Gone crafting... We'll be back soon!

 

Another Monday! How was your weekend?

Did you celebrate with your Mom yesterday for Mother's Day?

 

 

Julia and I planned a special day for our Mom.  It consisted of girly drinks and pool time!  Our Mom wanted a relaxing day, a day we could all catch up and enjoy the outdoors.  The sun finally showed up in Atlanta this weekend, just in time for a pool day!

 

To start, we had a light & refreshing cocktail (recipe at Iowa Girl Eats).  It's called a Skinny Sunrise, it contains: orange juice, pineapple juice, homemade strawberry simple syrup, vodka and topped with club soda.  We even made our Mom a fun cup to use at the pool - we cut out her initial on the Silhouette using an adhesive vinyl.

 

For lunch we had chicken salad sandwiches and fresh fruit.  All 3 of us love chicken salad, we could eat it almost everyday.  Julia made this batch using chicken, mayo, celery, onion, and pecans.  It was so good!  

 

(You can check out my chicken salad recipe here.)

We enjoyed the pool for a few hours, then ventured back in for some cold gelato!  Honeysuckle Gelato is a local Atlanta company.  We had key lime pie and sea-salted caramel.  Both were so delicious!

It was a fun day spent with our Mom!

 

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Julia and I will be taking a short blogging break.  We both work full-time and have active social lives.  Lately it has been tough to balance life and the blog!  We want to always provide you with fun & interesting blog posts and lately we haven't been able to do that.  So we'll be taking a break, probably for a just a month.  This will give us time to get our creative juices flowing.  We'll still be around in the social networking community, so please be sure to follow us on:

 

 

 

Friday Five: Mother's Day Printables

This Sunday is Mother's Day!! So that means you get to pamper your mommy or you get to relax all day.  Since my furry daughter always seems to forget about me on this holiday I've decided to spend the day with my mom.  Our day is going to consist of going to church, having lunch at Elizabeth's house and then spending the rest of the day sipping cocktails at the pool (cross your fingers that the weather cooperates).  It's going to be a nice relaxing day and I can't wait!! 

To celebrate my mom I've framed a piece of subway art to let her know how much I love her.  You can download your own subway art by clicking on the links below. 


My Fabuless Life


Fox Hollow Cottage



Baca Creative



Holiday Snob



The Daily Dye


I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Porch Makeover

It's that time of year again!  It's time to move all activities outdoors!  That means dinner, game night, reading time....pretty much everything.  Which means it's also time to update your porch décor. 

Our parents have enlisted our help with their porch makeover this year and we can't wait to get started.  We're thinking out with the old and in with the new. 

The porch functions great right now.  It has plenty of seating for our large family and has a table for food and drinks.  The only thing that needs improvement is the shape of the tables.  The two tables on the porch right now are round and they don't utilize the space that well - there's a lot of unused space.

The inspiration for the porch makeover colors come from these items that our parents already own.   I love all of the bright colors!  I also love the flamingo paintings (I painted them when I was in high school...hehe).  These items are a great start for the porch makeover but we need more color in this space.  Right now you don't even notice these awesome pieces when you look at the space - they disappear.



Here is what we are thinking for the makeover.  First and foremost - new furniture.  We want to get a long rectangular table that sits at least 8 people so we need a table that is 92in long or longer.  Next we want to get a buffet to store outdoor dinner ware and to place food on top of during parties.  For the chairs we are thinking 6 chairs that match and two head chairs that are bigger and different.  We'll bring in color with pillows, furniture and accessories.  And last but not least we'll install a new ceiling fan - we're in Georgia so every room needs a fan :)

 

 

We definitely have some challenges with this makeover.  The table is a key piece and it has been difficult to find one that is large enough.   Pottery Barn seems to be the only place that has extendable outdoor tables and they cost a small fortune.   Hopefully we'll be able to find the table at PB Outlet...fingers crossed.   I'm hoping to find the buffet at the thrift store; then I can paint it black and cover it in a good quality outdoor poly.   I've been looking for this piece for weeks and still haven't found anything though.  The last challenge is that we are working with an outdoor space so that means no walls to paint.  We'll have to bring in color through the accessories and not just any accessories.  All of the accessories will need to be made for the outdoors and water resistant.

 

We're are really excited to get started on this project and can't wait for our vision to become reality!!  Are you planning to redecorate your outdoor space for the summer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cinco de Mayo | Stache Dash

Good morning! How was your weekend?  If you're in Atlanta then you know it rained non-stop all weekend, except for a few hours of blue skies yesterday.  This was a huge bummber considering my plans took place outside  :(

Saturday morning we did the One Love Stache Dash hosted by one of my fave mexican restaurants in Atlanta, Tin Lizzy's!  It was a 5k race around  Buckhead, then a Cinco de Mayo block party.  But man was it wet! 

We made cute mustache & sunglass shirts using Silhouette's HTV (tutorial here).  Aren't they cute?  Unfortunately they hid under our raincoats during the race.

We had a fun group of girls running the race together.  There were six of us and we all paired up well with someone else.  Lauren's husband was even our personal paparazzi!  You can check out all his pics here.

The race was a lot of fun!  But we were ready to dry off and get warm after.  The rest of our day was pretty lazy and consisted of movie watching, vacation planning and pedicures :)

Sunday I met up with Lauren (@PrettySouthern) for a mexican lunch at Tacos & Tequila.  I think I've eaten mexican the last 4 days in a row, ugh!  Then we headed over to her house for frozen margaritas, card games and relaxation in the hot tub.  It was a pretty nice Cinco de Mayo weekend!

Do you have any 5k races planned?

April in Review

How is it already May?!  This year is flying by!
Do you have big plans this weekend?  There's so much going on with the Kentucky Derby this Saturday and Cinco de Mayo on Sunday.

*** Today we're sharing with your our favorite posts from the month of April, enjoy! ***

Guestroom Makeover Reveal

 

 

Refinished Sofa Table

 

 

Hallway Inspiration Board

 

 

 

Spring Wreath

 

 

How to Make a Guestroom Welcoming

Remember the side table we made over for the guestroom last month?!?  Maryann at Power of Paint is featuring it on her blog today!! She has an awesome blog so make sure you check it out!
Checkerboard Table

   

       

Silhouette Cameo Tutorial: Heat Transfer Vinyl

Today is Lilly's 4th birthday! 

She wanted something fun to wear on her birthday, so I made her another bandanna.  But this time I used the Silhouette Cameo to add on Heat Transfer Vinyl!

Julia and I bought our Silhouette back in December, we have loved crafting with it.  Overall it's a pretty simple product to use.  Like anything new, the first time you do something is a learning experience.

To start, open up your Silhouette program on your computer, the first thing you do should be to adjust the page size to your vinyl.  The HTV came in 9 x 36 inches.  So adjust the width to 9 inches wide.

Now go into your library and add any shapes or fonts you want to use.

Now create your design. 
Keep in mind the size of what you are ironing the HTV on.

Tips: you can ungroup shapes and letters by right-clicking the image and selecting ungroup.

Wording for HTV always needs to be flipped horizontally.

I always like to crowd my words and shapes together - this saves you vinyl.  Once the words/shapes are printed, you can cut them apart to space them out.

Now it's time to cut.  Always check your cut settings and even do a "test" cut first.  For the HTV I selected "Heat Transfer Vinyl" with a blade of 9. 

I recommend placing your HTV on your sticky cutting board (clear backing on the bottom). 
Then feeding it into the Silhouette. Now cut!

Peel back the extra vinyl, leaving just your words & shapes in place.

This is when I realized I messed up the first time!!  Remember, you have to flip your wording horizontally for HTV!

I went back and flipped all the wording and printed again.  If you are new to Silhouette, I recommend always purchasing more vinyl than you think you'll need.  I mess up and waste vinyl or cardstock on almost every other project - like I said, it's a learning experience ;)

Once you have peeled back the extra vinyl and have layed out your vinyl it's time to iron it on the fabric.  ** Keep the colored vinyl attached to the clear backing **

Lay the vinyl on top of your fabric (clear backing on top), lay of dishtowel on top of the HTV, and iron.   Your iron should be on it's hottest setting with no steam (always read the HTV instructions first). 

Apply pressure to the iron.  The instructions say it takes about 1 minute of heat.  However, I probably spent at least 6 minutes applying heat.  It might have to do with my iron and how hot it gets, I'm not sure.  Just apply heat for a minute of two, then check the HTV.  Lightly pull back the clear backing, if the HTV is not sticking to the fabric then you need to iron longer. 

**Make sure you have a dishtowel on top of the HTV, otherwise you will melt it!**

Peel back all the clear backing and you have a cute Birthday bandanna for your furry friend!

** We have a winner for the Taste Factor giveaway!  Chelsee at Southern Beauty Guide has won 1 month free membership to Taste Factor, valued at $60!  Chelsee, please email us to claim your prize.  Thanks to all our great followers!  And please start following us on Bloglovin.  **