Have you ever had one of those moments? You could call it coincidence but you know better.
Last month at church a sweet sister got up during a testimony meeting. One of the ways she expresses herself and her faith is through song. She sang a beautiful old gospel hymn that I had not heard before called His Eye is on the Sparrow. It was beautiful and touching.
I went home that afternoon and was looking through some blogs in my reader and came across this post over at Red Heads Craft More Fun. It was a tutorial for creating a canvas art project. She had used the words from the very same hymn the sister I had sung in church that day. A hymn I had never heard before and now I had heard it twice in one day – I think that was a message to me.
So I decided that I need to create this canvas art project for the sister at church, a woman whose name I didn’t even know.
I had a blank canvas sitting around from some uncompleted craft project. I used my Cricut to cut out the letters (DoodleType) and bird (Home Decor) and got to work. My paint color was Jamaican Sea from FolkArt. A little mod podge over the top and it was complete.
I followed the tutorial over at Red Heads Craft More Fun and I think it came out great. I love the sweet message of the hymn, that the Lord knows who we are and watches out for us.
Now I want to make one for myself.
Do you have a favorite hymn you would love to see on a canvas in your home? Which one would it be?H
Decorating the tables for an event in one of our church’s cultural halls is always a bit of a challenge. The cultural hall is a basically a gymnasium, really nothing cultural about it. It is a big huge space! I did my best.
Fortunately our Relief Society (the woman’s organization at church) owns some beautiful to the floor gold tablecloths which we used. They added some nice warmth to the table and room.
My sweet husband climbed up in the attic and pulled down all my Fall decor (which is numerous boxes) so that I could use some of the items.
Last week I was out at a CSA owned by some people at church and I noticed a row of sunflowers out in the field. I asked Carlos what he was going to do with them. When he answered – “cut them down” I quickly volunteered to do it for him.
Free flowers is a good thing. The sunflowers looked perfect on the gold tablecloths. I have a collection of white pitchers so I used those to hold the flowers.
I also had been collecting black candlesticks from my weekly trips to Goodwill. Not all the candlesticks started out black though – but thanks to a little black spray paint they all ended up black. I used the candlesticks to hold various pumpkins and balls from my stash of Fall decor!
Since it was a little too early for real pumpkins and gourds I used my fake stuff to add some color and interest around the flower arrangements.
We had three stations for food – all with the same food on it so we didn’t end up with a bottleneck at the serving table. We also placed a round table in the middle of the tables for water.
I brought a lot of my serving pieces along to help create height on the table. One of my favorite and most used pieces is the 4 tiered serving piece from Costco. I am not sure if they still have it but with the holidays coming they may have something similar. If you see one – buy it! I love mine and use it all the time. Fortunately two of my friends also own one so I borrowed there’s so each serving station had one on it.
I took one of my Fall garlands and just stuffed it inside my tall container.
I also brought along some of my cake plates and other higher serving pieces to add interest and height to the table.
I used my trusty little place card holders with cards I made in my Storybook Creator software to label each of the dishes.
The week before the event I still hadn’t found enough wooden candlesticks for what I needed so I had to get a little creative. I found a small wooden candlestick at Goodwill and a wooden coaster so I created my own display piece. It is amazing what you can do with a little E6000 glue and black spray paint! I just glued the two together…
and then gave it a coat of black spray paint!
Do you have any great tricks for creating fun serving or display pieces?
Last week kind of got away from me and half way through the week I realized I hadn’t taken any pretty pictures. So, the majority of this week’s photos are from our last minute, impromptu weekend trip to the Oregon Coast. There is no lack of pretty there!
Day 253- September 13
We live in an area of Portland called the Sunset Corridor. Here is why….
Day 254 – September 14
Call me crazy but one place I love to visit when we go to our beach house in Manzanita is the dump. I think Manzanita has one of the best dumps anywhere! Wait until you see the treasure I found for $1.50. It was too big to fit in the car so I had to leave it at the beach house but as soon as it makes it home I’ll show it to you!
Believe it or not, even a dump can be pretty!
Day 255 – September 15
They have taken lots of items that have been brought to the dump and made them into yard art – so pretty!
Day 256 – September 16
Another one of my favorite spots to visit while at the beach is Wanda’s in Nehalem. Good food and I love the fun, pretty vintage decor.
Day 257 – September 17
Besides visiting the dump and eating at Wanda’s, another favorite beach activity is hiking. This time we hiked out to Falcon Point. I fell in love with the old cement bridge that went along Hwy 101 near where we started our hike.
Day 258 – September 18
Day 259 – September 19
And one more view of the bridge – up close!
Day 260 – September 20
I want to drive this!!
Day 261 – September 21
A visit to the CSA our friends run and operate. Lovely sunflowers in the field.
Day 262 – September 22
Lunch with these two pretty ladies. My mom and her first cousin who was in town visiting. I call her Aunt Dottie although she really is a cousin. Not sure, is she my first cousin once removed or a second cousin??
Day 263 – September 23
More sunflowers up close and personal.
Day 264 – September 24
This flower has a little visitor.
Day 265 – September 25
From the field to my kitchen counter – lovely!
Day 266 – September 26
Homemade salsa with tomatoes from our garden. Love the sound of those lids popping!!
So I have a bit of a love affair. I am in love with everything about Anthropologie – their clothes, their accessories, kitchen items and their window displays. It is a store full of pretty!
Unfortunately Anthropologie’s regular price tags are a little too much for my budget (thank goodness for the sale room!!)
So today I want to show you a skirt that looks like it came straight out of Anthropologie.
Isn’t it cute. But guess what? It didn’t come from Anthropologie and it didn’t have an Anthropologie price tag.
This skirt came from my craft room – yes, I made it and I can’t wait to show you how. When I made the skirt I didn’t initially intend for it to be a tutorial so my photos are a little lacking. I don’t have photos of each step but hopefully there is enough for you to get a good idea how I did it.
A few weeks ago a few friends and I went to a local bazaar and met a lady who was making the most darling children’s skirts out of old sweaters. She added cute little embellishments and they looked like they could have come from Anthropologie. We decided if she could make them for little people why couldn’t we make them for big people!
After leaving the bazaar we headed straight to Goodwill to pick up a few sweaters.
I found this red large, J Crew men’s sweater for 6.99 and it just screamed skirt to me – can’t you just see it! I also found a gray one that I’m going to make into a skirt for myself.
This is a little confusing and hopefully I’ll make sense but a few tips for deciding what size sweater you need. You have two options, depending on the size and height of the person you are making the skirt for. Tessa is tall so I needed a sweater that was long enough from the underarm on down because the part above the underarm was too narrow from seam to seam to fit over her hips. Make sense??? The body of the sweater below the armpit area is wider than above where the sleeves are attached. This is the part of the sweater I used to make the skirt.
If the width of the sweater is large enough to fit over the hips between the sleeves up top then you can use the whole body of the sweater from the neckline down.
The first thing I did was cut the sleeves off and then cut the top of the sweater off at the underarm.
I also cut the ribbing off of each sleeve. I used the ribbing from the sleeves and the neckline to make embellishments.
The ribbing along the bottom of the sweater will be the hem of your skirt. I used one of Tessa’s other skirts as a pattern. Laying it on top and then cutting out the sweater slightly bigger, leaving a seam allowance on both sides and enough on top for an elastic casing. I serged the side seams together and then serged around the waistline edge before turning it over and making a casing for elastic.
Be sure and try the skirt on after sewing up the side seams to check the length before sewing down the waistband.
The next part is the fun part – the embellishment and what makes the skirt look like it came right out of the Anthropologie catalog.
I sewed the two sleeve ribbing pieces together and then serged the raw edge to make the large flower embellishment. You can also use the neck edge to make a flower. Just run a gathering stitch through the serged edge and gather it up together Take a few stitches to hold the center together.
For the flower on the skirt I used the two sleeve ribbings sewn together.
I used some ecru crocheted lace I had to make the little flower on the inside of the bigger flower and then just added a button for the center.
The leaves are cut from some wool houndstooth suiting I had.
I just cut them free hand and then stitched them down onto the skirt, leaving the edges raw. I then tacked the large knit flower down.
Then I made a few little rosettes out of the houndstooth fabric and some lining fabric. For a great tutorial on making the rosettes go here.
They were tacked down to the skirt too and we were good to go!
Isn’t it stinkin’ cute!!!
Now I can’t wait to get to work on the sweater I bought for myself! So what do you think?
Do you have some favorite childhood foods or treats that you have fond memories of? I know I do.
A couple of weeks ago I spent a fun weekend in Northern California with my Beach Babe girls. We were celebrating Shauna’s 50th birthday and we have a great time driving convertibles through the beautiful wine country of California. During our trip I stumbled across several of those favorite childhood treats that I didn’t know were around anymore. I was so excited!!
We were in a candy shop in Windsor, California when I spotted two of them!
I remember walking home from school (yes I walked to school, for miles through the cold, snowy winters of Wisconsin!!) and I remember stopping in a drug store that was near the school to buy this….
Turkish Taffy! My favorite was the banana and I would crack in on the cement and eat it on the way home!
In the same shop I discovered another childhood memory food – Blue Cream Soda. When I asked the teenage boy at the counter for a bottle of the “blue pop” he said “What?” The kid next to him said, “Haven’t you ever heard that before? Pop – she means soda.” I don’t know, is it a midwest thing? I call it pop. What do you call it? Pop or soda?? I got myself a bottle of blue pop!
Does it taste as good as I remember? I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet. I just love looking at it!
As we were driving from Windsor to Nice, California I noticed a sign for a Foster’s Freeze and got all giddy!
My Beach Babes were very kind and drove with me to the next small town so I could enjoy a root beer freeze from Foster’s Freeze. This did taste as good as I remember!!
Of course no trip to California would be complete without a stop here….
Although not a childhood memory (they didn’t have them in Wisconsin) I can’t leave the state without at least one trip to In n Out! With a little help from our GPS we were able to find an In n Out on the way back to the airport.
Thanks for taking this little trip down memory lane with me. Do you have any favorite childhood treats???
I just returned home from a fun and fabulous weekend in Northern California with some amazing women. I’ll be sharing more about our road trip in a few days but can’t wait to share with you some of the pretty I found along the way this past weekend.
I have decided that we can find pretty everywhere. Usually we are looking around us for pretty but sometimes we need to look up and down to find the pretty!
Day 246 – September 6
Don’t forget to look up!
Day 247 – September 7
Way Up!
Day 248 – September 8
The prettiest parts of buildings are usually found near the top of the building. Don’t forget to look up.
Day 249 – September 9
Fell in love with this vine growing all over the side of a building.
Day 250 – September 10
Loved this branch and two little birds silhouetted against the sky. If you look close you can see that the branch was covered in a spider webs that just glistened in the sun. I wish I had had my zoom lens!
Day 251 – September 11
A trip through Muir Woods near San Francisco – amazing Redwoods!
Day 252 – September 12
I have a thing for chairs and fell in love with the chairs we found at this very fun restaurant we had brunch at Sunday morning.
Send the kids back to school with a special Back to School Breakfast.
Today is a sad day.
It is the last first day of school we will have at our house.
My baby begins her senior year of high school today.
To mark this momentous occasion and in an effort not to be too sad I decided to host a back to school breakfast for Tessa and two of her friends.
But I am a realistic too. I knew that there was no way I would get three teenage girls up and ready for a nice sit down breakfast before school starts at 7:30 a.m. so I decided to hold the breakfast Monday morning, the day before school started.
Because this may be the last back to school breakfast I ever have (unless I can talk the neighbor kids into coming for breakfast next year) I wanted to make it a little extra special. For details on the table decor head on over to Your Homebased Parties for more info and photos.
The menu for the morning was as follows:
The first course was yogurt parfaits. I used our favorite yogurt – Vanilla Bean by Tillamook and layered it with some store bought granola (I like the almond granola in the bulk food bins at Winco) and some fresh strawberries out of the garden. Yes, our strawberry plants are still going strong.
We had gotten some fresh blueberries at the farmer’s market this weekend so Tessa requested blueberry muffins.
There was orange juice to drink and of course a toast to a great senior year!
There was also a egg frittata and some yummy potatoes. I’ll be sharing those recipes this week. In fact we are featuring breakfast recipes all week – it’s Breakfast Week here at Your Homebased Mom!
The best part of breakfast? Just watching the girls enjoy the food and each other. This is a big year for them and the beginning of even bigger things. I can’t wait to watch from the sidelines.
Here’s to a great senior year Katy Jo, Rachel and Tessa!
We have been so busy around here enjoying the last few weeks of summer and getting college girl delivered back to school that we have gotten a little behind again on our Finding 50 post. No worries though. I have still been finding lots of pretty in being 50! Here’s the last two weeks worth!
August 23 – Day 232
The first tomatoes out of the garden with promises of many more to come!
August 24 – Day 233
A full moon.
August 25 – Day 234
Late summer blooms in the garden.
August 26 – Day 235
Falling is coming to the garden soon….
August 27 – Day 236
Headed to Provo. An amazing sunrise and Mt. Hood.
August 28 – Day 237
Nothing prettier than a piece of cake from The Chocolate.
August 29 – Day 238
All four of my kids together!
August 30 – Day 239
Pretty little princess…
August 31 – Day 240
Jumping pretty high!
September 1 – Day 241
Pretty enough to eat!
September 2 – Day 242
It always amazes me how pretty vegetables can be!
September 3 – Day 243
I don’t even like cauliflower but loving the colors!
September 4 – Day 244
Breakfast at Tasty n Sons. I’m loving the pretty bottles of water on each table.
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