hand embroidery for baby.

our friends just had a sweet little baby girl and I wanted to do something special for them so I decided to hand embroider some onesies for them.

If you're looking for some cute hand embroidery patterns that are fun and cool, urbanthreads is my favorite site (great for machine embroidery patterns as well!)

bear.

bunny.

chick.

robot.

flowers.

monkey.

all together now.

in a basket with diapers... a great gift!

artisan bread in my new dutch oven!

isn't it a beaut?!

the mister gave me this sweet enamel covered dutch oven for my birthday.  he knows what I love.

now I can make this recipe as much as I want with many variations!

flour, yeast, salt and water.

yep.

that's it.

look at that pretty pot.

pretty bread.

so very pretty.

popsicles + purple cake = my birthday!

Today is my birthday.  Mondays are not the best days to have a birthday so I'll share with you my birthday weekend...

my cute mister and me!  he's the best. can't wait to hang with him tonight.

it's always hot around my birthday, but holy crap.  110?  Really?  Thank goodness it's raining today.

Friday evening, my sweet friend Amanda made me some rosemary lavender salt scrub... the best part about this?  the yoga poses shrinky dinks!  Makes me want to time travel to 1986 for a few hours and play shrinky dinks with my 8 year old self.

after we had dinner with our favorite couple, we drove over to this new popsicle joint in town called Steel City Pops.  They have some pretty great flavors.  I got banana, which had cinnamon in it, which was amazing.

We went back on Sunday and I got pineapple jalapeño.  Equally amazing.

let's just skip over to Sunday.

I made my own cake (I always do... I like baking my own birthday cake)

My sister-in-law, her boyfriend and his roommate (formerly my husband's roommate) made dinner for us.  I bet you think we had Mexican... nope.  Pizza.

John and me.  Ready to do the birthday cake thing.

Ellen and me.  Let's blow out these candles.

Purple hombre cake?  yes!

and yes.

it's just boxed cake and food coloring.

no fancy instructions.

yay for happy birthdays!!

and feeling pudgy on Mondays!!

DIY deck of cards book

yeah I'm still anniversary-talkin' (still a couple more DIY's to come on that as well), but this is something you can do anytime!

So here's how it went down.

get a deck of cards (it should be 53 cards including the joker)

punch 2 holes in the side of each card (use your first card as a template for the rest)

aw.  my holes are hearts.

*I only own a heart shaped hole punch

print on card stock (or plain paper would work)

the title of my book and a special message for the inside cover

cut your title and message out and mod podge, baby!

oh!  someone broke out the fancy scissors!

so you come up with 52 reasons why you love your loved ones and you print each reason out (on card stock or plain paper).  I also mod podged scrapbook paper onto each card (and then repunched my holes)

I hope your printer is working... or that you have one.

Now we print the page numbers.  I chose a few different fonts just for funsies!

mod podge the whole card after you've put everything on it.  This seals it nicely.

let cards dry.

I was going to go buy some rings to put through the holes but I ran out of time and the craft store is so far away (waaaah).  So jute twine it is!

tie it, snip it, done.

so sweet.

and I was able to say that I gave a paper gift for anniversary #1

anniversary gifts are fun.

My sweet friend Bethany made this awesome frame for us for our anniversary.

I love it.

she kept several different paper elements from our wedding and decoupaged them onto a frame.

this is from our programs.

so is this... she also used our invites, our cd inserts (these were favors),  and leftover burlap from bridesmaids clutches I made.

thanks, sweet Bethany!!  You're the best!

apple cranberry pie

so the best thing about the mister's new job is that if he makes nice with the culinary students who work the cafe, they bring him beautiful pies like this for us to fatten up on.

apples and cranberries.

so delicious.

so pretty.

I may eat this whole pie over the weekend.

yeah I said it.

then I will run several miles.

Christmas dump, part 4... creative wrapping

I couldn't help myself.  I just had to hot glue buttons onto my gifts this year!

Christmas dump, part 2... DIY sparkle letters

I love handmade gifts.  I love giving them and receiving them.  Here's what I did for my nieces this year...

I came across these chipboard letters at the craft store so I painted them with acrylic paint.

easy peasy.

then a little mod podge and glitter.

I love sparkles!

added a felt flower and some ribbon to the back!

ready to hang on 2 little girl walls!