Instagram & Catching Up

I'm probably not a typical blogger.  Or maybe I am typical, but I'm not a good blogger.  Either way, I'm terrible at getting updates out on time.  Here's the thing.  I take lots of pictures while we're out and doing fun things (or even when we're just staying at home doing boring things).  Instead of posting them all to Facebook and annoying my friends who don't really care, I finally signed up for an Instagram account.  This is mainly for my family who miss us dearly and want to see loads of pictures, whether they're boring or not.  If you want to check it out, I'm here:  Raums In FL.  I don't make a huge effort to make sure the pictures look great, I just want to show my family what we're doing.  So anyway.. I take lots of pictures, post most of them to Instagram.

Then when I get home, I write up notes (or sometimes actual paragraphs or whole blog posts) on what we did.  Now, if I were disciplined, I would just go through and add the pictures right then, and post it right away.  But I'm busy, and lazy, and distracted.. so I don't do that.  So you may see several blog posts come out in a day, back-dated, when I get around to finishing the drafts.

If you don't want to wait around, check out my Instagram account.  If you want the whole story, be patient and look here.  :)

Frozen Birthday Party!

Some of you might know that I can go a little crazy for birthday parties.  When you mix that tendency with the fact that my daughter chose to skip a birthday party last year, in favor of a trip to the American Girl Doll Store and Coco Keys Water Park, and that she requested Frozen for her birthday party theme this year.. well, you can imagine what happened!

I started planning a month or two ago, trolling Pinterest for the best ideas that also seemed do-able.  As is my habit, though, I left a lot of things to the last minute and there was an excessive amount of rushing around this morning.  Part of it was due to the fact that the weather forecast was so confusing.  It was supposed to rain all day, it had poured the day before the party, and our backyard was soaking wet.  Our plan had originally been to set up a 20'x30' canopy and several long tables and chairs that we had rented.  Biggest waste of money!  I had to readjust on the fly, setting up in my tiny house.

Here's how I set up most of the stuff, in our bay window that usually houses the plants (and cats, which is why we had to remove the hairy curtains for the party).  Instead of making a traditional banner, I just glue-dotted the 'flags' of the banner along the top of the wall.  Note for the future:  glue dots don't work that well for this, the flags started falling down about five minutes after the picture was taken.  A lot of the paper fans and paper goods came from Oriental Trading, one of my favorite shops for parties.  I was a little disappointed that the tissue balls didn't come with directions, because I've never done them before, but we figured it out in the end.  Unfortunately, guests had already started arriving so we used them as 'centerpieces' on the table instead of hanging them from the ceiling.

Here's a slightly closer shot of the spread.  The big number 6 was made from two pieces of foam board I cut out and taped together to get the desired thickness, then wrapped in tulle (and some extra sheer fabric I had lying around underneath), and embellished with some snowflake buttons.

The DIY Network has instructions on how to make glittery trees (for Christmas, but whatever).  We made our own simpler version to go with the decorations.  Then lots of shimmery powder blue gumballs and sparkly branches from the floral section at AC Moore completed the decor of the food 'table'.

For some reason, I thought the cake wouldn't be enough to feed everyone, so I made cupcakes, too.  As always, I overestimate how much food we need - there's half a cake and six of these cupcakes in my fridge right now.  I sprinkled Wilton Cake Sparkles on them, and everyone said they were delicious.

We got the idea for Frost Bites from Around My Family Table, but changed it a little bit.  This snack was really easy to make.  First, I knew I wanted to display them upright, but I didn't have any styrofoam or floral foam to set them in while they dry (which is how I've done them and cake pops in the past).  Luckily, I had an empty cereal box so I just poked holes in it, and it held the marshmallows up just fine!  So anyway, all you have to do is stick a lollipop stick in a marshmallow, dip them in bright white chocolate candy melts, and then immediately sprinkle them with whatever color sugar sprinkles you want.  The chocolate solidifies pretty quickly.  Who's ready for a sugar rush?

I have snowflake cookie cutters and was going to make snowflake sugar cookies and ice them, but that seemed like a lot of work when I was already running behind.  Thankfully I remembered seeing melted snowman cookies on Pinterest, so we made our own hasty version with leftover candy melts, marshmallows, mini Hershey kisses, candy corn, and pretzel sticks.  I wasn't sure how they'd taste, but everyone liked them!

What's a Frozen party without some Olaf noses, right?  I have to admit, this healthy food option looked a little out of place amidst all the sugar (and a lot of kids skipped right past them, to be honest), but Fiona took a big handful, so I was happy.

I saw these adorable cheese-stick-snowmen on It's So Very Cheri and loved them!  I ended up using ribbon instead of paper for the scarves.  Super easy, and the kids loved them.

Olaf loves warm hugs, and so did the kids at Fiona's party!  Super easy snack, and awfully cute, too.

I couldn't think of anything cool to call the fruit salad, but we decided on Coronation Fruit Salad.  Because that totally makes sense.  However, I did overhear one little girl asking her mom for more Coronation Salad, so yay!

For the main course, we had "We Finish Each Other's Sandwiches".  I wish I'd had time to neatly fold all the turkey and ham, but I didn't, so I'm just glad my husband took care of setting it up for me.

We also had "Troll Rocks".  My boys wanted to call them "Troll Balls" but we vetoed that.  Saucy Asian Meatballs from Gimme Some Oven.

One of the favorite parties I saw was on the Hostess with the Mostess website.  I loved the water bottle labels, so of course we had to come up with our own.  Ours read "Melted Snow" and "Some People Are Worth Melting For" and featured a picture of Olaf.  

Hopefully you noticed the little name tags with each of the food items.  I got the best idea to make snowball tag holders.  It was really easy - I just cut styrofoam balls in half, made a little slit in the top, then used spray adhesive and glitter to make them extra sparkly.  Idea from Paging Supermom, where I also got a lot of ideas for Fiona's Tangled party two years ago.  We also got the idea from them to do "Ice" bracelets - lots of clear plastic beads, and the kids had so much fun pretending they were actually freezing cold.

And here's a picture of the cake.  It turned out really cute, and thankfully wasn't that time consuming.  It's a tradition of mine to stay up until at least 2am working on the cake, but I was done and cleaned up by 12:15am.  It was a Frozen Miracle!  I picked up the little pearl strands in the floral section of AC Moore, after getting the idea from the cake on It's So Very Cheri.  Thankfully we managed to find some Frozen figures after stalking Toys R Us, and Fiona didn't mind sharing them with me at all.

One of our activities was making Olaf in a Mason Jar.  Or Olaf in a Blizzard, since he swirls around like he's experiencing some strong winds.  I got the idea from 30 Minute Crafts and only modified it a bit.  Lots of different kinds of pompoms (white for the head, black for the mouth/buttons), brown pipe cleaners, googly eyes, lots of glitter, and carrot noses I made out of Sculpey.  After filling them up with water, we sealed the lids shut with E6000.

Here they are working on their Olaf Jars.  Out of all the boys, only Colwyn was a good enough sport to participate, but that was alright.  More room for the girls!  Also - Colwyn obviously picked out the least girly shirt he owns.  Of course.  

We also did a photo booth activity.  Some of the girls had a great time doing this!  I cut out a bunch of props with my Silhouette - the kids could pretend to be Olaf, a troll, Elsa, and Sven.  Very cute.

Quicky sign thanks to the Silhouette and leftover scrapbook paper.

For favors, I wanted to do "Snow Dough" - glitter play dough.  I was going to make it myself, but lucked out and found some in the store.  I whipped up my own labels and Doug put them on - ta-da!  We also gave out squirt guns (an activity we were planning on doing if the weather had been nicer), and everyone got to take home their Olaf-in-a-Jar and Ice Bracelets, too.

I'm completely exhausted, but it was great fun.  Fiona had so many friends to play with, and I know she felt really special today.  We made sure the boys had some friends, too, and they definitely appreciated the chance to spend time with their new buddies.

Indoor Gardening

Over this past spring and summer, I've come to realize how much I benefit from being outside and connecting with nature.  Just sitting out back on the deck watching the kids play is great, but actually interacting with nature - walking barefoot in the grass, lying under the tree and looking up at the branches, tending to our garden, making our yard attractive to wildlife - that brings things to a whole 'nother level.  I'm a much happier, more sane person when I can do those things.

Unfortunately, we live in Massachusetts, and those opportunities are rapidly running out.  To be honest, I'm a little apprehensive about this winter and being shut off from anything green.  So I started searching Pinterest and the Google for information about houseplants and indoor gardening.  I've tried having some house plants before, but it's never worked out too well.. mostly because of a lack of information on my part.  This time, I'm vowing to do it right and not just wing it.

I took the kids out to Kanes, a local nursery that's like the Walmart of nurseries.  But you know what?  Everything I've ever gotten there has done really well.  We had a blast in the greenhouse picking out plants and admiring the sleeping kitties tucked away in little nooks.  And we came home with these beauties:

Check out the texture on that Pilea!  How cool are those leaves?

And look at the gorgeous green and pink foliage on the Fittonia!  It almost reminds me of watermelon.  So pretty.

And look at the leaf on this.. plant!  Yes, I lost the little plant label thingy.  Oh, had I tricked you with my clever plant-name-dropping?  Well, hey.. whatever its name is, it's lovely.

I got the Aralia mostly for height, but its leaves are variegated, too, so that's a bonus!  It looks so delicate.

We also grabbed some potting mix (nothing organic here, since we're not eating any of these babies) and some horticultural charcoal, since there won't be any drainage holes in the planters.

You may have noticed the aloe off to the side in the group shot.  I had plans for other plants to be grouped together in a giant glass terrarium, but the aloe has different needs so I picked up this cute little planter from Michael's.  I want plants in each room, and I figured aloe is perfect for the kitchen.

I filled the bottom with some charcoal...

Put my aloe in, packed some potting soil around the edges, and voila!  Isn't she lovely?  By the way, yes, I was doing this all on my dining room table.  These plants all need to stay out of direct sun and I figured if I brought these all outside to plant, I'd probably get pulled away (hello, four children!) and leave them out there too long.

Now for the terrarium!  Eee!  I have to say, this project was a little more fidgety and difficult than I was expecting.  Step one:  pour charcoal into giant glass terrarium.  Step two:  clean the glass.  And again.

Once the glass was somewhat clear of dust, I put a layer of potting soil down and set my plants inside.  It became apparent right away that one plant (the mysterious nameless one) was not going to fit.  They look so tiny in the greenhouse, but huge inside the terrarium!

After the plants are in place, then fill in with potting soil around the edges and in between the plants.  You don't want to put in a ton of potting soil first and try to dig holes, that just wouldn't work.  Not that this way was a piece of cake, but still.  Once everything is firmly planted, get out your sheets of moss.  Wait, you don't happen to have sheets of moss just lying around your house?  You can get this stuff at Michael's and AC Moore.

Tear off pieces and cover up the bare soil sort of like you'd use mulch.  You'll probably need to wet it to get it to stay put - I did.  If you have some little pebbles or rocks, you can add those for decoration, too.  You should end up with something like this:

Okay, so I may have gotten a little tired of trying to clean the glass, and there might still be some smudges of soil on it.  But isn't it beautiful?

Print Wall Art

In my quest to update my decor - which hasn't been updated in at least ten years (...I feel old) - I stumbled upon this picture on Pinterest:

It's from Blue Cricket Design and she gives a great tutorial on how to make it.  I loved the idea and naturally had to try it - with my own modifications.

First, I found an old damaged book.  In this case, it was a Pippi Longstocking book that Niall had ripped the cover off of.  I pulled out a bunch of pages and made sure all the straight edges were interestingly torn.

Then I mod-podged them to my canvas.  Spread a bunch of glue in one area, put down a page, and mod-podge over that.  Rinse and repeat until the canvas is totally covered.

In the tutorial, she used some magazine cutouts of birds and drew the branches and leaves by hand, then colored over it all with sharpie.  Obviously it looked great, but I wanted to use my Silhouette craft cutter instead.  I got to mess around with the design a lot without drawing all over my canvas, and then once it was cut, I just had to glue it down, and seal it with more mod podge.  I made sure to include a cardinal, as a nod to my grandmother.

I think it came out really well.  Unfortunately, I can't take a nicely staged picture of it because my house is a mess.. but you get the idea.

Sewing Fun

Last year, I sewed a bunch of nightgowns for Fiona as one of her Christmas gifts.  She loves nightgowns but only had a few old pill-y fleece ones.  I found an awesome and incredibly easy tutorial for a raglan dress at Ikatbag.  When I say it's easy.. it's really, really incredibly easy.  I did modify the pattern a bit for her nightgowns - made the sleeves full length, and shirred the neck instead of using an elastic casing.  She loves them, though, and they're so cute!

Well, for her birthday (yes, back in June), she got Bitty Twins but the clothing - oy!  American Girl Doll stuff is incredibly expensive.  She got an extra outfit for each doll, but no pajamas.  I promised I'd make her some.. and finally, three months later, I got around to it.  Well, for the girl doll.. I haven't done the boy's yet.

I used the same pattern and just trimmed it a bit.  Well, a lot.  But anyway, I got it done in about 45 minutes.  Not bad, huh?

Then I happened to find some fabric I bought for her last fall, planning to make a dress.  I'd forgotten all about it!  She's grown a fair bit so I didn't have enough to make a dress, but I was able to make an adorable tunic using the same raglan dress pattern.  It took me about an hour this time.  She's been wearing it all day - with a skirt, which looks a little goofy - I meant for her to wear it with leggings, but it's pretty warm out.

Here's a close-up of the shirring.

It's just so damn cute!  I get the feeling she's going to have many more of these dresses in her fall wardrobe.  I love the raglan style and the option of doing different colors for the sleeves.  I also want to try doing some different sections of fabric on the skirt, sort of like her princess twirly dress.

DIY Canvas Wall Art

For my foyer project, I needed some big art.  We've got some huge blank walls, but unfortunately, my budget is, like.. zero.  So I started searching on Pinterest and other websites for a good DIY art project.  I came across this picture that I really, really liked.

I've seen a few different blogs that try to recreate this painting which, from what I gather, is fairly expensive.  I liked this blog post the most:  Painted Wall Art for Non Artists.

So I went out to the craft store and picked up a canvas (mine is 18x24 or something like that), a bunch of paint, and some circular foam brushes.  When picking out the paint, I decided to get two different shades for the base coat on the canvas.  I like how the inspiration piece looks distressed and a little uneven, and I didn't want mine to look too new or 'perfect' (ha!).

My next step was to ask my four- and two-year-olds to help me paint, because obviously, Mommy can't paint anything without their expertise.  The base coat was actually perfect for them to help with since you can't really screw it up.. unless you leave it unsupervised and your two-year-old decides to scrape the paint off with a toy-kitchen-spatula.  Then you might have to touch it up a bit.

Anyway.  This is what my canvas looked like when I was done.  Hopefully you can see the different shades on it.

The directions on the blog suggested using a paint pen, which I'm sure would have been marvelously easy and convenient.  However, I didn't really want to spend the money when I'm somewhat capable with a paintbrush.  I wish I had painted my branches a little differently, but I think it came out alright.

Once the branches are dry, I got dot-happy.  Most of my dots needed a second (and third) coat to make sure the branches aren't showing through, and looking at this picture, I can see that it's not perfect on all of them.

So this monster of a canvas is now hanging in my foyer (which is still a post for another day).  I'm debating on whether to add some outlining to the dot flowers, and whether I should do some distressing of it.  It does look a little too new, but overall, I'm really happy with it.

Tie-Dye Galore!

I recently noticed that my inventory of tie-dye t-shirts has gotten rather low, so I set to work remedying that. I've been a tie-dying maniac lately, and my Etsy shop shows it!  Let me brag for a moment and share some lovely Mickey head tie-dyes with you.

This is a cute Youth Size 6 dress (from Dharma Trading) that I dyed with Tangled colors, but still with the Mickey Head on the front.  So cute!  I love the lettuce hems and ruffles.

For the grown ups, I went with a striking turquoise and orange combination in this shirt (size medium).

Isn't this one adorable?  It's a Youth XS in a real rainbow of colors.

Aren't they just so fun?  Tie-dying can be a real pain in the butt and literally backbreaking, but I love the surprise of finding out what all my hard work actually ends up looking like.  There's a ton more listed in my shop if you want to take a peek!

DIY Hydrangea Wreath

After our most recent playdate where I was teased (in a gentle, loving way) for still having my Christmas wreath on my front door, I decided to look around on Pinterest for some inspiration.  I could have just picked something up at Target or AC Moore, but I much prefer to make things myself when I can.  Pinterest is full of gorgeous wreaths and it was really difficult to choose which I liked the most.  In the end, I decided to draw my inspiration from this wreath:

Hydrangeas are one of my two favorite flowers (daffodils being the other), so this seemed perfect.  I wanted something less formal for the bow, though, and I decided to swap out the green flowers for blue.  Off to AC Moore to pick up supplies!

This is the ribbon I picked out.  It's not quite the same shade of blue as the flowers, but I liked it, and that's what counts, right?  I also picked out three stems of three different colors of hydrangeas and a grapevine wreath.  I picked the grapevine mostly because it was the only one that was the right size, but also because if I didn't have quite enough flowers, I figured it'd look best peeking through the foliage.

Once I got home, I got out my heavy duty snippers and cut off each head of flowers, leaving about an inch of stem to shove into the wreath.  I also snipped off all the leaves and made two big piles.

Then it was time to tie on my bow.  Now, I suck at tying bows, so this was probably the hardest part.  It took me several tries to make it look halfway decent.

Once my bow was satisfactory (make sure you tie it in a spot where the wreath won't hang crooked, too), I played around with arranging the flowers.  It wasn't quite as full as I'd imagined, but with some careful spacing, I got it to look pretty good.  Now - I'm not a professional wreath maker, and I'm sure the 'proper' way to attach the flowers is wire of some sort, but I just used hot glue.  It seems to be holding up fine so far.

Next came the leaves.  I just wedged them in anywhere that was a little empty, trying to vary which way the leaves pointed, and whether they were on the inside or outside of the wreath.  I had to hold the wreath up a few times to check my progress and make sure it all looked even.

The only thing left was hanging it on the front door.  Doesn't it look great?  It's a bit lopsided in the picture, I think due to the way the door was angled.  It's not lopsided at all in real life.  And yes, I know my front door needs a new coat of paint.  One thing at a time!