Pretty Fabric Flower Clips and Birthday Outfit

Every birthday girl needs a special birthday outfit, don't you think?  In our case they usually involve some type of tutu.  I've made a bunch of tied tutus but this one was definitely my best yet.  I used A LOT of tulle, so it was super poufy!  Since the party was birdie themed, I also wanted to subtly incorporate feathers into Lila's outfit.

Her hair clip and pin were inspired by this tutorial from Simply Vintagegirl.  The tutorial is fantastic, and the only changes I made were to use a variety of drinking glasses as my circle templates and to use barbecue tongs to hold the circles while melting the edges.  I couldn't find my tealight stash so I was using a regular candle, and it was hot!  Thank goodness for barbecue tongs. :)  I started with a sheerish light blue 100% polyester fabric, traced a few different glasses onto it, and cut them out.  I cut four or five slits into each circle and held them each over the flame until the edges curled.  After sewing my layers together I glued a few pearl beads in the center and either an alligator clip or a pin to the back.  I added a fluffy white feather to each and that was it!  I love how the outfit turned out!  So cute!

Taking a juice box break after an intense session in the bounce house. :)




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Cupcake Liner Initial

I'm in love with this cupcake liner L I made to decorate for Lila's birthday.  I purposefully made the L white so I could use it in her room after the party, but it looks so nice in our dining room that I haven't taken it down yet!  I guess I could make a W to take its place, since a random L doesn't make much sense.

This was super easy to make.  I used the flaps off of a cardboard box to make the L.  Then I sat in front of the tv and watched 1.5 movies while I hot glued the cupcake liners all over the cardboard.  I glued them pretty close together so the cardboard wouldn't show through.  I think I ended up using about 175 liners, but the L is almost 2 ft. tall, so I had a lot of space to fill!  I did get one pretty bad hot glue burn on my thumb, but I love hot glue so I won't hold that against it.

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3: Glue all over shape of choice.

Step 4:

And up close:

Love, love, love!  L for love?  That kind of makes sense in the dining room.  Or maybe lasagna??

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Rustic Elegant Dessert Stands

One of my favorite books to read with Lila is a little board book called Flip, Flap, Fly!  I think this must be where I got the idea for a 'little birdie' birthday party. When I started planning the decor, I knew I wanted the color scheme to be shades of light blue and white.  I also wanted to incorporate some natural accents.  A tree slice treat stand seemed like a perfect addition to the dessert table, but I wanted to make it a little more feminine.

I got the tree slices from amazon.com, but I also found some on save-on-crafts.com.  I used some Restoration Hardware candle sticks that I found at Goodwill years ago as the stands.  I almost painted the candle sticks white but I ended up liking the silver with the white wood.

I used some left over interior flat paint mixed with a little water to paint the tree slices.



Here's one holding butterscotch nests!

I'm really happy with how they turned out, and they looked great on the dessert table! 

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Easy DIY Cupcake Stands

This past weekend we celebrated our sweet Lila Jane's 2nd birthday!  It was so nice to get together with friends and family and have a party for her!  She had a great time and was exhausted by the end of the day! 

This party was full of diy projects, which I thoroughly enjoyed!  I really wanted to make the little cupcake stands that I've seen around.  I found this tutorial, and discovered how easy they are to make! The parts came from www.craftparts.com.  The circle is a 4in. plywood disc and the stand is a 3in. candle stick.  I glued them together with E-6000 and let dry overnight.  To paint them, I used a combination of spray paint and flat white paint.  They took three or four coats to cover thoroughly.

They were perfect cupcake stands!  You could even use these to display other types of food.  I'm trying to come up with a reason to use them around the house because they're that cute! More pictures of the cupcake stands in action and other projects coming soon...



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I'm a Little Tea Cart

I'm in the middle of planning a big 2nd birthday party for my little cutie.  I'm working on 1,258 projects to make my vision come to life.  Okay, so it's not that many, but it's starting to feel like it!  At one point I got stuck on the idea that I needed a tea cart, or more precisely, a white distressed tea cart.  Luckily I found one on Craigslist pretty quickly, but alas it was neither white nor distressed.  No problem, I thought to myself, I have some leftover white paint!  Unfortunately, I noticed that the finish was super lacquery (is that a word?) and would probably need sanding and/or priming to take any paint.  I wasn't in the mood to sand and/or prime, so immediately decided to use chalk paint.  We have a stockist not too far from here, but picking up paint also requires taking my two little bulldozers munchkins downtown into an adorable little shop full of antique furniture and a lot of cute, highly breakable things.  Randomly, as I was plotting a way to purchase the paint over the phone and have them run it out to my car Sonic style, I came across a recipe for homemade chalk paint using baking soda!  I've seen others using grout or plaster of paris but I had baking soda and I had white paint, so there was no need to leave the house at all!  This is how it went...

Here's the tea cart before.  It was in pretty good shape, but it needed to be white.



You can see the lacquery finish here.  It's like a mirror!

Here are the supplies I used to make homemade chalk paint.  The formula according to multiple online sources is 2/3 cup flat latex paint to 1/3 cup baking soda and 2 tbs. water.  Because I had already ruined my cheap measuring cups with my guest room project, I just eyeballed it this time.  I added water until it felt like the right consistency.  It helped that I've used ASCP, but I don't think that matters much.  I mixed it all up in a plastic take-out container (we have a lot of these thanks to the Pho from our local Vietnamese restaurant!).

Here are my thoughts on homemade chalk paint:

- drying time was a little slower than the real thing

- dried a lot grittier, but that sanded off fairly easily

- brush strokes were a little more visible

- coverage was similar- I didn't need to sand or prime!  However, I think the real thing does a better job with bleed through.  I definitely had some bleed through on this piece so there are some brownish stains that came through even after three coats of paint.  Since I was distressing the piece anyway it wasn't a big deal, but I don't think that would have happened with ASCP.

Overall, I definitely prefer ASCP, but for a quick project I could see myself using a diy version again, either with baking soda or one of the others.  How cute is this little tea cart now though??  I love it so much and can't wait to put it to use for the party!  Now, if someone could just come over and join me for some lemon water... my 3 year old says it's "yucky!" :)

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Gratuitous Sky Shots

Even though we live in the Pacific Northwest where it's gray and rainy a good portion of the year, we still get some amazing looking skies!  I've been kind of obsessed with taking pictures from our deck whenever the sky looks the least bit interesting which means I have a lot of pretty sky/sunset pictures floating around on my computer. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a bunch of them. ;)

See?  Pretty cool.