I love it when things work out!

Remember this gloating post? Well, after I checked at my local craft store and a 4 inch circle.. just a circle was $3.49!!!! Here is the finished product. It was a fun time for my daughter and I and really let her feel like she had control of her bathroom.

Christmas Tea

Remember these adorable invites? Well the party has come and it was wonderful! This is the third year Laurel and I have done Christmas Tea and is such a great tradition. Here are some of the details.

Decor... Red and White, swirls and mints everywhere.. felt minty just looking at it.

The sweets... chocolate dip, divinity, mint bark, brownies, cookies, stuff to dip, and a way cute cake Laurel slaved over.
Sandwiches.. cucumber, pb&j, bacon apple, and egg salad.. Ohh and some veggies to help with all the guilt!
Home made hot coco and we had an amazing party! And one last close up of the adorable cake.

Fun Vinyl

For Christmas Santa is bringing my girls new bathroom stuff. Its been a long time coming and took a while to decide on what to do. With each of them having their own bathroom now, I wanted something the same, but not identical. I found the shower curtain, supplies, towels and that left the walls. Normally I would get everything all set up Christmas Eve, but this year we decided to let them have the fun of it themselves, so the hunt was on for easy wall decor. I wanted vinyl but it can be costly. To my surprise I found 12x12 full sheets of vinyl for sale at my local craft store, for $1, and with a circle cutter I now have a ton of circles in fun variations to do 2 bathrooms. The best part.. it was $5. I am really excited to watch the girls decorate their bathrooms on Christmas!

Side note: thinks of the possibilities! I want to try these sheets in a die cut machine.. How much fun is this.. and how cheep!!

Home made gifts

Due to peer pressure I am going to post these. I have been working on making my gifts for a while and they are finally all done. So here are some simple ideas that are very budget friendly.

This is a "build your own snowman kit". I saw his last Christmas and loved it. Started making it in May and got the bag and things done in October. It includes bag, scarf, pipe, heart, 3 buttons, and nose. I am also adding hot co-co and a box of girl scout cookies to make it a total family event. All the pieces were from the wood cuts and I had to drill a few holes to add the dowel rods, really easy and fun.

This was one I fell in love with. Magnet Boards they were cheep, cute and by adding a few small items a wonderful gift! I ordered the metal as the unfinished kit, painted and put them together myself, ordered boxes that fit the board (a friend and I ordered 50 and split the costs of the boards and the boxes). I got an easy recipe that I could include all the ingredients in the box and stamped the box. It was fun to make and so easy. I got a couple for my girls to give their friends and will include a photo in a bag that the girls can stamp and make themselves.

Christmas Cards

Happy to say the cards are all made, addressed, and waiting with stamps for December 1. I have found a pattern in myself when it comes to my card making. I see something I just love this season, get the stuff have all the cards made by May and then wait. So far its worked out pretty good and I am on top of my Christmas cards.

It's SWAP time again!

With the Holidays right around the corner and all the cute Christmas/Winter things hitting the shelves we thought now was a great time to do a swap! Wanna play with us??

There are a few simple steps, "rules" if you will, to play along:

1. Send an email to withandwithout AT gmail DOT com, indicating you want to join this swap. Include:
Your Name
Your Address
Your blog address (if you have one)
A description of likes/dislikes to give your swap partner some direction(This information will only be sent to your swap buddy)

2. Send the email no later than November 16. Swap partners will be assigned by November 17. You MUST ship your swap by December 17.

3. Swap items must fit in an average sized shoe box. We don’t want people going too crazy but want to have enough room to fit some cool loot.

4. This is a Christmas/Winter swap. Everything you send needs to somehow tie in to the theme. Whether it be colors, actual Christmas items, whatever, just make sure they tie together somehow.

5. Again, cut-off to sign up is November 16. Please send us an email before then.

6. Please read #2 again. It’s important you stick to the ship date to not ruin the fun for your swap partner. Please let your partner know when you ship your package. If your partner doesn't get their swap due to being lost, that is one thing, but if you fail to ship and you receive yours, you will banned from playing again.

7. Have fun!! Feel free to invite anyone you’d like. We don’t have a cut-off and would love to have as many participants as possible.

We have created a Flickr group that we would love for you to join. This will enable us to share pictures of all the great things we receive through the swap, check out our past swap and have discussions about the group.If you have any questions, please feel free to email or leave a comment! We look forward to swapping with you!

11/16 UPDATE:: Buddys have been sent, have fun shopping!

Very small makeover

When I moved into our home it was me and the girls, 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2 family rooms, game room and more space than we knew what to do with. That was 7 years ago. Moving forward in time, we added a man to the house, the kids grew, their junk takes more room, the man needed a cave, on and on. My point is I started out with a whole basement and office area to myself and now I have a closet.. the coat closet in the main hallway. The person who does all the planning, the crafts, the volunteering, gets a closet filled with coats. I couldn't take it any more, I had to request.. nay.. demand a space of my own! While at Ikea the other day I found a shelving unit that would fit in the space and live happily with my scrap bag.. hark.. life is good! For less than $30, the space is mine (well there are 2 coats, but those will come out as soon as it snows). I am happy, I am organized and feeling very functional.. yippee for me!

Mummy and Me Tea

Each year Laurel and I do a Christmas Tea. Last year she got a bug to do a summer tea and we did a flower/lady bug theme, it was loads of fun and really cute! This year I wanted to do a Halloween party. So here are some of the details of our party.
The invites:
I custom made them from a design I saw online that cost a ton. I did splurge a little and the lettering is vinyl.


The Food:
We did hot hogs wrapped in croissant rolls (mummy's), chicken salad with eyes (grapes) on croissants, fruit cups, veggie tray, decorate your own cookies, popcorn, and we each decorated our own Carmel apple. For drink we did root beer with dry ice.


The take away:
Laurel picked up cute plates, I made pumpkins out of orange table cloth and wrapped the tops with floral tape and pipe cleaner (filled with candy of course). We added spider rings and little stencils along with sugar sticks and they got to take their glow in the dark drinking cups too. All this in a cute bag to go.

The rest:
After the eating, chatting and talking about our costumes, the girls watched Witches and the Moms cleaned up and hung out. Overall, a spook-tacular party!

My halloween pieces

For my costume I wanted really nice jewelry but was unwilling to pay for it, so for about 1/6 the cost, I made these.

Hotel Bordom

While traveling for work sometimes I get organized enough to bring projects with me. Sadly its day two and I am out of projects... well I can do my taxes :(
Here are a couple of photos of what I made.

These are the tags to go with the mummies I made over the weekend.

I have spent a lot of time working on my younger daughters Halloween costume. I brought it with and did the finally beading that I needed to add, I had enough goods to make some matching earrings and a necklace to go with. I will get photos of the girls costumes (ohh and mine! made stuff for it too) soon.

Weekend get away

Ohhh how great it is to get out and focus on what crafts and projects need to be done. I am going to list a few of the photos, I have more that was done, but it goes with gifts, swapps, costumes and stuff that I want to keep wraps on for a little while.

Bags. I was going to make them reversible. I was going to send one to my swap buddy, and then realized I could make 4 and give one to each of us at the overnight scrap this last weekend.. oh and scrap buddy don't worry.. it wouldn't fit in the box. They were pretty easy.. esp since I can't sew.. it was a first for me, but the material was so cute I had to do something with it.


Want your mummy? I got the idea for these a couple of years ago from Family Fun, this year I am making about 80 of them, the girls classes and my PTA board will love them! They hold 2 pieces of candy and are just adorable!

Yes.. I know.. don't hate me! My Christmas cards were done in February, so I had time to get these mind blowing, cute as hell Christmas Tea for Mom and Me invites made. Custom design, cant wait for the party to show you the whole theme!

That's it for now.. I will have more promise.

Not limited to monkeys

I love holidays and birthdays and any excuse to create something fun and wonderful. I take painstaking details to create most things I do cuz' I am a freak like that. So in creating my oldest daughters birthday this year I have not disappointed. She wants a Limited Too party and LT2 does not have their own birthday line so that left it wide open for me! We are still working through the details but here is stage one.. the invite.. and the work put into this "masterpiece".
First task, find an image of the Monkey and the Flowers (the images for LT2). I did this by purchasing a luggage tag of the monkey and scanning him, then my daughter got a new backpack I scanned the flowers so I got these images.


Once I had these I needed to clean them up and create line art. (this took hours)


At this point I shipped the images off to the local stamp store and in a couple of days I had stamps. With much pondering and letting my daughter choose colors and ideas I went with it. I love the way it turned it and not only am I making the invites, and the thank yous, we will use them for the craft at the party too.

The party is in December, so I will have a full update later of the party.

Shoe box Swaps - Halloween Swap

We're going to be hosting swaps from time to time. We thought we'd kick it off with Halloween since it's just around the corner and the goodies will be needing to be shipped at the perfect time for Halloween. There are a few simple steps, "rules" if you will, to play along:

1. Send an email to withandwithout AT gmail DOT com, indicating you want to join this swap. Include:

Your Name
Your Address
Your blog address (if you have one)
A description of likes/dislikes to give your swap partner some direction

(This information will only be sent to your swap buddy)

2. Send the email no later than September 9. Swap partners will be assigned by September 10. You MUST ship your swap by October 10.

3. Swap items must fit in an average sized shoe box. We don’t want people going too crazy but want to have enough room to fit some cool loot.

4. This is a Halloween swap. Everything you send needs to somehow tie in to the theme. Whether it be colors, actual Halloween items, whatever, just make sure they tie together somehow.

5. Again, cut-off to sign up is September 9. Please send us an email before then.

6. Please read #2 again. It’s important you stick to the ship date to not ruin the fun for your swap partner.

7. Have fun!!

Feel free to invite anyone you’d like. We don’t have a cut-off and would love to have as many participants as possible. We have created a Flickr group that we would love for you to join. This will enable us to share pictures of all the great things we receive through the swap and have discussions about the group.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email or leave a comment! We look forward to swapping with you!

Back to School

I substitute at my daughters school, and have found I have an amazing amount of respect for the job that teaching professionals do day in and day out. For the start of each school year I check the list required for school and buy extras when I find them on sale. I also add a disposable camera, gift card to develop the film and a sweet treat. Here is what I did this year.

A Roaring Good time!

Each year Laurel and I do a half birthday for our kids. We both gave birth to winter babies and like the chance of seeing how the other half the year celebrate. This is the fourth year we have done this.
We planned a Dino Party. The invites jaw even moved! We had cupcakes, Dino Snacks, bug wings, dino scales, and swamp water. We went and saw Ice Age 2 at the dollar theater, had lunch and then went to the Dino Park. For activities we did volcano's, dug a dino out of an egg, build habitats for the dinos in the eggs, and built our own dino's.
It was a great day and a quick easy party to put together!

Fall Themed Dinner Party

Summer will soon be coming to an end, giving way to crisper, cooler air, shorter days and richer scenery. Which also means the end of BBQ season is well upon us. This month we’ve put together some ideas to throw a warm, elegant dinner party focused around the new season. Fall, to me, just begs for a dinner party. The warm colors that lend to beautiful, regal decorations, the chilling air that allows for cozy sweaters, warm drinks and comfy home temperatures, the crisp smells of autumn and the food – the fall food – the perfect mix to get together with a group of friends and spend an evening mingling, cooking and enjoying delicious, hearty food.

Below are our ideas to help anyone throw a successful party.

A tip for any successful party:
If this is the first party and your guests are neighbors or business associates, keep it a little more low-key. If you are having fun and your company knows you’re a party-throwing freak, feel free to go all out!

Invitations:
Of course they’ll have to be hand delivered, but tie an invitation to a caramel apple or attach it to a stick and put it in a gourd or small pumpkin.

You could wrap the invitation around an apple or wrap it in leaves and tie them off with raffia.

For traditional, paper invitations (the kind you could even send through the mail), fall colors and the things that represent autumn (scarecrows, pumpkins, leaves, etc.) are easy to get on paper to make simple, cute invitations.

If you preferring buying invitations, following are some sites that have numerous options (or ideas if you do want to make your own):

Announcingit.com

Myexpression.com

Eleganthandmadecreations.com


Food:
Mulled Cider or Hot Cider would be a great before or after dinner drink

Use the cooling weather as an excuse to serve a favorite soup instead of the traditional salad before dinner.

Autumn is the perfect time to serve a hearty stew or pasta as a main course.

A tart or crème brûlée would be a perfect dessert

Wine and cheese are a great pairing for before or after dinner while guests visit and relax

Other great food ideas, as well as fall party tips can be found at the following sites:

Mormonchic.com

Digsmagazine.com

Gildedfork.com

Decor:
Deep, regal shades of color will create an ambience of fall throughout your house and tie your decorations right into your party. Gold, burgundy, chocolate brown (even a tan depending on your other choices), eggplant, forest green, burnt orange, mustard are all excellent fall shades.

A centerpiece of a cornucopia with real or plastic colorful vegetables on top of a deep colored table cloth or runner

Ceramic dish with a variety of gourds or apples as small table decorations (whether on the dinner table or the areas surrounding the table), or on the serving table if you have one

Sunflowers are always a nice touch for fall floral arrangements

Handmade or printed place cards rested on top of small gourds or apples at each setting

Small pumpkins and gourds in bunches in a line down the center of the table keep it simple and don’t take much room

Party Favors:
Instead of sending your guests home with just leftovers, consider a simple, understated gift as they head for the door.
Carmel or candied apples (decorate the stick with a fall-colored ribbon)
Leaf wine glass charms

Patriotic Party

Yes, it's always party, party, party around my house!!
This week it was a patriotic themed party for our city's local Roy Days. I sent out cute easy to make envelope pocket slide cards, made easy cupcakes with sprinkles and flags, colored table clothes, cute bowls with homemade salsa and chips, handmade apple pie (cuz whats more America than that?) Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Chicken, and made my favorite baked beans. Yup.. party, party, party.

Lemon & Lime Swap (pt 2).

I am telling you.. if you have found our blog you need to get in on this! The swap Kim sent me was great! I will definatily use all the stuff I got and it was a lot of fun shopping for stuff to send her!!

Lemon & Lime Swap

We decided to do a friendly, little swap this past month. Something to just keep in touch and have some fun. This is all the awesome loot that Kim sent to me. She did way awesome and made me feel like a schmuck because she did such great stuff. She was very creative and thoughtful with the items she sent. I look very forward to using all of them. Yes, even the Jello even though I'm no longer a Utahn.

If you're out there and interested and joining us the next time we do one of these, to have some fun and get & give some cool stuff, drop us an email and we'll make sure you get included. Because really, what's more fun than getting awesome stuff in the mail??

Beach memories

Last year we went to Florida and spent one day at the beach. It was the first time the girls had gotten to spend any really time at the beach and they collected a bunch of sea shells. When I got home I had to find something to do with them and came up with an idea.



By using a paper frame, some sandstone paint, and hot glue, we have a perfect long term use of the treasures. I chose my favorite photo and bam! A perfect memory saved! This year we didn't find as many shells in Mexico so I am adding the wording in vinyl of where we were. I am sure just about anything would work with this easy project!

Fun photo holder

The girls went to a local craft store today and made these. They are too easy and really cute, only $5 each.

Reunion Luau

We were in charge of the family reunion this year. I planned a Luau themed pot luck lunch. Each branch of the family was assigned food and we proved the main dish and drinks. Being me, I also had to do decor and toys for the kids (of all ages!). We held it at Willow Park in Logan (half way between SLC/Ogden and Idaho), the park was great with a little zoo right next to us and a great playground.

These are the save the date post card, the invite (front and back) and the reminder post card.

These were a last minute idea I HAD to do, cupcakes with the beach, sand and an umbrella. They should have been a lot better looking, but I decorated them at the park and the the girls helped.. they were a hit regardless!

Not the best photo, but I found this great drink holder from OTC. It was inflatable and held our drinks cold.

My girls of course with all the swag we had available for every to play with, also from OTC.

And lastly the food. I feel pretty good, I used real pineapple to hold napkins down and got all the paper supplies from Dilly Dallies.. a discount store here, for $1 a pack.