Strawberry Lemonade Party

We had a little Strawberry-Lemonade birthday celebration for my mom-in-law at our house last night.  I made this banner in honor of the occasion.

The banner was made with layered shapes cut from the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge from Close To My Heart.  I cut out circle tags on white cardstock, flower tags on yellow cardstock (resembles a lemon slice) and letters on pink cardstock.  To assemble, I threaded yellow ribbon through the white circle tags to form the structure. Then I glued a yellow "lemon slice" on each circle.  I sponged pink ink on the edges of the pink letters and attached them with foam dimensional tape.

It looked a little plain, so I added the pink tissue paper flowers and the yellow crepe paper streamers.  Tissue poms are cheap and easy and quick to make.  My kind of craft!

Tissue Paper Flowers:
Started with 20" x 20" pink tissue paper.
Stack 5 sheets.
Accordion fold into 1 long strip
Cut folded  paper into two halves
Round the edges with scissors
Staple each in the middle
Carefully separate the layers of paper
Fluff
Tape to wall

(If you want to make a full sphere, I'd suggest starting with 10 sheets of tissue instead of 5, so it would be nice and full.  Also, you'll want to add the hanging string at the same time you add the staples -- BEFORE you fluff.)


Because it was a Strawberry Lemonade party, all the food had lemon or strawberries in it.  I made little labels for the food on my computer (font = Minya Nouvelle) and printed them out on white cardstock.

Life has handed us a few "lemons" lately, and it was refreshing to pause and celebrate some sweetness.

Picking a color palette for your room

I am getting a bit tired of the colors in my bedroom.  When we moved in here 11 years ago, we painted the walls a lovely blue that was reminiscent of the Colorado skies we had just left.  I still really like the color, but I think I'm ready for a change.

I'm pretty good at knowing when I DON'T like a color, but pretty bad at knowing which color(s) I would like instead.  But then I saw an ad in a magazine for MyColortopia.com.  You can upload a photo with colors that inspire you, and the website will generate a color palette of Glidden paint colors for you.

One of my favorite things to look at is Lake Michigan.  The blues of the sky and the water plus the browns of the sand make me happy.  So I dug around in some old photos of trips to Lake Michigan and I found these two that might work.

I went to MyColortopia.com, scrolled down to the box labeled "My Image Inspiration" and clicked on "Go To Tool".  Then I was prompted to upload my photo (2MB max). Once the photo thumbnail was visible, I could drag the little crop box around my photo until the colors I liked best were in the box.  I clicked on "Show Colors" and it gave me several options to choose as my favorite main color.  (See the middle column in the screen capture below.)

My favorite color from those options was "Creamy Blueberry" so I selected that color, and the website generated three 3-color palettes using that color.  If you mouse over each of the colors in the palette, the Glidden paint color name appears. You have the option at this point to print the information, or email it to yourself or pin it to Pinterest.

I took a screen capture and made my own little reference card in Photoshop that showed the photo and the three palette options - along with the Glidden paint color names.

And here are the results I got after uploading the beach picture.

I liked a couple of the paint colors from this photo. The one that matched the sky (Blue Marina) is very similar to the current color on my walls so I was curious to see what Glidden would pair with it.  And then I also generated a palette using "Deep Blue Shadow" that matched the water in the photo.

That was a fun little exercise!  But I'm no closer to knowing what to do with my room because I like all these palettes!  If I had to pick a favorite right now it would be the middle option for the lighthouse picture (silver dust - buttered sweet corn - creamy blueberry).  But then what?  Do I paint the walls Creamy Blueberry?  That might be a bit much.  Maybe the walls are Silver Dust and the curtains/bedding are Creamy Blueberry and the accents are Buttered Sweet Corn?  Any suggestions?

Patriotic Banner From Old Jeans

We recently went on a family road trip that involved 8 hours of driving each way.  I am unable to read in the car without getting sick, but I've discovered that I can sew!  I made a couple little craft kits to take with me to pass the time more quickly.

This little project took up much of the drive home.  It's a patriotic pennant banner made from old jeans and felt.

Of course, because I made this craft in the car, I didn't photograph any of the steps.  But I don't think it's too hard to figure out how I made this.

My kit consisted of

• a couple of legs cut from old pairs of jeans, both dark and light wash
• red felt
• red and white embroidery floss
• patterns for the pennants, the stars, and the letters (I cut those shapes out of cardstock using my Cricut and used the cardstock shapes as patterns when cutting the fabric.)
• scissors, pins and a needle

Step 1: Cut everything out using the patterns. (5 pennants from the darker wash jean, 5 of the bigger size star from the lighter wash jean, 2 smaller size stars and the USA letters from red felt)

Step 2: Fray the edges of the pennants by pulling out some threads.

Step 3: Attach the light denim stars to the pennants with a straight stitch using 3 strands white embroidery floss.

Step 4: Blanket stitch the red felt letters and stars onto the denim stars using 3 strands of red embroidery floss.

When I got home, I stitched the pennants to a red and blue ribbon using my sewing machine.  Now my mantle is all ready for the 4th of July.  And maybe even the olympics!



Patriotic Star Cookies

I had (got) to bring a treat to my Bible study this week so I made star-shaped cookies and frosted them in red, white, and blue.  I did the outlining, but let my kids do most of the flooding.  The ladies at church were so impressed when I told them that my boys had frosted the cookies.  It's all about the squeeze bottles.

I made the boys stick to solid colors for the cookies that I was bringing to church, but then I let them loose on another batch of cookies.  Armed with outline and flood icing plus sprinkles, they had a lot of fun.  I love watching them be creative!

Have you ever seen such a festive collection of cookies?

Wedding Shower Card with Christmas Supplies?

I attended a wedding shower this week after being out of town and I had literally fifteen minutes to make a card. I knew I'd never have time to search for papers that matched, so I pulled out my paper packs from Close To My Heart.  They come with coordinating cardstock and patterned paper.  Love them.

Then I rifled through my stamps.  Surprisingly, the paper and stamps that caught my eye to use on the wedding shower card were originally sold as winter holiday products!

I thought the blues in the paper were very pretty, and the "happy for you" sentiment was perfect. I chose the patterned paper without snowflakes and put this card together in a matter of minutes.

I cut the scalloped circles out of white cardstock using my Art Philosophy cartridge for my Cricut, and I inked the egdes with twilight ink from Close To My Heart.  The "happy shower" stamp is from Stampin' Up from a set called "Tag Time" that I bought years ago.  I colored it in with colored pencils.

For the inside, I used another scalloped circle with my sentiment stamped in twilight ink.  I layered a couple other little images from the same stamp set along with the sentiment. 

If I had more time, I would have added other layers and embellishments to both the front and the inside of the card, but this was the quick version!  I attached a Target gift card (no time to shop for a proper gift either!!) to the inside of the card and rushed out the door.

Watermelon Cookies

 

Watermelon is the perfect little slice of summer.  So I recreated that look with some sugar cookies.

I used my circle cookie cutter to make the cookies and I sliced them in half before baking.

To frost them, I started with the green "rind" part.  I wanted the green to be somewhat two-tone just like a real watermelon rind.  In order to get that look, before I loaded the frosting into the piping bag, I drew some stripes on the inside of the piping bag with gel food coloring.  Each cookie comes out unique.  I outlined the curvy part of the cookie with the green icing.



Then I added a red line of frosting to the straight part of the cookie.  Then I flooded the interior of the cookie with red icing.  While the red flood icing was still wet, I added three drops of black icing to mimic watermelon seeds.

Once that was dry, I added an outline of white icing on top of the other icing along the curvy part of the cookie.

A little slice of summer. And they're so small you can eat two!

It's Pop's Day! father's day celebration

We decided to celebrate Father's Day a week early because we'll be travelling next weekend. I built the theme around the word "Pop" as another word for dad.

For breakfast, I served lemon POPpy seed muffins.  (I was going to do Pop Tarts but those are a bit sugary for my diabetic son!)

This is the only picture I took and it's all washed out, but oh well.  (You can see the "Our Pop Rocks" super hero card in detail in yesterday's post.)

For lunch we had POPcorn chicken, a spinach-strawberry salad with POPpy seed dressing, caramel and cheese POPcorn, and fancy soda POP in bottles.  (I didn't take a picture because I was too hungry!  The blog takes a backseat to real life.)

But the highlight for all the boys were the chocolate moustache pops.  They had fun posing with the moustaches, but it was so hot that the pops melted quickly, and they were all walking around with chocolate on their faces.

(Another washed out photo - ugh.  The little red pails are from the Target Dollar Spot, FYI.)

Here are the little signs I made if you'd like to use them for your Father's Day celebration.  I liked the red and yellow color scheme with the little black moustache.