I have a dear friend who is always uplifting me with joy and encouraging me to live life for the Lord. Needless to say, I am very thankful to have her in my daily life! For Christmas I decided I wanted to make her something special and encouraging. With all of the issues with my back, I had to keep it fairly simple but I love the result!

This 8×8 frame was the perfect base and I pulled out some scraps of paper that have a simple blue and gray scheme. My 2.5″ scalloped heart punch ended up being perfect to fit 4 hearts across and I hopped into Illustrator to print out the Scripture, Psalm 136:26. I chose this verse because I think it is always important to remember God’s love for us and to thank Him always. I feel that my friend is constantly reminding me of these things and therefore I wanted to give that back to her.

Each of the hearts were “popped” up with some foam tape for added dimension and I scattered several cute buttons for the fun of it. It was a fairly easy project and I have a feeling a few more of the special people in my life will be receiving these as gifts throughout the year because the entire thing comes from my heart — always important! {photos taken with my iphone}

I already took the time to sit down to figure out this week’s Dinner Plan — I know that last week I said I may or may not do this every single week but last week it helped greatly! If you haven’t seen the Meal Planner/Shopping List and Pantry Inventory that I created {and are available on my Etsy Shop}, I will have a post up soon with how they work  and how they have helped me! Im excited to see how much time and money I save from using these two tools!

This Week’s Dinner Plan

• Monday: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Fresh Fruit & Soup
• Tuesday: Buttermilk Roasted Chicken with Roasted Veggies & Potatoes
• Wednesday: Chicken & Cashew Stir-Fried Salad
• Thursday: Dinner with Community
• Friday: Leftovers
• Saturday: Date Night
• Sunday: Crockpot Beef Stroganoff

Snacks:

• Real Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies (Cookie of the Week)
• Healthier Peanut Butter Brownies

Thanks for stopping in! Have a wonderful weekend!

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The Yarn Wreath is all over Pinterest and now entering living rooms all over! I adore these cuties and the endless options for what you can do with them! From the moment I saw a photo of a yarn wreath on Pinterest, I knew I had to make one! I was so excited that I didn’t even try to find instructions, I just needed to do it! So here are MY instructions that will hopefully guide you to your very own cutie…

Materials Needed –

• Straw Wreath – $3 (I kept it wrapped in the plastic it comes in for ease)
• 1 skein of Yarn in your desired color ($2.50 to $7 depending on what you choose – thinner yarn will take you longer to wrap!)
• Several pieces of felt for your flowers (at least 2 pieces of each color plus any green(s) you may want for leaves)
• Any other embellishments such as fake leaves, flowers or berries, etc.
• Hot glue gun / Alligator Clips (see Step 6 for options)
• Scissors

Step One — Dot some hot glue on the back side of the wreath and gently press the end of your yarn in

Step Two — Wrap, Wrap & Wrap some more… (it is easy to pull the entire skein of yarn through the center of the wreath for ease of wrapping)

Step Three — Hot Glue the final end of your yarn

Step Four — Take out your Felt and trace either a compact disc or other round object onto your felt with a Sharpie (I used a paper plate for mine since I wanted it to be a medium sized flower (a cd will provide smaller flowers) and cut out your circle

–  Use your Scissors to cut a spiral in your circle (sample photo below)

– Beginning from the center of your spiral, start twisting. I used a small dot of hot glue in the center to hold the first spiral in place and stopped to dot a bit of hot glue through out just so that the flowers will hold over time. Continue twisting until the desired size of flower is reached. You can continue until all felt is used or if you would like a variety of sizes, snip off the rest of the felt spiral when you are ready to hot glue

– Using Pinking Shears, cut out your leaves in desired shapes and sizes.

Step Five — Play with your flowers and embellishments to decide how you would like to lay them out on the wreath

Step Six — Adhere your flowers and embellishments: (1) hot glue them on permanently, OR (2) hot glue to alligator clips and clip them onto the yarn so that flowers can be replaced for different seasons

Step Seven — ENJOY! (1) Hang this cutie up! OR (2) Cut a long stripe of pretty ribbon and use to hang this cutie up!

I hope that this tutorial is helpful and most definitely feel free to leave any questions in the comment section of this post and I will be happy to assist! Of course, there are plenty of wonderful tutorials out there in the wonderful land of the world wide web so have fun, try different types of flowers, embellishments and designs. Below is my finished product and a few of my favorite and most inspiring yarn wreaths… ENJOY!

Decor Chick

ItsFitz @Etsy

Six Sisters’ Stuff

Little Things Bring Smiles

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I had originally planned on doing a wedding countdown up to our friend’s wedding that was this last Saturday, April 23, 2011. Obviously, I was dreaming and was far too busy prepping for the big day and it never happened! So here we go… This is the first of several posts that will follow along with the planning and prep for the wedding.

The wedding budget was tight, so many of the details and food items were homemade! It was a blast, but we learned a lot from the experience and I would love to share that here with everyone.

The Guestbook

Today, I would like to introduce to you our special guestbook. We did purchase this guestbook from JoAnns for about $10 but because the wedding was a bit smaller (80-100 guests) we decided to personalize it. One of the things I don’t understand about wedding guestbooks is that all they really are is an attendance log for the day. Many of our guests signed there names and usually their congratulations. This time we wanted to give guests the opportunity to share their own personal blessing with the special couple on their day.

All we did was cover the guestbook pages with some lovely patterned papers  (matching the wedding colors, of course) and adhered some adorable mini vellum envelopes. We also included a front page including a photo of the sweet couple and stamped their initials and wedding date. The last page included two more photos to close it out. This book is going to be a treasure for the rest of their life.

There were many pieces of inspiration that I would love to share here, here and here for your reference if you’d like.

My favorite thing about this guestbook is that at the end of the wedding day I was able to hand it over to the couple to take on their trip to their honeymoon and enjoy the special blessings from their guests. The bride was so excited to open it up as soon as she got in the car and I loved being able to bring her that joy!

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Above is the album all put together {in case you couldn’t already tell} and below are most of the pages in the album. I kept it fairly simple with some ribbon accents and dollies. My only complaint with this album is that I couldn’t fit all of the pages I made in it because it wouldn’t close properly — big boo to that! Other than that, it turned out adorably and I am pretty sure my sweet friend who received it for her precious little one coming in December would agree!

Challenges Used:

• Anything Goes – Animals
• Flourishes (Bring back beautiful/BBO4) – Ribbon
• PaperCutz challenge anything goes

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First of all, you have to check out the FREE digital copy of the 2009 Holiday CARDS magazine — http://ow.ly/2Y7AX

That is exactly where I found these beauties by Tamara Jensen (Instructions on pg. 76)!

Aren’t these so gorgeous?! I just have to make a couple for my home this Christmas! I am more of a traditional girl when it comes to Christmas colors, so I will have to search for some fun ribbon to use that will match our decor and our Christmas tree! Check back soon for the finished product!

Happy Weekend!

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Welcome to day 7
of our Autumn/Winter Idea Book Sneak Peaks!

Anyone for more Christmas fun?!

Check out this gorgeous photo ornament created using CTMH’s special chipboard collection, called Dimensional Elements. You can cover them with paper, sponge them with ink, stamp over them and hang em up by pretty ribbon for a special touch. These will make for some special Christmas gifts for Grandma!

Check out the sample ornament from the Idea Book!

Stamp Set: Dimensional Elements – Ornaments (Z1337)

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This last week I was working oober hard on my cousin’s wedding photo board! It was the worst week ever to have a major creative block… But I made it through. Once I decided to make my own roses, versus using fake ones, things started rolling a bit more smoothly for me (the NIGHT before the wedding!!!!). Thought I would share a quick little tutorial on how I made these cute little gals!

All you need are the following:

• Glue Gun (& Glue Sticks…)
• A 3×3″ or 4×4″ Piece of Cardstock
• One or Two 1″ Strips of Paper (I don’t really recommend cardstock for this)
• Pearls or Buttons or Brads (anything really!) for the center.

Now, just follow these easy steps:

1. Fold your 1″ strips of paper in half (lengthwise) and crumple it up in a scrunching motion.
2. Then twist the paper while continuing to scrunch. (This is the crazy part, because you may not fully understand that last step but you just need to play with your paper in order to make the rose they way you want)
3. Make a small 1 1/2″ circle of glue on the cardstock square
4. Quickly curl the first end of your scrunched strip of paper into a small circle and press down onto the glue.
5. Add more glue around the edge of your center circle and press the remainder of your strip down.
6. Once your flower is the size you would like, simply cut the flower out of the cardstock square and glue down your rose center of choice (I used 3 pearls for my larger roses and 1 for my smaller ones)

The best part about these roses is that you can make them as crumpled or smooth as you want and really cater to your project by using different types of paper or center embellishments! I love an accessory that is versatile! Yay! I used them all over the photo board for the wedding, along with some left over fake leaves I had. I think it turned out beautifully, myself :)

The whole wedding was absolutely gorgeous! Hot pink with some orange, light pink and greens throughout… it was perfect for Katie (who was even more gorgeous). We danced the night away and had a blast. Here is a photo of  the finished product and a couple of the wedding itself, because it was too beautiful not to share :) Have a wonderful weekend!

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One day I was shopping at Home Goods, searching through all of their wonderful Christmas goodies and I came across these little tins of hot chocolate. It was one of those light bulbs going on inside of my head moments, for sure. I decided to get a bunch of em for the girls at work. I brought em home and wrapped them with some cute patterned paper, Close To My Heart, of course. I even hopped onto Photoshop to create a quick label for the top — I suppose the receiver of the goodie would want to know exactly what it is! I had a bit of fun with that and loved how it all turned out in the end.

Perfectly fun and easy little gift… everyone loved them! These cuties even qualify for a few challenges this week: Practical Scrappers – Anything Christmas; LaLaLands Crafts – Anything But A Card; Crafty Creations – A Crafty Creation of Any Kind; Crafty Ann’s – Anything but Red and Green; All Sorts – Anything But A Card; Bee-Crafty – Circles!

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Wow, this week went by super fast and I LOVE IT! One of my friends recently asked me to make her some Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins (well, I ran out of paper cups for muffins, so I did loaves instead) so tonight, I broke out the Pumpkin, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, and Cloves for the best recipe of the season! (For the recipe, scroll down…)

While everything was in the oven, I ran across Dawn McVey’s Color Challenge and I couldn’t resist. I decided to make a cute little ‘wrap’ for my friend’s loaf! Now, I know that the colors aren’t necessarily harvest, fall or even pumpkin colors, but I still think it goes nicely together and I love the color combo!

I simply took some Kraft Cardstock and made one 11 x3″ strip and one 9×3″ strip, designed the longer strip, scored it all to fit and then adhered the strips together after slipping it onto the loaf. Easy enough? haha. I think she will like it…

Supplies Used:

Now for the recipe…  it is SUPER EASY! You can have your house smelling delicious and fally in no time!

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins/Bread

Preheat the oven to 350 Degrees and Lightly grease your loaf pans or prep your muffin pans with paper/foil cups.

Mix together the following:

1 Package of Yellow Cake Mix
1 15 oz. Can of Pumpkin
1 Tsp. Ground Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp. Ground Nutmeg
1/4 Tsp. Ground Cloves

Fold in 1 Cup of Chocolate Chips (more or less… to your liking!)

Fill loaf pans or muffin cups. For loaves, bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. For muffins, bake for 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. **I always sprinkle some extra Chocolate Chips on top of the loaves and muffins before baking to make them look pretty!

Yields: Two Loaves or 24 Standard Muffins

Thanks for coming by! P.S. IF YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL FALL RECIPES YOU LOVE, PLEASE DO SHARE! I LOVE RECIPES!

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