That's Life Kid!

So after last year's somewhat involved birthday parties, I had declared that this year we would be doing simple parties for the girls. Parties involving kitty cat plates and such from Wal-mart. Then Elle requested a balloon party. Great! Easy peasy. I would buy a bunch of helium balloons and call it good. My mistake was casually typing "balloon party" into the search bar on Pinterest. : ) So many CUTE ideas. I was hooked and with Elle helping me design the event, here is what we ended up with: Cannot say enough good things about the woman who designed these invitations! For less than it would cost me to buy generic ones at Target, she worked with me, making changes several times. She even included the envelopes. Her FB site is here:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/That-Cute-Design/141701582527759 The striped party hats and cute party banner on the front of the table are from Target. The rainbow jello instructions are on Pinterest. Very, very cute, but VERY time co...

I love mixing patterns and textures! I wanted to do some more Valentine's decorating using things I already had around the house. I had some cute red and white polka dot tissue paper to start with. And I decided to use some newspaper to mix with it. I traced small hearts on each kind of paper and cut them out. I poked a hole towards the top with a pencil and my daughter Emma hung them on tree branches for me. I kind of wish I had cut more newspaper hearts, but I'm not about to "correct" Emma's work. I love how it turned out!

I wanted to make a quick, cheap Valentine's wreath for the front door. I already had coffee filters and had been wanting to make a filter wreath, so I combined that with another Pinterest idea and was pretty happy with the result! I used this tutorial: http://www.thenester.com/2010/11/making-a-coffee-filter-wreath-and-tree-and-things-of-that-nature.html Unfortunately, I didn't have enough coffee filters and my wreath wasn't nearly as full as I had intended it to be. From the street, it looks fine though! Also if you cross your eyes when looking at it up close, it looks much more full. ; ) The picture frame idea came from this tutorial:  http://daniellebartran.blogspot.com/2011/01/valentines-decor-things-i-really-want.html The best part was, I didn't even have to glitter my heart. Hobby Lobby had them for $1! I was forced to glue polka dot tissue paper around the sides since I ran out of coffee filters, but I thought it turned out pretty cute. The polka dot f...

Another thing you never think about when you are young and clueless is the bathroom situation. On any given day, one or more of your bathrooms may look and smell like a truck stop. And YOU have to clean them. And you aren't even making minimum wage. Think it's easier to clean that crud just because you love them? Think again. And just because you have girls doesn't make you exempt when the oldest is deathly afraid of the loud flushing sound (so she doesn't flush) and the younger one isn't always "ahem" careful about her aim & etc. (I'll let your imagination fill in the blanks) I always enter the bathrooms in my house with fear and trembling.

Well, we're finally ready for Christmas around here. Gifts are bought, wrapped and under the tree. Santa's cookies have been baked (Santa is coming tonight to our house this year). We've made salt dough ornaments, snow globes and paper gingerbread men. We've had Christmas parties to throw and attend and goodies to bake for neighbors. All this on top of our everyday lives. It's so easy for the real meaning of Christmas to get pushed to the side. Easy to forget about the sacrifice Jesus made to bring us truth, love and hope. Last night at church, we sang Oh Holy Night which is on my top 3 list of Christmas songs along with Silent Night and Mary Did You Know. "A thrill of hope. The weary world rejoices. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees." Beautiful words that probably don't even begin to touch the night when Christ was born. Praise God for sending His only son for a broken, hard and cruel world. 

We had a church party last night and I was wanting to make a cider bar. Of course, Pinterest helped me pull it off. I wanted to share this idea in case you're looking for the perfect cider set-up for your Christmas get together! I wish I had taken a picture before the party when I had more cups stacked on the counter below the "cup tree" and my pot of cider sitting there. Also, there were more apples stacked on the plate before my girls got into them. : ) Here is the link for the cups:  http://www.eatdrinkchic.com/post.cfm/diy-la-dolce-vita-party-candy-cup-with-carry-handle

Thanks to Pinterest, I have gotten extra crafty this year. I think that's a good thing...... I wanted to share some links to the tutorials I found this year. These thrift store glass vases were painted with white enamel glass paint. Tutorial here:  http://www.sugarandcharmblog.com/2011/01/easy-and-beautiful-enamel-painted-vases.html My iphone camera takes terrible pictures, so I apologize. But these coffee filter trees were so easy. Pin some coffee filters onto foam cones, hot glue some buttons and you're done. I will warn you that the foam cones are not cheap, so bring your 40% off coupon if you're going to buy them. Tutorial here:  http://craftsbyamanda.com/2010/12/coffee-filter-christmas-tree.html I loved the idea of this rustic, Pottery Barn-ish wreath for the front door. Once again, cheap coffee filters play a part in making the cute, ruffly flowers. Tutorial here:  http://www.carlykmyta.com/carly-kmyta/2011/11/make-it-yourself-monday-christmas-wreath.html ...