1 Year Down

I can't believe it, but our little girl turned ONE on July 31st! How did that happen?  Time sure does go fast when you are having fun...or running around like a madwoman.  It's one of those...I know!  :-) Back to our precious one year old...

Since we were on vacation during Audrey's birthday, and had quite a few events on the weekends following, we had a mini-family celebration on her birthday, and then her first birthday party on August 25th.  Here are some pics from her actual birthday and our little mini celebration.  (This is also Audrey's first encounter with sugar!) :-)

 

 My parents came up to Payson to celebrate our special girl

 

 

 

Love this picture!!

For Audrey's Birthday party on August 25th, I decided the day before i wanted to attempt to make a multi-colored cake, like I had seen on Pintrest. (Anyone else catching on how much I love that site?)

First I used a cake mix from a box and once it was mixed, I used a scale to measure out 6 equal portions.  

Then I used gel food coloring to color it in graduated pink and purple colors:

Unfortunately, I only had 2 sizes of round cake pans, neither of which was as small as I needed, so my cake layers were very thin.  If I do this again, next time I need to either double the batter or find a smaller cake pan.  I made it work though.  I baked each layer for 9 minutes and then after it was cooled started to stack them in the order I wanted.

 Once they were stacked, I iced and decorated the cake and it was time to wait for the next day when we would eat it.

We had sweet friends and family who joined us in our celebration and we had a fun time. (Thank you to all who were able to come.) After we ate pizza, we got to cake time:

Judah loved helping Audrey blow out her candle!

 Even though I would have liked thicker layers, the cake was yummy and a total hit!

 

 

Yes...this is Judah LICKING chocolate off the kids table!!

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY PRECIOUS DAUGHTER! We are so blessed the Lord chose to bring you into our lives!!

Hair Bow Holder

Another Project I was working on at the same time I was doing the Jewelry Organizer, was something to hold and organize Audrey's hair bows and headbands.  Again, on Pinterest, I saw this, and thought it would be easy enough to re-create:

I found a large picture frame I had in a box of picture frames that either never made it back up in this new house, or have never been up, and we probably received them at our wedding.  I didn't do any painting, as it was already a perfect cherry color to match Audrey's furniture.  Just bought some ribbon at Joanne's, hooks, and they had some silk flowers on clearance that I grabbed to "pretty it up" a bit.

First of course, I took the everything apart, and just kept the frame:

Then I used Nathan's staple gun and hot glue to put in the ribbon.  I wanted to do some thick and thin pieces of ribbon for the different size hair bows,  and for a little artistic flair as well as one piece of ribbon horizontal to help stabilize the vertical pieces a bit.)

 

I cut a couple of stalks off the silk flowers, and glued them to the front of the frame:

Then, I drilled holes in the bottom of the frame to screw the hooks in:

After this, I used two of the hangers I had left over from my jewelry project and put drilled holes and screwed them in the back so I could hang it on the wall in Audrey's room.  And the final product:

So, Audrey's bows and headbands went from being stuffed in a box:

To being displayed nicely in her room.  Now it's quick and easy to see what I have and grab what I want to match Audrey's outfit:
 

I liked how it turned out, but I think I may need to add more hooks at the bottom at some point so more headbands will fit.  For now it's works though.

Project - Jewelry

Do you ever have a project that just seems to last forever?  My sweet husband and also my sister-in-law gave me some great new jewelry for Christmas this year, and it has been laid out on my dresser every since.  You might be wondering how someone who hates clutter as much as I do, left it laying out there for over 6 months.  Well, I didn't want to just try and stuff it in my old jewelry box which didn't have any room in it anyway and was also too small for the longer necklaces.  So, I began looking through Pinterest and the Internet to gather ideas of a jewelry holder that I could make and try and save some money.  I saw some great ones, and my favorite's usually involved picture frames or window frames with hooks, etc.  Something like this...

So, once I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to make and just before I was about to go to the craft store to find an old window frame like the one above or picture frames at a thrift store, it hit me.  I used to have these 3 shadow boxes in our old house, and when we moved, they never got hung up. In fact, they were sitting on the ground behind our couch and had been there for 9 months.  I figure if I haven't put them up by now, I probably wouldn't.  Here is a picture of them hanging up in the hallway of our old house:

They were too deep for what I wanted, so I asked Nathan if he could cut them in half.  He wasn't sure if it would work, since they weren't actually made of real wood, but I had him try it anyway. Sure enough it worked, because he's amazing!

After this, I had fun arranging them on the floor in different patterns and trying to figure out what I wanted to do.  I finally settled on something like this:

As you can see to use all the halves, three of them, have the backs showing.  So, I took off the hangers on the backs and then I got the rest of the stuff I saw in my head for this project.  Some chain I thought of for the earrings, some hooks for the necklaces, and some liquid nails to put it together.  (I thought of the liquid nails since Nathan and I were pretty sure any screws would tear up the MDF and would look hokey.) Then honestly, I came to a standstill.  For the last 3 months, these have sat in my garage.  I pulled them out a few times, and then would just stare at them not really knowing where to start and put them back.

Today, that all changed.  I hosted a Premier Jewelry party for my dear friend Amy a week ago, and ended up getting about a good amount of free jewelry and some other pieces at half off.  The jewelry arrived today, and I was so excited about it.  I looked at Nathan and said, "I have to finish that project!"  (The catalyst to actually getting things in gear, was my dear friend Megan who came over today offering to help me get this project from my head to reality.

Here's how it all came together today...

 We sanded off the three of them that would have their backs facing front.

 I measured and marked every where I wanted the hooks 

 Megan came along behind me and drilled the holes that I had marked

 I stained the three that we had sanded.  (The stain I had was pretty close to matching the other pieces.) Then we started screwing in the hooks to the holes we had drilled.

 My husband helped me figure out how I was going to attach the chain for the earrings with some little screws and washers he had.

 Then we "liquid nailed" everything in the pattern I wanted, clamped it all together and left it to dry for a few hours.

 I figured I would finish tomorrow, but Nathan surprised me after I put the kids to bed by bringing it upstairs to hang on the wall in our bedroom.  He had reattached the same wall hangers to the back from the original shadow boxes.

AND HERE IS THE FINISHED PROJECT COMPLETE WITH JEWELRY:

I am pretty excited about how it all came together and LOVE the finished project.  I love that the boxes actually create some shelves where I can also lay my bracelets on top, or any miscellaneous rings, etc.

What I LOVE even more, is I hardly spent anything to make this.  A few months ago, when I was getting the items I needed, I had asked my parents to pick up some of the things when they were at the hardware store, and they didn't let me pay them back, so the hooks and liquid nails cost me nothing.   I of course already had the shadow boxes (in fact they were a gift, so I really spent nothing), and I bought the chain for the earrings which was a total of about $6.00 and had to buy the stain, since we couldn't find the stain we had from before, which was about $5.00.  So, I spent a total of $11.00 out of pocket for this jewelry organizer.

Thank you so much to my awesome husband and sweet friend Megan for your help in pulling this off today!