Thanks for the help (& some other randomness)!

THANK YOU so much for all of you that left suggestions for my sweet little hummingbird. After giving it some thought (too much thought actually, I tend to obsess), I have finally named this sweet little necklace:

This means that the winner is Cassie from Primitive & Proper - Yahooooooooo!!! Congrats friend! You rock!Seriously though, thank you all so much. There were so many great suggestions and I will definitely do this again the next time I'm stuck.

Here is another newbie for the shop too. Cute? Cute!

And in other OohLala news, I have recently decided to start up a second Etsy shop for flea market finds, refinished furniture, and other handmade home decor (OohLalaCoHOME). Look out for it on my sidebar and just try to resist buying this awesome roller skating bag. Just try! This thing is awesome. My sis and I were out thrifting the other day and we found 6 of these bad boys! Freakin' CLASSIC!

I hope you all are having a great week so far. Hang in there, it's sort of almost Friday-ish.

It's official!

It's official, Bloggy friends are THE BEST!!! I got the sweetest package in the mail today from Andi at Jane of All Crafts. SO stinkin' adorable!! She saw this little silver swan while out thrifting and thought of me. Plus, she added in a few extra cuties. YAY!

How sweet does this little swan look holding my rings. Perfect for when I'm in the shower or doing dishes (ok...well, in the shower anyway, ha ha). I love it! I can't decide if I want to keep him in his well-loved antique finish, or spiff him up with some spray paint. We'll see.

She also sent this A-dorable silver swan charm. I mean c'mon, could this BE any more perfect for me (if you watch FRIENDS, then you heard that last phrase in Chandler's voice, ha ha)!?

And look at these other 2 cuties. The sweetest cupcake on the planet and the most adorable little owl magnet made on a scrabble tile. I'm seriously so thrilled that these little guys are all mine :)THANK YOU ANDI!!! You rock, like majorly!!!

So, here's your challenge people - if you have made close bloggy friends and you know what they love, send some their way. It feels so unbelievable to have awesome friends all over the world that are thoughtful and sweet and were thinking of me. Random acts of sweetness are THE BEST!

Do it! Ha ha, we'll call it Blog-buddy-thrifting :)

Pics of the Par-tay

YAY for b-day parties!!! We had such a fun time throwing our little Hayden her 2nd birthday party at our house. Family, friends, and LOTS of yummy food!! Hooray!!!

This little sign that I made using a canvas, pompoms, and a sharpie greeted our guests when they arrived. The party was primarily in the backyard, so I didn't want people to be standing outside the front door knocking when we wouldn't be able to hear them.

We had yummy funfetti cupcakes with some paper flags that Noah and I made with scrapbook paper and toothpicks.

In this picture below, can you tell which flags Noah made?? Ha ha, adorable!

We did a "build your own sandwich" buffet that was super yummy and easy. We just loaded the buns with meat, and put the other sandwich ingredients out so people could add what they wanted (the pretty butterfly picks were from the dollar bins at Michael's).

I bought this at WalMart...but not to use in the typical way. I needed bud vases for my mantle, and for $2.37, these glass bottles were the perfect option (my hubby was sad when I dumped the orange soda down the drain, but a crafty gal's gotta do what a crafty gal's gotta do)

I took off the labels with goo gone, and used nail polish remover to remove the dates and codes that were printed on the bottles. Then I simply wrapped the bottle in some thick cream yarn that I had and hot glued the ends on the back side. I added some turquoise to a couple of them for some extra pizazz. I think they came out simple & pretty, and they're the perfect size for my shallow mantle. Add a $5.99 bouquet from the grocery store and my "mantle-scape" was done :)

My backyard signs made their debut at the party. This was a simple last minute project that I think came out pretty cute. I got a scrap piece of wood at home depot for $1 and had the nice man cut it into 4 rectangles for me. I also bought some wooden stakes for $.30 each. When I got home, I nailed the stakes on to the back of the signs, painted them white, and then went to town with my craft paint. I used my bed bath & beyond cardboard coupon to trace the smaller rectangle on the signs (using what I had on hand, ha ha). Then, I free-handed some geometric patterns on either side of the small rectangles with craft paint. After that I just used a thick sharpie and wrote some fun party words. I should have sanded the edges (I think you'll probably get a splinter just by looking at these signs), but I was pressed for time so I skipped that step.

The pinwheels were from the $.99 store and they doubled as party decor and favors. It gets breezy in my backyard, so they were spinning round and round pretty much the whole time. As the guests left, they got to take one home with them. We still have about 6 left & my kids are pretty thrilled about that.

The flower princess bouncy house was a MUST-HAVE. The kids bounced and bounced ALL day long and it made for a pretty easy bedtime :)

The lemonade stand was the hit of the party, for sure!!!

Noah had so much fun and was hard at work for quite a while. People would give him a quarter, and he would give them a different quarter back as change. He even came inside to get a quarter so he could buy himself some lemonade, ha ha! We got some really cute videos of him in action, but the files are too big to upload and share. You'll just have to trust me, he was A-dorable in action!Happy customers :)

I put my candelabra to work as a candy centerpiece. Doesn't she look cute!!??

A while back, I won my first blog-giveaway ever on Miss Mustard Seed's Blog. It was a party pack from Snickety Snacks. 24 delicious sugar cookies with edible pens for decorating them. The kids had SO much fun doing this, and so did some of the adults.

My baby girl had SO SO much fun at her party. She ate like 4 cupcakes I think, and bounced her brains out. She got tons of fun gifts (hello kitty tricycle, cash register, baby dolls, Rody, an Easel, a tea set, etc), and had a smile on her face all day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET BABY GIRL!!!!!!!! You own our hearts forever!(today we're in clean-up & rest mode....and my husband and father in law are building a fence in our front yard....reveal to come at a later date).

Happy Sunday!

Sneaky Peeks 2

Ok people, here we are, the day before the big par-tay! Baby girl turns 2 tomorrow and it's almost time to RAGE! This first picture below further illustrates why I should ONLY handle the party decor, and NOT the food! Ha ha.

Here are the beginnings of my hand painted fancy signs for the backyard. Hmmmm, what will they say??

And last but not least, for your viewing pleasure, a healthy sampling of our JUNK FOOD! Yummy!I plan on taking a ton of pics so stay tuned. Hooray for pretty parties!

I'll get by with a little help from my friends!

Notice anything missing here??? If you read this blog, then you know that all of my charm necklaces in my Etsy shop stand for something. They each have their own unique meaning. Something to make it more than just a basic cute accessory. Something for the buyer to relate to or appreciate. HELP! I'm stuck!

Look at how adorable this little hummingbird is and she is desperately in need of some deeper meaning!! HELP blog friends, HELP!

Here's the deal. If you have some time to give it some thought, please leave some "slogan" suggestions in the comments section. I will continue to brainstorm too, but if I end up choosing YOUR suggestion, you will win one of these sweet "meaningful" hummingbirds of your very own! Thanks in advance friends....now think think think.

Coo-Coo's NEST???

OR Coo-Coo-COOL!!?? Help me decide!

I had this dark wood mirror in my garage and it was seriously in need of a makeover. A bit boring and blah for me...nothin' a little paint couldn't fix. My little helper and I got right to work to fancy this bad-boy up!

I had a vision for this mirror, and my vision was stripes. BUT, I totally went about this the WRONG way and it was quite a frustrating project. For some reason, I figured I would just paint one color stripe first, wait for it to dry, and then paint the other color stripe. Umm. NO. Lesson learned. Next time, I will spray paint the whole thing the base color first, and then add the stripes after. DUH. (I painted the white stripes first with a brush, and then after 2 days of drying, I taped over them so I could spray the remaining stripes gold. Unfortunately, after I taped it off and sprayed the gold, my painters tape pulled up all the white paint I had already painted. BUMMER).

I carefully went back over the white with a brush, and touched up the areas that the tape pulled up. I think it turned out ok in the end. Thoughts??

This mirror now lives in no-man's land aka my bedroom, so not that many people will even see it. But, like anything in my home, I wanted it to be pretty!

The up-close shot is a little bit unforgiving, but I still think I like it.

This mirror is 2 parts shabby and one part chic (hopefully enough chic to keep you reading this blog - ha ha).

Sneaky Peeks.....

Just a couple sneak peeks at what I'm up to this week. We are having Hayden's b-day party on Saturday so the party planning mania has begun. We have a huge family and lots of friends coming so it's pretty much going to be a rager, ha ha! I am the queen of "last minute" so I thought I would try to get a jump on the cleaning and decorating this time so I won't have my usual last minute scramble. I still have a ton to do, but things are starting to look very festive in here :)

Little buntings for my little girl - {SWOON}

"Happy birthday to yoouuuuuuuuu!"

I made this little nest a long time ago (I just sprayed one from Michael's with white paint) and I finally have something to use it for, yay! Cutie-patootie.

& my sweet sister bought me this other springy nest at homegoods. A-dorable if I do say so myself ;)

We're getting all the supplies ready for the lemonade stand - sell sell sell - ha ha!

And I'm working on a mirror makeover too (unrelated to the party of course, but I wanted to show you my cute little helper in the pic). So, that's it for me this week. Cleaning, organizing, decorating, crafting, ETC...!