36 More Days
Posted on | May 10, 2013 | No Comments |
Until Jovie’s birthday party!
And I’ve gone a bit overboard on the planning — but hey, what’s new {::SMILES}
Jovie and I decided to do a fairy and pirate birthday party for her upcoming fourth birthday. Since we just decided a week ago, I moved the party back to the 15th instead of closer to the 4th of June (her birth day), so that I can prepare accordingly.
Soooooooo, to make the party oh so pretty and fun, crazy mama here ordered over 600 yards of 6″ tulle to make six tutus, a few pom pom tulle decors, and tulle wands. I think I may have also purchased enough ribbons to tie around our village. I’ll give more details on where I purchased the supplies later after the order comes in. That way I can also do a bit of a review on the shop’s shipping — in case you need to buy lots of tulle and ribbons.
I’ve been on the Internet whenever I have the chance Pinning ideas and using Evernote to organize my notes and check list. If any of you have ANY fairy and pirate party idea, please don’t hesitate to email me or comment here. I’d love all (easy and affordable) ideas.
Last night I started creating and got four cards done. After I post this blog entry I am going to finish making the last two. With Jovie, there will (hopefully) be six girls and one boy. She said they are her best friends {::SMILES}. The party is scheduled to be an outdoors party and I seriously hope it’ll be lovely that day. BUT, I have plan B aka in our living room, in case the rain decides to visit.
The card is simple and whimsical I think. Initially I wanted to use WPlus9′s Oatmeal cardstock to print the invite on. That card stock is my FAVORITE and I have been using it for 75% of my cards. But, I couldn’t run the card stock through my printer because it was too thick. The card stock is 100lb (lovely and thick — perfect for card making) and my printer can only handle up to 85lb (Stampin’ Up! card stock would work fine, their card stocks are 80lb paper). Boo!! After some messing about, I decided to just print on normal printing paper and adhere it to WPlus9′s Ballet Slippers paper. While I miss the speckles of the Oatmeal paper I was quite happy with the change of plan.
I also wanted to include a photo of Jovie in the invite. I’m not sure why since these kids are her good friends and all the parents know how Jovie looks like but I just wanted to add a photo and give the invite a bit of scrapbook feel to it. The buntings idea came from my friends and I love of buntings. There will be buntings at the party and I thought that buntings on the invite would be the perfect extra touch. So buntings I made!
I didn’t use a template or die-cutter. I just cut out estimates squares for the buntings and a rectangle for the banner. Then I trimmed the edges accordingly. Two minutes (did two/three layers at a time) was what it took to prepare the pieces. After the trimming I had to do another thinking moment. Baker’s twine, hemp twine, clothes pins, stamping, hand drawing or sewing? I went for the later. I figure it’d be quicker and flatter. And it was.
I know I said flat, but I had to have some sort of dimension. And that’s where the button came in. I just used a glue dot and voila, all done!
If I had the idea thought of beforehand, I could have created all four invites in 30 minutes. BUT, I was faffing about as usual and I didn’t go to bed until 4 a.m.
Jovie saw her invites this morning and she approved. Later this afternoon we will hand a few of them to her school friends. Yay!
Gift Box + Card
Posted on | April 23, 2013 | 1 Comment |
Hey! Don’t fall off your seats but I am still here!!
I have been so busy the last few weeks. I had family over for two weeks and I spent a couple of weeks before their arrival getting rid of stuff to make room for an extra bed. I’ve also been busy with my new (finally) business. If you’re interested you can check it out: Savitri Wilder Photography. I’ve been on and off about starting, mostly off due to children duties, but now that Jovie’s in preschool 3x a week and in September going full time, I have no more reasons to not go for it. I’ve done a couple sessions here and there and so far I have enjoyed every one of them!
In between my crazy schedule, I managed to squeeze in a bit of crafting time. M had a birthday party to go to last week and I decided to give her little friend a gift card. What’s the best way to quickly package a gift card? By using WPlus9′s kraft pillow box! A bit of Damask, a star die (cause M’s friend is a gymnastics super star), a tag die, a sweet “Fresh Picked” little sentiment, twine and American Craft Thickers I got a sweet little gift ready in 5-minutes!
To make the gift sweeter, I created a matching card. Same Damask stamp, a Lacey layers and matching die, the new (oh so fab) WPlus9 Folk Art alphabet dies, a button and a twine. Also 5-minutes.
Oh, the white ink and paper are also WPlus9′s products. The ink…. DIVINE!
So in 10 minutes time I got the above set ready for Miss M to bring to her makeover party.
Oh, this post can’t be complete without a photo of the all made up girl AND the cupcake she decorated at the party:
Ahh… doesn’t she look all grown up? Where did that cute chubby cheek 4-yrs-old go?!?!?!
Until next time and I hope this next time won’t be so long {::SMILES}.
Bits of News
Posted on | March 21, 2013 | 3 Comments |
Hi!! Been a bad… no, horrible, blogger and I really have no excuse. I could have spent the time but I didn’t. Instead I’ve been drinking tea, lattes, and gin and tonic, reading and messing about on the iPad during my spare time.
I did though scrapbook and managed a few Jovie pages. Yay me {::SMILE}. Nothing complicated. A pretty pattern paper as the base and a few bits of embellishments and a splash of ink.
Speaking of… Jovie has been doing sooooooooo well in terms of physical and mental development. She’s finally eating somewhat decently and getting noticeably bigger (although still one of the shortest in her age group), very smart and oh so cheeky. I probably should start Twittering again, “Things that Jovie Says”, so that you all can virtually hear her cheekiness because they’re all so so cute! Today her teacher told me that Jovie will be pushed encouraged to learn to read. Jovie’s phonics is quite good for her age and she’s starting to join letters together. I can’t wait to see how much she’ll pick up by the end of the school year and looking forward to reading many many books together with the girls and hubby (we’re all readers). I also think Jovie’s almost ready to go gymnastics on her own. We’ll see this coming Saturday if what I’ve been doing works. Will report back next week!
Miss M is doing superbly too. She’s in the top group in her classroom (the kids do the same topic but the higher the group, the more challenging the work is) and except for ballet, which she is quitting due to boredom after this term, is doing quite fabulously in all her after school activities.
As for me, or us, in general, we’ll be in England five more years! Yes, we will not be in the US until January of 2018!! We’re so excited about this and we look forward to not only spend more time with our British friends longer but to also travel to more European countries (and possibly northern Africa) during our stay. When we first moved here, we were traveling each time M had a school holiday (except Christmas break). But since she started doing competitive gymnastics, we had to slow our travels down a bit. It’s to the point where we don’t even go to London as often (and we used to go about once a month). So now we only go for a few days during the week after a competition weekend and maybe a couple full weeks off during the summer, summer and/or fall. While M has no dream of going to the Olympics, gymnastics is very important to her and since it is a sport where regular attendance is required to do well, we had to make compromises.
So that’s it. Little bits of news from us.
Until next time! Ciao!!
Our Little Champ
Posted on | February 18, 2013 | 2 Comments |
It was about 5 years ago, at the start of my blogging life, that I was moaning about how Emma didn’t want to much of anything in terms of activities. She quit ballet three times by the time she was five (or maybe even before that age). And the reason why she stayed as long as she did — 3 months — was because I made her. It’s not often that there’s a ballet school right across the street from our friend’s bar/restaurant {::SMIRK}!! She didn’t want to do piano, she didn’t want to do much at mommy and me gymnastics session or did she want to do the preschool class sans me.
At five and a half she asked to go to gymnastics again and while in doubt, I took her. Gym only lasted for six months but it wasn’t due to her lost of interest. We moved to England. After almost a year of being on a waiting list M got space and from the second I walked in, I knew I made a mistake. I felt so stupid for not trying out first, or even visiting the place. I didn’t know that there are only rec gyms in the UK. I thought all gyms are like the US.
Three gym clubs later and Emma is now a grade 14/level 5 gymnast. We’re so proud of her not only because she’s still sticking to it but for working so hard to be where she is today. She’s only started real gymnastics training in February of last year but in a year’s time she’s improved so much.
Last weekend was her first big, as in lot so of people and lots of big gyms from the southern bit of England competing, and she won herself the 3rd place sash!!
So so extra proud of her and we look forward to see what else she can do in gymnastics!
Nando’s and Charcoal
Posted on | February 8, 2013 | 4 Comments |
Last week I decided to try Nando’s. It’s a chain BBQ chicken restaurant that a lot of people, US military people that is, seem to really like.
It was good. BUT, it wasn’t something magnificent. I mean basically, if you all know how to light a BBQ, throw a few lightly marinated chicken pieces on top of it, attempt to not burn them and later lather the well BBQ’d chicken with the Nando’s Peri-Peri sauce, you’ll get more less the same thing. So taste wise, it was an 8. If I were stuck at a train station and the options were McD or Nando’s I’d go for Nando’s. In terms of value for money, I personally don’t think it’s worth it. It’s like IHOP. I used to go there. Loved it. But once I learned that it takes 5 minutes to make a pancake batter from scratch and the pancakes taste so much better, IHOP wasn’t good anymore.
It was also last week that I realized the reason why Nando’s quite popular, and maybe more so outside the summer season, charcoal is a SEASONAL item!!
NO NO NO NO NO! BBQ-ing is good all year!!
We wanted to BBQ last week but hubby forgot to grab some charcoal from the base. So he went to three different stores and came home with: “Honey, guess what? Charcoal is a seasonal item. The people at the store thought I was crazy when I asked them where the charcoal’s at.”
So note to self: Always stock up on charcoal!
NOW, have you looked at all the pretty new releases from WPlus9? You should!! They’re all so pretty! Also, check out the sketch challenge at Card’s magazine. You can win some fab stamps! If you’re short on cash and can only buy one thing from WPlus9, the one item I simply love and use 90% of the time lately is their Oatmeal cardstock. It’s off white with light speckles. It’s so so pretty and it goes with whatever style.
Alright, I’ll be done for now. I’ll share my knitting progress next time and some other news from last month. Bye!
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