Thanks for the Memories

Happy New Year's Eve!  This past year has been such an odd whirlwind.  I'm tired.  When I look back at the last year it gives me the exhaustion.

At the start of 2014, I saw something on pinterest about keeping a yearly memory jar.  I loved the idea and put this jar on our mail credenza with a little tag that at one time read "2014 Memories."  Most of the writing has rubbed off because my dog keeps putting his nose on the tag.

Throughout the year whenever something fun or weird or terrible would happen, my husband or I would write it down on a little scrap of paper and throw it into the jar.  It was fun watching the jar fill up with these concealed moments of time.

Tomorrow we are going to open the jar up and read through all of the memories.  I'm hoping it will bring up a lot of "Oh yeah, I totally forgot that had happened!"  There are so many little things that happen in a year that seem really funny at the time but then you never think of them again.  I am excited to have this time capsule each year to remind us of the good times and bad.

I hope that everyone has a happy beginning of 2015.

Babies Like Cheap Things

Brigid loves looking at and playing in the water.  She squeals with delight when you pour water over her hand.  I noticed awhile back that her daycare had this water-filled lily pad.  The kids always seemed drawn towards it, and I wondered if I could make something similar at home.

I found an idea for water sensory bottles and decided to try it out.  All I needed was an empty plastic bottle ($1.25), water (free), and something to stick into the water.  I had these crafting pom pom balls and thought they would be perfect.  I think I got the pom poms for under $2 at the craft store.

I cleaned out the bottle thoroughly since I knew the baby would be putting it in her mouth a lot.  Then I filled it up 3/4 of the way with water.  Don't fill it all the way, otherwise you won't get that sloshing effect that babies love to watch.  You could also put some food coloring in the water to give it a different color.

After filling it with water, I took a few handfuls of the pom poms and stuffed them into the top.  To my surprise, the pom poms actually float in the water as if they are suspended.  I would highly recommend using the pom poms as I'm not sure you would get the same effect with sequins or something like that.

To cap it off (PUNNY!) I put some hot glue on the cap so that it wouldn't come off the bottle.

Brigid absolutely loves this toy.  In fact, she prefers it to other toys.  She loves watching the pom poms float in the water and also loves when you shake the bottle so it all looks like it is caught in a windstorm.  The entire craft cost me under $3, but it's given Brigid hours of enjoyment.

I also love these bottles because they remind me of the popular 1990's drink, Orbitz.  Did anyone else get Orbitz.  I bought three bottles because I thought they looked so cool.  Then I tasted one.  It was nasty.  I almost puked.  The other two bottles remained on my bookcase looking cool for about 10 years.  Teenagers are so weird.

Wedding Paper Love

When I started planning things for the wedding, I knew that I wanted to do some of the paper products on my own.  I got ideas from blogs (I swear I have looked at every wedding ever posted on Style Me Pretty) and tried to come up with the templates for things early on.  The really difficult thing about the paper products is getting the right color of paper.  Sometimes I would find an awesome color, but it would be way too expensive.  Other times, I would find a color online that looked perfect and then the sample piece would be way too dark or way too bright.  It was frustrating.  I finally settled on the above blue.  It wasn't exactly the shade I wanted, but it was close and had a very pretty shimmer to it. 

Making programs is a lot more complicated that I thought it would be.  First, if you want to do a book style, you have to print the pages out of order and on both sides of a piece of paper so that when it folds, all of the pages are in the proper order.  This turned out to be a lot tougher than I thought.  I guess it wasn't hard to figure out, just time consuming.  Secondly, the text was maddening.  I obsessed and obsessed about the punctuation and grammar.  Like, obsessed to the point where I couldn't even see obvious mistakes anymore.  It was bad.  I kept having visions of people in the church pews snickering about my bad grammar.  It was awful.  At the end of the day, I had to let it go. 

The programs were very simple.  There was just a list of the people in the wedding, the order of the ceremony and thank yous.  I also included my favorite love quote.  Have you read Rilke's essay On Love?  You should.  It's divine.

We also opted for the guest libs instead of doing a formal guest book.  I actually made the template on the computer and again obsessed and obsessed about the grammar.  This one I know there were some mistakes and people definitely pointed them out to us.  Thanks people!  I need a refresher on what a proper adverb is.  Creating a template for these was actually really simple.  It was the cutting of them that was tricky.

I knew that I needed to jazz them up so that it wasn't just a boring piece of ivory card stock.  I got a paper punch with a polka dot pattern from the lovely Martha Stewart and thought it would be smooth sailing.  It was not.  After punching through a hundred or more pieces of card stock, the paper punch was not as sharp and not punching holes quite as cleanly.  It was a lot of work and my elbows were aching afterwards.  I think I gave myself tennis elbow.  After the punches, we decided to put a thin piece of ribbon through the top holes to give it a bit more color. 

A side note about the guest libs.  I love the idea, but I think my execution was off.  A few people suggested putting them at every place setting and I went against that thinking more people would complete them if they were in the cocktail room.  I was wrong.  They definitely should go at every place setting.  Live and learn...always listen to your wedding planner. (sorry Steph!)  We did get about 70 back and they were funny...although some of them were extremely naughty. 

My last big paper project was the table numbers.  This was one of those things that my mom and Mike were both against.  I am stubborn and forged ahead.  This project took a TON of time.  Each crystal was added to the number with my own two hands.  First I printed out the word "Table" on a bunch of sheets of card stock.  Then I took a pencil and drew in the number.  I then filled in the pencil marking with the crystals.  I would say each one took at least an hour of time.  However, they looked so cool.  The little crystals caught the candle light and kind of glowed all pretty.  It was just the look that I wanted.  Now I need to think of a way to re-purpose the numbers.   

Overall, I definitely agree with people that you should not take on too many DIY projects for a wedding.  It just gets to be a lot of time and I'm not convinced that you can always do it on the cheap...unless you want it to look cheap.  These few projects were just enough (and maybe a little bit too much) for us.

I also have to say that I had a LOT of help.  My mom put in a lot of time crafting with me as did Mike and his mother.  I am lucky because my mom is really good at getting things precise, where I am not quite as good at that skill.  Mike was kind of a special helper in that I know he doesn't really get crafting, but he knew it was important to me and so not only helped me, but also worked really hard to make sure it all looked nice.

Things I've Made: Pinterest

I've been making a lot of my pinterest pins lately.  I love the idea of being productive in the kitchen and creating things.  Truth is, though, a lot of the times I find that the pinterest recipes or DIY instructions need to be tweaked.  Especially DIY stuff.  I can't believe how many directions are left out.  Anyhow, here are the things I've made:



http://pinterest.com/pin/145100419214467230/

Rubber banded candle holders.  I actually found a lot of different online instructions about how to make these candle holders and all of them said it was super easy.  I found that it wasn't easy until I figured out that you needed to use thick rubber bands that were tight on the vase.  You couldn't have any rubber bands that were twisted, otherwise the spray paint would seep underneath the rubber band and you wouldn't get clean lines.  We used frosted glass spray paint and made straight stripes.  I won't post pictures of what mine looked like until after their grand unveiling at the wedding.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Cheesy-Beef-Taco-Dip


Cheesy Beef Taco Dip was really, really good.  Like, almost too effing good.  Some tweaks were that I added a jalapeno to the meat, pepper, onion saute.  Once the meat, peppers and onions were sauteed, I put them in a crock pot and added the rest of the ingredients to let them melt.  I sprinkled red pepper flakes on everything in the crock pot to give it extra spice.  I have found that hot dip recipes don't work as well on the stove top as in the crock pot.  I think when you make something on the stove top there's a tendency to rush the cheese melting and then the cheese clumps when cooling.  Plus, the crock pot keeps everything warm.  I loved this dip, but I have a friend who made it and thought it was bland.  So, this could be a dud.

http://www.loveandoliveoil.com/2011/02/grasshopper-brownie-bars.html

Grasshopper Brownie Bars were effing fantarriffic.  They were so good.  Even though there are three layers that you have to create, I didn't think the recipe was all that fussy.  And normally I am a spazz in the kitchen.  The fluffy mint part in the middle didn't set quite right on mine and it was a little bit melty when I put it on the brownies.  I think that when I make these again, I will put the brownies in the freezer after they are cooled to get them really cold so that the mint layer won't melt at all. 

http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2009/09/football-kickoff-buffalo-chicken-dip.html

I wanted to LOVE this dip.  And I liked it, but it wasn't my favorite.  I think I cooked it too fast and so the cheese didn't melt right.  Plus, it didn't look appetizing.  My version of it looked barfy, which always makes things less appetizing.  I cooked all of this on the stove, but might try it again in a crock pot so that it stays warm longer.

http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2012/03/mexican-stuffed-shells.html

Mexican Stuffed Shells are perhaps my most favoritest of all the dinners that I've ever made.  They were unbelievable.  I really spiced them up by using spicy taco seasoning, spicy taco sauce and spicy salsa.  It was a little too spicy, so I think maybe using a mild taco sauce would be best.  I could have eaten a million of these.  On a side note, Mike hates cream cheese and so he was skeptical of the recipe.  I kept telling him that cream cheese only makes things taste better, but he didn't believe me...until he tried them.  He was so happy when he was eating these, he looked like a little kid at Christmastime.

Crayon Hearts

With Valentine's Day upon us, my friend Grace and I decided to test our crafting strength and attempt a Martha Stewart craft. You can find this craft on her website if you search for "crayon hearts". Her instructions seemed simple enough, although the craft proved to be more difficult then Ms. Stewart made it seem.

First, it said to use a handheld pencil sharpener to collect crayon shavings. Except, not so much. The crayons wouldn't fit into the handheld pencil sharpener and we couldn't get them to produce any shavings. So, we had to chop up the crayons, which is really difficult and messy. It also takes a long time. So, that was fail number one.

Next, you take a piece of wax paper and fold it in half, then unfold it and put the shavings on one side of the paper and refold it. Then you want to fold up any open ends in the wax paper because when the wax is heated, it becomes liquidy and will ooze out the sides unless they are sealed up. Once everything is folded, you take an iron on low heat and press it over the top of the wax paper.

This part was fine, except the color of the crayon wax does come through the wax paper and so your iron turns funny colors. Fail number 2. You can see a little bit of the red-violet here.

Luckily, I almost never use my iron for clothing. Once you have everything melted down, you set the wax paper aside to cool and harden. This will happen quickly. We made three colors, red, red-violet and pink. Martha Stewart made some orange colors as well, which looked nice. Here are our hardened wax papers:


You take these and trace hearts onto the wax paper. We just cut out a stencil from other paper and used that. We made both larger hearts and smaller ones. Once you are done tracing, you can cut out the hearts and use a small hole punch to punch a hold in the point of the heart. Then you can use regular thread to make a loop through the hole so you can hang them in the window.


I ended up taping mine to the window sill, although I think you could also string them up along a curtain rod. When the sun hits them through the window they look translucent and beautiful. Look!

This was a very cheap craft. I got three boxes of crayons and they were around $1.00 each, then the wax paper was also pretty cheap. The worst part about this was the crayon shavings, there must be crayon specific sharpeners that you can get, regular pencil sharpeners did not work for us and chopping them was a pain, although it worked just fine.

I was thinking that you could make this for several holidays. Easter Eggs at Easter, raindrops for the springtime, shamrocks for St. Pat's Day, maybe pumpkins or leaves for fall/Halloween. It adds a lot of color to your windows!