Friday, March 11, 2011

Gorilla glue...will we ever get along?

Gorilla glue is everyone favorite glue. It hold anything. It is so strong. You can make anything with it. Anyone can use it. It is so so so easy....

Unless you are me. Let me explain a little. I had this:




and this





So I wanted it to be this





Easy right? So simple. Just slap some glue on and presto!
Okay so that's what I did.


Everything looks good. Everything is going great.
I just have to wait 2 to 4 hours and I have beautiful candles.

So after 2 hours or so I take off my "weights" and set up my beautiful candles in their new homes.







Nice right? They look great. I did it. And it was cheap. The candle sticks came from the Dollar Store and the candles are actually Paula Dean (seriously she has everything) candles that I had around the house. I am feeling great. I am ready to make a new blog post. I am patting myself on the back.

Until...I woke up this morning and saw this




And this


Glue all over the candle sticks. Running all down the side. Oh..maybe I used too much. Maybe it was me and not you Gorilla glue. Or maybe it was you. I don't know. One more look at my fail


Will I ever learn to like you Gorilla glue? Everyone L-O-V-E-S you so much. Anyone out there who knows what they are doing? Tips? Help?


I ended up scraping all the glue off with a knife and setting them back in their spots. I still feel bad though, how did I mess up Gorilla glue? I am not giving up on you though. I will try again! And side note: It is holding VERY strong.

So since this project was Dollar Store cheap I am linking up to these:

Hopefully anyone who tries this project will get it right :)


DIY Club
Join  us Saturdays at tatertotsandjello.com for the weekend wrap 
 up           party! UndertheTableandDreaming

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Memo Board Organizing

Being new to this whole blogging thing...I realize no one (except my cousin who is one of my only followers) knows anything about me. So here is a fun fact: I have two boys. That should be enough because anyone who has two boys, one boy, a husband, boy grandchildren or anything remotely close to this (boy dog?) will instantly know several things about me. 1. I'm frazzled half of the day. This is because I am picking up after them for half of the day. (The other half I just forget about because they are home and there is no point) 2. I'm a 100% girly girlish girl pretending to think "boy stuff" is cool. This is how this project came about. I recently made over their room, baseball style. It's cute. Sort of. I used Pottery Barn Teen as my inspiration. I will go through my "before" pics and take some "after" pics and do a post on it soon. Anyway, they have a cute denim memo board (picked out by me) that they have collectively stuffed full of pictures and mementos. I decided to give it a small "makeover" and organize the pictures.
Before:


Can they even see what's on that board?? So imagine my delight when I found this:



Photo sleeves that have boy phrases overlay on them. Very cute! So I choose some favorite pictures and inserted their photo's into the sleeves.



Then I artfully arranged the pictures on the memo board. Everything is "Mom" approved.



And now: The After



Ahhh...organized. And now some pictures of it in their room




Now just one more picture because their room is so nice and cleaned. Mom approved. Ahh..lets bask in the organized greatness for just a moment.




So nice. Okay and now to recap in case you were wondering what those neat photo sleeves were. I found them at a scrapbook store. I like to go into those stores (even though I do not scrapbook) because they have such cute things that can be used for all kinds of crafts. I always stock up on scrapbook paper. So here is another up close picture



They are made by Me & My Big Ideas and called Photo Sleeves in Boy Slang. Item number TR-13

Thanks for checking out my post. Now I have to go protect my organization project from two rambunctious little boys!














Creations by Kara

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

What happens when you're a new blogger.....

This:


Laundry. Lots of it. That is my little Christian at the top. He is 5 years old. He thought this was hilarious. So this is what has been going on while I have been trying to figure everything out. I still pretty much don't know what I'm doing and my mountain is growing. Maybe my husband will help when he gets home. Probably not ;-) So any ccomments? Tips? Laughter? Anything would help me out at this point. Thank You :)

Monday, March 7, 2011

Early Spring Mantel

Late winter and early spring is a hard time to decorate. Here is my early spring mantel pictures to help with ideas for your hard to decorate mantel. Let's get right to the pictures!







And the overall mantel shot:



I ♥ it. I am a new blogger (if you couldn't tell!) so any comments are greatly appreciated. I sorta kinda have no idea what I am doing here. I am just taking pictures of stuff and making posts out of it so any suggestions, comments, hi how ya doing, or anything really would be wonderful. Thank You!!

P.S. I am linking up to my first link party! I am so excited to be linking up to Women Who Do It All (love the name) Spring Mantel Party! Be sure to check out the party and her blog. Thanks!!







UndertheTableandDreaming






 http://linda-coastalcharm.blogspot.com/



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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Pink and Brown Baby Shower

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a baby shower for a baby girl. The mother-to-be wanted pink and brown for a theme. Those are hugely popular colors for baby girls right now so I am posting some ideas from the shower I did. For weeks I searched through all the blogs and websites to get ideas and here is a collection of the best ones I found and used.



Here is the overall table. First let me share my love of sticks. They are free. They are beautiful. They give texture. And, they are free. I used light pink paper bags as center pieces and filled them with sticks. They served as the backdrop to the table. Another favorite idea is to use mason jars and fill them with sticks. Then you can tie cute pink ribbon around the top of the jars. Very cute!

This is my "baby" sign straight from Martha Stewart's website. She actually had it say "Bebe" but I thought it would be cute this way. Also, side note here, we did not know the baby girl's name at this point or I would have made it say her name. I used floral wire to shape the letters. Then I wrapped the floral wire with floral tape. I added some pink flowers throughout the letters and hung with brown ribbon.

A great trick for a pink and brown baby shower is to find pink food (strawberry wafers, strawberry marshmallows, etc.) and dip them in chocolate. You have instant pink and brown party food.


Of course I had to print off a menu and frame it. Very easy to do, but gives that finishing touch. Behind the menu I have strawberry marshmallows dipped in chocolate and white eatable pearls. Then I used clear treat bags to wrap each marshmallow and topped it off with a cute brown ribbon. Those were placed in a small mason jar and finished off with a "baby" and pink ribbon.
The left drink holder is sweet tea (a must, always!) and the right drink holder is cherry limeade. So easy to make! I used two 2 litter bottles of diet sprite. You can use regular sprite but I just always use diet to cut down on the calories. You will see why in a moment. Then I bought a jar of Maraschino cherries which is basically the cocktail cherry. I poured all the liquid from the jar into the sprite and stirred.  The diet sprite hopefully made up for all the cherry flavoring which is full of sugar. Then I sliced some limes and floated them on top.

 This was my favorite detail of the party. I rimmed each plastic party cup with pink sparkling sugar. To do this, I found, you first dip the rim of the glass into water then in to the sugar. I am sure everyone in the world knows this but I found out through trial and error. Just thought I would pass that along. Each cup has a slice and a half of lime to top them off.


 I printed out water bottle labels from my computer and wrapped them around plain water bottles. I used double stick tape to secure the labels in the back. You can buy labels or download them and print them out but I just made them using my windows office software from my home computer.


Here are my homemade party favors. I used clear treat bags and filled with brown wrapped candy (Reese cups and Hersey bars. It was fall so it was easy to find them in brown wrappings). Then I printed off these paper labels. You can make them really fancy with scrapbook paper but I liked the simplicity of these. Then I cut them to the size of the bags and folded them over the bags. Then I stapled each side of labels to secure them to the clear bags.

 

I think by now, everyone who hosts parties, makes these Martha Stewart puffs. They are literally the easiest things in the world to make. I hung my pink puffs with brown satin ribbon. They were an ordeal to hang. I ended up using push pins right into the ceiling.


Finally, a sweet picture of the mother-to-be and her cute belly.



Linking up to:

DIY Club















All the pictures from this baby shower were done by my friend and photographer, Leslie Mcbride. Here is her link: http://lesliemcbridephoto.smugmug.com/