Crafts – Lissables

Happy 1st Birthday Max!!!

Well this seems like as good a time as ever, to revive the blog I let die a long time ago. Whoops, turns out, when you have kids they suck your time dry! But then they also bring joy and fun birthday parties which inspire you to bring it all back. Wish me luck on that one.

It has been over a year since I blogged. I left you high and dry on a heavy noted post about my second pregnancy trials. Well that little monster came into this world and changed it forever. I’ll have to do a recap of his amazing first year, it flew by in a blink. And suddenly I was planning his first birthday party which has come and gone. Max was named in memory for my Grandpa, Marinus. A good Danish name I didnt want to burden a child with but still wanted to honor the memory. Max was his nickname when they immigrated to Canada and no one could pronounce his name properly. Which made it the perfect name to give this hilarious little boy. It’s also the name of a the character in a favorite book of mine, Max – King of all the wild things, ever fitting. So we celebrated him with a Wild Things theme. I hope you enjoy all the little details as much as I did.

Our little cake display area was my pride & joy of the party. I may have only gotten 2 hours of sleep because of this party falling on the same weekend as my annual scrapbooking weekend. We got home at 7pm and I baked all night and set up so that it was all ready to go by 11:30 the next morning. Might have been the reason this is one of my less elaborate cakes! haha

The wooden cake stands are from Indigo in Canada, I found them this summer, fell in love and ran with the whole theme based on them. I found moss at Michaels along with some light up tree’s that will circulate into my thanksgiving decor later this year. The pine cones are from our Mt. Charleston one year Birthday shoot with Max the week before. The steel lanterns are from target, and I get asked about them from every guest.

I made a monthly banner and if you are counting, yes I did end on month 10, always a month behind but consistently, so that counts for something right? And that beautiful blue highchair that has had color identity issues is going to stay this mint color for the rest of its life because it caused major heartache while trying to cover the last shadows of pink. For some reason the paint kept spraying out a different color when I went to cover the last spots. Driving me INSANE. But I finally did it and its beautiful and so worth all the cursing.

My mantle is one of my favorite places in this new house. We had the tv outlets removed and moved, and a mantle custom made so I could decorate it every month. I have loved watching it change this last year. So September was all about this Baby’s 1st Birthday. Some throwback photos from my pregnancy, and his first days. And his brand new photos from his one year shoot. The big canvas is from his nursery and one of my favorite quotes. The letters are Heidi Swapp Marquee letters from Michaels. I obviously didnt add the marquee lights for the party but I will for his room! I ordered a book just to destroy for this party. Sorry book gods! Top it off with a banner & it makes it hard to pull it down for Halloween decor next!

If you know me, my decor is usually centered around photos. They are my love and life. We took these a week before his birthday and they sing to my soul. They are everything my heart dreamed of with his shoot. I will share the actual images in another post! I added a custom banner, I got the letters from target in a banner kit. Way too cute and easy!

My cake took a backseat this time. And that still is bothering me. But when its 3am and you know your baby is going to be awake in 3 hours, you just slap some frosting on that thing, add some sprinkles and call it a day! And besides, it tasted good and that’s all that really matters! I made 50 mini cupcakes too! Because you can never have too many cupcakes. And they made their way home with a lot of guests too!

Here’s where procrastination will never teach me a lesson. I had these elaborate favors in my head. I let it go until the last minute, and instead whipped these babies up. Thank goodness for my hubby and putting up with my endless, “Can you make me this in photoshop?”

The food was awesome and incredibly easy!! And you know what, it was the most recipe requests I’ve ever gotten! So here they are in all their easy peasy glory, but with no pics because I just wasn’t that on top of it!

Spinach Artichoke Pasta Salad

Ingredients

12 oz pasta (I used rotini)
1 cup sour cream
¾ cup mayonnaise
1 package (1.4 oz) vegetable soup mix
3 green onions, sliced
1 can water packed artichokes
4 cups chopped & lightly packed fresh spinach

Instructions

Cook pasta el dente according to package directions.
In a large bowl combine sour cream, mayonnaise and dry soup mix.
Drain artichokes well and cut into quarters.
Toss pasta with sauce. Gently fold in spinach, green onions and artichokes.
Refrigerate 1 hour before serving.

SWEET AND SPICY SLOW COOKER KIELBASA BITES

INGREDIENTS

3 packages kielbasa, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 cups BBQ sauce
1 (10.5 ounce) jar red pepper jelly
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (or more if you want it extra spicy)

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Stir to combine.
Cook on low 6 hours, increasing to high for the last 30 minutes of cooking (or on high 3.5 to 4 hours total)
Stir every 30 minutes to make sure the bottom kielbasa isn’t burning.
Enjoy!

I mean seriously two of the easiest things I’ve ever made and SO delicious that we thoroughly enjoyed the left overs! I made the pasta salad the night before so it had lots of time to set. We also had brushetta, chips, carrots & dip too. And gourmet PB & honey sandwiches for the littles.

And then we sang Happy Birthday and let a little dude go to town on a BIG piece of cake! He was ready for a nap but decided he could spend some extra time destroying this thing. For never having cake before, he sure knew he ~~liked~~ LOVED it!

And then he went off and slept a solid 3 hours! His best nap yet. So do I just bake him a cake everyday for that perk? #sugarcoma

Max loves his new chair from his GB&PopPop. He was stealing Sawyer’s a lot recently, and with 2 kids you know you need 2 chairs! We were so lucky to celebrate this birthday with both Grandma’s in person. When you live in another country from family, this isn’t a given, its a privilege and these boys are constantly spoiled with visits, their biggest gifts on birthdays! So we had some traditional Birthday video chats with our other long distance families, Auntie Kimmy and Braxton entertained Max right up until bedtime. Making it a chalk full of perfect happiness for this little boy!

Thanks to everyone who came and wished this favorite one year old of mine a Happy Birthday! It was a delightfully perfect day spent with friends and family. I’m sure I’ll blink and be posting his 2nd Birthday.

And stick around, I’ve already got a couple blog posts scheduled for this week! Im back, and I hope you are just as excited as I am about that!

Inspiration Unlimited 2012.

I cannot believe it’s taken me this long to blog about Inspiration Unlimited 2012. It was our first year and it will not be out last. We have already preregistered to go back next year. And I am already counting down the days. I cannot sum this up in one post. There were too many amazing moments to describe.

– My mom visiting and getting one on one time with her, the first time in a year!

– Making lots of new friends.

– Creating some amazing albums and projects.

– Having too many laughs with Lori and Lynn!

– Of course winning the cricut imagine! (which I swear I will get to posting about playing with one day soon!)

– Feeling absolutely, Unlimitedly, Inspired.

Not only did I come away from a 2 day weekend with 3 mini albums, a jewelry project, and a layout or 2. But I also feel pumped about getting back into scrapbooking, after putting it on the back burner during Sawyer’s first year. Which is just in time to make all the projects for Sawyers First birthday next week!

{How I adore you jewelry Class with Kristen Robinson}

Now onto the albums, for all of you who actually care! I always love seeing projects from these events, so I wanted to share ours. Of course the most exciting part for me is that this is a Teresa Collins event. I love her designs and this weekend did not disappoint. Our first album started the weekend off with a bang! We all know I am {obsessed} with taking pictures. So I always LOVE a good album that you can fit as many pictures as possible into. Bonus points for it being so easily displayed as well. We used her ‘Vintage Finds’ collection. Which is a very neutral soft feminine collection. It’s great because it will look great is so many different homes. It has mini page dividers and in between simple photo protectors. So I have over 24 photo’s in this one little mini album. How perfect! I chose to use all my favorite pictures from sawyers first year. {It’s all about sawyer this month, who am I kidding, EVERY month!}

Later that afternoon we had Debby Schuh’s Pocket album. And this is where it gets hard to pick favorites. I love this clever album and cannot wait to make another! In each of these classes the paper is provided to you. I however did not love the paper. But like most scrapbooking paper, it was two sided. And by luck I did love the coordinating back sides. So mine ended up looking 100% different than most of the classes. {I’m a sucker for banner’s, so as soon as I saw that first piece I knew what direction I was taking mine instead.} Inside there is 12 mini pockets. You can fill with notes, journaling, pictures, memorabilia. Debby suggested making another for thanksgiving and having each person write what they are thankful for and each person would get their own pocket. A wonderful memory to look back on! The possibilities with this album are endless. I cannot wait to make another!

We ended the weekend with another Teresa Collins class. The ‘Tell Your Story’ Collection is a big favorite of mine right now. With teal and coral I was instantly in love. Add some white, grey, chevron, and stripes and I want to buy it all! I was really excited when I saw the sneak peek about this album. Its a 6×12 skinny mini album. With lots of prompts to ‘tell you story!’ Which I think many of us leave out in scrapbooking. It’s a beautiful, it’s clean, it’s a simple album. I love it, I can’t wait to fill it. I’ve been dying to finish it these last two weeks, but a first birthday keeps taking all my time!

We also did a class from Stephanie Hunt from Bella Blvd. It was a mini album on steroids. Which is why I have no pictures to show you yet. {I will try to go back and add pictures to this section once I have it finished, because it really is a beautiful project!} I have not gotten any of it finished. It was a big project and good for her to try and make something so ambitious. Her ‘Because of You’ album is such a great idea. It’s a place to add memories. One page for each person in your life who has made you who you are today. You journal a “because of you” for each person. It will be a very emotional album. Something I think I will even learn from after going through everyone in my life. Another one I can’t wait to get to. That’s another great thing about this event. You are thrilled to continue working on these projects long after it’s ended!

So there it is. Finally the Inspiration Unlimited 2012 post. Only took 2 weeks. I know I didn’t do it justice, so if you want to experience it yourself you will have to keep and eye on it, and get on that waiting list asap! Only 348 more days to go until Inspiration Unlimited 2013! Cant wait to do it all again!

I WON!!!

If you know me really well, you know I DO NOT win anything. Ever. Bad luck maybe? Who cares. Not a big deal. And that’s why Last Saturday at Inspiration Unlimited, I thought, there is no way I will win this. That however has never stopped me before on trying. Apparently I have a little bit of my dad’s competitiveness in me. So Saturday night at about 9 they announced a contest using the left over scraps from the album kits they had made for 250 women. I grabbed 3 stacks, I was already crazy in my head. Keep in mind this event was about 45 min’s away from my house. And I have an 11 month old who still won’t sleep through the night. Again crazy.

I started cutting strips with fringe scissors in the car. And spent about another 2 hours cutting. Then came the “uh oh, how do I make this into my vision.” And for a moment I thought I had cut all that for nothing. But once you’ve sat fringing paper for 2.5 hours you dont just give up. It certainly wasn’t perfect and I would have preferred to sew it onto a dress form but I didn’t know if that was cheating since it wouldn’t be 100% paper. Regardless, I hot glue gunned over 100 strips onto posterboard. {And thank goodness I recently lost some of that baby weight!} I wrapped it around myself in one big sheet and finished it off with a flower belt to hold it together.

There was some tough competition. There was 5 winners. 4 won cricut mini’s, and after all of them were announced there was a little part of me that thought it was over because there was no way I won the whole thing. And then they announced my dress as the winner of a brand new cricut imagine machine! It was all I could do to not to run around like a crazy person. After I sat back down my hands shook for the next hour. I think I’m still in shock. Its a good thing I live here too because I don’t know how anyone else would have gotten it home on a plane! I am super excited to play with it! I’ll be sure to share it when I do, as for now I am still running around like crazy. After not sleeping all weekend we did, a birthday party, a cake and a photo shoot. And it’s only Tuesday!!! Next post will be all the albums and stuff we made at IU! Your not gonna want to miss it. Possibly one of my favorite albums ever made!

So stick around, because I’ve got a lot to share on lissables coming up! And mom goes home tomorrow, so I’ll have nothing but time to blog!

YA RIGHT!

A Vintage Highchair.

As we all know I am the biggest fan of pinterest.

But the best part of it is when you actually create some of your saved projects. Which is what Sawyer’s birthday is all about for me! I’m even getting it finished and on time! This is rare indeed.

But there was one pin I saved way back when I first joined pinterest. I knew as soon as that chunk in my bump was born it was going on the to do list. Refinishing a vintage wooden highchair, and doing a smash the cake photo session. {another excuse to take pictures is always on my to do list.} Here are a couple of the pins that inspired this project!

So off I went on my craigslist hunt for a vintage wooden high chair. Looking for items like that in Las Vegas gets very few and far between. But I got lucky. One just down the street. Brandon thought I was crazy. I was thrilled. And then it sat in the garage for 6 more months. I knew if I left it too long I would put it off and put it off. So I made a deadline chart for all his birthday projects. This was the first. {don’t worry I will share them all!}

This is such a simple project. If I can do it, you can do it!

Here we go, start by cleaning your chair. This is a step if your chair is dirty or has been used in the last 40 years. Mine was already clean so I started with sanding. And sanding, and sanding, and sanding. This is the step that takes the longest. The tray was the hardest since it had a finish on it to withstand a lot of wiping down. But stick with it, it’s all down hill after that! Make sure you also clean off the dust. Wipe it down with a wet cloth and make sure you get it all. I left a little on the tray in my haste, and though its not visible in pictures, you can sure feel it!

Now you want to find your favorite color. I debated between the final lime green and teal. There is not a great selection at our local home depot. I would have gone to a craft store had I prepared in advance. While your there pick up 2 cans of primer. It took me 1 1/2 cans of spray paint for each, primer & paint. {4 cans total.} Lay down a drip sheet, I choose to paint in my garage since painting in direct sunlight can cause the paint to bubble. I applied the primer one night, a second coat within the hour. And then let it dry overnight. 24 hours later I started painting. I did one coat at night and then I let a couple days go in between. Not on purpose, just time getting away. If you are going to use it as a daily high chair I would suggest putting a clear seal coat on the tray. I didn’t bother since I will only be using this for birthday’s and hopefully be re painting it each birthday!

And tada! Finished! I’m really excited for the way it turned out. I’ll be sharing all the smash cake photo’s tomorrow but he’s the finished chair and a couple teasers! Good luck! If you make one of your own be sure to share it. lissables@gmail.com I always love seeing other people’s takes on the same projects!

Make sure you check back tomorrow for all the smash cake pictures. O and after posting these I already had another birthday boy book the same session, lots of photography going on! Stay tuned!

Flattered.

I am a HUGE fan of pinterest. I am on it 24/7 and have 6,830 pins that I’m going to get to one day….. And though I try to pin stuff from my own blog every now and again, nothing really takes off. But just last week I saw one of my own friends pin something, and I paused and thought that’s cute and familiar. And BAM it hit me. “That’s mine! I made that!” I clicked through it to my own blog, to my post last October, about my Homemade Mummy Onesie. Where I found that she wasn’t the only one. A whole bunch of people are pinning it. As well, a blog that posts about pinterest finds posted a link to it! Thanks Over The Big Moon.

So I thought since everyone is pinning it and talking about it that I should share a photo of Sawyer actually IN the costume! Keep in mind he was only 2 weeks old, and I was definitely not back to my picture taking self.

So keep pinning away. I love you for it!

Homemade Mummy Onesie

If you are also finding yourself with a bump turning into a baby this month, you may have noticed there is few and far between for newborn Halloween costumes. So you’ve got to get creative! I have a couple different idea’s in mind for Sawyers first Halloween. I’m actually writing this back before he has made his appearance. I was smart enough to plan ahead! Plus at this point I still have some time to do creative things!

I found this idea on pinterest. Surprise surprise. The original poster used gauze instead. But I made this last minute one afternoon and simply used an extra onesie I cut up. However you may find gauze to be a bit stiffer and therefore easier to work with. Mine was slipping and stretching all over the place!

Since I was using strips I had to pin them down a lot and stretch them in anticipation. The original used one long strip, and laced it back and forth and cut it after sewing. With gauze she was able to distress the fabric as well. But its your personal preference what you would like to use, I am just sharing options! But with both your going to want to pin first and then use a sewing machine to sew it. Not a fun task! Its hard to get the onesie into the sewing machine and through it. But its do-able, and that’s all that matters. Be patient. Then cut your ends off. You don’t need to be precise, as the uneven look plays to your mummy idea!

And your final step, add a pair of large googly eyes! Try and layer them underneath your strips a little bit for effect. I made this in about 30 minutes. So if you know a little one in need of a simple homemade costume, now you have a perfect idea! I know I am loving my little mummy today!

Decorate Your Door

If you aren’t carving pumpkins it can sometimes be hard for trick or treater’s to tell whether your a candy house or not. But this is a fun idea that can decorate the outside of your house in the most simple of ways. I just happen to have a green door too so this is right up my alley! Use paper plates and back craft paper to make the eyes, mouth, bolts and scar. Use a large piece of fabric to make the hair. You can add some spiders too but the face makes a big impact all on its own.

Don’t have a green door? Get creative! A red door could become a cartoon devils face. White can become a ghost. Other colors can become fun cartoon monsters! Its all up to you!

Ghost Poop

If you are sending snack to school for kids and cant think of something thats easy peasy and wont keep you up all night preparing, look no further! Ghost poop, how silly and simple. But what kid wouldn’t giggle at it.

Download the free template from Cant stop making things for your label. Fill a plastic bag with mini marshmallows and staple your printed label over top. I know I will be making these one day for our little guy!

Name Skeletons

Ok and back to the kids Halloween. We’ve all done the craft at some point in our lives where you fold a paper in half, write your name, and cut out a cursive mirror image. A teacher took this a step further adding little skulls, arms and legs. And each kid ends up with a very personal name skeleton. Just glue each piece down on a piece of black craft paper. How fun! Great project to do with your kids!

Glam pumpkins

So we’ve had a couple back to back posts about kids inspired Halloween idea’s. But there is lots of idea’s for an adult Halloween too. I just love the idea of keeping Halloween classy. And this is the pumpkin if thats your Halloween theme this year!

A glamorous blinged out pumpkin! Find a symmetrical white pumpkin, sometimes this is harder than it sounds! (You can paint an artificial pumpkin to use again each year too) Add crystals with super glue down the seams and in between to form a bling spider web. Spray paint a spider silver and glue that to your webbed pumpkin. I just adore this pumpkin! So girly!