Festival of Trees

Hello there! It's been a while. :) I have so much to catch you up on!

First and most important, the Festival of Trees...

This year marks the 10 year anniversary of Steven's grandma Julie's passing. All of his cousins wanted to do something special for her. What's cooler than a tree in the Festival of Trees? If you haven't ever done one before, let me tell you.. It's a lot of work!! But so worth it.

We started working on this last year, the day after Christmas in fact. We went to all the stores and got all the ornaments and the tree on sale. All through the year we worked on it. We went to all the work shops and decorated our little hearts away.

We kept the whole thing a secret from the rest of the family, which was the hardest part! On the last day of the Festival of Trees, we set up a scavenger hunt for the family that led them to the Festival. They were so surprised! Here is what our tree looked like...

It sold! It sold it sold it sold!!! We were very excited about this. :)

Our theme was nerds. We wanted to add our specail touches to the mix of the Christmas ornaments. We made felt ornaments that had to do with nerd type of things.. computers, floppy disks, etc. We also added nerd glasses to the tree that we spray painted to match.

This was one of my favorite parts of the tree. We had gone to the D.I. and picked up some keyboards. We ripped them all apart and made them into Christmas sayings.

This is Julie. She died 2 years before I met Steven. I am sad that I never got to meet her but I love her family so much, so I know that I would have loved her too!

All right, credit to our boys! They helped SO much. They drilled the tree together and got all of those requirments taken care of. They also made this awesome snowman and the tree topper. They made the snowman out of chicken wire, which they would like to say is not great material to work with! But look how cute he turned out! And the star is incredible. We had old mother board from a computer that they drilled the star out of and then added lights to. What would we do without our guys?

Under the tree we had presents wrapped. All of the boxes had blankets in them. Usually when companies buy the trees, they donate the presents back to Primary Children's Hospital. That's what we were hoping that they did. I had put some of my blankets on my blog already in this post and this post.

We had so much fun doing this! We decided that we are going to do this every 10 years. In 2022, it will be the 20 year anniversary of Julie's passing and the 10 year anniversary of my grandma Beth's passing. Steven and I thought it would be so much fun to be able to do this tradition with our children. If you haven't ever done a big project like this, I totally recommend it.

 Like I said before, it takes a lot of time, but it is so worth it.

It's all her fault :)

At the beginning of October my Grandma graduated to heaven and officially became our newest guardian angel. I was very lucky in my life to have two fabulous grandmas that were both really crafty and talented in many ways. I like to think that I got some of their talents. :)

When I was 8 years old, my Grandma started me on scrapbooking. She talked to me a lot about how important it is to keep journals and records to give to our children. I started scrapbooking that day and never looked back! Whenever Steven would laugh and joke about how many scrapbooks and journals I have, I would just tell him that it's my Grandma's fault! :) In fact, that is part of the reason I started this blog. I wanted to be able to have a record of all the fun things that I have made and since it is online, I could hopefully reach some of my family that isn't close by.

For her funeral I was put in charge of pictures. I love pictures, probably too much. When they say that a picture is worth one thousand words, I say that a picture is worth one thousand gold bars. The amount of pictures I have on my computer will proove it!

I didn't want to do just some plain old frames for my Grandma. She was a sweet, fun lady. She couldn't have just plain frames! But another issue was that there were too many pictures that I wanted to share. Being the problem-solver that my husband is, he suggested that I get a board and "cutesy is up" (those are actually his exact words, he is adorable!). I went to Walmart and got a plain cork board and covered it with yellow fabric. Easy!

I added a few rosettes and a bow and called it a day! We had her scrapbooks out and her high school year book. We displayed her blankets that she made. I'm telling you, she was an amazing crafter!

Ironically, I had found this quote on Pinterest just a couple of days before she left us. I think that it fits perfectly with all our loved ones. Pooh Bear comes through again!

Recipe Apron

Last week was my sister Alexa's 16th birthday! Seriously, I can't believe she is driving and dating already. Alexa loves to cook and bake and she is dang good at it. One thing that I love about Alexa is that she is all about the homemade kind of gifts. That's my kind of girl! :) So I decided that she needed her own apron, but I wanted to add something special for it.

Here it is! Cute, right? (Her and the apron!) I wish I could give you a pattern. I am new to the sewing world so following a pattern is still a work-in-progress, let alone making a pattern! I just eye-balled it. I would sew a part and try it on and fix it. (And repeat!)

I got this cool pattern on ebay. There are cute cooking fabrics in a lot of stores, but I wanted something that looked vintage-y to go along with the next part that I did. I thought the fabric worked perfect.

I took recipes from my mom, grandma, and abuela. I scanned them into my computer and printed them out on fabric paper. I wanted to make this a generation apron, so hopefully she can add a recipe and maybe give it to her daughter one day.

One of my favorite parts is that my grandma had written a note to Alexa on this recipe. I think that it makes this more special to her.

I had a recipe from my abuela that I had done on the right side of the apron. Well, I'm not sure if the paper was too dark or what, but it didn't show up on the fabric. I spent some time taking it off and when my hand started cramping, Steven took a turn for me. :) Crafting involves a lot of mistakes and retakes! A good crafter also is quite skilled at covering up their mistakes!

And that is why there is a heart on the side now. :) But actually, I thought it was pretty cute with the apron. So I just have to get another recipe from abuela so that I can add that to the apron.

Happy Birthday Lexie-Lou! We love you!

Witches Night Out

Happy Halloween! It's not too late to get a costume together if you haven't already started! My sisters were going to Witches Night Out at Gardner Village last weekend and they wanted some fabulous hats.

Here is what we came up with!

First, we started with a plain black hat from Walmart. They were $1.39. There was a gray wig attached, so we just cut that off and hat the perfect hat for a steal of a deal!

This first hat was made with a green boa and a big green feather (both from Hobby Lobby). I had gone to Tai Pan and they had a sale on all of their Halloween decorations. That purple skeleton was part of it, so I got it for $.99. Sales are a beautiful thing!

This hat also has a boa and giant feather. The skeleton was from Tai Pan. It came in a four pack for $2.50! What I love the most is shopping after the holidays and getting everything super discounted. Then you can use it for next year's crafts! Torri also used a silver skeleton for a necklace and it turned out so adorable (in a scary skeleton sort of way!). :)

I think that this last one is my favorite! I had this scrap fabric to use. I started trying to wrap it around the tip so that it was smooth, but that wasn't working out. (That is the OCD in me!) But then I started to wrap around all gathered up and I think that it ended up cuter that way. I just hot glued the whole thing on and it stuck on really well. All those spiders came in a package from Walmart. And isn't the tulle fun? We made it so they could pull it over her face or it could drape the back. So fun!

Happy Halloween everyone! (It's the best time of the year!)

Look Who Is Featured!

Do you remember this quiet book that I posted back in March? Well Jocelyn over at the Quiet Book Blog invited me to post on her blog! Her blog is so adorable and has a ton of quiet book ideas. Go on over and check it out! Thank you Jocelyn for finding me! :)

A Wreath for Mom

It was my mom's birthday a few weeks ago and I know that she loves getting things to hang on her front door. 

I decided that she needed something fall-ish...

This was super easy to make. I went to the dollar store and bought one of those wicker-ish wreaths. I cut up my burlap into strips and just spun it all the way around the wreath until it was completely covered. I then sprayed it with gloss so that fuzzies wouldn't get everywhere. 

I bought the wooden S from the Wood Connection. I sanded and stained it. Then I took my embroidery thread and wrapped it. In the beginning, I was trying to get the string really close together. I soon realized that just wasn't going to happen, but actually I liked the look of it. 

I added some giraffe print ribbon and a flower that I already had and BAM! Wreath finished. :)

Now I want to make one for me!

2,557 Days

Seven years ago tonight this really cute boy kissed me in the park. I don't think that either of us knew what was in store for us that night! It was the last night of the summer before high school started. Boy, did I really like him! There was one Valentine's in church that the young women had a lesson from the Bishop. His name was Bishop Harrison. Him and his wife were so wonderful. They talked to us about love. They told us that they believe that you can be in love when you are young, it is just a different love then when you are older. They taught us about how love grows over time and it changes, even from year to year.

I got that lesson when I was 12 years old and I think about it all the time. When I got that first kiss in August of 2005, I definitely loved this boy. Like my Bishop taught us, I know now that love does grow over time. I don't love Steven the same way that I did that night, or the same way as when he took me to senior prom, or the same way as when we got married. I love him a whole lot more. He is my best buddy in the whole wide world. Every day I am so thankful that he is mine!

It is a big joke in my group of friends and family about how scared I am to have a son. I just love girls. I feel like I totally understand them and I love all the drama and glitter and dolls that come with it. But... If I can raise a boy like my in-laws have, then I will be more than happy to have a son! I hope that I can do as good of a job as they have. Every time you have a great spouse, you have to be grateful to who they come from. And I am so grateful for them. They have taught him to be the perfect husband!

Since we have been married we don't celebrate August 27th anymore, because our wedding date is much more important. But I still can't help but make a cute card to remind him how much I just adore him. :)

I love you Teddy!!