Friday, July 30, 2010

Stylish Storage

I have been a big fan of Sewing Momma on etsy for quite a while. Her shop's tagline is "Trying to make organizing pretty", and I think she has succeeded. These beautiful storage bins could be used to store just about anything. Here are a few of my favorites:


Large Comfy Storage Bin



Extra Deep Fabric Bin



Perched on a Branch Fabric Storage Bin

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Love this!



I found this free printable alphabet bunting at Ruffled via How About Orange. It's so cute (and free) that I just had to share. I think I might print these out, attach some felt to the back and let Luca use them on her felt board.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Displaying Children's Artwork

We do a lot of painting at our house, and sometimes it can be hard to figure out what to do with all of the resulting artwork. I'm sure this has been done before, but I decided to cut out pieces of some of my daughter's paintings and frame them in a mat that I had leftover from a previous project (more on that later). And voila, here is the result:





I think it turned out pretty cute!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Birthday Bash

My daughter turned 2 about a month ago and I was so excited that I went into party planning mode months in advance. I really wanted to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere for my daughter and about 9 of her friends (plus their mommies). I also wanted the day to reflect her personality and the things that she loves.
My little girl is really into butterflies and her favorite colors are pink and yellow, so that made coming up with a theme pretty easy: pink and yellow butterflies!
I kept the decor simple. I made two butterfly garlands out of pink, yellow and white vellum paper. I got the idea here.


The one change I made was to hand sew, rather than use a sewing machine. This was primarily because I wanted to have a lot of control over the spacing between the butterflies.


The rest of the decor consisted of pink, yellow and white balloons, and some butterfly shaped confetti that I purchased from Paperika and sprinkled on the dining room table.


Every child received their own party cup to use (and take home with them). I designed some simple labels and stuck them on some straw cups that I found at Target.


Then I made some custom paper party hats (I used an old hat that we had as a template), and a special "2" crown for my daughter.
The menu consisted of my daughter's favorite foods: hot dogs, fruit, pretzels, veggies, guacamole and chips. It was the dessert that was probably the most labor-intensive part of the whole process. I made chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing, and decorated them with pink and yellow fondant butterflies.


Then I made sugar cookies and decorated them with pink and yellow royal icing.


I got all of my recipes from the wilton website and read some excellent cookie decorating tutorials at prudent baby.
The treat boxes were small brown paper boxes that I sealed with round labels (bought at Michael's in the wedding section).


I stuffed them with teddy grahams and some fabulous recycled butterfly crayons that I bought at Gaddy Nipper Crayons.
It turned out to be a beautiful day, and my daughter had a blast, which made the late nights decorating cookies and sewing butterflies totally worth it!
Here's my little girl enjoying her cupcake:


Oh, and this was the invitation that I designed: