Happy Easter!

This one is short and sweet because it is well past bedtime. The table setting is all done and we are ready for Easter! Just have to make the food and put it on there...that's actually the hardest part for me! Hope you all have a beautiful Easter!
(And p.s. The white plates are from the dollar store, and the blue plates are from the discount bin at Zurchers. Gotta love the sweet deals!)

Easter Decorating Ideas #3

Here we go on day 3 with a few more fun things to show. Do you remember in grade school learning how to make crepe paper flowers? (Crest Hill grads, remember our art teacher, Mr. Grimes? Flashback!) Anyway, that was one of my favorite things to make and I love the new update of the big paper flowers. I found this either on Martha Stewart, or a link to another blog on her site. Either way, it is way easy and has spectacular results. Plus it is fast!

I bought the tissue at the dollar store and put about 5 layers of it down.  Fold it like an accordian, then attach some wire through the middle. Make sure it's not too tight. Snip the ends into a point, then open it up and very carefully, fan them all out and it looks gorgeous! I made the really large ones and some smaller ones also.  

The chandelier (or cheap IKEA light) in the kitchen was sort of boring so I wanted to make it really festive. I draped this string of eggs that I got at Michaels onto it, then put some tulle around it. By the way, they sell rolls of tulle at the dollar store. Whoda thunk?

Then I hung the various sizes of paper flower balls onto it and it ended up looking very fun indeed.

   Next, I covered these plastic eggs in tulle (tulle is evidently the theme of my Easter this year!) and put them in a vase on top of a candlestick. I put a little nest of sticks and pink tulle around it and used it as a table centerpiece.

And lastly, I found a few black candle-sticks at the dollar store and sprayed them white and put some dollar candles on them. I have a feeling I will want them black again one day, and as we all know, you can never spray paint too much!

     See you tomorrow when I throw it all together and make a tablescape!

Easter Decorating Idea #2

     Since I have had from Tues. of this week off work, I have been able to actually get more projects done and have been having a blast! Over the last few days I have been to my usual hot spots (Dollar Tree, Savers, Michaels) to get some pretty cool (and cheap) stuff. Today I'm just going to spotlight a few things that will eventually go on the tablescape, but that can really be used anywhere.

    First, I decided that my color scheme would be all white for a base color. I think because I saw it on someones blog and loved it. I also saw it on a Martha Stewart link and I always love me some Martha! Plus, I had a ton of white spray paint just sitting around begging to be used. The colors I chose were pink, turquoise blue and green. Here is  some of the basic junk I bought at D.I. and Savers before, and then after I attacked it with a can of paint.

Some of the stuff was off-white, so I re-painted it also to get the same matching white. I'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to eat off a spray painted plate, so after I attached a painted candlestick to it, I just put a doily on top. Thanks to Jori at her cool blog, Hello Cupcake! She gave me the idea to use the candlesticks from the dollar store to use for a cake plate. Love!! And the good news is: I didn't pay over $1.99 for anything that I painted and used. Sweeeet!

     Here is the cute little cake plate all finished with the candlestick painted and glued to the bottom of the plate. Oh, and I did not make these adorable brownie bites (Target did!) but I'm guessing they would be pretty easy. 

Next is the gauzy, ethereal looking egg holder. It was originally a black candle holder with glass votives in it. I got these beautiful ceramic eggs on sale at Michaels for $1.00 and put white tulle under it to keep the eggs in. It makes them look all floaty and heavenly.

 I may give these ornaments away to the family coming to Easter dinner. It's a fun way to display them. So up next...while I was at Savers I saw the TALLEST vase I've ever seen for $1.99 and grabbed it because it was so cool, and already white. I put some on-sale hydrangeas in it and yow! Fell in love.

It's fun to display candy in a super easy to make candy holder using the same idea as the cake plate. I just sprayed a bowl and candlestick and glued it together. And for the plastic egg display - I love milk glass, but it's sooo expensive. How about $1.00 for this little plastic job? Once I sprayed it from it's ugly off-white color, it looked just like a milk glass vase.

I have no idea what the original purpose of this next doodad was, but I think it was an old, really tacky looking napkin holder. I really love how it ended up once I put the cute checkered napkins in it.

And last, what do you do with all of your leftover tulle and flowers? Just tie it around the chairs! I have a bunch more to get ready for tomorrow's posting, so check back and see what's happening, and I will see you then!

Easter Table Idea #1

Easter is almost here! It is one of my favorite holidays. I love dying eggs, decorating, having family over for Easter dinner, and especially the symbolism of the holiday. For me, finding new ways to decorate the Easter dinner table is one of the funnest things leading up to Easter. Looking around online and on other blogs gives me so many ideas, I get a little overwhelmed. But I thought it would be fun to post 5 days of easy, cheap decorating ideas for the table, then on day 6 show all of the ideas put together as a tablescape on the Easter dinner table.

    Today is the first project, which cost a total of $2.50. I bought a branch of silk flowers on sale for $2.00 and cut the flowers off (the branch looked fake and plastic, so it had to go!) So I used some branches that were in the yard from a major snowstorm busting them off and hot glued the flowers to the branches, which looks a lot more realistic. Though the trees outside are flowering, they just won't last inside in a vase, even in water. So this is a good compromise.

I bought the vase at Savers for 50 cents and already had the spraypaint. But first I sprayed the vase blue in spots I wanted dotted. After it dried, I put round stickers on the spots and spraypainted the whole vase white. I took off the stickers and there they were...cute blue polka dots!

Once the blossoming branches went in the vase, I actually felt a little Spring happiness for the first time this season. This little quickie craft makes a great piece for the dinner table or a coffee table. See you tomorrow!

Spring Sweater Update

While Lucy and I were out prom dress shopping, I saw this awesome sweater in the window of a store. I stalked it for a few days, wondering how I could inconspicuously take a pic of it without the people in the store thinking I was a true stalker. I did get this pic, terrible as it is.

It does show vaguely how cool it was. I love the idea of taking a long, outdated winter sweater and making it into a long Spring vest!
    I remembered that deep in the dark recesses of Emma's closet was a sweater similar to this one that I could cut the sleeves off of and make it work, as she hadn't found it, nor worn it for years.

So, Em found it and gave it to me, (not knowing what I had in mind for it.) As I began to hack off the sleeves, Emma walked in, and in true Emma fashion said, "So, I see you are taking my favorite sweater and trashing it!" Umm...yes? Maybe "trashing" is the new "updating". Oh, how I love that girl.

This had to be the easiest project ever. All I did was cut off the sleeves and put some fabric fray stuff on it (of course I would never hem the sleeves...too much work! )So then I just added a length of ribbon and weaved it into the center of the sweater, and it was almost done.

At the last minute I took a piece of the sleeve and folded it into a rose and sewed it to the front, which I think upped the cute factor quite a bit.

Off to search for a model. (I never have to search far in this house of girls.) As usual, I talked Lucy into it.
I think it looks perfect as a Spring sweater, and she pulled it off great with jeans and a t-shirt.

She did pull a quick 
spider-monkey move and shimmy up onto the pillar for a really cool pose that I had to post also. Ah, to be young and agile.

Here's a little Happy Spring endnote. I took this pic before our last big snowstorm last week and had to post it with a favorite poem of mine by Robert Herrick.



Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.
--Robert Herrick

These poor mini daffodils were struggling through the snow to peek up. (A favorite side note story: My friend Keith Homer, gardener extraordinaire, occasionally does "guerilla gardening" at random houses. One year he planted these without me knowing and the next Spring, up they popped!) They are so beautiful and a perfect symbol of Spring and Easter.

And finally, since we are bogged down with rain and snow and sleet right now, I decided to cozy up in my house and finish up a project that had been taking way too long to finish. A soft, white baby blessing blanket. It's made from Red Heart yarn and is some sort of furry micro fiber that feels like a baby lamb (or any fuzzy, cute creature.) I wove a piece of blue ribbon into the edge and gave it to a cute couple that had a baby boy that Emma works with. So, that's one major project down and on to Easter!

Copycat Cardigan

    Winter is still lingering here in Utah, which most people here fairly loathe. But of course, I love it because it means...more time for sweaters! And this is the time of year where you can get crazy discounts on winter clothes, which makes me even happier.
    My daughter, Lucy, has an adorable friend named Abby. She came over the other night to pick up Lucy and stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw the cardigan she was wearing.

     I fell in love with it! She said she bought it in California for $35.00 at a boutique store, and since I am pretty sure I won't be there anytime soon, I knew what I had to do. I had to re-create that cardigan somehow, by gosh. So I grabbed my camera and had her pose for me. I love how it looks nautical and classy, and so timeless that a teenager or even a mom (me:) could wear it. I was so psyched to figure it out I could hardly stand it.

    So I went to Savers and headed right to the grey sweater section, found it, and it cost about $4.00. Joy! I am so inspired by the way they display their clothes in sections of color, that I do that with my own closet. It makes getting dressed and grappling around in my closet at o'dark hundred soooo much easier. But I digress...

    Then I ran over to JoAnn's and got new silver buttons and black bias tape (double fold) for the piping. Remember, I am NOT a sewer. I am a gluer. So I figure out fast and easy ways to cheat on things by just gluing them. There is a downside to this and I will talk about it later. Gulp.

I DO know how to sew buttons on,(thanks mom!) and so I switched out the buttons. I then eyeballed the size of the little pieces that go between the buttons and cut, folded and glued those into the right shape. I glued those on first (I did one less than I meant to...my bad). Then I glued the piping all around the sweater. Done!

     I had Lucy model the finished product, which is so fun to wear! I get tons of compliments on it, and am happy to say I spent about $12.00 total on it.
      Oh yes, the downside to gluing ornamentation onto sweaters. Someday, you'll actually have to wash the thing. Handwashing works, but just to be safe I went back in and hand stitched it on from the inside. Made me feel a little better about washing it.

     Here is a closer view of both of them side by side. The original on the left and the copycat on the right. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not exact, but who would know, right? And thanks to my cute models Lucy and Abby!

    
And p.s. Sorry about the ugly, empty space on the left side of the blog. I applied to put ads in there and evidently it takes them a looong time to figure out what goes there.