No Boys Allowed

Except Dads, brothers, Cousins, Uncles and Grandpas of course.

Hayden turned 4 and we had a FUN girly birthday bash for her. It was awesome!!!

My sweet Hayden wanted an Ariel party. We got the Ariel invitations, I ordered the under the sea bouncy house, I put out some shells and starfish. And, that's where the "Ariel" theme ended and my vintage garden party began. See, a couple months ago, I made these cute buntings with Hayden's party in mind. Mismatching vintage fabrics :)

As you can see, they don't exactly fit in with her "under the sea" theme. Well, since she is only turning 4, I figured this would be the last time I have the ability to (steamroll) influence my sweet girl and I took full advantage. While she got her mermaid invitations, shells, and bouncy house, I got my garden party too :) Win win.

Here are some pics for ya!

(balloon cake topper idea courtesy of the one and only Martha Stewart)
Special thanks to my sister for pulling off the balloon cake topper at the last minute as I was frazzled and trying to get everything ready. lol. U rock sis!

I set up a painting table for the girls since Hayden is VERY into art right now.

 

Along with the vintagey bunting (hung using tree stakes from the garden center at Lowes), I used golf tees and stuck clear balloons (bubbles) in the grass around the craft table (thank you pinterest). See, the girls are painting (my) garden party paintings "under the sea" Lol.

 

They had SO much fun making their masterpieces :)

I ordered the cute aprons from Oriental Trading Company, along with the paint pallets, and then got the canvases and brushes at Michael's (with many trips and many coupons - lol).

 

 

 

After painting, it was time for some bouncing :)



 

 

Giggles, squeals of laughter, and a few tears from time to time. Bouncy house perfection if you ask me :)

After bouncing - dessert!

And last but not least, gifts. She got some seriously cute stuff! It was so fun to watch the kids crowd around her with excitement as she opened each one :)

Each girl left with a swag basket filled with girly goodies (necklace, shades, lip gloss, hair ties, a wand, candy etc). I got the super cute berry baskets on Etsy here.

handmade hair ties made by yours truly...

She woke up this morning and was so happy to open all her new stuff and has been playing with it non stop. She is super excited to now have an American Girl Bitty Baby from one of her very special besties. She named her Lala :)

Such a lucky lucky girl!

Happy #4 baby girl. I love you the super duper mostest! XOXO
Happy St.Patty's everyone!

Hi , remember me...

Hello all, sorry I have been missing in action lately. Sadly, although I have been having some blogable moments lately, I can't seem to find the time to sit still and blog {sigh}. It's Sunday morning, I have my warm cup of coffee by my side, and I'm ready to go.

This post, and the next few posts will most likely be all over the place and a bit on the random side. Hopefully you don't mind ;)

First - I want to share with you all something that I now feel is a MUST have! I'm going to start by showing you something embarrassing. Well, at least for me. Typically when I sit down to use my glue gun, I have many things that I need to glue (so the glue gun is on for a while). Anyone who uses one knows that they can be drippy and messy. My solution for this has been to use an old cutting board. The problem is, the glue is really hard to peel off once it dries, so it looks very unsightly. Wanna see??

Eeeew! Typically I would perch the glue gun somewhere over there on the right and use the small space on the left as a work surface. It definitely helped keep the glue off the table, but still. Not an ideal situation.

On a recent trip to hobby lobby, I stumbled upon this beauty....

Let me tell you, the dry glue peels off of this thing soooo easily! It is some sort of scientific miracle. AND - it's bright pink :) I think it was $10 but I used a 40% off coupon. It's by MOD PODGE and is some sort of silicone mat. Amazing, I tell you!! Definitely worth picking up!
For it's maiden voyage, I made a bunch of Valentine's day glitter banners for my etsy shop :)

Another thing I wanted to share is kind of a BIG deal around here. My daughter Hayden will be turning 4 in March and she has NEVER had a hair cut. Can you believe that!!? Ever since she was little, I knew we wanted to donate her hair once it was long enough. So, we waited. She has beautiful hair! I'm her mom, so of course I'm going to think so. But really, people stop me in the street on a regular basis to look at her beautiful locks. Well, it was finally getting to the point where it was getting tangled and she was wearing it up in a pony tail more than she was wearing it down. It was time to CHOP! *gulp.
Here's a "before" shot of her hair when we arrived at the hair salon:

Those are her baby curls on the bottom and they are my absolute favorite part of her hair. I knew even with a trim that we would lose those, so we just decided to go BIG.
Here is the after:

Here are a few more shots....

 

Doesn't she look cute!!?? I got a little hot and sweaty as she made the first big chop, but after that it was smooth sailing. We will be donating her hair to an organization called Wigs for Kids that gives free wigs to kids with cancer and other disorders that cause hair loss. I feel happy and proud that we made this decision early on and stuck to our guns.

Right after the hair cut, we went straight to the baseball field for Noah's baseball tryouts. It was freeeeezing. Well, CA freezing but I think my phone said 42 degrees while we were out there and I definitely wasn't dressed appropriately.

Noah had a great time at tryouts and will soon be drafted onto his first ever little league team. Exciting stuff around here, let me tell you!!

So, that's what's been going on around these parts. I hope you all are well :)
Remember, if you are looking to spice things up in your home for V-Day, check out my lil' shop.

I'll be back sooner rather than later :)

Girly tid-bits

It is the last stretch of Spring break and it is a rainy mess outside. A perfect wet and gloomy day to stay in and get cozy. Who is the bonehead that takes her squirly kids out on errands in this weather you ask!? ME! Ha ha! Ugh! Not my very best idea, but I couldn't imagine an entire day stuck indoors with them. The silly squirrels get squirly for sure! ha ha!

Anyway, in wrapping up Hayden's room-refresh, I thought I would talk about the other details of her room. Some stayed the same, a few changed, and all in all it was a successful refresh :)

FIRST - you must take a look at the "before" pics so that you can clearly see why a refresh was in order. Take a look (& try not to cry when you see the m-e-s-s).

1. Dresser/changing table (sorry about the icky cell phone pic)

2. bed along the window making the curtains impossible to open and close easily. MESS!

3. Closet of doom. Look at that mess! The house shaped toy shelf is jammed with those creepy babies and animals. ha ha. Ewe!

(this above picture literally gives me hives)

Now let's get to some refreshed "after" shots, k!? Phew! that was rough.
We are currently in potty training mode over here so I thought it was an ok time to ditch the changing pad on the dresser. I definitely wanted to add more play space on the floor for playing and I felt like eliminating the giant yellow dresser from the room would be a good idea. However, it was painted especially for her by yours truly, and we really need the clothes storage. Like, really!!! She's quite the fashionista :)
So..........

It ended up here. The top of the dresser is still in progress, but you get the gist. Ideally I would like to ony have the laundry basket live up there and everything else be cleared. Ideally. Right now it holds storage bins, rain boots, etc.

Oh - and here's a shot of her magnet board wall that is still in full effect. It's a bit messy looking, but she loves it so it stays. Plus, spackle is not my friend and there are a ton of holes under there. ha ha!

The next big change that occurred was the bed moved away from the windows to the other wall. I can not tell you how much better it is to have the curtains more easily accessible.

I had totally forgotten that I had this adorable vintagey looking twin sized chenille quilt in the linen closet. I purchased it loooong ago from Ross for $9.99. I had no real plan for it, but I loved it and it had to be mine. Here's a close-up for you...

Just look at those cute dots and pom pom trim. {LOVE}.

Of course the bird-a-lier stayed put and is still one of my favorite projects to date :)

Since the yellow dresser moved into the closet, the dollhouse shelves needed to be moved out. Take a look:

It's definitely much easier to maneuver the curtains behind the shelves. MUCH easier. I didn't get a great pic of the wall with the windows unfortunately and am too lazy busy to take one at the moment.

The last part of the switch-eroo was to put her little bookcase on the wall where the dresser was. It's much smaller in scale and doesn't make this side of the room feel so heavy. Plus, my girl loves her books :)

(note: I plan to get rid of that ugly lamp asap. I want to find a cute lamp to go on top of the white cabinet on the left side)

All in all, while I didn't actually add to the square footage of floor play space, the layout is much more open and airy feeling and I think everything turned out great. Hayden loves her "new" room and that is really all that matters in the end.

I hope you are having a safe, warm, and happy Friday! Please cross your fingers for me that the flea market on Sunday doesn't get rained out. I am dying to get my thrift on ;)


Original project post links:
Dresser
Bookcase
Magnet board wall
Bird-a-lier

Hayden's Gallery

Hello there! Well people, I think I'm "done" with Hayden's room-refresh. Yep. "D-o-n-e." I know, as diy'ers, we're never really done done. However, for now, I am calling it "done."
Today I want to share with you Hayden's new "gallery" wall. You see, I moved around the furniture so the room could feel more open and airy (if that's possible in girly toy mania). Anyway, once the furniture was moved around, I was left with this big blank wall above the bed. Hmmmm.

I knew I wanted to hang the 2 wall hangings I recently made, but what else? I knew that everything needed to be relatively light weight and hung securely since it will be over her bed. Then I had a random idea (which 99% of my ideas are, ha ha).
See below.... (oh and yes- when there is measuring and math involved, the hubby must help)

(it's just a thin piece of that backer board stuff that I had laying around)

Look like anything to you yet??

How about now??

Haha! Random.
My sweet neighbor George cut it out for me with his saw :)
I thought long and hard about what to do with the giant H. Originally I planned to wrap it in cute fabric but I quickly changed my mind. There are already enough fabricky crafts in her room so I decided to go with paint. First I attached some hangers to the back with E6000 because the board was too thin to use nails.

Then I painted it a sunny yellow color called honey bird by Behr (from a paint sample I bought from home depot).
Take a look...

Wanna see where she ended up?? Take a look:

Here's a closer shot for ya...

I tried not to go overboard, as I have a tendency to do that. My goal was to simplify and clean up her space, so I didn't need to add too much. I did make this little canvas at the last minute to keep everything sort of symmetrical.

I painted some happy stripes on a canvas, and mod-podged on a cute page from one of our favorite Madeline books (don't worry, we had a duplicate copy). Then I just popped it in a frame that I had on hand. Easy.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out and from what I can tell, Hayden likes it to. I'll be back tomorrow to give an over-view of her whole happy space :)
TGI-almost-F.