Merry Merry

 

I have been sharing my Pretty Girl Favorites on my Instagram account! Hoping to help you get your Christmas shopping done!

Today is Day 3 and I have a freebie to share! Do you leave treats on your front steps for all the delivery people? We do! And I always have a version of this sign sitting right next to the treat bucket!

I hope you will follow along for my 12 days of favs! 

Staying Positive

What are doing to stay positive during this crazy time? Here are a couple of my  go-tos! I used a new font by my talented friend,  Crystal Kluge! 

Who's Heading Off to College?

I am not, but I know there are a lot of you out there whose kiddos are! {are you crying or are you cheering?} Over the weekend I created several printables that would be perfect for decorating a dorm! 

 find it here

 

find it here

 find it here 

 

find it here

And just for fun . . . total flashback to when I was in college! The higher the bangs the better!! UW Stout during the 90's!

 

Front Porch Holiday Style

I collect goodies all year long for my porch. Some never make it to the stage and some are cast year after year. I am loving some of my new pieces! The Morrell red container, the Seater Heater and the Skotch Coolers (which are my favorite).

Hope you find a little inspiration for your porch! Happy decorating!

Art Camp on Spruce part THREE

ice cream

ice cream

we all scream for ice cream!

can you guess the theme this week?

Homemade Ice Cream -

throw everything in a mason jar 
shake it for a couple minutes and 
throw it in the freezer
a couple hours later . . . ENJOY!

Ice Cream Cones -

paper plates

paint

glue

sprinkles

paper grocery bags

scissors

hearts {from the previous week}

One of the things i have been teaching the kiddos each week is USE WHAT YOU HAVE! Paper bags from the grocery store are my new favorite thing to try and incoprate into the craft!

I thought these might be a bit out of our wheelhouse but the kids did so well, and they loved how they turned out! I followed this tutorial from the cutest little girl.  

Art Camp on Spruce

Cleo and I are hosting an Art Camp in our garage this summer. Yesterday was the first one and it was a huge success! Cleo had so much fun being the leader and she was so good about going around and complimenting everyone on their projects!

Yesterday's theme was birds. I found these birds on Pinterest. {can I get an AMEN for Pinterest} I really tried to stick to my rule of using what I have on hand but I did need to pick up a couple more supplies since we were making so many. 

Each week I am going to try and add a service project into our Art Camp.  This week we made bird seed ornaments. I plan on dropping those off at the local assisted living facility! Hopefully, the residents and birds will enjoy them!

The birdseed ornaments were super easy to make! I found the same recipe over and over again:

2 cups birdseed
2 packs of gelatin
2/3 cups water
some sort of cookie cutter or mold (i used ramekins)
a straw or lollipop stick to make a hole for hanging
twine

add gelatin to water and let it dissolve 
turn burner to medium
heat until the gelatin simmers, stirring frequently
let the gelatin cool
stir in birdseed 
now you are ready to mold your ornaments
let them sit over night

: : : : : : : : : : : : : :

This weeks crew + Cleo doing her thing!

Family Camp

We checked off the first item from our Summer Bucket List . . .  Camp Icaghowan family camp! We had a great time and it was clear, Cleo was made for summer camp! This will definitely be a summer bucket list repeat. Art and crafts, s'mores, swimming, parent free-time, the climbing wall, games, horses, hiking; camp had it all! Do you have a family camp in your area? Might be worth looking into!

One of Cleo's favorite books is about summer camp: Thank You, Aunt Tullulah. A really cute book about a little girls who exchanges letter with her aunt during summer camp.

Start the week with Sprinkles . . .

Lots and lots of sprinkles. I whipped these up yesterday! I am not a baker. Not even a little so I am totally going to toot my own horn on these things!

You can find the recipe here and the frosting recipe is from the good ol' Betty Crocker Cookbook!

Summer Bucket List

I love filling out our Summer Bucket list! And I find if I don't jot down our list we never remember everything! Here's a printable to get your started! 

What's on your list this year? I will be sharing some of ours in the next couple weeks! Happy planning!

May Day Baskets

I love a good May Day basket! When I was a little girl my Grandma Marion always celebrated May Day. And now I am trying to continue that tradition!

#usewhatyouhave

tins = My parents received a big box of candy for a Christmas gift years ago. I have been holding onto these candy tins since then.

flowers = a floral banner kit

vintage light reflectors

vintage ribbon

and of course I used my stamp kit from Paper Source

a may day poem

candy from our local candy store

Henry's Confirmation | Our Family

Yesterday we celebrated Henry's confirmation. It was a beautiful day filled with lots of sunshine and family. 

We have a non-traditional family, or do they call it a blended family? We just call it family. It's not what I ever would have chosen for Henry. Can you imagine?  "When I grow up, I hope I have a baby and I am not married to the dad!" I struggle with the guilt of this still 15 years later. It never goes away. And maybe I have parented a bit differently because of it too! But here's the cool thing about our family . . . we all get along! There have definitely been some lows and some fights and some hurt feelings, but we have always tried to put Henry first and what is best for him. And we want to be a positive example to our other children too!

Yesterday, as we all stood around H during the "Laying on of Hands" I couldn't help but get a bit emotional. First, as a mom it's always emotional seeing your children growing up. Second, to have his grandmas and grandpas, his siblings, his mom, his dad, his bonus mom, his bonus dad, his grandpa's girlfriend, Henry's friend's dad all stand with him and pray with him and for him . . . made my heart so happy. But I also had a sense of pride knowing we are being and doing our best for him.

Henry chose this verse for his faith statement during confirmation. I think he chose this verse because he really loved the friendship part of his Wednesday nights and found comfort in those new friendships. But as I re-read it again today,  I instantly thought it was a fitting verse for Our Family.

Signs

A couple weeks ago I discovered the most adorable greeting card line called, Stripy Arms. I added several of her cards to my collection and I also, added this print. I almost cried when I found it on her site!

Here's the deal . . . around the same time that I found this print, a friend had just told me I was "too much" for her. A 13 year friendship finished. Hard words to hear . . . heartbreaking nonetheless. I was also helping a friend with all of her marketing for her new store called, The Bees Knees! So if those two things weren't enough to convince me that this print needed to be in my home. A friend then pointed out that the girl in the print had short hair. I just cut off all my hair! EEEEK!!

Do you believe in signs? I call these God taps!

Spring, where are you?

This midwest girl is ready for spring!! A little Mary Poppins to get us in the mood!
{download it here} Happy Spring, friends!

Hello 46

This is 46. I have earned every one of these wrinkles. The best ones i can safely say are the laugh lines around my eyes. I know that I have laughed far more than I have cried. I am working on being proud of this body. The body that made me a mom. The body that fed my children. The body that allows me to run and bike and climb the stairs. I am working on it.

I have the best little family who really is something else. A cute husband that makes me laugh every day and two kids that I couldn’t be more proud of and of course our Sully dog. Want to know what unconditional love is? Get a dog! It really is one of  the best gifts i have ever given myself. I have an amazing group of friends. As you get older your friendship circles change. Some leave on their own and some you choose to gracefully exit, but I don’t regret any of those friendships. There is always something good that comes out of people sharing chapters of your life with you! Look, I promise you will find something.

I have found things in my life that make my heart happy. That are my very own. Photography, helping our furry friends find their forever homes, running an Etsy shop and most recently, working with some amazing women to help make our community a better place . . . things that I hope make my kids proud of me!

Saturday, Henry and I are heading to Flordia to spend a week with my parents. Another reason to celebrate. I have two parents that are always on an adventure and we want to tag along. We still have time together. I really want to make it count!

Hello 46! It’s great to be here!

Valentine Word Find

When my son first started to read he loved doing word finds so this may be a hit with your new readers as well! You can find the printable here! This one is super easy . . . just two cuts and you have 4 cards! Boom! 

you're a real treasure

A design for a friend is a win for you! Another easy Valentine! You can find the printable here!

you COLOR my world

YOU COLOR MY WORLD ❤️ I am putting together Cleo’s Valentine’s Day classroom cards today! I am not against candy at Valentine’s Day, but I have a ton of these crayons so I designed this coloring sheet! #usewhatyouhave

Need a quick coloring page for Valentine's Day? You can download it here!

the best pancakes in the whole wide world

Thank you Pioneer Woman for the best pancake recipe! This is our go-to every weekend. I double it and then we eat them for the rest of the week or we sometimes finish them all in one day! Someone in our house sneaks them out of the fridge and just eats them cold 🙋 

 ::::::::::::::

1 cup Sour Cream
7 TBLS Flour
2 TBLS Sugar
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
2 Large Eggs
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

You're All that . . .

And a bag of chips! Another fun, FREE printable for Valentine's Day!
-Print
-Cut
-Fold
-Glue (I used hot glue)

#usewhatyouhave

Katie at Just Add Sunshine invited her IG followers to get on board #TheGreatCraftRoomCleanUp so I did! I started with painting my space white. I have been wanting to do this for such a long time and I LOVE it! The hard part now is putting nail holes in my pretty walls. Little by little I will get things back up, but I am in no hurry. 

Part of cleaning up is always cleaning out, right? And holy crap I have a lot of stuff! So my new motto is USE WHAT YOU HAVE. I discovered I have a very large collection of blank CD's. I can't even use CD's in my current computer so they moved from my supplies drawer to my craft supplies drawer. With Valentine's Day coming up I thought it would be fun to try and come up with a couple craft ideas I could do with Cleo using the old CD's. This is what we came up with. The best part for Cleo: using the hot glue gun. 

"So Happy We are in the Same School" 

Supplies: CD's, paper hearts (I had the pink ones on hand and the green and hotpink I paper punched) a hot glue gun and googly eyes