No More New Baby Smell - 10 months

Mia just turned 10 months old!  We are realizing that she is starting to become a real person and isn't a baby anymore. L And the fact that her birthday party is less than 10 weeks away freaks me out. So much crafting and planning to do!

Picture Frame Wall - Holiday Redo

The set of black picture frames on my wall has been bothering me. It was supposed to be a wall filled with pictures of all the wonderful places we traveled, since we did a lot trips when we first started working. But now, who knows when our next trip will be!  And lately the plain black frames and the pictures have been boring me.  With the holidays, I knew the perfect way to spruce it up!

DIY - Flower Wreath

Whenever I look through catalogs, I rip out pages of things that I like and put the idea in a box for a rainy day.  A few months ago, this Crate & Barrel wreath caught my eye.  (You should be able to figure out my favorite color by now.)  As with most things, I thought to myself, that’s expensive and I can SO make that!  $100 for a wreath!? That’s just absurd for my frugal and crafty wallet.  I decided to make this recently as a cute little housewarming gift.  

Materials:

Foam wreath - $4 w/coupon

Silk flowers - $3/each on sale (I used 2 red hydrangea bunches and white flowers to accent)

Hot glue gun and a package of glue sticks – already had on hand

Wire (for hanging, stolen from my dad’s stash of hardware/tools)

Wire cutter (also stolen from my craftsman father)

 

Process:

1. Lay out newspapers.  My flowers had glitter.  And glitter drives Doug insane.
2. Make a place to hang the wreath. I used some wire to bend/wrap around the wreath to make a hook. 
3. Snip the flowers off the long stem, leaving a little nub to stick into the wreath.
4. Glue the late night away!  For each flower, I took my glue gun (I hate glue guns by the way, as you can see by my scar/burn from this project)  and would let the heat make a hole in the foam wreath. 

That way I had a hole to stick the nub of the flower in and the flower could lay better.  SamsterMommy has a good illustration.  I let some flowers overlap so you don’t see the foam wreath.  You could leave the wreath one color, like this one from Target, but I wanted to break it up a bit. 

So I took little white flowers and stuck them wherever there was a gap or I could see the foam wreath.  Just keep filling/gluing until you feel it looks right. 

For less than $15, I made a much prettier (and cheaper) wreath than those in the stores J  Granted it’s not as large, but still, even if I did make it way bigger, it’d be cheaper and better, right!? I also added the leaves from my hydrangea stems so it wouldn't be a dinky little circle. Kinda reminds me of angel wings.

Yep that's my bathroom. It was late night crafting again and I didn't think to remove my Christmas wreath from its hanger, put the hanger on a prettier door and then take pictures of this new wreath. I also plan on making little Christmas trees with the leftover flowers.  Come back next week for those and more wreaths!

linked up here:

Food + Foto Week 4: Spaghetti and Meat/Veggie Sauce Recipe

Here’s my fourth Food + Foto submission…semi-homemade spaghetti and meat sauce.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Ahhh, thanksgiving leftovers…how we love them until we get sick of that fourth plate.  Here’s what I served up so we didn’t have to eat plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes for lunch and dinner everyday for the next week.

Thanksgiving Recap

Now that the leftovers are almost gone (just one plate left), here’s my Thanksgiving recap…

Umma's Birthday!

Sorry I’ve been gone for a few days, but you know how the holidays get busy like that! Don’t you worry though, I’m back with plenty of food, crafts and family pictures to share J

We usually keep it low key for family birthdays, so for Umma's birthday last week we ordered in some Pork Shoppe and picked up a pumpkin cake from Rolf’s. But first, Lil Mama Stuart had to bake something.  Because something home made is always a go-to gift for me.