Decorating for Christmas

I love decorating for Christmas. And I love looking around at all the awesome decorating on Pinterest and blogland. So many great ideas!   

Here is a peek into some of my Christmas decorating this year. As you can tell, I love anything that is vintage or has a vintage feel to it. And I love collecting old scales.

And Buddy the Elf even came to see us this year.

I have lots of fun plans for him every night. ;)

I found 101 ideas here.

A&J

Lemonade Stand Lessons...NOT Learned...

It's summertime.  We LOVE summertime around here.  And every summer I make a bucket list of fun things I want to make sure the girls get to experience.  Loved seeing all the little lemonade stands in blogger land and of course immediately put this on my list.  I was even in the process of coming up with my lemonade stand design and thinking how much fun the girls would have helping me make it....until..... I saw this cute cardboard stand come up on Zullily. 

And for a great price......Bam!  Exactly what we needed. I should have realized then that cutting corners wasn't going to give me the homemade lemonade stand experience I thought it was going to be.  I had this vision that the girls would learn a good lesson about hard work and the value of making a dollar.  Here's a rundown of what they really learned.

Lesson # 1.  It takes time and money and some hard work to get started on your business.  Nope.  It really doesn't.  Mom ordered our stand online and she even made our lemonade for us while we danced around and sang, "we get to have a lemonade stand." (Ok, so I went with Strawberry ice tea instead for all you detailed oriented people saying, why is her lemonade so dark)

  Lesson # 2.  It takes a little time to build up a customer base.  We live in a neighborhood that doesn't get much traffic so don't expect to get a ton of customers and not everyone will stop so let's not get our panties in a wad if they don't stop.  Wrong.  You should have seen the masses of people that came out of their houses.  Not to mention, every single person that drove by stopped as well.  This also helped them learn that mom isn't always right.  Geez. 

 Lesson # 3.  It takes thought into how much to charge for your product.  No one will pay $25 for a glass of lemonade (As Brynley suggested)  Nope.  Wrong.  Apparently sweet strangers will gladly give these two Rascals $10 and even $20 for small glasses of not very good Strawberry Iced Tea.  EVEN after I informed them it's not a fundraiser, it's just for fun. 

They made $40 in less than 30 minutes.

Go figure....so the lessons I thought they were going to learn didn't actually pan out the way I thought they would.  No biggy, the girls did thoroughly enjoy it and we even got to meet some very nice neighbors that we had not met yet.  It's still summer fun and that's what's really important.

ps. I just might quit my day job and team up with these two to sale lemonade for a living. :)

A&J

Teacher Appreciation

There are always teachers to thank....

It's so hard coming up with ideas to show how much we appreciate our teachers.  At the girls school, they have several teachers and aides that help in each classroom.  So buying gifts for everyone that helps is quite difficult.  Not to mention each teacher has a different personality so what equally fits everyone?  I have the answer....

Yummy Desserts!!

Angel Food Delight with a cute tag

saying "LCCS Teachers are the sweetest Angels!"

 And my most famous Banana Pudding Trifle.  This recipe is soo super yummy and it was handed down to me by someone that said I was not allowed to give it out.  It's a hit everywhere I take it and it makes me feel like I am the best cook ever. :)

The tag says, "We go Bananas with appreciation for our LCCS Teachers and helpers!"

I took a dessert in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that week and the teachers were all very thrilled.  The 3rd dessert was magic bars with a tag saying "LCCS Teachers know how to work that teacher magic!"  I somehow didn't get a picture. :(  I think these would be good for summer camp teachers, sunday school teachers, and even all the other little teachers that help us along the way.

A&J

Where the Wild Things Are...Halter T-Shirt Dress

Thought I would share another cute version of the T shirt Halter dress we've already featured.  This dress pattern from Here is my favorite because there are endless options.  I know I originally said this was so difficult to make because t-shirt material is hard to sew.  But after trying again and reading the helpful hints in the instructions (a little trick called starch), this one went much smoother.  I will definitely be making more!!  Here's a "Where the Wild Things Are" version that I made using a men's T-shirt found at Walmart.  

This little cutie's favorite book is Where the Wild Things Are so her entire birthday party centered around this theme.  I'll have to post the most adorable party favor her mom made for everyone in a later post.

The animal print is from a pair of leggings my daughter grew out of.  I'm pretty sure they were from Target. 

 Here's a closeup of the pocket.  The wording was on the back of the T.  I just hand stitched it on with coordinating yellow thread.

I do have one confession...I love using ruffles at the bottom, but I've never sat down long enough to learn how to make them.  I'm so impatient!!  So, I save outgrown clothing that already have ruffles on them.  Cut the ruffle off and sew on the dress.  It makes this dress so easy and so fast too!  I whipped this one up in less than an hour.  Pretty cool for my limited crafting time.  Love it!!!!

A&J

Vintage Baby Shower

Loved, Loved, Loved this shower!  It was so fun to put together.

Here's the invite....

 The Table...

It's so great to have best buds that have cool stuff you can borrow.  My "partner in crime" and I have the same taste so when I needed stuff for this shower, I was able to raid her stuff so I didn't have to pull everything off my shelves and from around my house.  It worked out MORE than perfect. :)

A&J



Happy Fourth Blogger Friends...

A few days late, but I couldn't help but post this All American adorable pic of our 4th fun to show a collection of bandana dresses/shirts/outfits as featured as a tutorial last year.

As a collection, it's so stinking cute.

Anyway, it makes me smile.  I hope it makes you smile as well.

A&J

Ideas for the 4th

Looking through many of our favorite blogs, I've found some great ideas for the 4th of July.

We always have a big get together with lots of neighbors, friends and family on the 4th for some hot dogs and fireworks. Take a look at these great ideas I've found that I plan on trying to use this year:

First off, a vintage decorated table. I love anything vintage, so the theme and colors of this are right up my alley. Love, love what they did here. 

source: pizzazzerie

Also, from the same great site I found some FREE awesome printables. Not only do I love this poster of Uncle Sam, but the colors are my fav. And they all match with the table setup.

source: pizzazzerie printables

And how cute are these little flags!

{And they give a great little tutorial on how to make them.}

source: saltwater-kids

Of course we need some tye-dyed cupcakes.

{I have made some similar to these when I did camo cupcakes for my sons Army Party. They really were easy and fun.}

source: caffeinatedglobe

These brownie kabobs look awesome and easy.

My husbands favorite, chocolate and strawberries.

source: craftyconfessions

And one more thing for the kiddos. What a great idea!

source: cometogetherkids

Have a fun and safe 4th!

A&J



Sports Birthday Party

We had my son's 6th birthday party this last weekend. He kept saying that he wanted to have his party at one of those Bounce house places (where all the kids run around and jump on the inflatables). I wasn't too thrilled with the idea because how in the world was I supposed to put all my decorative little touches on everything??

I convinced him to have the party in our back yard again (we did this cool army party last year and the kids still talk about it). He agreed, but only after I said I was going to paint our entire backyard like a football field! Score! I got my way... :)

Here's a shot of 50 yard line of the field.... (the K is for our last initial).

The snack table was loaded up with all kind of ballpark goodies. Cupcakes that I decorated like basketballs, soccerballs, footballs and baseballs. Oreo truffles decorated like footballs (these were good and went fast!), tons of hot dogs wrapped in foil (ballpark style), bags of chips, popcorn, peanuts, twizzlers, chocolates and bubblegum and sunflower seeds.

{The two tier metal bucket was a find from Hobby Lobby and I found the cool popcorn buckets at the Dollar Tree! Love them!}

The kids did some relay races (spin on the bat &, carry the ping pong ball on a spoon down the field and back), some bean bag tosses, throwing contests, stick the ball on the target which was left over from last years army party (played like pin the tail on the donkey), a homerun derby and we had a pinata for the kids to swing at! We had several other games on our list, but actually ran out of time.

The invites were made in Photoshop and just printed on white cardstock. I used papers and elements from this Game On Digital Scrapbooking Kit from Sweet Shoppe Designs.

I actually used the balls from this kit also for the target game and also for labels for all the food etc.

  It was such a fun and easy party to put together! Perfect for all those sports fanatics!

A&J

Roller Skating Birthday Party

Party time again...

After googling Skating Parties, and visiting all my favorite party blogs, I realized there are not a ton of ideas on roller skating parties.  I felt on my own and that I would actually have to resort to using my own creativeness.  I must say, I've gotten quite spoiled to finding cute ideas online.  I felt a little bit in a panic.  So, I buckled down and put my creative juices to work.  It all started with this fun image of these cute roller skates I found online.  Used it to photoshop this invite below.

Thus, establishing the colors.  Purple, Pink & Green.

Next, I created these matching cupcake tags.

To be put on these cute little cupcakes in coordinating colors...

Then I made a larger matching cupcake tag for the birthday girl's cupcake. I had this scallop shape that my partner in crime found online.  I printed it to the size I needed then just used it as a guide to cut out the purple paper stock.

Next up, birthday girl's matching attire.  I couldn't find exactly what I wanted so I chose to make her shirt myself so I could match it to the party colors.  Can't help myself when it comes to animal print.  Had to add it.  I might be slightly addicted to animal print. :)

Here's a close up.  I simply cut out coordinating fabric pieces and stitched them onto the shirt.  The purple bows are ribbon that I put a stitch on and then tied in a knot.

For the party favors we decided on extra large pixie sticks.  I usually stray away from too much candy, but we handed these out for Halloween and it was so fun seeing how much kids faces light up when you hand them one.  It's my new go to candy to hand out to "other kids."  Sadly and I hear about it often, but my own poor, poor kiddos have only eaten maybe two themselves.  Anyway, I digress....I then tied on a glow in the dark bracelet, zany band rings, and of course the thank you tag.

Here's are the tags themselves.  Feel free to print and borrow.  I fully intended to have Brynley sign them to add a personal touch, but that did not happen. 

To complete the party...Add a cute little sister in a matching shirt.

And a few great friends....

What more could a sassy 7 year old girl ask for? 

I Loved putting this party together.  I know we say that about every single party, because we secretly would love to be party planners for little kids birthday parties, but this was a neat one to put together.  The Skating center is available for private parties so we were able to take over the whole place and they even played our own music for us that we brought on the Ipod.  We played red light green light and danced to a few line dance songs to close the party.  From the kiddos to even us bigger kiddos, we all had a great fun time.  Brings back so many memories strapping on a pair of roller skates. :)

A&J