If you are anything like me...

... you have been going to a ton of baby showers lately!

And if you are anything like me... the family budget doesn't have any extra "shower" money in it right now! So, I thought I would share some of my solutions with you!

In the past I blogged about the bath towels I make. Those are always a big hit at any baby shower (especially if you include a little rubber duck or something small like that with them) but since I just linked you to them there is no need to re-blog those babies! Moving on...

The Pacifier Pouch!

I seriously made this out of two scraps I got from the scrap bin at the Quilters Coop in Temecula (along with a little iron on vinyl to make the inside waterproof)! It was so easy and so so so cute! You don't have to include the clip, but I decided to because it just kind of completed the gift (the new mom doesn't need to go out looking for one now!)

The Travel Wipe Cover!

This is just a necessity so why not make it beautiful! I used about half of a "fat quarter", some spray adhesive, and ribbon and a hot glue gun - that simple! (and oh so cute!)

The Nursing Cover (aka: The Snack Shack)
So this one... well I'm not sure if it's cheating or just being really smart but I borrowed my friends "real" one and just measured it and copied it exactly! I went and got boning and "D" rings at JoAnn's and bought a white wash cloth in a big multi-pack on sale at Target (I figured I would me making more or these at some point). I lined both sides so that it was nice and pretty as well as just a little bit thinker to avoid sun light shinning through.

This is a gift best for first time mom's, as a second time mom probably already has one of these (unless they didn't nurse with previous babies and then by all means - bless them with one of these for their awesome choice to nurse their newest bundle!)

The Baby Wrap!

I toyed with making a sling, but after asking the mother I was going to give this to what she would prefer, I decided to brave the wrap - and man am I glad I tried! I loved it! This gift "streached" me the furthest in my sewing skills (which is great)!  I had to get special needles and string and learn a few new stitches on my machine, but I was so happy with the result because I basically made a "Moby Wrap" which is amazing! It really is just a giant piece of material with a little bit of stretch in it. I just hemmed the edges and reinforced the middle seem right where the baby is going to be. (This young lady was very happy in the wrap I made for her new cousin)

Burp Clothes!

I found a 6 pack of good old fashioned cloth diapers at Babies-R-Us and bought some super cute flannel and then - TaDa - some the cutest and most absorbent burp clothes you will ever find! (and six of them is just about enough to get you through one day!)

Happy Baby Showering!

My First First Birthday Party!

After attending a shower for my bestest friend Katie that was thrown by a master party planner I was totally inspired! (Take a look at this amazing shower here - Seriously, can you believe how cute that was?!) Anyways, like I was saying, I got inspired! I wanted to actually pull something together for Bennett that was both homemade (read: inexpensive) and beautiful (not girly of course) but not over the top (read: I was not getting a jolly jump or petting zoo!) .

So I set out on a quest... a first birthday quest... my mind instantly jumped to one of my favorite bloggers Katrina and her son's recent 1st birthday party! Not wanting to completely copy her entire party of course, I wrote her and asked her if I had permission to copy just one aspect of her party - the adorable shirt she made for her son! Well, she wrote me back (almost instantly, I was rather impressed actually) and let me in on her secret: Etsy! She said she had just gone onto etsy.com and looked at what people were selling for 1st birthday party items and them just made them herself! HELLO?! Such A Good Idea!

So, needless to say, I was on etsy in like 5 seconds (good thing the web address is short) and had so much fun looking at all the ideas! I couldn't even believe some of the stuff I found! Like this, and this and this! Oh man I love that website!

After my cuteness overload - I had to refocus - I knew what colors I wanted to stick with since they were on the invitation: Bright Green, Navy Blue and White.

So, I was off to JoAnn's that night (husband in tow of course) and came home with some great stuff for about $20 (AWESOME!)

I only remembered to take pictures of one project - can you say rushing to get them all done in like a week?! YEAH - well, no one's perfect!

Project #1, the flags: This project took a lot of pinning (two pins per flag) and a lot of sewing. But I wouldn't change it for anything! I loved the way the finished product looked!

I used simple household twine for the "rope"
The little flags turned out pretty awesome and even thought they weren't hanging from the big pepper tree like I had imagined, they still looked great in the Prior's family room and kitchen!
Next project: Birthday Banner - should have been hanging off the side of the barn all attached to the same piece of string - but still, very cute! (thanks to my husband's great idea of how to hang these!)

Again, because it was planned as an outside party, I had this great idea to decorate with Bennett's favorite toys so when it came to a "drink bucket" I thought his little red wagon would be perfect! It did look very cute full of juice boxes and water bottles - but word to the wise: don't use your son's favorite toy and tell him he can't touch it! He spent much of the party trying to empty out the wagon and get in! (Oh well, you live and learn)

The desserts were not my doing! I mean I thought up how I wanted it to look and such, but I must give credit where credit is due - my mom and soon to be sister in law made all the cupcakes (both kinds) - thank you both so much!

We went with carrot cake as a good middle of the road, not too much sugar and still yummy option for the day. The "adults" got my mom's fabulous carrot cake recipe turned into cupcakes and the kids got a recipe I found online that actually wasn't that bad at all (I would use it again for sure!) and it contained no white sugar or flour! Oh and then sort of last minute I made a huge batch of ginger cookies because they are my husband's favorite and they are always hugely popular and well, I was worried we wouldn't have enough dessert. Funny thing is, all the cookies were gone and we had left over cupcakes!

One of my favorite things I saw on etsy was the circle garland with the little boys pictures on them. Well, as those of you who scrap book know, that garland would not be cheep with the amount of paper and ribbon you needed to buy for it - so here's what I did! I bought white poster board and used left over paint from Bennett's walls and painted poster board circles. Once dry I (actually Adam did this part for me) used spray adhesive to attach Bennett heads to the circles and we staggered them, green circle, white circle, green circle ... Now of course, these were supposed to be hanging from the big pepper tree in the back yard, but still, they looked super cute and people really enjoyed looking at the whole year of Bennett as the pictures spun around through out the afternoon.

I didn't end up making Bennett's birthday shirt - which is funny because it was the only project I set out on really doing! Thanks to Kohl's and the always fabulous "Carter" brand for choosing my exact color scheme for the party, we went with this:

As for the high chair decorations, I went with what would help me be the most relaxed! I knew that if I spent the time to make some sort of decoration like I saw on etsy and then Bennett reached over and pulled it off with his messy frosting hands I would be less than lovely to my son ("No, NO, No!!!" I can just hear me now on the video!) and I didn't want that. So, I only decorated with a balloon - I still think it looks cute!

The only "game" we had was a craft table where we asked people to make Bennett a birthday card and write a blessing for him on a future birthday. It was a big hit and we got cards up into his 20's as well as a card for his 40th and 41st birthdays!

Lastly, the party favors! I had them all in a basket (actually, it was the basket Adam and I had at our wedding on the present table for cards) and as the party drew to a close I tied a balloon on to each one and sent them on their way (less clean up and what kid doesn't love taking home a balloon?!)
(My sweet neighbor holding all the balloons with the basket in the background on the end table)
Each bag had a Kazoo and a Harmonica (blue and bright green of course - we cleaned party city in Temecula out of their green favors - sorry!) because they were the right color and Bennett's recent love of the Kazoo!

I think that is about it, other than the food. The food was simple, I'm sure you saw it in some of the pictures anyways, just snacks, we didn't serve a meal, we just made sure that it was all stuff that we would be okay with Bennett eating if he went to a birthday party (you know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you)

I had a super lot of fun with this party and I am defiantly looking forward to throwing some great one's in the future! Thanks again Alli and Katrina for getting me thinking in the right direction!

Martha Does Hanukkah!

This last weekend I hosted a table at my churches annual Ladies Dessert Night. Seeing as how we have no extra money right now and my china is blue, I went with what I had and made a Hanukkah themed table!

Well, my good neighbor (and creative mastermind behind most things crafty that I do) gets Martha Stewart Living and she knew I was doing a Hanukkah table and showed me just what Miss Martha had going on her Hanukkah table! Thus with the help of Crystal-Lee and my mom, two projects were born out of the cuteness found in the December 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living!

First Project: Chocolate Dreidels

These were so easy and cute!

Melt some chocolate, dip the bottom of the kiss in the melted chocolate and stick it to the marshmallow. Wait about 2 min for that to harden and then stick a pretzel stick in the other end.

After that you can start dipping the little beauties into the melted chocolate and laying them on wax paper to harden.
Then you make some frosting that will get hard (we used royal icing) put it in a piping bag, put the symbols on and you have the cutest little dreidel / place card that there ever was!

Second Project: Star of David Candle Wraps
(FYI: My fingers were kind of bruised the next morning after doing these all in one sitting. I would recommend spacing this project out over a few days)

Martha, the generous woman that she is, put the templates for these little beauties on her website, so I just printed them out, used some navy blue paper my mother-in-law so graciously picked up for me, cut the paper to the height of the candle and started punching little baby holes with the sewing pins

800 hours and one badly bruised finger later, I had the most beautiful candles ever! (Even with the hurt finger, I would totally do it again - I LOVE them!)

Dinner? What? You want me to make dinner?

Okay, so lets just say I'm a bit spoiled with having a husband who likes to cook!

However, said husband has been rather ill lately and all of a sudden I'm trying to think up dinner ideas at 5pm when I realize that he is not going to be able to get up and make something! (I know, like I said, I'm rather spoiled in this area)

Well, here's what I found:

SUPERCOOK.COM

This website is a miracle! I have used it this past week and so far I have found two fabulous recipes by just typing in the things I have in my house. But my favorite part of the site is the section below there you type in the food you have. This section, titled "Do you have..." show suggestions and you just click on things to add them to your list of ingredients. Stuff like butter and garlic and olive oil, things that I have but that I would forget to put on a list of ingredients.

So all that being said, I love this website and here's the links to the two fabulous recipes I found.

Baked Chicken with potatoes and rosemary (I added onions and carrots and it was great!)

Curry Chicken (I made brown rice and zucchini to go with it and it was awesome!)

I hope you enjoy the website as much as I have! Happy cooking!

Flourishing?

Flourish:

1) to be in a vigorous state; thrive

2) to be in its or in one's prime; be at the height of fame, excellence, influence, etc.

3) to be successful; prosper.

4) to grow luxuriantly, or thrive in growth, as a plant.

5) to add embellishments and ornamental lines to writing, letters, etc.

So I've been thinking about this word.

A lot.

I think, "Am I flourishing?" Do I want to be flourishing? I'm defiantly not flourishing financially right now. Is that okay? What about spiritually? Am I flourishing spiritually? Do I even want to flourish spiritually? What will that look like? Will I look like a freaky church person with lame t-shirts?

Flourishing requires health and a lot of it. Health that sometimes I don't know that I possess on my own.

The picture above is of a plant I received as a house warming gift when Adam and I moved last summer. I took this picture a week ago. These are the first two flowers (of many more to come as you can see) to bloom after literally coming back from the dead! This plant was dead - I mean dead, dead! I truthfully thought a weed was starting to grow in the pot. But nope it was the plant coming back. At the end of July I left the plant for 5 days with no water, I thought I had killed it for sure that time - apparently not. The plant kept growing and these sweet little blooms opened up!

Things that are dead don't produce. Things that aren't healthy don't produce. Malnourished plants might be green, but they will never produce a thing. It's only things that are thriving (or flourishing) that are healthy enough to produce fruit or flowers.

So of course as I think of the word "flourish" i think about what I'm producing. What I'm doing with my life. What I'm doing for God. And then it hit me, plants don't will themselves healthy. Plants don't decided to produce, it just happens. As a natural outpouring of health. And sometimes that health doesn't even come from a person caring for the plant, sometimes health is truly an unexpected miracle from God that we can take no credit for. None whatsoever.

I'm reading a book right now that is dealing with how you respond when you are offended. I'm realizing I have no choice in how I respond. It's a natural outpouring just like those two little blossoms. I can not will myself to respond differently just as that plant could not will itself to produce flowers.

How I respond to offence is a picture of my health.

Any health I have is not because I willed myself healthy. Any health I have is a miracle from God.

_______________

Those who are planted in the house of the Lord

shall flourish in the courts of our God.

Psalms 92:13