Boston Love

In light of the rough week we've had in the US, a hard question. What do you normally do for someone going through extreme grief or pain? I always feel so helpless. If there's an address, I knit one of these hearts and mail them off. There are some Boston victims that will be getting one of these, from me, this week. </3

Give Away - My Memories and Free Printables!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a company called My Memories.  They offer a digital scrapbooking software and wanted to know if I was interested in hosting a give away for their product.

At first I though, "Um, we don't do digital scrapbooking here.  Why would I want to host a give away for that?" and dismissed it.  Then I thought about it a little more.

Printables are all the rage right now.  They are all over Pinterest and Etsy.  I've got three framed in my house right now.  They are instant, personalized art, right?  But not everyone has mad Photoshop skillz. (right, Phoebe? - that's right, I'm ratting you out.)

I wondered how well My Memories Suite would work for making printables, so I said (well typed,) "sure, I'll try it out."

YOU GUYS!  It's awesome!  It's super easy to use, it comes with a pretty good library of shapes, frames, images, and buttons.  In addition to everything that comes with the software, there is a whole ton of images, kits, and crafts that you can purchase to use within the software.  I felt like the prices were very reasonable, and there is a wide range of styles.

So, I made you all a couple of printable so you could see how great it is.  Everything I used came free with the software.

Feel free to click, download, and print.

Cute, right?  And those three took me about 15 minutes each to create.

In addition for those Silhouette users out there, you can save your files as SVGs so you can use them to cut vinyl  too! 

I also am loving some of their "craftables".

Like these cute cupcake wrappers and toppers.  (Phoebe now has even more resources at her disposal to go over the top with her birthday parties!)

and one more thing I like about My Memories before we get to the give away. . .

You can send your printable (or photos or whatever) to them to be printed, either on photo paper, or as a wall cling, or on an iphone case or on a deck or cards or . . .

I totally need that right?

OK - so My Memories has offered a copy of their My Memories Suite Software to one of my readers.  It works on both Macs and PCs (you know I'm a Mac girl, so I can vouch.) Here's how to enter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
In addition to that, they have offered AHR readers a really great coupon.




Enter the code STMMMS28172 at checkout and receive $10 off the purchase price (regularly $39.97) and a $10 credit to the My Memories Store (that's where you can get extra shapes, backgrounds, etc.)  Nice, right?  (I'm totally going to use it myself!)

That's it!  I'll announce the winner after the give away closes on the 25th at midnight.

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disclosure:  I received a free copy of My Memories Suite to try and review.  I also receive a commission on any copies of the software that are purchased using the above coupon code.  My opinions are 100% mine.   You know I'd never lead you all astray.  That wouldn't be cool at all.

Egg Birthday

My now 4 year old loves to hang out in the kitchen.  Inevitably, if there are eggs in view, he will pick one up, stare at it and daydream of throwing it at something.  He usually asks 'Mom, can I break this?  Can I throw this at something?'  I take a deep breath and gently take the egg out of his hands before he decides to answer his own question.

In response to his longing for egging someone/thing, we threw him an Egg Birthday Party. It involved breaking/smashing over 100 eggs.  We had a firing squad line-up of a select few egg producers.  An owl, a chick, a rooster (ok, this one just hatched from an egg), a penguin, and a hen.  There was also an alligator, but apparently that one needed saving for his bedroom decor.

We also had cascarones (confetti eggs).  The child guests were floored and delighted over the activities.

The buffet table included marshmallow eggs, chocolate eggs, deviled eggs, malted eggs and egg shaped sugar cookies. The cake donned a ninja, because that has everything to do with eggs, right?
We ended the party with a parrot pinata!

Happy Birthday to my E-walker!

The Play Kitchen

I had no idea how much of my design and decorating style and motivation were tied to the actual house I lived in.  Yes, naturally, things will change when you move from a modern town house to a log house, but what about when I moved into a non-discript, white walled, 1980's, suburban, tract house?  Well,  a total lack of inspiration from the actual house has really dampened my desire decorate it.

Also, I never really viewed this house as mine to decorate.  We were only planning on living here for a year.  Now it has been 18 months, we've decided that for now, we aren't going anywhere, and it could easily be another year or 18 months before we move. After Lincoln and I made the decision, I started to get a lot more serious about making this house our home.

I put a lot of effort into the Apple House, not only because it needed it, but because we thought we were going to be there for a long time.  In reality, we've lived in this house 6 months longer than we lived there.  So. . . it's time to start putting more effort into THIS house.  You would think by now I would have learned that you never know how long you will be in one place.  It could be 11 months, it could be 7 years, it could be for the rest of your life. . . at least for us, life is messy and complicated and so the only thing to do is make your home where you land, even if it's only for a short time.

With that, I'm going to start showing you my house as I get it decorated more to my liking.

I'll start with the boys' play kitchen, because it happens to be a corner that came together with items we all ready owned and I love the way it looks.

We don't have a dedicated play room in this house, and the boys' bedroom is tiny, so instead, there are "pockets" throughout the house where they play.  Their play kitchen is actually in our real kitchen, next to the back door.  The boys often play in it while I'm cooking.

The play kitchen is one of those old wood play kitchens that are in nearly every pre-school in America.  I think they are made by Whitney Brothers.  I got them off of craigslist from a nice lady who had once owned a preschool, had put these in storage when she closed it, and was finally selling them.

I painted them bright red and personalized them a bit!  (and yes, there is a knob missing, it's inside the kitchen somewhere waiting for me to put it back on.)

The checkerboard I just did with painter's tape and the "Wright's Diner" I did before I had a Silhouette, so I did it the old school way of cutting it out of vinyl with an x-acto knife.

This vintage alphabet posters is one of my favorite garage sale finds ever!  I paid $5, frame, glass, and all at a garage sale in Seattle when John Henry was still a baby.

It is hysterical and inappropriate in places.  Let me share a few of my favorite squares.

Yes, that's right, some of the letters don't even have words that start with the letter.  I guess it was printed before children's xylophones were widely available!  :)

The boys' art gallery is also in this corner.  It is simply a dowel (with feathers on the end) that I hung some yarn from and then we use clothes pins to attach the art work to the yarn.  The boys love moving them around and choosing what goes where.  A few times a year I clean it off, save my favorites in a file folder that I keep for each of them, and recycle the rest.  It doesn't take long for them to fill it up again, and I love being able to look at their artwork without it filling up my fridge.

You can also see the chalk board globe I made for them.  Well, I actually made it to sell, but they loved it so much that I let them keep it and made another one for the business.

And now, just to keep it real, let's have a look at what this corner usually looks like.  I took this before I cleaned things up to take pictures.

Yep, that's more like it.

Now, let's have one more look at it the way it is in my dreams.

Cute!
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I will be sharing at:
Domstically Speaking's Power of Paint Party

Harold and Maude - Shabby Chair Pair

I asked for help naming this pair on our facebook page.   If you haven't joined us there, you need to get on in!  The conversation and the ideas that are shared are awesome!  I will for sure be using some of the other names that were suggested, but you all voted and Shannon's suggestion won out!

I thought it was interesting that nearly all of the suggestions were a man and woman pair.  I would not have thought of that.  As you might have noticed that most of the pieces I name are women's names.

The original reason I asked for help in naming these chairs was because they made me so agitated that I had a hard time wanting to call them anything other than &*@&# and #*%&@!

I decided to try something I'd read about a few places, a petroleum jelly resist.  The idea here is that you paint one (or two in my case) coats of paint on, apply some petroleum jelly (Vaseline) to the places that you want left alone, let that dry and then apply your next color.  The petroleum jelly is supposed to protect the first coat of paint in the areas that it is applied, so that when you rub it away you are left with places that were untouched by the last coat of paint.

Well, I guess when you live in a place where the humidity is around 90% all winter long, petroleum jelly never does dry out.  So after waiting over night for it to dry I decided to paint over it anyway (what else was I going to do?)

Then I waited for that coat of paint to dry and started rubbing off the jelly with a paper towel.  WHAT. A. MESS!  It smeared the last coat of paint (the black in case you're wondering) all over the place, sort of mixing with it and it was coming off where I didn't want it to come off and no matter how much I rubbed it with a a paper towel I couldn't seem to get all of the jelly off of the chairs!

After several rounds and far more paper towels than I'd like to admit, I finally got most of the jelly off, but ended up not waxing them because there is a still a very fine film over them that feels a lot like wax.  I didn't want to push my luck with this cranky pair!

I am happy with how they eventually came out, even if it isn't at all what I had in mind!  I did learn an important lesson though.  Petroleum Jelly has officially been banned from my workshop!

Maude and Harold are certainly one of a kind.  You won't be seeing a finish like this from me EVER again.

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Maude and Harold are for sale.  See my Portfolio and Available page for details.

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I will be sharing at: 
Primp

Birthday Preparations

My soon to be 4 year old has requested an 'Egg' theme for his birthday party, next month.  The thought of smashing eggs has been on his 'to do' list for a couple of months now.  Planning an 'Egg' party that does not look like an 'Easter' party is not an easy task.  Today, preparations are taking the form of confetti eggs, or cascarones, as some might call them.  Yes, I see that this is some very large confetti.  It was an Amazon fail, but I'm making it work.

And Then There Were Two....

I’m Phoebe, Megan’s little sister.

We’re just shy of 55 weeks apart. We’ve spent our lives on opposite ends of nearly every spectrum. In our youth, we fought, as all healthy siblings should and as adults, we bond, as all healthy siblings should.  Our favorite pastimes are giving each others’ creative bubbles direction, sharing hopes and dreams of spiritual matters, and lending an ear for the drudgery that is life’s mundane.   Our relationship is not one of walking on eggshells or treading lightly. We keep things real, tell it like it is, and there is no room for taking offense or flinging insults. We also find each other hilarious!

I have 3 children, ages 5, almost 4, and 18 months. I am shamelessly proud of each of them. I was giggling with joy, as I typed that. I was married young (20) to my high school sweetheart, but I made sure that I sowed my wild oats before having kids (not in the promiscuous sense). I have a bachelor’s degree in Business Admin. I worked as a Pharmacy Technician. I spent most of my career in pharmacy retail, but a small stint in corporate finance. I owned a retail floral/gift boutique for just under 2 years. I love to create. I love art. Most of my creativity is displayed in over-the-top birthday parties for my kids, gifted baby sweaters (no endorsements into this family, until you learn to knit), and my childrens’ wardrobes.

I consider myself your ‘run of the mill’, annoying little sister. Sometimes, siblings have been known to limit accepted phone calls per day.

I am the clothes horse of the two of us. Style, for me, comes in a shoebox. Megan and I share a passion for color and vintage items. What I see walking down the street, she sees painted on a thrifted dresser. I’ve always had what some might consider ‘expensive taste’ in textiles, clothing to ribbon. What most people don’t know is that the majority of my children’s clothes are straight out of the thrift store. I enjoy the hunt, almost as much as I enjoy pairing to create the perfect look.

Meg, asked me to share my creativity with Apple House Revival. I accepted; there you have it.
My posts will be sporadic and possibly nonsensical. Like I said, I have three small children, no explanation needed.

First up, Meg suggested a vintage apparel round-up. She actually said dresses, but doing ‘exactly’ what she suggested would break my ‘little sister code of conduct’. In my selections, I kept ‘every day wearable’ at the top of my priority list. Enjoy.

I had to include this one. I would absolutely wear this. But, the crowning touch is that it’s reserved for someone else. Story of my life.

I dream of fashion of this sort. However, the frugalista in me, would never allow it at that price.

Call me crazy. I want!

Dang! Not my size….

I’m a sucker for anything I owned, as a child. Baby girl needs some.

I LOVE patent leather. Shoes, belts. I wear patent, no matter the changing styles.

Best baby gift ever!

Must-have for my boys!

I HEART Swiss dot…who doesn’t?

Vintage, not just for women…great mens' gift.

Do you love vintage fashion too?  Tell us what your favorite vintage find is!