30x30 continues!

Ok peoples!  So far I’m doing great with my 30x30 outfit challenge!  You can see day 1 here and the items that I’ve chosen.  Up next is Day 2, 3, and 4.  Right now the outfits are pretty easy because I’m starting off with the most obvious…pair a bottom with a top.  Boom.  But believe it or not I’ve never worn any of these combos in my closet before…so it’s fun to get out of the rut!  Don’t mind the faces….I was clearly going through something….like a case of permanent awkwardness and the inability to not ham it up when a camera is on me.

 

DAY 2

{Items 17, 25, 24}

 

DAY 3

So even though it’s OCTOBER and I planned every outfit to be for FALL…New Jersey delivers in wacky weather and gives me 85 degree temps.  So although this could technically be 2 outfits…let’s label it as one as I did wear the cardigan out to lunch with a friend, but then took it off midday because it was so stinkin hot. (PS: I really liked my makeup this day. It’s too bad I have no idea what I did).

{Items 15, 18, 23, 26}

 

DAY 4

SUPER casual day!!  Totally glad I remembered to toss in a non work top or two for days when I’m running errands.  Now to be fair I was painting some trim and doing other miscellaneous housework…so this outfit was just to pick up the kids and get dinner.  Still!  Got the job done!

{Items 13, 22, 27}

 

And just realize I’ve worn all my pants.  Guess it’s skirt or dress time tomorrow!  Haha!

OCtober 30x30

In continuing efforts to get my budget under control, and still stay as super fly as possible, I'm imposing upon myself the 30x30 fashion challenge!!!! (I imagine it said with like a cool echo for effect and em-PHA-sis.)

I've seen a ton of this floating around on the Pinterest and thought, hey...what a better way to get over my Philip Lim for Target losses then to embrace what I already have. For those who don't know, you take 30 items from your closet and make 30 different outfits for 30 days. I'm kinda really excited about this challenge, and hopefully it will get me to appreciate my closet, save me some loot, and look at my war

robe in a whole new way. 

SO to start...I cruised a couple of other ladies sites because I had no idea where to begin. How many pants do I need? Should I do sweaters or jackets? Does jewelry count as one of the 30 items? I took some of this and some of that and came up with my basic formula: 4 Sweaters (because it's getting cool out) 3 Jackets (or blazers...not coats...not that cold out) 2 Cardigans, 2 Dresses, 8 Tops, 3 Skirts, 3 Pants, and 5 Shoes. I'm saying that accessories such as hats, belts, scarves, tights and jewelry are freebies...but I'm still not allowed to purchase anything. So without further ado...This is what I chose:

Let me just note a few things:

-I totally took these all at night and in a rush so I apologize for the sloppy pics

-My comforter is SUPPOSED to be wrinkly.  It’s the style

-Some of the clothes you can’t even see the pattern, which is why I numbered them so when I actually wear them you can see what each is from

 

Ok so I’m totally excited about this!!  I even have day one all set!  WOOT!  On top of things!!  The only sad part about this picture…cuz I think the outfit is really cute….is how absurdly white my legs are.  Oh-to-the-well….next time I’ll wear tights then!

 

{items 1,19,24}

Pumpkin in a Half Shell

It all starts with a Pin. I’m trying to bridge the gap between pinning a billion ideas I don’t have time to make and actually making the stuff I’ve pinned… trying being the key word…
Call me crazy, but I’m also trying to actually peruse through and quite possibly read the plethora of magazines I get delivered to my house every month. They pile up and I don’t read them and Hubby gets rather annoyed by it. Ha! The good thing is that my favorite time of year is upon us, which means I really like all of the warm and cozy articles in the the latest issues arriving to mi casa!
I got pinspired by a little morsel of fun in a recent Rachael Ray magazine:

In the effort of time and simplicity, I thought I would strip this incredibly cute idea down to it’s basic principle…
I picked up some materials at Joann’s:
- Wood slice - ($9.99 + 40% off coupon = $5.99)
- Decorative pumpkin made of Styrofoam = $4.99

Plus the stuff I already had:
- hot glue gun
- foam hot glue sticks
- steak knife


Use the steak knife to cut the pumpkin in half. I picked a pumpkin with a little more character, instead of the run of the mill orange. I liked the multicolored look. I can always paint it down the road… or bedazzle it, or draw a face on it, glitter it… oh the possibilities!


I attached a d-ring hanger to the back of the plaque. I grabbed a couple of different length screws to make sure I got one that wasn’t too deep. The teeny one did the trick. Hang it on the wall.

Badabingbadaboom! Pretty cute, right?

Here it is happily hanging above the sink in my kitchen.

Not too shabby for a 5 minute craft. It took me and Will longer to find the right sized pumpkin and wood plaque than it did to put together! You could make a collage of them on the wall with other a gourd variety! Line them up down the hall wall! Paint them metallic copper and let the rustic wood plaque stand out. So much fun! I’m thinking I’ll grow this little gourd collection every year, and by then we’ll have a bigger place to display a collage on a dining room wall or something fancy.

Fairytales in Fall

I’ve been wanting to share this for a long time. I haven’t even shown Lani these pics! I did a photoshoot a couple months ago with some awesome vendors based on a nugget of an idea I had. That nugget grew into a full blown wilderness idea. Throw in a fabulous photographer (Sheri Wade), furniture rentals by Found Vintage Rentals, hair and makeup by Elizabeth, and a couple beautiful models, and you’ve got a table set up in the woods fit for Snow White.

Add a dash of DIYs:

A little rustic meets modern fairytale makes for an eclectic tablescape. Acacia wood slice chargers mixed with gold square chargers. Pinecones spray painted gold. A burlap table runner. Moss and feather napkin rings. Books turned paper apple placecards. I thrifted some fun things like the green glass cups perfect for dwarves, the brass candlestick holders, some of the green glass bottles, the white napkins, and the books to make the placecards. I bought some moss balls and plain moss to wrap the burlap and napkins. The centerpiece couldn’t be easier than a bunch of granny smith apples inside a cake plate and dome.

This was such a fun shoot in the middle of a real in-the-middle-of-nowhere location. While setting up the table for this shoot, I saw deer frolicking nearby. If that doesn’t scream “Perfect location for a Snow White inspired photo shoot”, then I don’t know what does.

Thanksgiving tree

This weekend was full of ups and downs and lefts and rights and a bunch of circles and squiggles.  First, I decided that Sunday would be a great time to go do all my Thanksgiving shopping….along with the rest of the world!  Man!  I think I got stepped on and pushed more times than I can remember!!  Not really…in reality…the most I saw people giving were a few eye rolls…but in the spirit of the season I feel like there were more “Excuse me’s” and “Thank yous” and “I’m so sorry…That’s ok” than I’ve ever heard before in my life.  Would have been a good lesson for the littles.

Second, in order to get a jumpstart on things, I decided to set my table early!  Wahoo!  It’s so cute!  I’m not going to show you the whole table yet, but as I was pondering what to do, I couldn’t help but feel like something was lacking.  Something big. So…I made something big!

So you can kinda see my here…but I had to show the scale of the “tree.”  I’ve pinned a bunch of things like this for displaying Christmas cards, but I thought this would be a perfect way to share what we’ve all been thankful for this year.  I basically went out at 9:00 at night and took clipping from different bushes and trees in my yard and just found what worked.  I filled the bottom of the vase (actually a candle holder) with some hazelnuts I picked up at the grocery store during my Turkey day food romp (didn’t have a plan for them…but knew I would use them for display somehow), and used my Cricut to make little tags to write on.  The genius cheapy part of this, besides the free yard clippings, was the string used to hang the tags is actually from the burlap placemats I made.  I frayed them a little, and kept the scraps and TA DA!  Free fun string to use however.

Hunter is really getting a kick out of the whole “what we are thankful for” thing.  He doesn’t TOTALLY get it, but I decided I’m going to write down whatever they say regardless.  Today Hunter said “Jagger”…which just made my heart melt, and Jagger was much more creative and said “Paper and crayon.”  He’s like Brick from Anchorman…I love lamp. 

I thought it would be fun for others who stop by our house to also partake in our little Thanksgiving tree, so I put extra tags and string in a cute little cup on the table.  BTW, that hobnail milk glass vase was 25 cents and Goodwill…gotta love the half price red tag days.  So cute!

I’m hoping to keep this transition alive…and maybe hang my favorites from previous years on the next years trees.  It’s a great way to log how your year has gone, and to remember all the things that are GOOD that happened in your life and not to focus on the bad.

Fall Craft – Paper Pumpkins

What do you do when it’s a rainy day & you’re stuck inside with your crazy family? You go through your paper & crafty scraps and decide to make some fun little fall paper pumpkins! Duh! I’ve seen this craft done a million ways, and of course, Martha has done this so elegantly:
Based on the sized scraps I had on hand, I came up with this formula on my own twist on Paper Pumpkins in 4 different sizes:

Large – 9 strips of paper 3/4” wide x 7”long

Medium – 9 strips of paper 1/2” wide x 5.5” long

Small – 9 strips of paper 1/2” wide x 4” long

Extra Small – 8 strips of paper 1/2” wide x 3” long

I was limited by the amount of strips I could fit on my brads since I was using cardstock paper. If you use regular text weight paper, you could definitely make a fuller looking pumpkin. I went for heft.

You will also need:
Brads (2 per pumpkin)
Hole puncher (mine was 1/8” hole punch)
Scraps of green paper so you can cut out leaves for the top

Stack up your strips and punch a hole near the top and another one near the bottom.

Thread a brad through to make all of your strips stay together on the bottom.


Fan out all of the strips and bend them into a ball so the holes match up. Put the leaf on top and secure with another brad.

That was easy!

You can group these together as part of an easy little centerpiece or write names of your Thanksgiving guests on the leaves and use them as place cards! It doesn’t get much easier than that! If you have a couple different shades of orange (or another color) you could create an ombre effect on your pumpkin because it’s so hot right now! Ombre is everywhere!

It is the perfect brainless craft to do while you watch TV. My favorite kind of rainy day activity! Oh, and it was free to make. It REALLY doesn’t get much better than that!

Hectic Halloween

Well the Birdsells and the Arianis have been having WAY to much fun together this past week!  We’ve had great food, good laughs, lots of wine and junk food (seriously we’ve probably all gained about 5 pounds) and all our boys have certainly had their good days and bad ones…but all in all they are the best of friends!  We even got a little Halloween snow over the weekend!  Crazy!!  Heather was truly excited and I don’t think Will knew what to think!

 

Today we plan on doing some pumpkin carving, we are throwing a bash tonight…and rushing to finish our costumes!  Yarks!  Here’s how my living room looked last night…this all while sipping wine, watching zombie movies, and nursing Heather’s hubby back to health (he got all sick…hence the random piece of plain toast)

Sup sup, Heather.  Throwing up her crafting gang signs.  Yeah I craft…What?  We should be JUST finished with our costumes AND all our food goodies by the time our guests come.  Yeah…we know…it’s tough being this dang awesome. Hope you all are having a happy Halloween!!!

Pumpkin Patch at Irvine Park Railroad

Of course we go to a pumpkin patch every year. Irvine Park Railroad in Orange, CA is a great park on it’s own. I’ve heard about it’s great pumpkin patch & Christmastime festivities are pretty spectacular, but it’s always one of those “Yeah, Yeah… We’ll get there. It’s a pumpkin patch. How great can it really be?”

Pretty freakin’ great!

We hit it up on a Sunday morning after a hearty breakfast. Pretty much the only way to fly. Will polished off 2.5 pancakes, all of his eggs, and at least 2 pieces of bacon. I guess he was hungry!That boy is on a mission from God.

We checked out the ponies.

Will lead us successfully through the Hay Maze.

We took pictures with all of the wood stand ups. Definitely a must!

Will took the fastest hop in one of the mini bounce houses, ever. He waited so patiently for his turn, went in, walked to the back and came out. “Done!”. Uh… ok?  Will & Daddy checked out the spooky mine that had a giant skull inside that freaked Will out. We rode the awesome train around the park. Will rode a hay-horse like a champ. A pink one, no less. And we walked through the haunted house!

We hopped on the hay ride around the park. It was itchy, but fun!
And then Will rode Aspen, the pony. I think I was way more excited about it than he was, but he did great and told Aspen she did a good job. Yeehaw!

And we picked out our pumpkin! That’s not even everything we did! There was so much to do, and so much space to run around in. We went to lunch afterwards was were drunk off of all the fun we just had. I think we might go again before Halloween, it was THAT fun! So if you haven’t gone. GO! Plan it and go! My little tip is that if you go on the weekend, get there when it opens because it was crazy busy when we left at lunchtime.