Embellishing Life

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Father's Day idea

The hubs loves poker.

So for Father's Day I started something two years ago that has already become a tradition.

Every year (Okay, it's only been two years, but I think doing something even just two years in a row qualifies as a tradition. Right?) I take a picture of the kids in a mock poker scene for daddy's day.

It's a little photo we include with his gift.
I turned this picture into a set of playing cards at Shutterfly.


hmm...what does she have?

This set of pictures was the first year we did this.

The little guy was only 6 months old. See that blanket bump behind him?

That's my mom trying to hide and hold him upright.

You can go all out with something like this if you wanted to, by setting up the whole scene in the background.
I had major back issues for months after the little guy's birth, so I did what I could at the time.

This would be fun to do a sports or grilling scene, too.

I'm running behind this year, but I plan to get their pictures done this week.

Fingers crossed.

Linking here:

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Craft Catwalk #33

Link up time!

Check back this week for features.

Please remember to...

1. Link to the post of the item you MADE, not your main blog.
Only family friendly content - no giveaways or shops, please.

2. Visit some of your fellow party goers, and leave them a little comment love.

3. Link back here. Grab the Craft Catwalk button or add a text link.

~ By submitting your work you grant me permission to use your pictures in a feature post. I always link back giving you proper credit~

{Open until Wednesday morning}

Friday, June 3, 2011

Check this out

Great finds from this week's Craft Catwalk!

Memorial weekend party at The Joys of Home Educating

Inspiration for the fourth of July!

Buffalo chicken nachos at Will Cook for Smiles

Now I'm craving nachos...

Chicken wire memo board at A Diamond in the Stuff

Someday I will make one of these. So little time, so many projects...

Vintage mini book at Polly's Paper Studio

I LOVE mini albums!

Patio makeover at Sassy Sites

I'm loving the name plaques above each swing. No more disagreements over who gets which swing!

Super cute frog bites at The Seven Year Cottage

If you were featured today, grab your feature button from my buttons page!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Breakfast nook turned Toy nook

If you've been following my blog you know I'm a stay-at-home mama of two very busy little munchkins. My four-year-old ladybug and my two-year-old little guy. They are always in motion.

At the end of the day, I could find toys everywhere. My swiffer sweeper got a lot of use just by sweeping toys out from under the couches at the end of the night.

This was the stash I swept out at the end one day's play...

It was time to make our house more functional for two active kiddos! Since we don't need two dinning areas, we decided to turn the "breakfast nook" into a "toy nook".

Why didn't we do this sooner?! It's so nice to keep the toys contained when they play downstairs.

I made this display for their art work using things we already had (woo hoo!).

All I used was clothespins, burlap, hot glue, and scrap wood. Hot glue the burlap around the board and then the clothespins. The hubs screwed it into the wall for me. Sweet guy.

This well loved little piano was mine when I was little. It really needs a coat of paint.

Perhaps a post for another day :)

Linking to

House of Hepworths

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Summer Bucket List

Just finished our summer bucket list!

I saw variations of these all of the blogosphere last year, and I thought it was such a brilliant idea. The summer tends to fly by, leaving all the best laid plans behind it. At the end of the summer I always found myself thinking of all the things we should have done, but didn't think of at the time. After seeing so many of these cute lists last year I made one too and it definitely helped us focus on the fun summer stuff we really wanted to do. Even though we didn't get everything checked off our list, we still did a lot more than we would have done with out it. It was a project success! So I figured we'd give it a go again this year.

I started with a 11 x13 frame I already had. The glass had broken a while ago, but I knew that I'd find some crafty use for the frame eventually. The only thing I had to buy was the cork board. Since I had one of those awesome 40% off coupons, I headed over to Michael's and purchase a thick piece of cork board that fits perfectly in the frame. So the total cost for this project ended up being $3.49! Makes me love it even more!

I wrote our activities written on THESE little tags so that after we've done one, we can pull it off the board and put it in our summer scrapbook with the pictures from that day. Using my Cricut I made up some 2 x 3 inch tags from cardstock.

I stamped the bottom of the tag for some added cuteness.