Category Archives: Holidays

If I Had a Love [Part 3]: A Collection of Valentine’s Day Ideas

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[Part 1]: Garlands

[Part 2]: Table Centerpiece

[Part 4]: Music

If I had a love, I would dress the table for Valentine’s Day like so.

I still need to add napkins and candles (of course).

And then, I would also set out a Valentine’s Day candy counter. Have I told you I love Valentine’s Day candy? [wink] Just kiddin’. I have. Like 10 bazzillion times already. And if you’re going to leave a comment, you should tell me how awesome I am that I didn’t eat one piece of it. Cuz you know I’m off sugar. L to R: chewy pink grapefruit sours, strawberry taffy, cherry gummy hearts, peanut butter m&m’s (in the pink striped bowl), old fashioned peppermint sticks. But you can use any candy you love if you want to create a similar offering. Just choose candy colors that match your scheme.

*All items used in the table dressing and candy counter were scavenged from closets, toy bins, linen closets, kitchen cupboards, and the thrift store (1 vase, 1 martini glass, & 1 stemmed goblet  for a total of $2.25). To create a similar setting, just look around your house! You’ll be amazed at what you can find. Simply choose a color scheme and go from room to room. Grab anything that falls into the scheme, even if you don’t think it will match anything else. Often, those pieces make the best combos. And have fun with it!

Up Next: My Valentine Playlists

If I Had a Love [Part 2]: A Collection of Valentine’s Day Ideas

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[Part 1]: Garlands

[Part 3]: Dressing the Table

[Part 4]: Music

If I had a love, I’d make a bloomin’ tree for the dinner table.

Here’s how you can too …

Supplies:

White spray paint * Glitter * A ribbon * Tissue Paper * 1 12×12 piece of decorative paper * Tall cylindrical glass vase * Tall branches * miniature birds from craft store * hot glue gun * scissors

1. Spray paint your branches white

2. And then sprinkle with glitter while paint is still wet. I used a turquoise blue glitter.

3. While your branches are drying, cut squares from tissue paper. I cut 8 4×4″ squares and 8 2×2″ squares out of 2 different colors (yield 36).

4. Take one square and squeeze the center, so the corners are all pointing the same direction. Then twist so the finished product looks like a flower bud.

5. Place decorative paper inside vase and cut to vase’s height.

6. Add a ribbon.

7. Place branches in the vase.

8. Plug in your hot glue gun and gather your “buds.” I made white and pink flowers so I can reuse this centerpiece come Easter, but you could really do any color to match your scheme.

9. Glue buds to branches.

10. Ta-da!

11. And finally, don’t forget to add your love birds.

Aren’t they so sweet?

Tips:

a) I taped the scrapbook paper in place inside the vase so it wouldn’t move or slide.

b) I also poured sand into the vase after I had the branches where I wanted them so that they would stay put. The sand also makes the whole arrangement more sturdy.

c) Check out your local thrift store for many of the needed supplies. I picked up my vase ($1) and ribbon ($0.50) while thrifting.

d) Use what you have on hand. I cut the branches from a bush in my backyard, glitter from my craft box, old tissue paper from our used wrapping paper bin, and if I hadn’t wanted to use spray paint, I could’ve easily used the white acrylic craft paint I have in my paint drawer. In total, I bet this centerpiece cost me no more than $10.

Up Next: Dressing the Table

If I Had a Love [Part 1]: A Collection of Valentine’s Day Ideas

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[Part 2]: Table Centerpiece

[Part 3]: Dressing the Table

[Part 4]: Music

If I had a love, I would make garlands by the mile and string them from every corner of my ceiling.

(inspired by)

*To make the heart garland, just follow the tutorial I posted for the felt garlands last month. But use paper instead of felt. Go here for a tutorial on the pom-pom garland, and here for the lollie garland. Have fun!

Up next: The Table Centerpiece

Sniffles. Snowfall. & a FREE Download.

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My eyes are scratchy. My throat is fiery. My head is fuzzy. In short … I think I am sick. How does that happen? I work from home for cryin’ out loud. And I don’t have kids. And I’m not kissing anyone (What a shame.). And this is so not a good week to be sick–my to-do list is bordering on insanity. Plus I wrenched my back a few days ago and am having trouble making it up and down from the couch. Plus it’s snowing. A lot.

Wow. Aren’t glad you stopped by THIS blog today?

So back to the to-do list. Though long, it’s actually filled with a lot of fun stuff, the best of which is that Frit and I are decking out our house for her younger brother and his girlfriend so they can have a deliciously romantic Valentine’s Day dinner here on Saturday. Yay! Yay! Yay! I LOVE holiday events, parties, special dinners, and the like. (But you already knew that.) I’m so excited about it in fact, I woke up yesterday at 4:30 a.m., my brains spinning with decoration ideas.

So you see…I do not have time to be sick or flat in bed with a messed up back or kept from venturing to the store due to snow. I gots stuff to DO people! But seeing as I am sick, flat in bed with a messed up back, and am still scared to drive in the snow despite having lived here for 13 years give or take a summer here and there, here’s another Valentine’s Day card I whipped up this morning from the comfort of my cozy, warm bed. (I could kiss the inventor of the laptop computer! But I won’t because then he/she might get sick too.)

So back to the Valentine’s Day card … I saw this phrase on a t-shirt once and thought it was sweet and quirky and cute. Speaking of quirky … did you know that someone (the 60-something-year-old male receptionist at my old job) once told me I wasn’t married because I was quirky? Really?

So back to the Valentine’s Day card …

Download for print HERE.

I also made an 8×10 color version if you want to print it, frame it, and add it to your Valentine’s Day decorations.

DOWNLOAD HERE

And then, because I’m in bed and have nothing to do, I was playing around with the exposure of that image above and wound up with this. For some reason I really like this blown out photo with the saturated oranges. Maybe you do too? Anyhow …DOWNLOAD HERE

Finally, in closing (it’s about time), here are a few links to some lovely projects I have bookmarked for future creating.

A Sweet Way to Give Valentine Sweets

Could there be a cuter way to send a note?!

Make your own personalized stationary. I think mine would say, “I like lollipops.” Or. “I hate snow.”

I’m such a sucker for garlands of any kind and this one is darling.

I’m Going to Shave My Legs for New Year’s Eve. What’re YOUR plans?!

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Well.

I left this:

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for this:

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And oddly enough, it’s ok. I shoveled the driveway this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it. Shoveling is one of those tasks that, for me, is incredibly therapeutic. I know most people don’t shovel like I do–I’m meticulous and precise and have to get all the snow off the cement, or at least as much as I can, and I try to be as exact as possible in keeping the snow banks in line with the curb or edge of the sidewalk. (Can we say OCD?) Anyhow, I love tasks like that.

And now it’s New Year’s Eve. (How did that happen?)

We were going to hostess a party, but that never came together. Then I was going to cook a fancy dinner for just the two of us (one that we could get really dressed up for), but that fell through. Then we were going to invite the neighbors over, open house style, for cider and doughnuts, from 8:00 to midnight, and that fell through too.

So here I am, sitting in my skivvies, crossing things off the list (and adding more to it) of things to get done whilst I ring in the New Year.

And oddly enough, it’s ok. It’s perfect, actually. Here’s where I’m at so far:

1. Clean the kitchen (DONE)
2. Clean the downstairs bathroom (DONE)
3. Clean my bathroom (DONE)
4. Unpack, do all laundry (IN PROCESS)
5. Shave my legs (DONE)
Nothing says, “Hello New Year! I’m ready for you.”, like freshly shaved legs.
6. Go through dresser and closet: iron/refold/organize/downsize
7. Make a list of things to accomplish or learn in 2010
8. Make a list of all the things I accomplished or learned in 2009
9. Tidy my office nook
10. Go buy a new shower curtain liner
11. Toast the New Year (the sparkling cider is in the fridge, ready and waiting)

Here’s hoping you’re having as glamorous a New Year’s Eve as me!

xo

Morning Light: A New Season has Come

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Good morning! Delicious light is streaming through the windows, spilling across the floor like golden honey right this very second and I’m salivating over it. Sunshine coming up over the mountains might not be quite as intoxicating as sunshine coming up over the ocean, but it’s sure moving up the list.

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And I for one, am so happy ’bout this new November. Yesterday the Halloween decorations were taken down and stored for another year, and out came the turkeys and pilgrims and plethora of pumpkins. Do you know what a plethora ees? (Name that movie.)

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Oh the holidays. I love the bustle and busyness of it. I love the colors and smells. I love the frost on the ground and the fog in the windows. I love the reminder it offers us to be grateful for harvest and bounty. I love the gift wrap. I love the endless days of baking. I love thinking about what to give to whom. I love gathering around tables, sharing food and laughter. It’s more than nourishment for the belly.

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Oh yes. The season is upon us.

*photos from a morning walk around my neighborhood.

One Slice of Cherry Pie (a la mode please)

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I had the best of intentions. I always do. I was going to go to the greeting-card store and spend two hours reading every card until I found the perfect one—just like she does for every card-warranting event. In fact I remember when I was seven, lying on the floor of a Hallmark, gazing up at her legs, certain I would die if I had to wait five more minutes for her to “find the perfect card.”



But as usual, busyness got the best of my best intentions, and two days before Mother’s Day I found myself pulling out the generic stationary on which I send “thank-yous” to clients. Scrambling to Google a quote with some ounce of meaning, I carefully wrote:


A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

–Tenneva Jordan



Thanks mom, for always giving up your “pie.” Happy Mother’s Day. I love you.


A week later I received an e-mail from her. It simply said:


I got your card today! It made me cry! I enjoyed the quote and your sweet note!

Life’s short . . . eat “PIE”!

Have a great week! Love, Mama


My mom’s life had already been on my mind when I got that e-mail. Not that she had been sick or anything tragic. But she had just turned fifty, and I felt like that should have meant something. She had just sent her last child to college. And I felt like that should have meant something too. To me, I mean. I knew it meant something to her. Now that there wasn’t anyone except her and dad to eat pie, I wondered if she remembered what flavor she liked best.


I speculated for days trying to understand the choices she made years earlier, choices between big cities and bright lights, and having me. But speculating was futile. I haven’t had to give up my pie yet and to be quite honest, it’s me who usually takes the biggest piece. I decided to just ask her and so I sent an email. All her reply said was:


Sweetie, YOU were my pie.


To all you wonderful women out there—you who are mothers and daughters and sisters and friends—Happy Mother’s Day. I hope you know how much you are loved, and how invaluable you are.



But mostly I hope you are enjoying every bite of your pie.



Bonafide

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Easter dinner involved a LOT — of meringue.
On top of a banana pudding cheesecake.

And other delectables hailing from the Southland I miss …

Coke baked ham
Bacon boiled green beans
Homemade mac&cheese
Twice-baked cream cheese mashed potatoes
Broccoli salad
Deviled eggs sprinkled with paprika
and yeast rolls

I started baking on Saturday and ohhh was it worth it!

Between a mess’a good food, my mother, sisters, and a slew of their friends and roommates it was a perfect way to celebrate new life.

If only I had taken pictures of things other than meringue. Huh.