Easter Decor 2013

It was especially fun to decorate for Easter this year in a new house. New ideas. New perspective. New places to put knick-knacks.

For the mantle: I made the wreath by wrapping pussy willow stems around a grapevine wreath. The glass jar in the center is filled with 2-inch moss balls purchased at my local craft store. The ceramic bunnies I found at Marshall's a couple of years ago. The potted lily on the far right was a gift from friends. I made the "Happy Easter" sign by cutting triangles out of burlap fabric and gluing it to twine. I used white acrylic paint and letter stamps to stamp a letter on each triangle.

I bunched burlap ribbon together and wove it through the decorative items from one side of the mantle to the other. Other items include sticks, moss balls, eggs, pussy willow stems, etc.

For the table centerpiece: I used a birdcage for my kitchen table centerpiece. Inside, I placed two pottery bunnies I purchased at Target a couple of years ago, along with a twig birds' nest and eggs. I also added some green moss and green moss balls.

Cake Successes & Cake Failure

I bake cakes. Sometimes they don't turn out so great. See my son Mark's birthday cake below.  :)

Sometimes they do. See some 8-inch cakes and some mini-cakes I made around the same time as the disaster above.

Horton Hatches the Egg

I recently read Dr. Seuss' Horton Hatches An Egg to my kindergartner's class at school. It was great fun.

I made pink egg cookies with green dots to resemble the egg from the book. I designed matching tags for the packaging and used pink-and-white baker's twine to tie each cookie in an individual bag. The cookies were a BIG hit.

Advertising For a Christmas Party

I made the following promotional materials for a church Christmas party. I used a snowflake image by Katie Pertiet to create the design below (flyer and e-announcement). The script font is called Lavanderia and is available for free on the web.

I used the flyer's design as a template for creating the poster. I printed the design out in sections, placed them on the foam board, and gently traced the lines of the lettering with a ballpoint pen. I then used glittery silver acrylic paint and a fine-tip paintbrush to paint in the letters. For the surrounding snowflakes, I used several different snowflake stamps and several white and silver glitter acrylic paints.

Pantry Make-Overs

The existing wire shelving in the walk-in pantry just wasn't going to cut it. There was shelving on just 2 of the 4 walls. And the existing shelves stopped 4 feet short of the ceiling. Ah, the wasted space! The wasted space!

So, I ripped out the wire shelving.
I patched the holes in the dry wall.
I painted the walls Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore.
I installed crown molding. Yes, crown molding in the pantry. It looks awesome!
I built custom shelving to maximize the available space. I used pine boards for the ledgers, MDF boards for the shelves, and metal brackets for extra insurance (you know, the kind that are most often used in clothes closets). Theoretically, each of my shelves can now support over 200 pounds.
I painted the shelving white.

Ah, that makes it sound so simple. But it wasn't. I had no idea what I was doing. Totally making it up as I went along. And did I mention all the odd angles? Yikes! This was a challenging, pain-in-the-you-know-what project. But it had to be done.

The space is so much more functional. Glad I did it.

I also built the spice rack on the pantry door, as seen above. I got the idea for the spice rack from Shanty 2 Chic and then modified the measurements and design to suit my particular needs. Shanty's blog author says she finished her spice rack during her kid's nap. Let's just say it took me more than one nap time to finish mine. I may have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm persistent.

If you haven't tried baskets in your pantry, I highly recommend them. I've never had a pantry large enough to accommodate baskets before, but I'm loving them now that I've got them. They're great catch-all's for anything that doesn't come in a box that'll sit on a shelf. Each of my baskets holds designated items. For example, I have a bread basket and a bags-of-chips basket and a  . . . you get the idea.

And, because overhauling one pantry just isn't enough . . . .


BEFORE

I removed the wire shelving and the baseboard and quarter-round where the floor meets the walls.

I installed a rotating can shelf purchased from Shelf Reliance in the center. On either side, I modified and customized two Pax shelving units from Ikea, cutting everything to size.

Whatever will I do with all of our coats now that I've taken over the coat closet you ask? Why, don't you worry. I have a grand idea for the coats. Just you wait!  :)

AFTER

Christmas Decorations 2012

For more Christmas decorations in years past, see 2011, 2010, and 2009. As you can see, I try to add a little bit more each year.

Board-and-Batten Wainscoting

This was my biggest undertaking yet. And that's saying something because I've always got a project underway. I wisely waited until Eric was out of town for the weekend to do it. He wants nothing to do with my projects!

I have no carpentry experience at all, so this was a very intimidating undertaking.

I had to figure out how to use this thing, for one.



I made lots of trips to Home Depot and roughly doubled my existing tool collection in the process of making this happen. And I did it all by myself. Yes, I'm gloating. It was a ton of work!

I had to rip out the existing baseboards, come up with the design and layout, do all the measurements, cut the wood, nail the wood to the wall, fill the nail holes, do the caulking . . . .

Remember, it's only half done. I still need to install crown molding and paint the wall between the crown and the board-and-batten a light blue to match the baby's crib bedding.

Simple Buffet

I love to go all out for a party. But sometimes, less is more and simple is better.

For a small gathering of family and friends at our home following my son's baptism, I prepared a light lunch and displayed it on our kitchen counter.

Nothing fancy. Just a few small touches to make it a little special . . .

. . . like pictures of my son through the years displayed in small silver frames . . . red-and-white baker's twine tied around the serving dishes and the pile of napkins . . . matching, custom paper rosettes that I made into food labels . . .

I served all the fixings for sandwiches, along with chips, fruit, veggies, and 3 dessert choices: lemon cheesecake with lemon curd topping, coconut cream pie, and key lime pie.

Place Mat Book Holder

This was a 10-minute project. A book holder made out of a stiff place mat. This one holds two books in two equally-sized pockets.

1. Purchase a stiff place mat. (I bought mine at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $4).

2. Fold up the bottom of the place mat such that it will hold the book and yet not allow the top of the book to be exposed. Depending on the height of your books, you could have either a shallow or a deep pocket. Pin in place.

3. Sew a straight line down the center half of the place mat, reinforcing at the top and bottom with back stitching. (You will sew right over the pocket you've created with the fold).

4. Sew the outside edges only part way up (this allows the holder to accommodate fatter books). Reinforce with back stitching.

5. Pin a ribbon in place where you want it on the outside of the holder. Sew along both the top and bottom edges of the ribbon to the edge of the place mat, reinforcing with back stitching. Use an anti-fraying treatment on the ribbon edges.

6. Done.

Posters for Signing

Somehow I end up making a lot of posters. Check a few of 'em out here.

Below are a few posters I made for women at my church. We passed them around for people to sign to say "thank you" for the service these women had rendered to our congregation.

I used a Cricut die-cutting machine for the flowers and lettering. Simple. Simple.

To add dimension to the flowers, I curled up the edges (by wrapping the paper around a pencil) and glued just the center of the flower to the board.

(Above and below the lettering, people wrote short notes and signed their names.)

Recent Graphic Design Project

These are some gift tags I designed for a friend to use. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements software to make them.

Teacher Appreciation Gift

For Teacher Appreciation Day, I made each of my kids' teachers a box of made-from-scratch cupcakes.

For the custom tag, I took an Echo Park Paper tag from the "Hello Summer" collection and altered it in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Below is the original tag. Click here to see the whole "Hello Summer" collection. It's really darling.

Garage Art Work

I recently installed a storage system in our garage and sealed the concrete floor with an epoxy paint. I wanted to add a couple of pieces of original artwork to personalize it some, too.

This is what I came up with.

First, I purchased this darling antique window with 6 glass window panes and plenty of peeling paint from my friend Alia, who found it at an antique store in Pennsylvania. I washed the window panes and covered them in 2 coats of primer which I followed up with 2 coats of chalkboard paint.

Now, I love and adore the work of custom chalk letterer Dana Tanamachi. Check out her stuff here. I wanted to try my hand at doing something in her style. Using Dana as inspiration, I free-handed what you see below in a little over an hour's time. It's not nearly as precise and neat as Dana's work, but I just didn't have the patience when I was doing this (at 2:00 in the morning) to spend forever on it.

And some close-ups . . .

Now, this second piece I hadn't planned on doing until a delivery was made to my home and a beat-up old palette got left behind. My first thought was, "Oh, great, now I've got to make a special trip out to the junk yard to get rid of this thing!" Five seconds later, "This would make a great piece of art work for the garage!"

I took a plain, wood palette and sanded it (but not nearly enough, I discovered later). I painted it with a coat of primer and a coat of black paint. I then hand-painted each board with one of the Nine B's suggested by Gordon B. Hinckley for living a better life. 

I could have done vinyl letters and it would have been easier, but I wanted something that looked like it belonged in a garage. Something that looked weathered and imperfect. To achieve the look, I used a fine, soft-bristled brush to hand-paint letters in white acrylic paint. 

First, I printed out the lettering on paper on my printer. Then, I used a ballpoint pen to trace over the letters onto the wood. The pen goes through the paper just enough to leave a line in the wood for you to use as a guide for painting. Only, as I mentioned before, I didn't sand down the palette enough for this to work very well. The wood was so rough that the pen wasn't able to leave a mark most of the time, so I ended up free-handing quite a bit of it, which worked out alright because I was going for a less-than-perfect look.

And a close-up . . . 

I then attached d-hooks to the back of each custom piece and wired them for hanging. They now hang in my garage. 

Chocolate Mousse Cake

I'm very particular about what recipes I'll try. I hate to waste my time and I hate to waste money (i.e. ingredients). The America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Country/Cook's Illustrated family has won my trust time and time again, so I'll always try one of theirs. A little farther down on my list of go-to sources is Fine Cooking. I've had some hits and some misses with their stuff, but mostly hits, so I'll try their stuff now and again if it interests me. Well, this Chocolate Mousse Cake interested me and I gave it a try. I'm glad I did. It was super-easy and very yummy.

The recipe features a chocolate collar for finishing the cake. I've done that before, but it requires tempering the chocolate and can be a little fussy, which I didn't have time for when making this cake, so I opted for chocolate shavings instead with little piped dollops of mousse on top.

(To make chocolate shavings, simply zap a bar of chocolate in the microwave for about 5-10 seconds at full power---just enough to warm it up, but not melt it. I like the larger, solid bars of chocolate from Trader Joe's. Trying to do this with your average Hershey's bar would likely be a lot tougher. Then, while gripping the bar of chocolate firmly in your hand, run a vegetable peeler along the edge over a piece of parchment paper to collect the shavings. The more pressure you apply and the warmer the chocolate, the more defined the 'curls' you'll get will be. To get wispy little shavings like the ones below is less work and faster--use light pressure. Do NOT attempt to pick the shavings up with your hands, as they will melt on contact. Use a spoon to transport them or to pile them on your cake.)

Get the recipe here and try it for yourself. Remember to use good-quality chocolate. It really does make a difference when it's the starring ingredient in a cake like this one!

Cookies for the PTA

I was recently asked to contribute some cookies for a teacher appreciation event at my son's elementary school. I made 150 cookies: Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Sugar Cookies.

I wasn't going to be able to stay for the event and I didn't want to have to leave behind serving dishes that someone else would then have to wash and get back to me, so my solution was this . . . I used kraft paper as a table covering and arranged the cookies on it in rows. At the end of each row, I put a custom label identifying the type of cookies. I found some vintage apothecary labels online and altered them in Adobe Photoshop to make custom cookie tags.

This was a very informal event, set-up in the teachers' lounge, so dressing it up a little with the presentation was fun.

Easter Mantel

This was the first year I decorated the mantel for Easter. The pictures aren't that great, but you get the idea. There's a little more that I'd like to do with it, but I was trying to stick to a budget, so I'll add on more next year.

I used sticks, moss, pussy willow, birds' nests made out of twigs, and robin eggs. I also used a ceramic bunny on one side, which I balanced out with three ceramic finials on the opposite side. The larger eggs I painted myself to match the colors of the decor in this room---greens and blues.

Random Baking

I do a lot of baking. I'm happy when I'm baking and even happier when I'm sharing what I've baked. Here are a few shots of recent things I've done . . .

Above is a cake I made myself for my birthday . . . banana cake sandwiched around a layer of banana cheesecake, all frosted in a banana swiss meringue buttercream.

Classic chocolate cake with caramel filling in between all the layers and a rich chocolate frosting. I made the banner, too.

Assorted cupcakes, etc.

Red velvet cake with marshmallow frosting. I made the tag, too.

 Dark chocolate mini-cakes with raspberry buttercream and drizzled chocolate ganache.

A snickerdoodle cake with cinnamon frosting.

Valentine's Day Lollipop Covers

I saw a printable template for lolli tags by Domesticated Lady here just before Valentine's Day, and I knew what I wanted to do for the kids' valentines for their school friends this year.

I used Adobe Photoshop Elements software to make my own tags using the cool doily element from Domesticated Lady's tags, printed them and punched them out, and then glued them to a card stock cover. I don't have a picture, but there's a tag on the back, too, that says To: and From: