Rainbows On the Brain

Say what?? Its December. I should be thinking about Christmas decorations, right? Well, that's done. For the first time EVER, I completely decorated the house for Christmas by the first day of the month! I am a firm believer in not putting up any Christmas decor until after Thanksgiving, and usually I wait until December. My cousin and I have a tradition of putting up our grandma's tree every year on the day after Thanksgiving. So we did that (which was an adventure, let me tell you! Major tree issues - ugh), and I guess it inspired me to get going on my own decor. So on Saturday, I decorated in the house as much as I could.

 This year, DH bought me a new garland for the mantle. I love it! I'm kinda thinkin it needs lights though...hehe.

On Sunday, I convinced DH to go pick out our tree (we don't do artificial trees) and we put it up that afternoon. C had fun "helping" us, though she couldn't quite figure out how to actually hang ornaments.

I forgot to take pics of the other decorations we have, but we really don't have a lot. Just a wreath on the back of the front door (we keep it closed all the time to keep the cold out, so I enjoy it more when the wreath is facing into the living room), and one on the pantry door in the kitchen. All my artificial seasonal flowers came out, which will stay up until the end of winter (they're not sparkly and Christmas-y, just winter-y, in my opinion). A little tree in C's room, which she helped decorate, and my traditional Barbie mini tree. I have been collecting Barbie Hallmark ornaments since I was a kid, and a few years ago I decided to give them their own tree. I love it!

But enough about Christmas (for now!). What's really been on my mind lately is RAINBOWS! Why, you ask? Because I'm planning C's THIRD birthday party!

First of all, let me just say that it is extremely hard for me to believe that my baby girl is turning 3 in just 15 days. Just this morning I looked at her in her toddler bed and teared up because she almost takes up the whole thing now. (*:

Until C starts to express an interest in her actual birthday parties and has her own ideas, I've been choosing the themes. For her first birthday, we didn't do a theme per say. I just went to the Dollar Tree and picked out decorations that I liked. It ended up being pink and green and butterflies everywhere. It was pretty simple, though. Last year, I did a Minnie Mouse theme. That was super cute. I had little mouse ears for the kids to wear, and hot pink and neon green everywhere, and my friend made a gorgeous Minnie Mouse cake for us. It was still a pretty simple party, though.

This year, inspiration struck me a while back. I can't remember what the first thing I saw to inspire me was, but I must have seen a picture somewhere of a rainbow party, and knew that's what I wanted to do. December can be such a blah month to have a birthday in. Sure, everything's decorated in red and green and sparkles for Christmas, but everyone's so busy with Christmas and everything else, so its always a struggle with birthday parties. So this year I wanted something super colorful and cheery - and what says colorful and cheer better than rainbows?!

What sealed the deal for me was a picture of cupcakes I saw back in October.

Gorgeous, right?? Once I saw this picture, I knew C's birthday party would be rainbow-themed, and I knew I'd make these cupcakes. I ordered the rainbow candy earlier this week, and I'm crossing my fingers that it'll arrive before the party!

One night this week, C asked me if we could make rainbow cupcakes. I had already gotten her approval for the theme for the party, and she's seemed pretty excited about it. I knew I needed to practice these cupcakes before the big day. Cause not only would they have a rainbow on top, they would be rainbow on the inside, too!

So, me and C mixed up the cake mix (from a box) and I divided the batter into 6 bowls, then added food coloring to each bowl. It was a very time consuming process, but the results were well worth it! I didn't add frosting to these, but C didn't seem to mind.

I only got 12 cupcakes out of one box of cake mix, though. I need to make at least 4 dozen cupcakes, so that process will take me a while. I might end up making some cupcakes and then a rainbow cake. We'll see.

My husband and I must be out of our minds, cause we decided to have C's party at our house this year. We normally have it at my mother's church, since we have so many people. But its always hard to get a good date since the church has so many things going on this month. So I suggested to DH that we have it at our little house and he agreed. Yep, we're crazy. We're inviting over 40 people. If they all show up, my house will be super crowded. Hopefully, the weather will be nice and the kids can get outside a little to run around...

I'm going ALL OUT with the rainbow theme. I'm probably going overboard, actually. You should see my Pinterest board dedicated to rainbow stuff! I'm DIY-ing almost everything. It will look like a rainbow threw up in my house that day. My plan is to decorate the night before after C goes to sleep, so that when she wakes up the next morning she sees all the rainbow stuff (the party is on her actual birthday). I have a TON of ideas and I absolutely can't wait to start everything!!

Yesterday, I watched youtube tutorials on how to make tulle tutus, and I feel confident I can make one, so I ordered some different colored tulle. My plan is to create something to this effect:

Haven't decided about the shirt yet, but I love the idea of a "3" and C's name!

I'll be making tissue paper pom-poms to hang everywhere, kind of like this:

Youtube has great tutorials for those, too. (Gotta love youtube!)

And of course, there will be a plethora of multi-colored balloons and streams everywhere. I'll be posting lots of pictures, so stay tuned! ( :

Fresh

This is officially the last post about my living room curtains. (Insert fanfare here.) I made my decision on Friday, and as soon as I got home that afternoon I took "before" pictures, then hung the new curtains. And was extremely pleased with how they looked!

Not much to say here, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. ( :

Before:

You'll have to excuse the multitude of pink toys in here. I've tried several different storage/organization solutions for them, but nothing has worked. So I gave up! Normally, C's toys are confined to that one space. She's good about picking up after herself (most of the time). So I've learned to just live with it. Our house will not be featured in any magazines, and we actually live here, and this is our life. ( :

And now for the "after" pictures! (Sorry, I was having trouble getting great shots. The lighting was terrible! But you can get the idea.)

What do you think? Its a HUGE difference to me. The new curtains make the whole room look lighter, more fresh. And a little bit more modern. Which is not really my style, but I like the little touch of it here. In the store, these curtains looked off-white, so I was a little worried they would look dingy next to the white trim, curtain rod, and ceiling in the room, but they look white in there.

For now, we're still living with the old throw pillows on the couch. One is red stripes and the other is green stripes. (The couch is on the opposite side of the window.) I'm gonna take my time and find pillows that I really love. Or just some pretty fabric and make my own covers.

At Christmastime, I'll probably swap out the new curtains for the old red ones. Because I really do love the way the red curtains look during the holiday season, especially with a pretty Christmas tree right next to them! ( :

And that, my friends, is THE END of the story of my living room curtains! ( :

Decision Made!

I promise, I am almost done talking about my living room curtain situation! ( :

When I get something on my mind to do, I want to do it NOW. It consumes my every waking (and sleeping) thought - well, not quite, but it feels like it! I might have an idea to do something and hang onto it for a few months (or even years), but once I make the decision to do it, I want it DONE. Like ASAP. I guess there are worse character traits to have, right?

So this is why I've been obsessing over my living room curtains this entire week. Every night while rocking C to sleep I imagine what new (blue) curtains will look like in there. I've thought about it and thought about it. And thought about it. Even though I can see it plain as day in my head, I know blue curtains in there might actually look ridiculous. Which is why I've been hesitant to buy the ones I've been blogging about all week. (Sorry.)

I had the bright idea the other day that making my own curtains might be cheaper. I researched no sew tutorials and felt confidant that I could handle it myself. I'm pretty handy with an iron (haha). So today on my lunch break I hit up all the fabric stores in town. I just knew I'd find the perfect fabric and it would be the perfect price.

Yeah, right!!

I was completely overwhelmed in the first store. So many fabrics in there...I'll probably dream about that tonight. I looked and looked, but nothing was screaming I'm the one! at me. On I went to the next store. I actually found a fabric I was in love with. It was an outdoor fabric, but I figured that doesn't matter. It was a gorgeous blue and white pattern, similar to the blue curtains I had picked out at Lowe's this week. Unfortunately, it was $18 per yard. Way too pricey. My goal was to make the curtains myself if I could make them cheaper than I could buy them ready-made. At the third store, I didn't find a single thing I liked. My friend J suggested shopping online, but I wanted something TODAY. I either wanted to hang curtains tonight, or start making them tomorrow.

So I headed back to Lowe's. I looked through all their curtains, just to make sure there was nothing else there that caught my eye. Thank goodness I did that! I stumbled across these beauties:

(That's a picture of the packaging.) The design is navy blue. Once I saw them, I was torn between them and the original blue ones I liked.

Furious text messaging with a few friends ensued. I even grabbed a Lowe's employee and demanded her opinion! I probably hemmed and hawed over these dang curtains for a good 10 minutes. I was leaning towards the pattern on the left, but I kept thinking, what if I regret not getting the other blue ones?? (I know, first-world problems, right?!)

In the end, everyone I asked voted for the one on the left in the picture above. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Since that blue is a true navy, it will be easier to match. The other blue is more of an indigo. While I love the pattern and the color, it will probably be frustrating to find fabric or pillows in that color - and that will drive me nuts (just like my wall color does when it comes to decorating!).

Plus, there was a nice price break with the new pattern: $19.95 versus $26.95 per panel. Sold!

I can't wait to get home and put these babies up to see how they look. I hope I'm not disappointed. Its gonna be tragic to have this much lead way and then totally hate them in my living room! We shall see. And then, I promise, that will be the last time I talk about my living room curtains! ( :

Again With The Curtains

Still trying to make up my mind on the curtains for the living room. I'm still in love with the blue ones I posted about earlier this week. Actually, I'm still in love with the multi-colored floral ones, too, but they're definitely out of the running (sadly).

Monday night, I showed DH the pictures of the 4 curtains I had selected from Lowe's. He immediately nixed the multi-colored floral pattern. Its pretty girlie, so I didn't argue with him. Its his house, too, and while I have the main "pull" when it comes to decorating, I don't like to do things that he absolutely hates. (Although I do put my foot down on some things, like colored walls. When we were fixing up our house before we got married and moved in, DH wanted every room to be painted white. Boooooriiiing!! I knew I'd hate plain white walls everywhere. So I put my foot down and said we were having colored walls - and a different color in every room! After we were done painting, DH admitted it looked good. Boo-ya.) Anyway, he wasn't in love with the brown and green floral curtains, either. But the blue ones, he seemed to actually like!

Of course, he immediately said I don't need to be spending money on things like that right now. He's right, which is why I haven't ran back to Lowe's to purchase those babies yet. Then he said "and what else will you have to buy after you get new curtains? Pillows for the couch??" Umm....well, I can't exactly have the same red and green striped ones if I get blue curtains, now can I? ( ; He just rolled his eyes. Which means if I come up with the money for this little upgrade, I'm good to go.

I have dreamt of curtains every night this week. I'm such a nerd! But I'm still basking in the fact that this is the biggest decision I have to make right now. Something so trivial and meaningless. Its wonderful. ( :

BUT, I am now havin a hangup over these darn blue curtains. My mother pointed out that they don't "match" my rug. Grr. Do curtains have to match the rug??! The colors "go" just fine, but now I'm concerned that there will be too many prints goin on so close together... Help me decide!

The middle picture there is what my floors in the living room look like. And there's my rug. A new rug is completely off the table. The curtains won't be touching the rug; there is maybe a foot or so of exposed floor between the rug and the curtains. Does it matter, though? I can't decide!

These blue curtains have opened up a whole new world of decorating in my living room. I'm kicking myself for not considering blues before now. So I may keep looking for a subtler pattern in the same rich blue color. Or I may go to the cloth store and see if a blue fabric sings to me, and have someone make curtains for me. (Or find an easy DIY tutorial online...hmmmmm!) That would probably be the cheapest route, huh?

Regardless of what I decide for the curtains, blue is gonna play a part in this room eventually. Lately, I've been obsessed with peacock colors. I don't have anything in my house in those colors, but I find myself admiring decor in them. So my plan is to make a wreath for the front door with peacock feathers and flowers in that color family! I can see it in my head, and if money wasn't an object, I'd have already started on that little project. ( ;

So, yay or nay on these particular blue curtains??

DIY Autumn Wreath

I did it! I made my first wreath. I said the other day I was inspired by another blog's DIY tutorial for an autumn wreath that looked pretty simple, and I went that day and bought supplies to make my own. I started on Monday night, but didn't get very far since I didn't buy enough ribbon (more on that in a sec). I really wasn't expecting to finish the wreath last night, but I did! And I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out:

Not bad, eh? Naturally, there are a few little things I would do differently if I made another one, but I'm pretty proud of my first attempt! Right now, its hanging on the pantry door in the kitchen. I originally intended it to be hung on the front door in the living room, but I think its too small for that door. I may or may not make a bigger one. Actually, I have an idea for a different front door autumn decoration.... ( ;

Autumn is my absolute favorite season. I love the warm days and the cool nights, and the crispness in the air. And I love the fall colors. I'd decorate with fall colors year-round if I could. So this baby will be hanging around until the very end of November, when I'll bring out my Christmas decorations. Surprisingly, DH really liked my wreath, too. He's skeptical of DIY projects like this, and he watched me making this last night with a "look" on his face. But when I was done and held it up for him, he was impressed. He even wants me to make some to sell at our church's annual Harvest Sale (all items are donated and the money goes to the church, and people love to buy crafty stuff like this!).

So here's a quick tutorial of how I made this wreath. It couldn't be more simple.

I started out with a styrofoam wreath and some pretty ribbon from Michael's:

Then I just wrapped the ribbon tightly around the foam, using hot glue at the beginning and end of the roll to secure it. I only made it halfway through with one roll of ribbon:

So the project was put on hold until the next day. Yesterday, I bought two more rolls of the ribbon, just in case. And thank goodness I did, cause it took a whole second roll and just a bit of the third! Next time I'll choose wider ribbon and be more careful about the spacing - I think I overlapped this ribbon a bit too much. It has a sparkly edge, though, and for some reason that made it difficult for me to get the overlapping just right. Anyway, here's a shot of the whole wreath wrapped:

I didn't get any pictures of the rest of the process. It went pretty quickly, and I was so excited to finish, haha. But I had purchased several bunches of fall flowers from Michael's, and I used wire cutters to snip the flower heads off and try to get them as flat as possible on the back. Besides the flowers (mostly mums), I also bought some fake fall-colored leaves and some adorable miniature pumpkins. One of the bunches of flowers had some pretty sunflowers and some random fall-like details (not sure how to describe those, haha) like the feathers you see in my wreath.

Next, I laid the flowers in a circular pattern on my rug and played with them until I liked the arrangement. Then I just started hot gluing them onto the wreath. I found that its much easier to put the glue on the flower back and then press it into the wreath (I started out by putting the glue on the wreath first). The hot glue dries really quickly, so like I said, this was a quick project. I did go through about 4 tubes of the mini glue sticks, though! I ended up having to snip off more flower heads to fill up empty space, since I didn't account for the roundness of the wreath in my planning. No worries, though. Then I just kept adding extras, like green leaves, until I was satisfied with the wreath. And voila!

I originally thought I'd leave some open spaces so you can see the ribbon underneath, but I didn't like that. I liked it fuller! You can see the ribbon from both sides though:

You could fill in more flowers and stuff around the edges to hide the base, but I liked being able to see the pretty ribbon.

This wreath is so cheery in my kitchen! I don't decorate the kitchen much with the seasons, so I love the little pop of color in there. Now I'm itching to do more projects like this! ( :

Here's a couple of detail shots, just cause I like it so much.  ( :

New Projects!

Today on my lunch break I did some exciting things! Okay, so they probably aren't exciting for anyone but me, but that's okay. ( ;

First, I headed to Lowe's to look at curtains. Lately, I've been itching to get new curtains in the living room. We've had the same ones since we moved in (going on 5 years!). I've never really loved our curtains, they've just always "worked" and I haven't looked too hard or been too inspired to think about it much. DH actually picked them out. There's absolutely nothing wrong with them, they just haven't been "the ones" for me (haha). I read a ton of blogs, and I've really been inspired lately by all the gorgeous curtains I'm seeing in other people's houses. All I've ever know is simple, single-color curtains, or those really country lookin ones with lots of ruffles (shudder). Or maybe lace panels, which is totally not the look of my living room. Anyway, here's what we have now. Please excuse the Christmas picture, I don't have just a picture of my curtains (yet).

Its hard to see in this shot, but the curtains actually have green in the plaid, and it matches perfectly with our walls. (Our walls are pained La Fonda Plaza Green by Valspar, by the way.) I am in love with our wall color. It was a bold choice, but I've never once regretted it. I get so many compliments on this color! It is hard to decorate, though. Its such a specific green color that I can't just go to a store and find something that matches. Which is why our couch and chairs are just brown. Safe. The pillows on our couch are striped - one is green stripes and one is red stripes. It sounds hideous, but I promise it looks good! I think I'm just tired of all the red in here. It constantly feels like Christmas, you know?

I'm ready for new curtains (and new throw pillows, of course!). I want a different look in this room, and with such a big window area, curtains will quickly do the job. I've been casually looking for a few weeks now. Saturday afternoon I looked at Lowe's website and decided today to see it all in person. I found 4 curtains that I love.

Completely different looks, huh? The flash of green in each picture is the color of my walls. Luckily, Valspar still makes that color. I think I can eliminate the green and tan flowers on the lower left - too plain, and I want more color. I worry that the red flowers on the top right will be too much red for me again.

I am totally in love with the bold floral pattern (bottom right), but worry that the greens will clash. What do you think? If the greens "go" together, I think it would be so fresh to see these hangin around my windows! It would also open up a lot of color options for me to decorate with. I could do throw pillows in several of those colors to tie them to the other side of the room...

Finally, the blue. For some reason, it has never occurred to me to use blue in my living room. I thought my options were green, white, or brown/tan. (I also love the way yellow looks with green, but that's too much like John Deere for us red tractor lovers! lol) Orange would look nice with the green, but I'd get tired of that I know. But blue....I'm kinda diggin how it looks! My friend R says the blue curtains may be a bit too formal for my space. But maybe that's just what I need in there to balance out the countriness of the room. I do love that its a classic pattern and so crisp. And I could do blue throw pillows on the couch...

I'd welcome any opinions from blogger land on this! Help me choose my curtains! ( :

Keeping with the decorating theme....I also stopped by Michael's today. This morning I read a post by a blog called A Beautiful Mess about preparing for fall. Fall is my favorite season, though it unfortunately doesn't last long around here. We go straight from the dog days of summer to the bitter cold of winter (even though Northerners would argue that winters in North Carolina are not so "bitter"), it seems. I like to decorate the house for fall as soon as possible - which means I decorated on Saturday. ( : I have a ton of fall floral arrangements that come out of hiding this time of year. Anyway, the girls at ABM linked to an older post of theirs about making a fall wreath and it really inspired me. Its never occurred to me to make my own wreath before. I have an every-day wreath that hangs on the back of the living room door (our door stays shut most of the time to keep the cool air in) and a Christmas wreath (both of which my aunt made for me), but a fall wreath? When I saw this DIY tutorial I knew I had to have one.

While I was at Michael's, I took note of their fall wreaths. 40 bucks for the same size I wanted! No, thanks. I can make it cheaper than that, I know. I gathered my materials and it turns out that I can make a wreath for around $25. I splurged a little and bought some extra goodies to throw in there. ( ; I can't wait to get started! I probably bought way too many flowers, too, so $25 is probably overstating it. I'll definitely share the final result, hopefully later this week. I wanna get this baby hanging on the door ASAP!

I also went to Target today. (Target and Michael's - a deadly combination for someone with little money to spend!!) I needed some hair spray (since I am not pleased with the Not Your Mother's spray), but of course I had to look around while I was there. I ended up buying a few things for C: a few new puzzles (which I think are good for her brain), some watercolor pages to paint, and this:

I am super excited about this! (Even more so cause it was on clearance, haha.) I'm sure there are better preschool books out there, but this one looks pretty good to me. Some of it I think will be a little too advanced for C right now, but a lot of it she can dive right into: Colors, Shapes, Patterns, Pre-writing, Letters and Sounds, Beginning Writing, Reading Readiness, Early Math, Science, Social Studies.

C won't be going to preschool, but I want her to learn what she can before kindergarten. If I was a stay-at-home-mom I'd definitely have a daily plan for this in place by now. As it is, though, we'll just do what we can, when we can. She loves learning, so I know she'll enjoy this. I'll probably make some sort of binder for all this, and make copies of each page so she can do them more than once. And I'll probably send some with her to my mother-in-law's house so they can do some work there. I figure the more she knows by the time she'd ready for kindergarten, the better off she'll be. Especially because more than likely, she'll be heading to kindergarten when she's just 4. Her birthday is in December, and if we hold her back until the next year (when she's almost 6), she'll be one of the oldest in her class, and I think she'll be underchallenged and bored at that point. She already knows all her letters and their sounds, and a bunch of colors and shapes, and some numbers. So I feel like she's already ahead of the game. Maybe I'm rushing it with a preschool program, but I don't think so. I think my kid is kinda gifted and needs to be challenged. We'll see how it goes. I can't wait!

Lots of new stuff goin down around here. Exciting! ( :