There has been a minimal amount of crafting going on over here, unfortunately I have been too overwhelmed to post much about it. A quick little project that I’ve wanted to tackle for a year or two (has it been that long since we finished our kitchen??), I finally attempted and am pretty happy with.

A lone can of paint had been sitting in this cupboard (Sorry I didn’t take a before-I-emptied-our-life-out-of-here photo, but believe me, it wasn’t pretty.) along with a whole bunch of odds and ends. I really wanted to move my cookbooks back in here, so I unloaded it and got to work.

I might have mentioned that I wanted to bring a little color into our kitchen, specifically the blue from this tile we have been working around.

So I matched the blue as best I could (Behr’s Blueberry Hill, if you’re curious) and got to painting. I just wiped it all down with TSP and Liquid Sander and then painted. The Behr paint has a primer built in. Two coats later we got this…

So it is a little…um…bright, as in “POW punch of BLUE!” but once the doors are closed it is much more understated and gives a cheery little bit of color to our corner.

Addie just said that it looked “very boring when it was just brown,” so I’m going to put this project in the success column, I think.

Guess who’s back? (Back again.)

Yes! We have returned from the great muggy midwest, aka Michigan, and have a lot to catch you up on! And because I owe you at least three, four, TEN(!) Crafty Tuesdays, let’s start there.

Before we rolled out of here on separate vacays, Birdie #2 and I put together a few more of these cool tablecloths for two of our sweet June birthday girlies.

These tablecloths are sewn (with love!) out of outdoor fabric and we heat pressed the vinyl on the panels before we stitched them all together. I need to take a photo of the back so you can see how they fit snugly on a 6 ft (the first is for an 8ft) table. And then, of course, you can hide all kinds of goodies underneath the table, hidden from view.

That was June birthday-ing. And then we charged into July. I made some of these placemats for my sister and her brood. Birdie #2 made me some for my birthday and I *heart* them – and they get used and recited around our place…often!

I doctored up a burlap bag with some vinyl for her too…but totally forgot to take a pic of it. (Have one handy, Meesh?)

This is just the tip of the crafty chaos around here lately. I don’t think I’ll be able to wait until next Tuesday to unveil the house painting undertaking and I KNOW I still owe a “what-the-heck-did-you-do-to-your-living-room” update as well. So stay tuned. This week. I hope.

Patience, my pets.

I have so, so many posts piling up over here but between the “week of Emma” and the fact that our entire house is in construction chaos, I just can’t seem to get a minute to put it all up here. But my goal by the end of the week is to post all our Spring Break fun (yep, it was a good 2 1/2 weeks ago!) and hopefully a FULL update on the living room project as I furiously try to pick out some paint colors over.

So a quick little Crafty Tuesday here – Emma Grace Birthday Edition.

First the invites we sent to Em’s friends…

We handed out “reverse goody bags” – in other words, we handed out our treats the day before the party.

Which contained little tees for the girls to wear on Saturday when we hit the park.

How cute do they look in all their matchy match tees?

She had a great day…or rather, great week!

I still can’t believe she is 10.

I know I promised you a Baby CT today, and I had high hopes of finishing everything on our task list for the nursery, but I only finished the quilt. In all honesty, that was the “big” thing on the list anyhow, so I guess that is good. We still have a pillow, a changing pad cover and maybe a few basket liners to finish up and baby A’s room will be done. Here is the quilt before we handed it over…

I used this pattern from Bijou Lovely and the fabric is from our Michael Levine scouting trip and a lot of the quilt is from the Honey Honey by Kate Spain for Moda Fabrics line that I got off of FatQuartershop.com.

And here it is with the bedskirt and bunting all tucked into the nursery…

It’s looking kinda amazing in there. I think JB is going to want to just hang out in there day and night once baby gets here.

Of course I am not the only one super excited for baby A to get here. Addie has been incredibly impatient with me – she really wants to make a pillow for her cousin. So that is on the docket for this week, too.

More baby stuff on the way…and I have a few little things up my sleeve as in ONE WEEK, next Crafty Tuesday in fact, my baby will be turning 10. Double digits. So you can imagine our excitement and fury in getting a few things crafted up!

I know I promised you a Baby Crafty Tuesday today…but we aren’t quite ready for the big reveal yet. I’ll tease you with a crib skirt and a little belly shot of Aunt JB – she is coming along nicely (the nursery and the baby!).

We were all a little crafty while Daddy was away this past week. Em and her GATE class did a little gallery of the artwork and photography they created in class.

Addie got her clay on in art class. Why yes, it IS a bowl with a cat head on it.

Addie needed some EIGHT tees for two girls in her class who have birthdays this week. And she wanted to help make them, so I taught her to “weed” the vinyl out.

She was bound and determined to use the number 8 that she had weeded out for something. She started putting tape on the back of it to make a card, which led to the idea that maybe we could heat press the vinyl onto cardstock? And the answer to that is…YES! So we made some birthday cards, too. About eight seconds in the heat press and the vinyl sticks nicely to cardstock. Who knew?

And finally, Birdie 2′s sweet MC had a birthday last week. She is all soccer – all the time. So I made her some new stationery…

…and a sign that she can take for her room when she leaves for college next year. Gah…we are gonna miss her so very much!

The stationery and sign I made in Illustrator and just printed them out on cardstock from the inkjet printer.

So that is what we have around here this week. I guess it is back to the baby goodies. Next week…for sure!

Yes, indeed. Some of you caught a glimpse at what the two Birdies have been up to lately, if we are friends on Facebook. But for the rest of you, we’ll just do a little recap on how to decorate for a Educational Foundation’s annual fundraiser for 250+ people on a very tiny budget.

We were given the theme “Night Market” – and thankfully Birdie #2 had the vision, I was pretty much along for moral support and a little bit of muscle.

First up – to create an outdoor, “town square” to dance the night away under the stars. It  all began with a trip to the lumberyard…in Birdie #2′s minivan. Oh, yes we did! The lumberyard guys were pretty amused as they loaded us down with 11-4x4s and a whole bunch of PVC piping! Inside, outside…wherever it fit.

Thankfully we had some amazing Dads who took all of this lumber and the pilings that I made with flower pots and cement, (yep – by myself) to create the amazing structure.

Once the structure was built, we strung it with twinkle lights and posted handbills to make it appear as if it was outdoors.

And we planted the piling pots with flowers.

It looked much prettier and more “authentic” once the lights were dimmed.

Before the dancing, there was an auction…so we created Night Market “stalls” with buntings to differentiate the auction categories. (THIS is what we had been collecting 32+ umbrella stands for! A big thank you to those of you who helped with our cause!) We built the buntings with the stands, pvc pipes and for the bunting signs, we used international newsprint.

We created some centerpieces using even more paper – donated sheet music from our middle school. We rolled the music, arranged them in jars that we vinyl’d up with Big Momma and topped it all off with a tissue paper flower.

Let’s see what else? Oh, yeah…we tried our hand at 3-D paper lanterns (also cut with the Silhouette). They were a little challenging, but once we cut it and covered the cutouts with vellum, it was perfect with LED votives for a little extra touch on the bar tables.

And that was about it. Any wonder why the Two Birdies look like they are hanging onto the pole for dear life at the end of the night?

Sooo very happy that it is behind us. Stay tuned for all things B-A-B-Y next week!

Oh, hey. I know it has been weeks since we have posted a Crafty Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been getting all kinds of crafty over here.

Birdie #2 and I have taken the next step to making TwoBirdies Workshop an “official” sort of business. We now have a resale/wholesale license so we can get our supplies at wholesale prices…which we have totally needed and used the past two weeks. We have spent nearly every waking minute in the sweatshop, er…I mean workshop, putting together four different t-shirts for the ballet company, and the new Peter Pan ballet that debuts this coming weekend. I think we have made close to 200 tees (Birdie #2?),…some days it feels like close to 2000. I’m still working on getting our little ballerina models to pose for a photoshoot so I can show them all to you here. Let’s work on that for next Tuesday, shall we?

We did step out of the workshop for a few minutes last week for Valentine’s Day. Well, technically we didn’t even step out of the workshop for the first of our Valentines. We made LOVE shirts for all the little girls to wear. The glitter vinyl is oh, so…BLING-a-licious.

Doesn’t Addie look like she is up to absolutely no good? I’m pretty sure that isn’t far from the truth, too.

While the Birdies were busy, the birdie-ettes were making some Valentines to pass out to their classmates. I made some little valentines for them and printed them on cardstock and then they made them “scratch-off.”

They signed their names in the little hearts, colored them with white crayons and then painted them with scratch-able paint (silver paint and dishsoap mixed in 2 to 1 parts). They attached pennies…and voila! Done. They were fun and didn’t add to the already candy overload, either!

We also crafted with Mrs. A’s 4th grade class AND Mrs. P’s 2nd grade class on Valentine’s Day. I’m kicking myself for not taking a single photo of the cute Love Monsters we made – not even with my phone! I guess it was just kind of intense trying to get all 65 of the monsters made with impatient little 2nd and 4th graders. But this is what they looked like -

(photo and EXCELLENT idea courtesy of Eighteen25.)

I don’t think I need to tell you what a huge hit they were. The 4th grade class was especially creative and everyone really loved them. They were fun.

And that was Valentine’s day around here. Any goodies in your neck of the woods?

Last week’s Crafty Tuesday is courtesy of a little baby shower we threw together for Kaori, our pianist that helps out during the girls’ choir practices. She is due in a week with a little girl and we wanted to put together a little quick, after-choir celebration from the kids.

Her nursery is yellow and gray (LOVE!) and since we had to have the shower at church, and after choir (before dinner) it was just a little “quickie” shower where everyone brought munchies.

I found some yellow and gray paper and made a little bunting – my new favorite things. I cut the flags out of paper and tied them together with some baby yellow yarn.

I made some tissue paper flowers – which are TOTALLY easy to do (learn how here!)…

But we had a few difficulties with the space and planning. I had intended on all of the tissue flowers to hang over the table at various heights, but the 20 foot ceilings in the hall didn’t allow for us to hang anything from the ceilings.

My “baby clothesline” didn’t quite work as envisioned either…there really wasn’t any place to hang it, or the bunting…we just made do.

My favorite was the onesie that Jamie and I put together for the future little chorister…

That, and watching the kids get so excited when Kaori opened the box o’ baby things that the choir gave her.