwing a party! I have been loving paper lanterns and this was the first time I used them. I made the banner with fun paper and my new Cricut--what a great machine! There is a closer picture of the start of the banner so you can see it better--it said "McKenley is Here!". I showed you the diaper cake last week but here it is in its official place at the shower. The Baby sign was just something fun that I did because I couldn't stop playing with my Cricut! That sign with the shadow letters took me like 10 minutes? Is this a Cricut commercial? Sorry! The cake was made in Sebring and was gorgeous and tasted great!







A few silly games! It wouldn't be a baby shower without games! I am a fan of interactive games where you don't have to stand in front of a crowd and talk 'at' them and where they have to sit all together for 45 minutes. We played a game where you were blindfolded and you had to find safety pins in rice for a specific amount of time and it was quite difficult!

This is a 'memory' game that I put together. I mentioned before that I am hosting a second baby shower this coming weekend and am doing this game with a fun twist so check it out when I blog in early December!

This was fun and simple--guess the amount of pacifiers! It's hard to see here but these are the cute decorative pacis that you can buy at Michaels or party stores. It was fun to not only announce the winners but to also see how low and how high some people guessed!

This is a gift that our Aunt Harriet has given us for every single baby! I should have taken one out for a better picture but they are imprinted disposable diapers with the baby's name on it--cute!!

What a fun shower and great celebration! Every baby is a miracle and every baby comes (hopefully!) from dreams and anticipation but there is just something special about the reward you get when the path of adoption is added into this process. She is a little miracle for her parents and big brother (who thinks his little brother will come in "another week") and I'm so proud to be a new Aunt!

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

Happy Fall Ya'll!

Since this week is Thanksgiving, I thought I would post pictures of my Fall Decorations! I don't do Halloween since we are in a rural area where people don't trick or treat (don't worry, we go somewhere else, my kids are not deprived of 15 lbs of candy that they don't need). Instead, I do "Fall" and leave it up until the end of November! Though I will admit that this year is a bit different. Because I am hosting a baby shower here the weekend of Thanksgiving and going out of town the following weekend, I decided to start Christmas early! But normally, Fall is up through Thanksgiving weekend! I stopped decorating and tweaking once I realized that things had to change but here is what I did before I had to take it down!
I thought about not showing you my front door because I'm not loving the garland above. It was very heavy and didn't 'swag' very well but whatever, I tried it and it didn't work! Next year I will get something that drapes better, deal with it!
Here are some areas in my entry:
This is living room and dining room areas-I didn't do much in either as I still like clean spaces when it comes to where we spend a lot of time!
Here are pictures from my kitchen:
Even my coffee bar got some fun candles!


I am looking forward to a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and a busy weekend celebrating the pending arrival of new nieces! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

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Friday, November 14, 2008

Baby Shower Decor!

I am co-hosting a baby shower this weekend for my new niece! It is not in my home and I am taking what I am doing out of town and mingling it in with another person's decor and style. I hope I won't scare her because I have lots of stuff to take! I'll post pictures next week but wanted to share my diaper cake! The shower theme is brown and pink so I went with that, of course! Yes, it is 100% diapers, except the center which is bottles.

I love doing something totally FUN and cute and since I don't have any girls I am having a BLAST with this shower! OH, and the TWIN GIRL shower that I am hosting for my TWIN in two weeks! Yes, just typing that gets me teary eyed--I mean, how CUTE and UNIQUE is that????? That will be at my house and I plan to have fun so I'll put that up early December!

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Home Office in great need of systems!

Here is my newest project! This homeowner is very busy with multiple businesses and 2 children. They just completed an addition to the back of their home in order to gain space! This room is right off their entry and she is a bit overwhelmed, can you tell? I am reorganizing this space as well as setting up the new Play Room. Most importantly, I am merging things together from many different areas to create true "homes" for all items and am creating systems to better manage her busy life! She is very intelligent and juggles more than most and just needs an organized environment and rules to follow in order to maintain a Pretty Neat space!

I will post After pictures next week!

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Saturday, November 1, 2008

Halloween Drink Bar

I know this isn't really about Decorating or Organization but this blog is also about creativity and making everyday things fun so I thought I'd post it!
I made a Creepy Halloween Bar for my friend's party and had SO much fun!

Here is the bar. I used a basic black bowl and glued the halloween trim to it. All the labels were made with basic scrapbook paper and ribbons that I found. Using halloween inspired sticker letters would have been expensive and time consuming. An easy solution is to download cool fonts instead. All the fonts I used were free. I didn't take a good picture of the wine covers I made but they were quite cute too and are in the background of the bar.

This is the cosmo with Dry Ice and it was so much fun! Dry Ice has several rules that you can easily find online if you want to try it one day. As long as you follow the safety guidelines, it's a blast and really made the bar creepy and cool! The ice popped and bubbled in the ladel.

Yes, gross. That's the point. Isn't it fun? You can see I set it up with some shot glasses but I didn't think anyone would actually drink it so I didn't put out a serving piece. One person wanted to try it and he said it wasn't that bad! Note that if you do a fun gooey shot like this, it's all about the container. This in a shallow glass or colored item would not have looked great--it needed something pretty to make it look all the more creepy!

This is the sandwich I made. It is just crossaint dough wrapped around ham and provolone. Easy but fun! I also made adorable eyeballs for dessert for the kids that were SO easy but I didn't take a picture!

I LOVE crafting things for holidays so stay tuned--it offically is the season! I'm also working on TWO baby showers this month and will have lots of fun with those as well!

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