Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England
(No spottings of the Princes that day, but we did walk down to see the school they went to as kids)
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places. Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.
Another reason (other than school) that I haven’t posted much lately is because I have been working on this:
It has taken FOREVER, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. I used a pattern from Honeybear Lane. Of course until after I got it that I realized that it had 50 steps. But since I paid for it already I forged ahead. My cousin just had a baby boy, so this is for Baby Brody. I’ll be honest, the only reason it got done today is because I want to give it to my cousin tomorrow when the family gets together for Easter. I need to do laundry, clean my apartment and study for my Estates & Trusts finals. It is my no mean perfect, but I figure the baby won’t care.
I only used four fabrics for the puffs instead of the eight she recommends. I also doubled the batting so the border would be even puffier. The binding didn’t go so well so I had to improvise a bit, but it works.
I love the lion fabric! And the blue looks awesome next to it. The yellow (it has little bees on it), polka dot, and green fabrics are cotton. The one with animals is a flannel and the green backing is flannel as well. The binding is a blue cotton as well.
I’m a glutton for punishment, so I’m making another one for the Boy’s cousin who also just had a baby boy. I’m hoping the second one goes faster than the first. Its not a hard pattern, just time consuming. I have a friend who is having a baby girl soon, so maybe if I get good at it, she’ll get one too.
Arc du Triomphe, Paris, France
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places. Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.
The Boy and I were at Target after St. Patrick’s Day, so of course we were perusing the clearance. The Boy loves St. Patty’s Day and I love projects, so when I saw how cheap their holiday bowls and cups were, I couldn’t help myself.
I use E6000 to glue the cup in between the big and little bowls. It’s plenty big for lots of chips and then the dip can go in the top. I love that the cup matches the bowls so well.
Simple, cheap and practical. My kind of project. It takes up a bit of cabinet space, but that’s okay. And since the Boy likes being Irish so much that we can use it all year round.
It has been far too long since I have last posted and I want to thank everyone who’s still here. Law school is way super lame and I have been crazy busy with end of the year/end of it all forever stuff. Some of it has been fun, but most of it has been work and it has all left me super tired. Since I didn’t think you really wanted to know about my latest creation, which was a 15 page memo to a fictitious client about the pros and cons of a couple of financing proposals, I finally photographed some random stuff that I thought you might be interested in.
This first one is something I did right after I got back from England and was still super homesick for my second home. It was funny how I was homesick while I was there but equally as homesick when I got home. I wanted a place to keep some mementos and I was going though a Mod Podge phase. I started out with a cigar box. Honestly, I can’t remember where it came from but I think my dad somehow came home with a bunch one day or something. No one in our family smokes cigars but I do come from a long line of dumpster divers, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Basically all I did was cut blue, red and silver pictures out of magazines and went to town. To get the top just right, I printed the outline of the British flag (found it on Google by searching for coloring pages). Then I cut the pieces out, kind of like a puzzle, and Mod Podged the right color clippings to each of the red and blue parts then Mod Podged the whole thing together onto the lid that I had done in all silver. Doing the top one color made it so I didn’t have to get everything lined up perfectly. I made a journal using the same technique, but I think it is in a box somewhere at the moment, still waiting for its turn to be used.
The body of the box is red because that is probably what I had the most of. The inside of the lid is foil because it is not all that easy finding pictures that have big chunks of silver.
It holds birthday cards, Underground tickets and other trinkets from my year abroad. They’re pretty happy in their pretty little home. Here’s one more close up of the top.
Palacio Real de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
(I loved this light pole in the middle of the courtyard)
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places. Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.
My favorite place to shop is at my parent’s house. They have lots of cool stuff there and the price is always right—free! Well, its more like a currency-less exchange program: I borrow a table so I don’t have to put my sewing machine away and in return I agree that the Boy will help my dad move a cabinet at work. Its great for my budget.
Anyway so a while back we stopped by my parents’ house for one reason or another and my mom asked me if I wanted this frame:
Apparently one of her brothers had given her this artwork a while back. By a while back I mean she’s had them longer than I’ve been alive and they have never been hung up in the house. Needless to say she didn’t need them anymore. Being a good kid, I of course offered to take it off her hands. Not that I needed it, but I am broke so I don’t turn down free stuff. I figured I would find something to do with it at some point or if not, I would give it to charity like she was going to if I didn’t take it.
So it sat in my closet for a while until one day I got bored and decided that I needed something to hang above my desk. I didn’t really have a plan, so I dragged out a bunch of random supplies and started fiddling. I have this roll of metal that I got to do my wall of frames and I still have a lot left. The frame had a piece of cardboard behind the artwork (which got recycled) so I decided on a memo/magnet board. I got out some scrapbook paper to cover the cardboard for the memo side and cut the metal for the top magnet side.
Hey look, there it is. So I cut my metal and stuck it back in the frame only to realize I had a small problem.
Can you see it there? The metal wouldn’t lie flat. Ugh. Don’t you hate it when things like that happen. Luckily for you and I they invited a nifty little thing called glue, so I just stuck some along this edge and put a few of my text books to good use holding the metal down until it dried.
Success! It hangs above my desk so I have something fun to look at while I am studying. I just use pushpins to stick things to the bottom and magnets on the top. It won’t last forever, but given the amount of money I spend on it ($0), it doesn’t need to.
I was inspired by the Command Center over at Oh So Chichi! and decided that I needed something like that in my house. Now I don’t have any kids to keep track of but the more organized I am, the happier I am. I also like to keep everything in one place. I sketched out my design and headed out to Dollar General and picked up some cheap frames. They are super lightweight which is what I wanted so I could use Command strips to hang them. Here’s the final result:
This is the best picture I could get since it hangs in a tiny hallway that runs down the center of our apartment. It’s a good location though because its right across from the kitchen and we pass it to get to the bedroom, office or bathroom. I used the leftover fabric from my apron instead of paper behind the glass.
This 11x14 is our to do list. I keep my personal to do list in my planner but this is where we can put things that we need to do together. The fabric is behind the glass so we can write on it with dry erase markers and wipe it off when we are done. I cut the vinyl using my Sure Cuts A Lot Software.
This menu board is my favorite part of the whole deal. I painted clothes pins using my free Valspar paint sample from Facebook. Then I painted chipboard letters (they didn’t match otherwise I wouldn’t have needed to paint them) and glued the letters to the clothespins then glued the clothespins to the frame. The pockets are fabric with vinyl on them. I ironed the fabric in the size I wanted it and glued the edges to the glass. I write one recipe per piece of paper and clip it on the day that we are going to have that for dinner. This helps me keep track of our favorites, which will go in the favs pocket. The new pocket holds blank paper and recipes that I want to try. Also on each piece of paper I note where the recipe is from so I don’t have to dig around when it comes time to cook.
The rest of the frames are 8x10s. The first one is just where we can leave notes or reminders or just say I love you. For the middle one, I glued a piece of metal flashing to the glass and stuck it in the frame. Then I used some magnet paper (it is supposed to be used in your Cricut) to make strips with our weekly cleaning chores on them. When that room has been cleaned for the week, the strip goes on the other side so we know what is done and what still has to be done. The last frame is for bills. We have three bills that we get in the mail (electric, internet and water/sewer/gas), so when those bills come in the mail they get clipped onto this frame and the due date gets written above the clip with a dry erase marker. That way we won’t forget what is due when.
Here it is in use! I love it so far and it works really well for our little family. There is room to add another row of frames below these too so if I come up with more things that we need I can easily add them.
Christ Church College, Oxford, England (parts of Harry Potter were filmed here)
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places. Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.
One of my good friends (Baby Girl’s mom) had a birthday a few weeks ago and I racked my brain to figure out what to get her. She is a great mom to three little girls and they are the most important thing in her world, so I thought that something that had to do with her girls would be great. I thought about the frames I made for Boy’s cousin for their baby and I got an idea. Here’s what I came up with:
Her three girls are Brooke, Felicity and Callie. I got some frames and ribbon from Walmart and used my E6000 glue to glue them together. I also etched each girl’s name on her frame.
I put pink paper in the frames because I didn’t have time to print pictures of her girls, but when she gets pictures printed she will be able put pictures of her babies in there. She loved it and it was a super easy to put together. I love giving personalized gifts because they are just that much more special.
