The summer camp feeling [and a slightly random post transition]…

Throughout college, I worked for my school newspaper [the Washburn Review]. I started at the same time as two other girls and we decided it would be fun to write a column called “The Freshmen View” to talk about our experiences as freshmen on campus. In one of the columns I wrote, I talked about my transition from living at home with my parents to living in a dorm three hours away. I compared it to feeling like I was just away at summer camp. Between classes, extracurricular activities, hanging out with friends, and everything else, it just didn’t really feel like I had moved. I was so busy that it hadn’t actually sunk in that I lived there and wasn’t just away at camp for a few weeks.

Since moving to Houston [nearly six months ago now], I’ve had this same “summer camp feeling”. A few examples from the past couple of weeks:

• When filling out a form for work, I put that I was from the Kansas City office…oops.
• I told someone that I have only ever eaten at the Grand Lux Café when I was out of town. This was the day after I ate lunch there in Houston.
• When a friend asked me how long it took for our new house to really feel like it was ours, my response was that the house felt like ours pretty quickly. But that it still feels weird that the house is in Texas.

Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely loving living here - it is just taking me a while to realize that we live 13 hours [approximately 800 miles] away from the place we had always called home. It still feels more like we are just here at summer camp for a while.

But one clear sign that Houston is becoming more like home was how excited I got that an amazing new e-zine was founded by someone from my city. My city being Houston. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to go read the premier issue of High Gloss right away. It is amazing. All 181 pages are packed with great style tips, beautiful home decor inspiration, fun party ideas, gorgeous photos, interesting articles, and just all around incredible-ness. My favorite articles were:

• Modern Makeover
• Putting on the Glitz
• Striking a Balance
• Valentine’s in the Valley
• La Vie en Roses

Thanksgiving table...

This Thanksgiving Mr. W and I hosted our first family holiday. Not only was it our first holiday to host, but it was also the first time that our families came to stay at our new house. We had so much fun planning, organizing, and just figuring out how to feed and sleep seven guests. One thing that we had to decide on was where all nine of us would sit for Thanksgiving dinner. Our house has an eat-in kitchen with a table that seats four, a bar that seats three, or a dining room that we use a reading / sitting room. Umm...that doesn't really add up to nine very well.

This will all make more sense once I show more pictures of our new house, but we ended up moving the big chairs, coffee table, and end table out of the sitting room to make room for a "dining table." The table actually consisted of two six-foot long folding tables from Lowe's and the tablecloth was a drop cloth from Home Depot. I had this all planned out in my head and kind of completely lucked out that it worked as well as it did - the tables fit perfectly in our dining room, the drop cloth was the perfect size, and the people fit perfectly.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Heart of Light posted about her holiday table planning, including that "You can squeeze in with 18" of space per person around the table if you all like each other - if not, you'll want 24-30" instead." This was the perfect information to put me into full nerd mode - I mapped out our table in PowerPoint to measure that we would in fact all fit and plan how it would look. Here is what I came up with:

As you see, we didn't have enough of any one color of plate or glasses for everyone, but since it was planned out I was able to make it look intentional. The horrible wrinkles in the drop cloth were not so intentional...oops, probably should have ironed. The finished table did end up looking very similar to the plan though. 

We kept it very, very simple and didn't even have a centerpiece so we could all see each other easily. And so we could easily clear the table to start playing our favorite game. :)

 

This last photo has nothing to do with the table or planning, but it is us with our amazing family the day after Thanksgiving at the boardwalk [and random photos and posts in weird orders seem to be my thing lately]. It was such a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with our families!

[P.S. In case you're just dropping by, I do realize it is now January, but it's better late than never, right? :)]

Couples' shower | yummy desserts...

On to my favorite part of any meal or party...the desserts! Yum!

The sign above the table said "just (about) married" [like the invitations]. The table had more chalkboard food labels and chalkboard painted wine bottles like the ones I showed you here. And another spray painted dollar store frame like the one I showed you here.

The dessert menu included...

• Caramel brownie bites [my favorite treat!]
• Mint brownie bites [my even more more favorite treat!]
• Chocolate chip cookies
• Lemon bars
• Pretzel sticks dipped in white chocolate and milk chocolate with green sprinkles
• Fruit kabobs [I love the way fruit kabobs look - they make me want to serve everything as a kabob! :)] 

The two white plate stands above started out like this...

I made the cake stands using dollar store plates and dollar store candlestick holders. I stuck them together with Gorilla Glue and gave my weights a workout holding them in place to set them. I figured my weights needed a little use sometime! :) After they were dry, I just gave them a few coats of spraypaint. [Don't worry, I didn't serve food directly on the cake stands. I covered them with scrapbooking paper and the brownie bites were in mini cupcake liners.]

I'm planning to check the dollar store for matching salad plates, so that I can make a coordinating multi-tiered version. I looooove cake stands.

Couples' shower | fun in the sun...

Along the fence in the backyard, we clipped up tons of random pictures of the couple. We strung Christmas lights between the pictures to light them up after the sun went down. We also had games set up throughout the yard...bocce ball, horseshoes and Texas toss 'em [or hillbilly golf or ladder ball or whatever you want to call it].

Rain was forecast for the day of the shower, but we lucked out and there was not a single sprinkle of rain the entire day. It was a beautiful day for a beautiful couple.

Couples' shower | bbq & drinks...

Mr. W manned the grill for the party, making hamburgers, hot dogs and brats. We also had Asian salad and a variety of chips. Everything was served on white platters and in big green bowls. There aren't any pictures because I was too busy eating and forgot. :)

Somehow I did manage to get some pictures of the drink table though. We had water, tea, soda and margarita punch [my favorite!]. The big green tub to the right was filled with Boulevard - a must have in KC and the groom's favorite.

The tables were covered with Kraft paper. And you'll notice two more chalkboard projects - wood circles labeling the food / beverages and chalk around the middle of wine bottles. I made the wine bottles the same way as the chalkboard signs - by painting them with mod podge first. I'm not really sure that step is necessary, but it worked well, so I stuck with it. :) I taped off the area I wanted to paint with painter's tape [and masking tape when I ran out of painter's tape].

Couples' shower | more decor...

As guests came to the house, they were directed to this coffee table in the living room...

The close-ups...

The details...

• The frames were both originally really ugly dollar store frames that I spray painted.
• I made the big tree picture for the guests to add their fingerprints and sign their names. The tree looked great when it was finished. And the bride-to-be referred to it as "the coolest thing ever" the whole day. So, now I refer to her as "the sweetest girl ever." :)
• The vases are the twine-covered ones I made here. The "greenery" in the vases are random pieces I cut off the bushes in front of our house.
• The candle is actually leftover from our wedding. I just wrapped three pieces of ribbon around it and secured them with double-sided tape.

The random story...

The colors for the shower [green and brown] were inspired by the wedding colors. And they worked out very well for a backyard BBQ, because there is already lots of green and brown with the fence, trees and grass. So, when I was looking for pictures of the couple to frame, I wanted them to coordinate with the colors and theme. I thought I found really cool pictures, but Mr. W told me it looked like we thought they were "tree huggers." Haha, oh well, they matched and I liked it! :)

Couples' shower | chalkboard decor

Remember the couples' shower we threw forever ago? Well, it's finally time for a bunch of posts and pictures. :)

I bought dollar store picture frames, spray painted the frames and used chalkboard paint on the glass. The instructions clearly say not to use it on glass, but it totally worked. I painted a few coats of mod podge on the glass first to give it a little texture and then used the brown chalkboard paint.

The first chalkboard frame was hanging by the front door to greet the guests...

I wrote on it to match the invitations. Here's a closer look...

Another chalkboard frame was in the backyard on the food table...

Keep an eye out for more chalkboard decor in the next posts. :)

Graduation party pics...

It's [finally] time for some pictures from Mr. W's surprise graduation party. :)

Okay, so this picture isn't technically from the party, but it is the reason for the party. This was right after he received his Masters in Public Administration degree from KU [obviously].

And this is when I made him put his hood on. Hehehe! I couldn't help it - you get "hooded" when you get your masters, so shouldn't you haven't to actually put it on at least once? It's a good thing he doesn't read my blog though, because I am fairly certain Mr. W would not approve of me posting this picture!  :)

Now to the actual party pictures...all two of them. Turns out I'm not so great at remembering to take pictures.

Mr. W's mom was my partner-in-crime in planning his surprise party and was even nice enough to let us have it at her house. And to order the desserts. And to take care of most of the other food. And to do a bunch of other stuff too.  She was a very good partner-in-crime. :) 

We decided not to do any decorations. We wanted to keep it very low key, since Mr. W had insisted that we not do anything to celebrate - we try to listen to him at least a little bit. :) It was a good thing we kept it low key though, considering he was wearing a dirty old t-shirt...

You can't see it in the picture, but his t-shirt literally had multiple, large, semi-gross spots on it. I kept trying to casually mention that maybe he should change clothes. And he just kept saying "we're only going to my mom's; she won't care." Oh well, his dirty shirt definitely made for a good story. And it was just close friends and family, so they really didn't care.

We all had a great time celebrating [despite the dirty shirt]. We laughed until we cried talking about getting approvals for craft club, hearing Mr. W's mafia man voice and just hanging out. :)

[P.S. The pictures for the couples' shower are coming soon too. I finally went through them all...get ready, I'm pretty sure it'll be about seven posts worth!] 

Simply lovely...

I would love to have an ice cream social and these would be a great addition: Free "Love and Ice Cream" gift tag printables from Eat. Drink. Chic.

This is one on the sweetest baby showers I have ever seen. How precious! I am filing this idea away in my mind for someday when I am hosting a baby shower.

"Sip and See" library baby shower from Swanky Tables

So simple, so cute...

via RachaelRayMag

I love how sometimes the most clever decorating ideas are so darn simple! I am loving Rachael Ray's easy entertaining ideas for a 4th of July party. I'm going to be a little busy this 4th (at an incredible wedding!), but I will have to remember this for next year or some other time.

I always forget about my random craft punches, but this is a great (and easy!) idea for using them. My cute rubber ducky one - that I've never had a reason to use - would be perfect for a baby shower!

By the way, I hope you enjoyed my festive coloring for 4th of July (and how I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to superscript on here). And yes, I know I'm a dork.

Did Martha read the same origami book as me?

I just saw a post on iDIY about Martha's Cheery Paper Fruit Pouches and got so ridiculously excited because I have honestly been making these for years and years! When I was little, my sister had an origami book and I tried to learn things out of it too. This was the only thing I could make really well and I randomly make them all the time. Like when I was nine and made all of my friends try to drink Kool-Aid out of them - which you can totally do! (But if you don't drink it fast enough, it gets really soggy and your hands turn red, so I would advise trying this with water instead if you're curious.) Or when I made them out of the cloth napkins at my cousin's rehearsal dinner because my grandma wanted to see my origami skills. Oh, and I always make teeny tiny ones out of the paper napkin rings at Applebee's while I wait for my food. So obviously, I have never thought about doing anything remotely useful with them - but I am definitely going to now!