Abigail's Baby Shower!

Ok, so here comes a long post!  I have been long anticipating the day of Abbey's baby shower.  My sister-in-law Dorothy and I were the hosts, and it really was the first party I completely put together myself (ok, Dorothy helped a lot with the cooking, set-up, and clean-up)  But the decorations, a majority of the menu, and the party planning was done exclusively by moi.  And, as you can well guess, I reveled in the opportunity to create!

My brother Tom and his wife Dorothy offered their beautiful home (even in the midst of a huge ongoing remodel - see my awesome brother's blog HERE) up for the party location.  Thank goodness for their large rooms because it was perfect.  I made a few craft paper buntings and hung them up later to be given to Abbey for nursery room decor.  I simply cut out a bunch of triangles and glued them onto a long string of twine.  I also used the twine to hang the blue tissue paper tassels onto the buffet.

Safari animals (bought at Michael's), some cute leaf ribbon, candles in mason jars, and a few treasures from the sea - all in a rustic box left over from T and D's wedding (made of "Folly-Wood" of course) - and boo-yeah you've got a centerpiece!

No party is complete without tissue paper pom poms!  I added some rain drops because it's a shower, and believe it or not it was not raining in Washington today.
I simply cut a bunch of tear drop shapes out of various blue craft papers (again a lot of left overs from wedding crafts were used - I keep too much) then I ran them through my sewing machine letting about an inch or two of thread run between each rain drop.
Super easy and the result was stunning.

More pom poms, more bunting, and the punch table is set up.

Food!  

Fruit kabobs, yogurt parfait, and onsie shaped sugar cookies (don't forget little blue hershey's "it's a boy" kisses).  Surrounded by the latest ultrasound picture and cute snap shots of the soon to be parents - aww.

Blue ducky punch and D for Desmond!

Donut holes, ham, and homemade quiches!  Yum.  This was my first attempt at making quiches from scratch - including homemade crust.  All three turned out and they were delish!

Plus my fun tissue paper tassels.  
Found an easy DIY from THE KNOTTY BRIDE on guess where?  Pinterest!

Food was eaten and enjoyed and then we moved on to presents...

Here's the diaper cake I made as an additional gift for Abbey.

Yay, presents!  This was a co-ed baby shower and it was fun to see Steve there along with the other guys that had the guts to attend (I thought it made the whole party so much more fun!)

The adorable couple.

After stuffing ourselves with food it was only natural to head outside and enjoy the rare May sunshine here in Washington and play a few rounds of bocce ball.

What a fun day.  Here I am with Abbey enjoying blue punch in a mason jar wearing my fabulous "shower" dress...  Cheers!

Decorating a Nursery while waiting on Baby McCabe!

So my brother and his girlfriend moved up to Tacoma, Washington from Mesa, Arizona in January this year.  Moving to Washington in January is gutsy!  My brother's girlfriend is expecting their first child - the first baby of the McCabe clan.  So, of course, I spent way too many hours on Pinterest looking for inspiration to help them decorate a little nursery in their rental home.  Suffice to say, I absolutely loved this project.  We decided to focus on a very muted pallet for the wall colors (we will need to pain them white when they move out) and jazz it up with punchy accent colors on the wall hanging and accessories!

Oh which colors to choose!  I love me some paint samples!  We decided on the two middle colors.

Striped ceiling awesomeness!  My brother and I made lines with a chalk line tool and then put up painters tape.

Painting a ceiling kinda sucks.  Bad posture Laura!  Owwie my back...
Got some grey wall paint going on as well.  It's hard to tell here but the ceiling stripes are a very pale blue.

Looking pretty good - still need to edge everything out.

Starting to look sharp!  The ceiling looked awesome when the tape was removed.  This took three days to complete including the day or so it took to decide on colors.

A New Year

So, the very first day of the year 2013 and I do something I've never done before, whale watching.  Is this a foretelling of a year full of new experiences?  Here's to hoping...

What a gorgeous New Years Day.

On the water ready to look for some whales.

Saw some sea lions.

There it is!  Can you see it?  Nope, took picture too late...  As expected.  

I did see a few whales surface, even saw some tail fins.  It was awesome and breathtaking.  I hope 2013 is a good one...

Bridesmaid dress success!

I realize now I didn't get very many pictures of my dress the day of Michelle's wedding; that seems to happen to me quite often...  

But the wedding was beautiful and everyone loved the way my dress turned out.  So far I've been in two weddings and both of the brides let us bridesmaids pick our own dresses with a color swatch to follow.  I really love this idea!!

Close up of hand beaded feather detail.

Helping with Michelle's earrings.  This was the only photo that showed the beaded peacock feather I spent so many hours on!

The bridal party.

See how well our navy dresses go together.  And I love BJ's suit - perfect...

A 30th Birthday

For my younger brother Tom's 30th Birthday party I wanted to do something unique and fun.  He had been dreading turning 30 and didn't want us to celebrate at all, but no one listened...  What better idea I thought than making a big 3-0 that he could beat the crap out of.  So, my first Pinterest experiment commenced - Pinata DIY!

Taken from the blog Oh Happy Day, I decided to give this pinata tutorial a go.  This is a great tutorial and I pretty much followed it word for word, but here is my process...

Supplies:

Cardboard

X-Acto Knife or scissors

Tape

Tissue Paper

Elmer's Glue

Old paint brush

Candy and goodies for filling

As I still work for Starbucks, acquiring a large amount of cardboard was no big deal.   

(ps, Veranda Blend is ick)

I decided on a size and started cutting and bending the cardboard.

Here I've finished the 3.

This really was quite easy - I had the 3 and 0 done in an hour.

I didn't get any photos of the "fringe" process but I just used a bunch of left over tissue paper I had laying around - more colors would have been pretty too.

First, I layered a bunch of tissue paper onto the cardboard and adhered it with watered down elmer's glue.  I made the tissue paper a couple of layers thick to make sure the final pinata would be fairly sturdy.

I then cut strips and "fringed" the edges.  I attached the fringe strips with the same watered down elmer's glue concoction and an old paint brush.  The tissue paper made a bit of a mess as you can see on the floor.

I bought a Costco amount of candy for inside the pinata (it being September Costco was, of course, already selling Halloween candy)  It's hard to see in the pictures but I cut about a 3 inch flap in the top of each number to allow me to add candy!

The final result was really cute.  We hung it from a tree in Tom's front yard and it stood up to some good whacking.  It was definitely a fun thing to do for a party!