In the Aftermath

My life has gone from total chaos, raining cats and dogs really, to a dull spitting pitter patter.  Since April, I planned and coordinated all the food for our entire stake for girl's camp.  I helped our little group of 7 girls get all geared up and ready to spend a week away from home.  All in the middle of birthdays, chores, work, and homeschool, ya know...the everyday stuff that has to be done to survive.

But, now with all cupcakes bakes, frosted and eaten.  All salads chopped, tossed and consumed.  All decorations put up, adored, and taken down.  Glitter shaken from my clothes after my rock star reception of appreciation at Girls Camp.  I took a week to re-cooperate and now...Now it's time for re-evaluation, reinvention and new beginnings.  After much prodding from a friend, and most anyone I gift anything to, I am embarking on a new project...

I'll give you all the details in the coming days and weeks, but for now, just know that  it's totally awesome.

It's a Birthday Extravaganza!

In the spirit of playing catch up...still, I needed to post a few more birthday details from the last month.
First was Shiloh's birthday.  She turned 2, but since we were going out of town and I had to do the food for Pre-Camp, we played it low key this year and just did a family party with some simple cupcakes in her favorite flavor, strawberry.  And since Ashton doesn't like very many fruity flavors, I made chocolate ones for him.

Next was mine, and since I turned 29 this year and I really wanted to celebrate, I decided to go all out and make myself an awesome cake and decorate my kitchen table too!  (It's still decorated!)  Here's so of the great photos that my sister took:

I did make the roses in this photo too.  And if you want to make them too, go here.  And if you're digging the roses on my cake as much as I am, then go here.

Wenesday was Randall's birthday and once again church called.  Luckily, as always, he's easy to please.  All he wanted was brownies.  And for dinner it was pot pie.  I can't tell you how much I love that man for all that he is, all that he wants to be, and for loving me in spite of me.  If you know me you would know that I can be intense and moody more often than not.  And sometimes I'm surprised he's still there when I wake up in the morning.

Playing catch up...

I feel like I've been a day late and a dollar short for a while now, but especially for the last few months.  I have just spent some time reorganizing my files and uploading pictures from my camera and then organizing those.  So, I should be posting more in the coming days of what life has been like around here, some new projects I'm working on, and projects I've finished along with a few dashes of inspiration.

So, in an effort to get started with all this, I'm going to start with the beginning of this years birthday season.  My son turned 8 this year and wanted to be baptized as much as we wanted him to be, too.  Here's a picture of him all dressed in white...

And for his birthday this year we all got terribly sick!  It was awful!  But somehow, I managed to make him a cake.  It wasn't as fantastic as I'm sure he had imagined, but I think it turned out okay.  What do you think?

The transformer face was done in royal icing.  I think he turned out okay for my first attempt at royal frosting images.  I should have probably done him a full week ahead.  I gave him two days to dry and he was still pretty pliable.  If you'd like some more information on how I created this image, click here.  Marian does amazing work and I would love to create sweets as wonderful as she does!

I hope your days are as inspired as mine have been!

Super Hero Training

Wednesday night was our New Beginnings Program. (Every year with the youth we kick off the new year by introducing the theme and also welcome the girls who has turned 12 or will turn 12 in the coming year and then also talk about all the cool things coming up in the coming months.) This years theme was the 13th Article of Faith. I was inspired by all the qualities that are listed and that we aspiring to be in our lives. They reminded me of super qualities. Character traits that our heroes have. So, this became our theme for the evening.

As we were putting together the details for the evening, I really wanted to combine the Young Women values with the qualities from the Article of Faith. And as I did some digging, I found this booklet about scripture super heroes. And it gave me a jumping off point for what I created for my girls. I made my own booklet with scripture heroines that exemplified each of the eight values and the qualities from the theme.

For the program this year, we talked about the women of the scriptures and each of us as leaders took a few values to talk about. For instance, I talked about Good Works: Tabitha, Virtue: Mary the mother of Jesus, and then the ultimate super hero, Jesus Christ. Then one of our girls, Tiffinique (I love her name btw.) sang Hero by Mariah Carey. It was awesome! Then, one of the bishopric members, Dave Chance, said a few words and we closed and had refreshments.

For decorations, I made buntings that said We Believe for the area behind where we spoke and then above the food table. I had shields that I printed off that had each value and color on them. We hung those from the ceiling around the room. I made a cake with a super girl busting out of the top of it. And, for the girls, we made booklets for each of them and put them in clear gift bags with a card that had the theme on it, a bracelet that had the words we believe on it and a box that we made and put a shield shaped cookie in. Check out the pics...

Operation Organize: Jewelry Hanger

I think Ashton is a better photographer than I am, but here's a quick shot at my new jewelry organizer on my bedroom wall looking so amazing that I can't take my eyes of it.

Here's a close up from the side:

For this project, I recycled everything from around the house. The frame is an old armoure door where the panels got busted out. The first thing I did is paint it with some black spray paint which I had on hand. I found the wire in the woods behind my house and scrubbed it with a wire brush and painted it too. I then cut the wire down to fit in the panels and used a staple gun to attach it to the frame. After that I added some fabric I had in my piles and stapled that in too. Then i had these coat hooks from a projected that I no longer needed and I screwed those to the frame at the corners and in the middle. Then to add a little fun I made some fabric roses and hot glued them to the frame in two opposite corners. Then I hung it up and filled it with all my jewelry that was tangled all together on my counter in a box in the bathroom.

I used the hooks for necklaces, I hung my earrings on the wire panel on the left and on the right I put my pins, bracelets and rings. Here's a few more close ups of what the wire panels look like:

The bracelets that don't unhook, I tied to the wire with ribbon I had left over from the cake I did for Nicole. And any earrings that didn't hook on to the wire, I added to a ribbon that I just pushed the stud trough and then put the backs on. ( it's the pink bow hanging in the first few pictures...)

At first I just had all my rings jammed on to one of the coat hooks, but I was afraid that they would all fall off, so, in the end I did spring for some s-hooks that I could hook on to the wire and then add my rings to them. To get enough I had to buy 3 packages of hooks and at $.99 each, I think $3 is a still for my new organizer turned art piece. What do you think?

Cake

In 2010, I started the "learning to make a fantastic cake" process. So, I used my girls at church as guinea pigs and did a cake that used a new technique for all of their birthdays. Through out the year I've made 6. So, earlier this month I made another testing out my skills and this it what I took to church for Nicole (which happens to be the name that I chose in French class).

Something New...

This is one of my favorite pictures of myself now. And guess what? Ashton took it! I can see a future filled with beauty that his talents create. Now, I did add a little Photoshop action to it, but he did a good job for me. By the way, this is my new favorite hairstyle. It takes me a long time to do it but I think it's so worth it. The more I do it though, I think I'll get quicker at it. But really, this post isn't totally about my hair, or my son the budding photographer. It's really about my need to show off my awesome new scarf. It's really a lace shawl that I turned so the point was in front and wrapped the ends back around the front then added a broach and wa-la! I love it.

It's this pattern, Haruni, made by a generous knitter, Emily Ross done in some of my favorite North Carolina Alpaca yarn that I usually get a skein of when I go to visit family. I love, love, l-o-v-e it!