Prints and Patterns - Love or Hate

Home Depot

I recently saw a Home Depot commercial with this DIY project. It took my breath away. Now this told me two things. One: my style is evolving (as everyone's should) and Two: where can I start experimenting.

If you were to look in my closet you would see a lot of color...solid color. I have very little in the way of printed things. Solid colors are safe, classic and you can mismatch to your hearts desire. 

With my recent birthday one week behind me and feeling a little "old" I began "playing" with my wardrobe and looking for ways to bring some fun in. I found this inspiring blog: http://www.aintnomomjeans.com/ and would highly recommend it. So this week I have been thinking outside the box and have been mixing long sleeve stripes with short sleeve solids, textures with cardigans, etc.

jcrew

These pants are too far from the box for me but....

jcrew

THIS I can try. I love the contrast of colors. It's very fun and both pieces can be used to make other outfits.

Decorative Home Interior

I am not saying go to THIS extent of experimentation with patterns but throw a patterned pillow here and there and see how it grows on you....or not! 

Greece

Every winter I get in my "Greece mood". Which means I watch all of my movies that take place in Greece (ie Mamma Mia, The Moon Spinner, My Big Fat Greek Wedding...) and dream of going there. I think the main draw for me is the crisp white and blue buildings and the sunshine and the windmills and the water and the sunshine. (did I mention sunshine?) 

I could go on and on about my love of Greece but for now I'll leave you with some pictures to spark your interest.

Dinosaurs to Horses

My daughters have both loved dinosaurs and dragons for the past couple of years. If you have daughters who loved dinosaurs and dragons then you know how hard it is to find girl themed decor for bedrooms and parties. I made dinosaur art for both of my girls bedrooms.

BEFORE

Currently my oldest daughter's love of dinosaurs and dragons has changed to ballet and horses.

So for Christmas she got a horse themed quilt from Santa. (Santa shops at Target)

The dinosaur pictures came down and I made horse canvases to go in their place.

AFTER

I bought a value pack of canvases at Michaels and painted each with the color I wanted. I then went online and found silhouettes of horses and enlarged them, printed them, and cut them out. I used scrapbooking scraps that I had left over from other projects and some new sheets I saw at Michaels and traced the silhouette onto the paper and cut them out then glued them to the canvas.

 

Now every morning while I help my daughter make her bed she informs me that she LOVES her new horses.

So worth it!

Disney Pixar Car's party for Girls (or as close as)

My daughter is a wonderful mixture of girly girl and tomboy. She loves her twirly skirts and the color purple and her Cars and dinosaurs. I love it....except come party throwing time. When Anna told me she wanted a Cars themed birthday party I thought I could focus on the girl cars in the movies. (ie Sally and Holly Shiftwell) But which characters do you think are her favorites? Franchesco and Finn 

This proved to be the hardest party for me to execute but challenge is good....right? So for a month I researched and planned and created things for a Cars party. Then 4 days before the party my sweet Anna comes to me and says she has changed her mind and would like a Minnie Mouse Bowtique party. I turned 3 shades of red and my husband reminded me that I loved my daughter very much and removed me from the room. We informed her it was too late to change and she loved her Cars birthday party.

This puzzle was the inspiration for the invitation that I made. 

I wanted people to walk into our home and know it was a Cars party but not NASCAR. 

I wanted to combine both Cars and Cars2 movies into this party so I borrowed my husbands globe and made the Route 66 sign from poster board.

The party favors where purchased at the Dollar Tree.

There is a website that will calculate the mileage from point A to point B for you so these are all accurate from Richmond, VA.

Luckily my daughter already had the Cars toys for me to use on the cake. (it was hard to separate her from them for the few hours of the party but she managed) I created the flags from fruit roll ups and icing and the roads from chopped Oreos.

Purple Kool-aid

For activities we had Cars themed tattoos and I found over-sized Cars coloring sheets at the Dollar Tree for kids to color. The Dollar Tree was my one stop shop for this party!

The party went off without a hitch. Not the snow that fell the previous night or the big sister who had strep throat put a kink in this party. As I was cleaning up that evening I looked over to the couch and overheard Anna telling her new Pillow Pet that this was the best birthday party ever. My heart melted and I was reminded again that I have the best job in the world.

Chore Chart

Motherhood on a dime

My girls have been relatively good at doing their chores but lately they have lacked motivation. As I was browsing Pinterest (my absolute FAVORITE website) I found this idea for making your own chore chart. It was super easy and the girls LOVE it.

All you need is some scrapbooking paper, a sheet protector, and some magnetic tape. You create your own chart or you can use the template that is provided on the website and print it on your favorite scrapbooking paper. One of my daughters likes pink and the other purple so I chose sheets with those colors. Then put the paper in the sheet protector and put two strips of magnetic tape on the back of the sheet protector. I placed our charts on the refrigerator since that is a place the girls see every day.

 I personalized the chores for each girl. One has a hard time keeping her crumbs on her plate so she is now sweeping under her chair after meals. (she thinks this is fun!) The younger daughter needs to learn how to dress herself so that is on her chart. I really liked some of the chore suggested that were listed by Stacie. As the girls grow they will be my laundry helper or kitchen helper. 

Every day the girls put an "X" next to their accomplished chore with a dry erase marker and at the end of the week I can just wipe the sheet protector clean and start over next week. 

Now if only I earned an allowance for doing my chores every week!!!

Child's Room Africa Art

My daughter will turn 4 in a few weeks and like every typical 3 year old she wants to go to Africa for her birthday. You heard right. Africa. She can tell you every animal she would like to see in Africa and no the zoo is NOT an option. So for my adventurous daughters birthday I made her Africa for her bedroom.

I have to say that I had NO idea how many countries were in Africa until I started cutting each one out TWICE and putting them back together as a puzzle. I originally wanted to do this in fabric but 1. Fabric has gotten really expensive and 2. I could not find exactly what I wanted. So Michaels came to the rescue with a block of Animal Print scrapbooking paper.

 I bought a blank canvas and painted it gray. I then found a picture of Africa and enlarged it to the size I wanted. I cut each country out and carefully laid it out on the table. I then traced each continent onto my animal print paper and cut them out then put it all together and glued. This took most of day to complete but my daughter made it all worth while. She kept telling me how beautiful it was becoming and kept cutting the scraps I gave her so she could pretend to make her own Africa.

Wouldn't you know her big sister came home from school and wanted one too:) 

Hand Blown Glass Ball Display

I began my hand blown glass ball collection with the birth of my first child. I saw a commercial where the couple had hung an enormous amount of green glass balls over the crib and I fell in love. I purchased 5 and hung them over my daughter's crib. I repeated this with my second daughter.

While we lived in a rental town home, during the construction of our current home, I boxed all of the glass balls up and just this week thought of a way to display them. 

During our annual trip to the Outer Banks, NC I went into a glass shop and noticed a glass ball display in the front window. The shop owner took a large branch (they had painted white) and hung the balls from the branches.

I purchased a birch tree branch from Michaels (AND I had a 50% off coupon) and purchased a two pack of curtain brackets. I painted the unfinished brackets white and my husband mounted them on either side of the window over our tub. This set up roughly cost $12 to create. (minus the cost of the glass balls)

Today was a cloudy/rainy day so I have yet to see what the bathroom will look like when the sun shines thru the window and the glass balls. Will let you know how it looks!