Casually Elegant Thanksgiving Tablescape

Sooooo...anyone still with me out there?  I always feel like I come back to post with a bunch of excuses for why I am so haphazard with blogging.  All I can say is...I will blog when I can.  I love blogging and I pray I always will keep up with it.  But for now...this season of my life is calling me to focus on managing my home and being available to my girls. Blogging is no longer a full time aspiration for me but a wonderful hobby where I hope I can continue to foster old relationships and make some new ones too.

So I am thinking a nice seasonal post with some Thanksgiving inspiration (a tad last minute) was a GREAT idea. And tablescapes are my heart and why I don't do more of them on here...I just don't know.  

Probably because I have like 2 hours of optimal sunlight to do it and I am usually knee deep into something else during peak photo shoot time. Which is why I LITERALLY dragged my dining room table through two french doors to my porch to take these photos.

Yarn Monster Cupcake Picks

In case some of you missed the ever popular Spooktacular over with the fabulous Eighteen25 girls, here was my project for this year...the cutest Yarn Monster Cupcake Picks I ever did see!

They are not hard to make and you only need a few supplies you probably already have in your crafty stash.

DIY Farm Party for Kids

I am so happy to share this sweet little farm party that I did for my little Ella's Pre-K class.  This ended up being such a fun one to prepare for and I enjoyed coming up with economical ways to make it cute without breaking the bank.  I knew I needed to get creative!

Fall Pom Pom Wreath

OK y'all, I am itching to haul out all the Fall stuff. This is my favorite, favorite, favorite season of the year and I am getting so excited!  So today I planned on a little craft with my girls.  The three of us tend to work on wreaths a lot and I have been working with yarn a ton lately so I thought we would make a pom pom wreath to go on their bedroom door.

1st Day of School Photo Sign + Printable

Oh my sweet day....how are you all doing? I am way shocked that it was been 2 months since I posted.  But you can't say I didn't warn you! I wanted to soak up my littles this summer and I did!  Still am, in fact.  We don't start school until September 4th!

But we have been having fun swimming, playing, eating ice cream, splashing in sprinklers, baking days, and lots of memory making.  Sigh.  The end of summer is so bittersweet. Both my girls will be in school so I may cry a lot and bury myself into crafting in my empty house. But I am excited to get back into crafting and living to blog about it.  So here is my first one to kind of get myself back on the grid in blog land:

Simple 4th of July Party Cups

Hey sweet friends!

Here's a quick and easy DIY for the 4th or any other party.

I am all for some pretty mason jars or glass bottles with pretty striped straws.  But if you have a big family reunion or a large party you are going to need something more practical.

Why not make custom cups with some fabric or paper?

 Take some clear plastic cups and cut out fabric or paper circles and place your glue "pretty side up" with a bit of mod podge (it dries clear). Fast, easy, colorful!

Mine are both fabric and paper.  I just traced the bottom of the cup but if you are using paper, you can use a circle punch too.

So easy and makes for a little custom flair to your party!

Painted Sailor Stripe Napkins Tutorial

I need to start off by saying that this year has marked the year of my obsession with stripes.  I am not sure why I love them as much as I do but anything remotely nautical or preppy has me over the moon in love.  So I have been dreaming of doing a Nautical 4th of July series for this year.  

And I am kicking it off today. Hooray!

I really wanted to use striped napkins this year but could not find any.  And so they kind of turned into an unexpected DIY project.  I could not find any fabric anywhere with the stripes I wanted and the ones I found retailed at $14 each.  Gah! So I figured a little fabric paint and inexpensive white napkins would do the trick. So a tutorial was born!

What you need: White napkins, red and blue fabric paint, masking tape (or painters tape), paint brush, number stencils, cardboard or poster board.

1. Iron your napkin and lay it flat on top of cardboard or poster board. 

2. Carefully place one strip of tape the length of the top of the napkin.  Do the same thing right underneath it with another line of tape.

3.  I wanted the first stripe to be painted red so I removed the top strip of tape and placed it directly under the second one. Then I placed another strip of tape underneath that and removed the one above it again.

This is how you create your stripes all the way down. 

It also helps that the tape stabilizes the napkin onto your poster board.

 Now start painting the exposed white lines your red color.  Once dry, peel your tape strip to reveal your fun, striped napkin! 

My goal was to make the napkins look like a sailboat sail so I stenciled 0704 (July 4th) onto each corner of the napkin with a midnight blue color.

They ended up really cute!  Or like a preppy prisoners uniform.  Awesome! :)

The monkey fist knots are not really the best knots I could have done. They are supposed to be tighter and much more ball like. I just learned how to make them (my husband knew how and after researching for days I finally asked him if he knew how to make one and he said YES!  Who knew??) I am still practicing and getting better at it and it is a good idea to put a styrofoam ball inside one to help shape it into a ball.  But I figured these still look super cute and nautical like.  Right?  RIGHT???!!!

A photo tutorial would have been close to impossible so here's a great link at animated knots for making a monkey's fist knot with great step by step photos.

I have more ideas to share with you over the next few weeks until July 4th.  

Stay tuned my beautiful friends!

Hugs!