My free picaboo photo book

Last month I saw several blog posts about the free Picaboo photo book offer. I took advantage of the offer and created a wedding photo book for us! Well, it's here and I was surprised at how nice it actually turned out! And for $11 (shipping) I think it was worth it. 

front hard cover 
(8x10 book)

A few of the 20 pages... 

Thought I'd have some fun with the back cover. It's got a snap shot type look to it. .. had to fit in a bunch of other great photos from the day!

I'm lovin' my free picaboo photo book!! It pretty-fully sits on our coffee table waiting to be looked at.

I hear these photo book companies often have great deals like this. Check them out from time to time and check for offer codes.

scrabble or craft?

Both!
Here's a fast, easy and oh-so a-dorable project.

Scrabble has had a special place in my heart.. My husband and I started dating in grad school, but because he was a year ahead of me I was left with one more year in school.. without him. The long distance was definitely not my favorite part about this relationship! But we found ways to still have some fun together. Playing facebook scrabble became our thing to do- me in Wisconsin, and him in New Brunswick, Canada. ... I never did beat him in any of those games!

After spray painting it, I used an 8x10 frame that had been waiting to be used. Hot glued some fabric to the backing cardboard of the frame.

I had a bag of scrabble pieces that someone gave me from their old game- score! Those are just super glued on the top of the glass. 

Easy as that! 

 Right now it's hanging in our entry way (because there's a nail there!).. but eventually when I find the right place it will go in our bedroom. I plan todo our bedroom in black, white, and a turquoise color. This will be perfect! 

My best friend over at Different by Design created one of these too! Seeing her's is what motivated me to do my own. I've seen it done before and we both wanted to find and save up scrabble pieces for crafts like this! We finally made a scrabble craft, Heather!!

p.s...

 Here's a picture of one of our online scrabble games

it's a heart!!

Baby clothes and no baby

Look what I found during Walmart's anniversary sale going on!

 (3-6 months)

I know, baby clothes, right? And I'm not even pregnant nor plan to be anytime soon, but this was a deal I thought unwise to pass up! .. Oh, the deal? Well each outfit was $1! The original price tags are from $5-10 dollars. Wa-hooo! Not planning babies just yet, but why not prepare way ahead of time when I find deals like that! ... boy adding my great find to my facebook status sure got me lots of questions like, "why stocking up on baby clothes? Hmmmm???" That's always fun. Oh yah, I was also accused of stealing all the outfits from the mommies who really need them. haha! So sorry if you're one who's in dire need of baby clothes and you went to Walmart to find the ones on sale GONE..  ah, I pretty much hit the last of the cute outfits anyway. If only I had come a few days before! 

silverware wall hanging

Yeah, we finally have something on one of our kitchen/dining room walls!

  This was a pretty inexpensive project to make since everything came from two of my favorite kinds of stores-- dollar store and thrift store! 

Here are all my supplies I used for the project: 

strip of fabric- found a couple yards at the thrift store for $1.99

Krylon bronze-ish spray paint- walmart (this was purchased for a different project actually)

Canvas (already painted it before photo)- $2 at the dollar store (not sure of the size but I know it's bigger than 11x13)

Adhesive flexible silverware mirrors- dollar store! These are pretty neat.

twine, scissors, glue gun, stable gun

After cutting my fabric piece to the size I wanted, I stapled it to the wood of the canvas...

...then hot glued a line of twine on the top and bottom of the fabric to even it out a little and hide the scrappy edges. 

Next peeled of the mirror backings and added some hot glue (the adhesive would for sure wear out quick, no doubt) and secured them down in the right places. .. they may be a little crooked! But I think
 it turned out pretty nice.

 

 

happy creativities!

What to do with it?

A while back I got this little tiny table for free from an online classified add.

For awhile I tried thinking of how I could make it cute for our living room as a side table. I pulled all the white top sticky paper off and just used it like that as a side table. 

Hubby's parents took care of our fish over the summer while we were in Saskatchewan so we brought the fish tank over with this little table. Now that we're back home I like this table as a fish tank stand, but it looked a little tacky. So I gave it a simple temporary makeover!

We had some left over brown material from our wedding stuff so I used it as a tablecloth and tied a big ribbon around the whole thing.

Nothing fancy shmancy, but I like how it looks. Definitely love how it hides the pump and other fishy supplies.. and of course the table legs!

This is me just making do with what I have...

Home Sweet Home

Yep, that's right, we're home! 

Thursday morning {September 16th} we left Saskatchewan after some tearful goodbyes to good friends made over the summer. We had a fantastic summer, but we are so happy to be back in our own place again. We didn't think we'd get to unpacking all of our luggage right away {I really thought our bags would sit there for a week unpacked!}, but we must have been so excited to be back that we unpacked everything Thursday night! It felt so good. And boy was our bed more comfy then we remembered! 

Friday was my birthday.. Joel made pancakes for lunch {since we slept a tad past breakfast time}

he thought his pancakes were ugly. But I thought they were just adorable.

Then he left me home for a few hours while he went out {shopping for me of course, since he had no other time to do anything before my birthday}

Later on in the evening he took me out to dinner. We ate at a little Chinese restaurant.

He ordered sesame chicken and I ordered orange chicken-- my favorite! 

When we came home Hubs made me stand outside our apartment door and wait while he did something inside! .. and this is what I found when he finally let me come inside

Ice cream cake!!! Reece's ice cream cake!!! Oh Y.U.M! I told him long before my birthday "I want an ice cream cake for my birthday!!" He remembered.
Isn't that all so sweet?
A quiet little birthday with just the two of us together {heart heart} .. Oh, did I forget to mention he gave me 26 spankings?! .. my poor bum..

It's so good to be home again... 

We don't have internet at our apartment, so blogging may be scarce for me.. which makes me sad. But I'll find times to post. I'll miss seeing everyone's fun post every day! 

Until next time... 

I shall find some ways to be creative in my own place again! Hopefully next time I'll have some fun things to share! 

I'd love to do a party!

A few nights ago I was up late while my husband and a friend of ours played several chess games one after another. One game of chess seriously takes them over an hour! Us wives laugh and make fun of them for it. So while they were quietly concentrating on each life altering move {not a peep for reals!.. I don't know how it's possible!} I randomly came across the coolest blog! 

For the last couple of days this has been my new favorite blog! I've been looking through all of her posts and there are a TON of great ideas. Go have a look if you've never heard of this blog. She mostly blogs about party ideas and decor, which totally inspired me. Now I want to have my own party.. but I need a reason for one! .. right? We're going to be back in our apartment next Thursday after being gone all summer in another province!.. Could that count as a reason? Could we throw our own "welcome home" party?! {haha!} 

Anyway, I loved all the ideas and inspiration I found on this super cool and new favorite blog. I saved a bunch of ideas and will store them away for future reference.. {hoping to have an excuse to try them out soon!} 

Just to share a few inspiring ideas ... 

DIY Temporary etching

 Totally can't wait for an opportunity to try this out!

Cute housewarming with s'mores and coffee stands

 Just love the way everything is set up so nicely and adorably!
{this is just one photo so go check out the other set ups}

Foam and tissue paper lollipop for a candy themed party

.. I could SO do that! 

{we don't have kids, but hey, adults adore candy too, right?!}

Picnic in the woods

Doesn't this look like fun? 

Notice the chandelier hanging from the tree? That's my favorite part!

I'm telling you, I am so super inspired.

Mini Bunting

Awwww!

Plums as seating cards

Now this is just "plum"sweet! 

Never have I thought about using fruit like that

Large tissue paper flowers

Very fun! I'll try these out tooooooo! 

Homemade cupcake stand

There are SO many great ideas for cupcake stands out there!
How thrifty is this!?

Those are just SOME of the fun inspiring things I found over there. Now get yourself over to this blog and be inspired to do your own sweet party!  
{shower, reception, just for fun.. whatever!}

Mom's Crafts

When I made my decorative wooden signs {here and here} it gave my mom inspiration to try her own. She just recently tore down a whole wall of paneling in her kitchen and is redoing it and painting. With all the pieces of old paneling she wondered what she could do with it. Decorative wooden signs! She was going crazy at Michael's craft store, buying letter stickers and shapes and paints.  Dad helped her with cutting the pieces of paneling and she sanded them up.

And here are here lovelies.. 

Her L.O.V.E photo board was inspired by my own! 

I just love the little bow on the ribbon! A-dorable.

This one is totally my favorite! The twine and kitty buttons hanging from the ribbon are too darling! If you know my mom, this saying is so true for her! {haha} She's a cat fanatic and she loooooves her kitty. 

This is her kitty, Jona

he's a gorgeous kitty and he knows it! 

We love him to pieces

And one more..

This one is for the gate to the backyard. Next to cats, mom loves her bears and decorates the house and yard with them! I think this one is just great! Way to keep out unwanted neighbors and strangers!

Hope you enjoyed these!

Until next time... 

hApPy cReAtiViTieS!

Precious Hands

A while back I saw this idea and it inspired me to make something like it for my friend who has three cute little kiddos.. that I've been able to babysit often throughout the summer. 

Here it is all finished! 

Unfortunately this is the only picture I took of it after it was finished. The batter in my camera died and I didn't have much time to charge it up because we were taking this over to my friend right away! I was so excited to give it to her!! 

Here's how I made it

Picked up some poster board from Walmart and some acrylic paints in three colors. Cut the board to fit the size of frame I had and went on to the hard part-- getting their handprints onto the poster board! Let me tell you, that was a chore! Mostly with the little one. Her handprint smeared across the page and I had to wipe it all off, almost ruining the poster board!! .. ya I was panicking. {haha!}

After getting it as perfect as we could get it, I moved on to the frame.

I found this frame at a thrift shop for a buck! Love it when I find nice frames for cheap. I really like the shape of it... just not the ugly gold! And the little design all around it is pretty neat too.

This is her youngest kiddo. She's being my little Vanna White showing off the "before" frame. She's such a funny kid. Hubby has really taken a liking to her..  I think he wants one!

I used white Krylon Fusion for plastics spray paint and it went on perfect! I did a few coats. I don't know much about painting/spray paint, like prepping your object and such and what sticks to what and when to use primer. I'm a newbie in the paint world.

 

Very pretty design and it looks much better white.

Then back to the poster board part.. which too me the longest.
I printed off the kids' names and ages in a cute cursive-y looking font...

 .. and transferred them onto the board by diy transfer paper

{shading the back of the piece of paper and turning it back over to trace it onto the poster board}

Then carefully and tediously fill in with black acrylic paint, let dry, put frame back together with adorable handprints and hang on the wall! (these particular steps actually drug out to a few weeks! .. I had one last name to paint on and I didn't get back to it for awhile until yesterday).

It's too cute. I was pleased with it so much I wished it was mine!!
This was my friend's belated birthday present. We had pizza and ice cream cake for her birthday at our place a few weeks ago, but this wasn't even in the making yet! We dropped it by her place last night and she loved it so much.

Behold, children are a heritage of the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed {happy} is the man who fills his quiver full with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies at the gate.

Psalm 127:3-5