Ok so I promised DIY's.
We celebrated my son's first birthday last weekend and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share a few of my favorite DIY's that I put together for his party.

I tried my best to add some links to the products I bought so hopefully it will help!

For the guest book I got everyone to sign on a Project Life card, that I had printed online. Didn't pay a cent, other then ink I guess. That way I could throw them into J's Project Life photobook I am making for him!

CHALKBOARDS:

I had wrote everything on little chalkboards. But we all know chalkboards are pricy. I bought one chalkboard which you will see below and I used a 40% off coupon at Michaels. For the rest I bought little pieces of plain wood from Michaels (ranging from .50 cents to $1.25) and I already owned some Martha Stewart Chalkboard Paint. Made my own Chalkboards!

All you need to do is two coats of paint and then take some chalk and draw over the entire thing. Then take a cloth and rub it off. It will give it the chalkboard finish.

CHALKBOARD POTS:

To incorporate more of the chalkboard/garden theme I had bought some small ceramic pots from the dollar store and again just painted them with chalkboard paint. Then bought some small little plants from Walmart for $2.50 a piece. 

BURLAP POTS:

These cute plant pots were from the dollar store again, no more then a dollar each and already owned some burlap. You can buy it from Michaels for pretty cheap if you look around and use a coupon. I hot glued it to the pot and left some extra burlap on the top to fold over into the pot and glued it in the pot as well. I had some cute polka dot ribbon I had got on sale awhile back from Michaels and just hot glued it around the edge of the burlap. I did not actually glue that part to the pot just because I liked the three dimensional look to it. I then took some parchment paper and cut some squares and shoved it in the pot.

CAKE POP HOLDER:

My amazing Mother-In-Law made these adorable cake pops. The little boxes I got from Target for .50 while they were going out of business here in Canada. I then bought some Styrofoam from Michaels and wrapped them like a present in gold paper. They worked wonderfully.

PAPER PENNANTS:

The pennants were all homemade, VERY easy again! Bought a stack of paper from Michaels (it came in a package with brown, beige, grey, yellow beige and black) cost me 5$. Also bought one sheet of gold paper. I just cut out some little triangles by hand (I am not super picky about them all looking the same, if you were picky about them I am sure a paper cutter would work and maybe cutting one and tracing it.) I then used a tiny hold punch and just threaded some string threw. Quick and easy and I made 4 of them in no time!

WOODEN CRATES:

Let's talk about the crates. These were again a bigger splurge for me although I did stain them myself. I looked for the cheapest place to buy crates and sure enough Walmart had them for $10 each. I bought 3 and stained them with a Walnut stain that I bought for the Growth Charts I had made. I kept them outside for a good week since the smell was strong but they turned out really nice in the end. 

MILK CONTAINER FAVORS:

 The favors were probably my longest project. My dear friend Erika was the one who gave me the whole idea of milk and cookies party and all thanks to these little milk carton favors she had a cut out for. Check out her blog: Scraptherapy. She is amazing. She pretty much put these adorable favors together. All I did was assemble them and then I created the little "thank you" tags on photoshop with a graphic I found online. Inside: Cookies and Cream Hersheys drops. I managed to score 4 big bags off amazon for $12.

FLAGGED STRAWS:

The black straws with the gold flag: Straws from Ikea and the flags I just made with gold washi tape, just stick the tape together over the straw and cut a little triangle at the end.

Made the picture on Photoshop and just printed it. Added pinecones as a bit of decor.

Hope you enjoy these DIY's!

Growth Chart DIY

Well I have promised a DIY for way too long!

First up: Growth Chart.

To be honest I found it hard to get a handful of nice photos through the process of making mine, so instead I thought I would just try to explain it, again it has been too long.

We have all seen them, the giant ruler growth charts!
A few months back I stopped at a friends house just for a quick visit, while there I saw her gorgeous wooden growth chart. It was a must have. After explaining all she needed was a sharpie, wood and stain to do it (plus a few more supplies I will explain), I was hooked. I not only made one for myself but one for both my sister-in-laws.

The whole thing took me about 1.5 to 2 hours long, and did not cost me more then $30:

1. Buy a 6 foot .... (Home Depot, Rona) Approx. $10
2. I started by drawing faint pencil marks with a ruler at every inch going up the board, making sure I made the half and feet marks a bit longer.
3. After double checking all the lines looked straight and accurate I grabbed a brand new black sharpie and went over all of the lines.
4. For the numbers, if you have stencils that would work really well and save you a lot of time. I did not so I printed very large numbers (1-5) off of Word in a font I liked. I then cut out all of the numbers and taped them onto the feet lines. Then I traced them with a pencil and then went over them with a sharpie.
5. After all of that was complete, I took a break.
6. After a short break, I had bought some oil, wood stain in colour: "Walnut". You can get whatever colour you like but I found the "Walnut" gave it a really nice finish. About $15 from Walmart.
7. I applied the stain while following the instructions on the back: applying and whipping as I went along.
8. I kept the chart outside for a handful of hours and then kept it in our kitchen for a few more days since the stain can be quite strong and did not want it in my son's room.

Easy-peasy. Hope you enjoyed! I loved this idea for my own kids and also as a really thoughtful, easy, fairly cheap gift you can make for others!

DIY and New Hobbies!

The last few years, my first 4 as a mom, have been full of joy. There have been so many fun things to do, experience for the first time, and establish as new traditions. We have taken field trips, spent rainy afternoons at home, tried new foods and tried to woo our little one toward our healthy favorites. We have spent our first years as parents in a special sort of glow.

But things definitely changed when we became parents, especially for me, as the mom. Suddenly, most of my every day was full of child care, in all of its forms. And a lot of my favorite pastimes fell to the wayside, as I made time to take care of another human. I stopped reading as much, scrapbooking, playing guitar, rollerblading, shopping for leisure (ha!), painting, etc. It was too frustrating to get started doing something and then be interrupted and never have time to pick it back up again. I started to resent the pile of scrapbooking supplies that represented my lack of free time.

But seasons definitely do change, don’t they? As we approach my baby’s fourth birthday, I’m amazed at how the landscape of my days and weeks has changed. I recently shared a few posts about self-care and spending more time on myself. One thing I did recently as an exercise in carving out time for myself was to complete a month long makeup challenge (which felt totally luxurious in how unnecessary it was!) I’m getting better at claiming minutes during my day for myself. I even sat down recently and completed a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle! I mean, wow. I couldn’t have imagined doing something like that even two years ago!

As my time begins to feel more free, I’m considering my hobbies again. I’m opening that cabinet that has held my art supplies for so long, and I’m starting new projects that I have never considered before. I took a calligraphy class online with my mom. So fun!

And she’s teaching me to sew. ME! SEWING!!

My mom made almost all of my clothes when I was little. She sewed matching outfits for all of my siblings for all of our photo shoots and family events. She is an amazing seamstress. But I can’t make anything with fabric! It all seems so overwhelming and confusing when I sit down and look at a pattern. Cutting all one direction, measuring, sewing inside out, gathering…it just seems like a lot to absorb, much less gain mastery of! But my mom is awesome and very patient, and she’s been giving me lessons.

How cute is my Mom? Seriously!

We’ve made five summer dresses for Austen. I’m so proud of us! Four of them are very basic, I mean LEVEL BEGINNER, pillowcase style dresses. But I did a whole dress BY MYSELF! And then we did one dress with a pattern. It is so fun and satisfying to make something useful and cute for my daughter to wear!

So here is my DIY of late. I have photographic evidence! See that blue pinstripe? I did it MYSELF!

I think the one thing all of these cute dresses illustrate is this: sometimes in life we end up doing things that we never thought we would do. And it's exciting and confidence-inspiring when something unexpected goes unexpectedly well. So I'm learning to expand my borders and take on hobbies that are maybe more "me" than I ever thought, and I'm hoping that this experience will help me be brave about other "unimaginable" tasks, like tart-making or home decorating or photography.

Are you stepping bravely out into "hard" tasks? Taking on new hobbies? Let me know how you've stepped out of your comfort zone recently in the comments!

Love, 

Courtlandt

Project Life

Project Life: Core Card Kit and Pocket Photo Pages

Alongside all of the DIY crafts I am in the process of completing I took on yet another task that I have been so excited to share.

I am all about simplicity. Although I am quite perfectionist I like to do things quickly and efficiently.

One thing I talked about in my post "when a 1000 photos just isn't enough" was this idea of starting an online scrapbook. I loved the idea of creating a book that was clean and polished at the same time not having to invest in a ton of supplies. I took a look a couple of sites online such as MixBook and MyPublisher (which by the way I would go with MixBook over MyPublisher any day) but once again it just did not seem to do the trick for me.

A few pro's of an online scrapbook:
1. Clean and polished
2. Simple minus the cropping and stretching of photos which could take time
3. Can add text
4. Pretty cheap compared to investing in scrapbook materials
5. I think the whole process is a lot faster

A few cons of an online scrapbook:
1. Uploading can take forever (although MixBook was much faster then MyPublisher)
2. Often cropped too much of my photo off
3. Could only fit so many photos
4. Could, but thought it would not look as nice, hand write events on the pages.
5. Did not find it simple to sort through my photos
6. Can't add memorabilia

I had finally kind of put aside the thought of making a scrapbook altogether until I came across Project Life.

If you are anything like me, you like to do things quickly and still like to see amazing results, Project Life is for you. It is made for anyone on the go who doesn't have a lot of time to cut, glue, paste, etc. You will see below the end product looks clean and neat.
It is a bit of a investment in the beginning but I feel it is well worth it (approx. $125 not including developing photos). Here are the steps:

Project life:
1. But a Core Card Kit... there are lots too choose from (29.99 USD online)
2. Buy the Pocket Photo Pages (29.99 USD online for a large package which is what I got)
3. Buy an album (range in price online, I already owned one)
4. I bought an edge rounder cutter because I am that perfectionistic and wanted all my photos to look the same
5. Pick out your photos and order them at any photolab close to use (no larger then 4X6 to fit the pocket pages)
6. Cut them as you like to fit the smaller pocket pages
7. Add the cards from the card kit however you like
8. Write on the cards as you like
9. Can easily add certain memorabilia

There are tons of free cards online as well if you are looking for something specific. Below is my start to Project Life. I have yet to order photos... so my book is just filled with the cards so far but take a look.

Album I actually already owned which was a money saver

The start to my book 

Work in progress

Corner Rounder

I'll be sure to share more of the project as it progresses. I am so excited about the end project! 

Party Planning + DIY's

As many of you already know I have already started to plan my little guys first birthday.
I know, I am crazy. It is beginning of March and the planning is nearly complete. And in all honesty, I started in February, right after I finished planning for this baby shower above.

As I have already shared I love to decorate. I wish someone would pay me to decorate. And even better decorate and take pictures of the decorations!
But for now I will keep dreaming.

Back in February I had come up with the idea of doing a vintage lemonade party, however I lacked a lot of decor and knew it was going to be a bit of an investment to make it work. Luckily a dear friend of mine (who loves to plan parties as much as I do, and her parties will be on my photography blog soon!) came up with the idea of doing a milk and cookies party! BAM! That is what I want to do!

It has been tons of fun scouring pinterest, browsing Michaels for ideas and creating things at home. I am defiantly the type of person who sees something and most of the time says: I am going to make that. I have a hard time spending money especially on decor and feel as if I am being super thrifty if I DIY. But hey if you hate to craft and want to buy it, do it!

One of my all time favorite things to do is sit down in the evening with a good show on, sip tea and creating something!

So on that note I thought since we have so many moms interested in this blog it might be fun to do a few DIY crafts on here. Simple things all of you can do! For instance: a wooden growth chart, tissue paper tassel, paper pennants, chalkboards and maybe a few more.

So that is what I am hoping to share in the next couple posts to come. Always feel free to leave a comment or write us an email if you have any questions as all! Look forward to sharing with you all!

Yours truly
Julie