New Year's Resolutions

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas week and got to spend lots of time with your loved ones. (my favorite part!)

God has been speaking to my heart again. I was thinking about New Year resolutions, which I never take seriously. (for 2 years running, my only resolution was to grow my hair out, accomplished by strenuous act of not getting it cut off. Ha!) Last year, I turned 33 in December and for the first time had a serious resolution: Since, according to scholars, Jesus lived to be 33, I strove to be more like Jesus. This year, I thought about it and prayed about it, thinking, "What could be better than to attempt to be more like Jesus?" God whispered to my heart, "Be more Lisa." Wow. Talk about blow me to the ground. He spoke to me about this: Imagine a person who totally discovered, cultivated, and embraced all God made them to be. A person who had the courage to fully be that person, not caring what others thought, not wearing a mask. What a fiercely powerful individual that would be. A world changer. God made each of us thoughtfully, carefully, intricately for such a time as this.

And think about the verses where God tells us to love him with all that is within us? Now turn that around. You know if He asks that of us, He is already doing it. Meditate on all that is within God. All the love, power, wisdom, energy, creation. All that is within Him focused on you. Pretty healing stuff.

Balloon Party For Elle Belle

So after last year's somewhat involved birthday parties, I had declared that this year we would be doing simple parties for the girls. Parties involving kitty cat plates and such from Wal-mart. Then Elle requested a balloon party. Great! Easy peasy. I would buy a bunch of helium balloons and call it good. My mistake was casually typing "balloon party" into the search bar on Pinterest. : )

So many CUTE ideas. I was hooked and with Elle helping me design the event, here is what we ended up with:

Cannot say enough good things about the woman who designed these invitations! For less than it would cost me to buy generic ones at Target, she worked with me, making changes several times. She even included the envelopes. Her FB site is here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/That-Cute-Design/141701582527759

The striped party hats and cute party banner on the front of the table are from Target.

The rainbow jello instructions are on Pinterest. Very, very cute, but VERY time consuming. If you don't mind spending hours keeping track of 20 minute increments of time to pour the next layer, then go for it. : ) I personally won't be making it again. Ever.

The hot air balloon was on Pinterest, but no instructions were given. Just the cute little picture. How hard could it be, right? Hmmm. Let's just say those three little balloons took me more time than any other project for the party. Other than the jello. : ) If you're going to make them, be sure you have a bigger helium balloon and that it is fresh (is that the right description?). The more deflated the balloon gets, the less it is able to hold up even the skinny little strings I used. As for using cute ribbon, no way. The balloon couldn't handle the weight.

The recipe for flavored water is on Pinterest. As are plenty of rainbow colored food ideas.

The cupcakes were simple. Boxed cake mix, lightly frosted with canned frosting. Then, dipped in sprinkles. It took 3 bottles of sprinkles for 36 cupcakes. The plastic balloons were ordered online. My girls loved those plastic balloons. Just don't make the mistake I did and think you're ordering 12 of them, but instead receive 12 BAGS of them with 9 bunches in each bag. We will be decorating all of our food with plastic balloons for the next year.

My wonderful hubby made the giant balloon swag. It really was a show stopper. Here are the instructions: http://www.designmom.com/2011/05/balloon-banner-diy/  But don't let the blog instructions fool you. This is another time consuming project. Awesome when it's finished, but I firmly believe that when you start a project, you should know what it will take to finish it. It took Jason 2 hours to make it. He did use an air mattress pump to blow up the balloons, which helped. But, you still have to tie all those balloons and when it came to the sewing part, if the needle so much as grazed a balloon by accident, Pop! So, make sure you have more of each color than you think you need.

Valentines Tree

I love mixing patterns and textures! I wanted to do some more Valentine's decorating using things I already had around the house. I had some cute red and white polka dot tissue paper to start with. And I decided to use some newspaper to mix with it. I traced small hearts on each kind of paper and cut them out. I poked a hole towards the top with a pencil and my daughter Emma hung them on tree branches for me. I kind of wish I had cut more newspaper hearts, but I'm not about to "correct" Emma's work. I love how it turned out!

Valentine's Day Wreath

I wanted to make a quick, cheap Valentine's wreath for the front door. I already had coffee filters and had been wanting to make a filter wreath, so I combined that with another Pinterest idea and was pretty happy with the result!

I used this tutorial:http://www.thenester.com/2010/11/making-a-coffee-filter-wreath-and-tree-and-things-of-that-nature.html

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough coffee filters and my wreath wasn't nearly as full as I had intended it to be.

From the street, it looks fine though! Also if you cross your eyes when looking at it up close, it looks much more full. ; )

The picture frame idea came from this tutorial: http://daniellebartran.blogspot.com/2011/01/valentines-decor-things-i-really-want.html

The best part was, I didn't even have to glitter my heart. Hobby Lobby had them for $1!

I was forced to glue polka dot tissue paper around the sides since I ran out of coffee filters, but I thought it turned out pretty cute.

The polka dot flower was just rolled up scrapbook paper. There are tutorials for those flowers everywhere.

I hope this gives you some inspiration for your own Valentine's wreath!

The Bathroom Situation

Another thing you never think about when you are young and clueless is the bathroom situation. On any given day, one or more of your bathrooms may look and smell like a truck stop. And YOU have to clean them. And you aren't even making minimum wage. Think it's easier to clean that crud just because you love them? Think again. And just because you have girls doesn't make you exempt when the oldest is deathly afraid of the loud flushing sound (so she doesn't flush) and the younger one isn't always "ahem" careful about her aim & etc. (I'll let your imagination fill in the blanks) I always enter the bathrooms in my house with fear and trembling.

Merry Christmas!

Well, we're finally ready for Christmas around here. Gifts are bought, wrapped and under the tree. Santa's cookies have been baked (Santa is coming tonight to our house this year). We've made salt dough ornaments, snow globes and paper gingerbread men. We've had Christmas parties to throw and attend and goodies to bake for neighbors. All this on top of our everyday lives. It's so easy for the real meaning of Christmas to get pushed to the side. Easy to forget about the sacrifice Jesus made to bring us truth, love and hope. Last night at church, we sang Oh Holy Night which is on my top 3 list of Christmas songs along with Silent Night and Mary Did You Know. "A thrill of hope. The weary world rejoices. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees." Beautiful words that probably don't even begin to touch the night when Christ was born. Praise God for sending His only son for a broken, hard and cruel world. 

Apple Cider Bar

We had a church party last night and I was wanting to make a cider bar. Of course, Pinterest helped me pull it off. I wanted to share this idea in case you're looking for the perfect cider set-up for your Christmas get together! I wish I had taken a picture before the party when I had more cups stacked on the counter below the "cup tree" and my pot of cider sitting there. Also, there were more apples stacked on the plate before my girls got into them. : )

Here is the link for the cups: http://www.eatdrinkchic.com/post.cfm/diy-la-dolce-vita-party-candy-cup-with-carry-handle