Thursday, October 25, 2012

Little Boy Blue

If you haven't noticed, a few of my friends are having babies...by a few I mean 9. And I love all of these ladies and their precious angels, so we always have to celebrate them in style. Here is a quick look at the latest and greatest.

The theme was "Nursery Rhymes"

Our invite, courtesy of you-know-who
The decorations are not quite up to my regular standard, but just hear me out, school showers are held in a science lab y'all. AND "they" expect us to teach the whole day and then the shower starts directly after school. So we all would run and decorate for 15 mins at a time separately and at 3:15 it just was what it was. The theme was there, and we did our best. I think it turned out really cute, despite our limitations.

We used nursery rhyme posters we already had in the music room collection, cause that's how we roll.
And we Eliza, adorned the food table with cute nursery rhyme allusions to describe all of our goodies.





Jack and Jill....drink table

Pat-a-cake

How does your garden grow? Veggies and dip.

Peter picked a pack of pickled peppers


This little piggy had roast beef, This little piggy had none...

There are no actual pictures of us with the mom-to-be for a couple reasons. One it was a little chaotic as 60 people came in from dismissal duty and started making plates and socializing. And two it was pajama day at school, so we were all looking a little sloppy and no one wanted their picture taken. 

We figured out in the middle of the shower, it was actually perfect that the nursery rhyme shower ended up on pj day, we could have all gotten cute matching pjs with cows jumping over the moon, or little lambs etc. But, none of us thought of that until the shower. Oh well, next time!

Happy Baby Boy "Murph!"







Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Party like it's 1999

This past weekend one of my very best friends turned 30! We have been close friends since I was 20 so this is crazy to me, but alas, we are (almost) all in the 3's now! I feel like it was just yesterday we were hanging at the chapel. having endless All sing practices and going to formals!











Now we're getting married and having babies.





The time has passed by, but it has only made our friendship grow stronger and stronger!

So for this very special friend, we had to have a very special 30th birthday! So we did it up big. We decided to have a grown up prom! Of course this meant formals, corsages, cheesy photos and lots of glittery decorations. 







Official Prom photos were taken as guests arrived.
Mr. and Mrs. Congeniality
Teen Parents making it work 

The "it" couple, hiding a scandal
Most Popular


Prom King and Queen
Most Likely to Succeed



A Prom Queen!!

And we all had too much fun with the photo booth.






We all had the best time. Especially this guy...



And most importantly I think Kendra had a great birthday! Which is all I wanted because she will always be my BFF!





Saturday, October 20, 2012

Counter Offer

When we bought our house 3 years ago we sat down and made a list of things we wanted to do to it. The usual, paint rooms, replace fixtures, landscape, have 33 double hung windows installed you know normal list. Most things were inexpensive, tedious home improvement projects we just wanted to do to make the house more our own. And we plowed through the list one by one, even the windows. But one thing that was on the list that kept not getting done was the kitchen counter top update. Mostly because it was something I did not know how to do myself, or so I thought.

I had heard a rumor of people who were brave enough to paint their old laminate, formica counter tops. And then I saw it pinned on pinterest.

It was only $60 and it would take approximately 2 days and it transforms my old, ugly counter tops into granite {ish}!

Here is my thought process--I don't like the counters now--I can paint them to what I want for only $60---If I screw it up I get to buy new counter tops--win/win!

So here is my Giani counter top adventure!

First I scrubbed the counters down with an SOS pad and taped off the trim.


Then I told my little house guest I was going to paint the kitchen counters, but by the look on his face when I started I don't think he believed me.


I put on one thick coat of the primer and the journey had begun!

I already liked it better than the blah grey! And this was just the matte black primer.

The next step was the marbling effect with "mineral paint" And this is when I got really nervous. I mean I can roll a paint roller, but be artistic with a sponge...not so much...but the handy dandy video tutorial assured me it was foolproof, just start sponging and layering. So I did.



Ummmm, it was awful. Like really, really bad. I was devastated. I started researching granite costs and home improvement loans. I mean, it looked like Wesley got into paint and just hand printed all over our counters. But the more I did the worse it got. So Matt convinced me to leave it alone and let it dry. I proceeded to scour the internet for tutorials to fix this mess. And I discovered the key was more layers. It was going to be like camouflage, not patterns. So I started again. And it started looking good, like really good, like granite!


Final step, seal it. This step also threw me a few curve balls. When I rolled on the poly it made a texture, where before the counters had been completely smooth. And of course real granite is stone smooth so texture was ruining my fake granite. But poly shows every single bump, which includes the bumps you make when you layer 50 coats of sponged on mineral paint.  My genius plan was to use a foam brush with the second coat, to smooth the top coat out, yeah all that did is create very visible streaks. So here was the scary thing, it said only do 3 coats and even if I wanted to more, I was running out of top coat, so this 3rd time I had to get it right. I used steel wool to even out the brush marks and made peace with the fact that this was not real granite it was a can of paint and there would be a few bumps and rolled on my last coat. No luck, I didn't have enough poly to finish and everything looked uneven. BOO. I was back on Lowes.com putting in my kitchen measurements and scheduling estimates. Again, my level headed, calm, supportive husband stepped in {after rolling the dry poly with a wet roller, but that's neither here nor there}. He assured me 4 coats would work, he went to home depot and got me a new can of top coat and rollers, came back and finished our beautiful counters. Hero!


 Ta da!!!!!


Wes approves!

A few close ups:



You can kinda see the texture in the close ups. But we've lived with it for a week now and I can tell you truthfully, I don't notice it at all. Now that it's a functioning kitchen with all the appliances and decor back on the counters, it just looks like a shiny black marble surface {That shows every tiny fingerprint, but so would granite!}

We are super satisfied, even if we did try to screw it up every step of the way!







Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Glamping Shower

This is very late, but back at the end of September my friends and I threw our friend Ashleigh a woodland themed baby shower. It was pretty awesome.

Here is the background on the theme. I always use nursery colors or wedding colors as a jumping off point when planning a shower. It's not always where I land, but it's a good springboard. So Ash's colors were peach, gold and cream. So I thought peaches and cream...but didn't get very far with that. Well, she also had an amazing set of deer antlers in her nursery for decor, and that got us thinking, woodland...rustic...camping...BINGO!

I mean she has two boys and a husband...so this sweet little girl on the way is about to be dropped into a boy scout troupe. But we couldn't make it completely a camping shower, cause this was about a sweet, precious, delicate little girl! Well, we had just seen the movie Moonrise Kingdom, the story of a girl running away with a boy scout and camping, only she is wearing a little pink dress, patent leather Mary Janes and carries a cute little suitcase. (Obviously there is way more to that great Wes Anderson film, but I digress.) Anyhoo, this became the theme. A rustic woodland camping shower with touches of soft peach and cream for sweet Emmylou!

So here are the pictures, which are all you wanted anyway.

First what I (ish) made:

The invite (Matt):

Then we Eliza, my most talented friend in the world, took the logo in the top corner and made a camp flag. You can't be at camp without a flag! (The wind was not really cooperateing for pictures, but you get the concept right?) And Phi mu friends, yes that is in the shape of a quatrefoil!



Next decorations:

Did you know when you turn your tension way up and sew streamers together they ruffle! Look at what's going in and then out of my machine! Sew easy! And sew cute!


All hung up


Then this sweet wreath I made by monogramming a piece of burlap and sewing it to a swatch of peach deer print fabric, then attaching it to a wreath with a satin peach ribbon, pretty self-explanatory.



I hemmed a little burlap and peach satin to make a quick table runner. BTW those are two most difficult fabrics to sew a straight line with, hence the bunching effect I went with, I mean...I did that on purpose...



You can never go wrong with a sweet baby clothesline!


A sweet notebook to write all the gifts in.


A deer head made completely out of cardboard. (Eliza, amazing I tell you)


Sweet woodland creatures scattered the table.





Since it was suppose to be a campout we had a lot of seating set up outside.


I forgot to take pictures of my homemade mason jar lanterns until it was dark...but just imagine lanterns strewn about the back fence.





Next the yummy food, that everyone else brought, you know I hate worrying about the food. 

Lara's grilled peaches with mint

Terrah's perfect shade of peach punch


Tarra's dipped marshmallows and "acorn" almonds

Jana's amazing s'more brownies, Ashley's peach cupcakes and Meredith's HOMEMADE macaroons!



Jessica's fancy pigs in a blanket

We also had trail mix and coffee somewhere in there. There was so much deliciousness!

Then it was time for gifts! Pictures of people opening gifts are never good, but I wanted to share at least one. Baby girl got several adorable things and there were lots of oohss and ahhs shared.



And that was our Glamour-Camping/Glamping shower! Another successful party on the books! We never did get a picture with the mom to be, we were having too much fun, but I think Ashleigh enjoyed it, and we all loved hosting it for her! Congrats on Peak #3!!