Baked Beans Blunder

I enjoy cooking and one of the ways I try to serve our church family is cooking for families with new babies, recent hospitalizations, deaths in the family...

Anyhow, on this particular day I was cooking for a few different groups of people and decided to use the chicken tortilla soup I had made a froze a few days prior. So, the night before, I pulled out the container of frozen soup and let it thaw in the refrigerator. The next day I made cornbread and put together salads, desserts and toppings for the soup. Everything was packaged and in bags when I went to ladle out the soup. I opened the container and it was... baked beans! Not tortilla soup! Argh!

I normally label everything but had not labeled the soup since I had made it for this very purpose. And, unbeknownst to me the baked beans were in a matching container, also unlabeled, by my dear hubs.

No, I did not make the soup at that late hour. I picked some up at La Tapatia (excellent tortilla soup) and headed out with G for deliveries.

Lesson learned: label everything that goes into the freezer! Duh! Oh well :)

Vintage Wall Art

A few months ago I went ahead and hung empty frames in Gavin's room with the hopes I'd soon find a vintage picture book with artwork that I liked. A few weeks ago, after a trip to Half Price Books I found an old book called Little Boy Blue (by Daphne Hogstrom, Golden Press 1966). I loved all the images of a little boy playing and the vibrant blues and greens in each image.

For this project, I carefully removed pages from the book, cut them to size and centered them on fabric that coordinates with his room. Finally, I machine stitched the pages onto the fabric. I really like the end result and may continue decorating his room with book pages in the coming years!

The finished product!

Love Owlays Invitation

I helped host a baby shower for my friend Jana a couple weekends ago. Jana and her husband are waiting to find out the baby's gender and have decided to decorate their nursery with owls and yellow and gray colors.

For fun I decided to make the shower invitations. And, I must say-I was super pleased with the end result! I love that it's 100% customizable and affordable (the price of white card-stock and the fee to copy it at a printing store.)

To make the invitation:
I sketched out an mommy and baby owl onto card-stock paper (watercolor paper is too rough for a smooth finish for this type of project). Then, I outlined them with a thin sharpie and used oil pastels to add a border/highlights.
Next, I water-colored the image. Finally, I used an exacto-like knife to cut around the outside edge of the image. Its important to cut close to the image so that it copies onto the invitation seamlessly.
Then, I created the invitation wording in Microsoft Word, pasted my owl onto a print out of the invite, added yellow and gray paper behind the invite to serve as a border, and finally copied the invites onto white card-stock.

Cupcake Blunder

I decided to bake mini cupcakes in candy/nut bowls for a shower I am helping host. While filing the bowls It occurred to me that I may have overfilled them, but I decided to try my luck since it was getting late and I wanted to move onto my next task. The cost of trying to do too many things at once! Lesson learned!

If you're wondering what's up with such a random post... I decided a while back it was silly for me to just post about all the fun things in life because my life is certainly not all roses and well baked entrees! So I decided to add the occasional blonde girl/what was I thinking/blunder post to the blog for some comedic relief :)

Babies are a Hoot

I helped host a baby shower for my friend Jana a couple weekends ago. It was wonderful to honor a friend and her special new arrival! For this shower each host crafted things to both decorate the party and the little one's nursery!

Jana, the Guest of Honor!
The Hosts: Kristin T., myself and Kristin M.
some of the Party Girls
DecorationsI used a "cross-cut wood plaque" and owl stencil from Michael's; I was inspired by this.

The mantle was decorated with a super cute banner and blocks that one of the hosts made. She cut the blocks and then attached scrapbook paper, letters and pictures of the couple with modge-podge. One side of the blocks says "baby" and the other says "love". So super cute!

I used Whole Foods Sonoma Chicken Salad recipe (I love it!)Worms? Of course! It was an owl-themed party!One of the hosts made these super cute tissue poms!

We asked guests to sign the back page of In My Tree (a children's book about owls)
Using felt and embroidery thread I put together a set of little owls for the nursery!

Games: Wishes for Baby, Ghanaian word match, and Due Date guessing

I made all of the printables for the party excluding the food labels. The food labels come from a line of free printables from Pottery Barn Kids by TomKat Studio; also, the "Wishes for Baby" printable was modeled after this.

For favors, one of the hosts had the great idea of making refrigerator magnets. She modge-podged scrapbook paper onto clothespins and attached magnetic tape to the back. Simple, useful, and great!

Chugga Chugga Choo Choo

In January we dedicated* our little boy to the Lord at church.

To celebrate the event we invited our families, small group from church, and some of David's colleagues to join us at the dedication and then at our home for lunch.

Gavin's baby dedication marked the first time we had family in town while I was getting ready for a party. Everything worked out wonderfully and I was very happy to have our moms' help since I had a full plate!

Decor
Trains- David and I have liked trains since early in our relationship. It dates back to an Art class I took in college where we asked our significant others to choose a mode of transportation that symbolized our relationship, and then draw that object. David drew a train. For many reasons I love that he choose a train as well as the other things that he added to the picture.
Then, this Christmas Gavin received an ADORABLE train sweater from his Gran and Grandad Smith and the theme was born for this event!
Another special train memory for me is the train my Grandpa Dick made for our family when I was young. I have always loved the things he crafted and painted for us. My parents brought the train to the party and seeing it brought back a flood of memories of my Grandpa!
Wreath-I made a party wreath for this occasion and decided to do a black and white polka dot fabric so that it could be interchangeable for future events. I really like seasonal wreaths and the idea of a welcome wreath for parties is something I like to greet our guests with :)
I pinned on the bows and the "All Aboard" sign. For future events I will change out the bow and make a different sign to hang in the center.Signs- layering paper attached to wood skewers, I made a few train themed signs. One was at the entry as a little welcome sign, another was near the party favors, and another near the food.
This sign ended up saying "Tank You". I reprinted the sign after getting the idea but did not take a picture of it :)

Menu-I was careful to plan a menu that could have most prep done ahead of time and a main dish that could simmer in a slow cooker while we were at church.

To add some pizazz to the meal I researched the names of train parts so that I could name each item something special. For instance, a little sign near the cups said, "chugga chugga" and the sign near utensils said, "chew chew"!

Menu
Baggage Car = Utensils
Cargo = Condiments
Diesel Fuel = Ice Team
Locomotion Lemonade
Water Tower = Water
Produce Car = Assorted Veggies
Food Labels
I made the labels in Microsoft Word using a font I downloaded online. I attached striped scrapbook paper (that I cut with a scallop punch) and a small clip-art train.

Fortunately, almost everything was prepped one or two days out before the event. Because, Saturday afternoon I came down with a stomach bug and was basically useless most of Saturday evening and Sunday. I had baked cookies ahead of time but did not get to decorate them to look like trains and I did not get to finish making homemade train suckers. With those minor disappointments aside, it was wonderful how our families helped us finishing prepping all the food and setting out the platters and decor so that the party could still be a pretty and yummy event!

Music- Luckily for all of our guests I downloaded almost 100 train-themed songs. Yeah, I didn't know there were that many either... It became a joke how crazy it was to hear train engines and lingo, again and again and AGAIN!

We are so thankful to everyone who joined us for this special time! I promise I will get better at taking pictures of people!!! If it weren't for my dear sister I would not have any pictures of this party. So, thank you sis for being on your toes!
Gavin and I with his Cousins Josh and Jenni
G playing with David's family after the party

One last shout out:
Our church gave Gavin and a set of books as a dedication gift. I like them all but found one of them particularly interesting: 801 Questions Kids Ask About God. I find the q&a to be thought provoking and helpful! I highly suggest checking it out!

*Baby dedications are when parents of a young child stand before their church family and state that they will raise their child in a Christian home. The parents ask for prayer and support for the endeavor as well as for their child to grow in knowledge and love for Christ.