Boyfriend's Christmas Gifts.

This Christmas will be the second time my boyfriend and I will celebrate together. Last year, he ended up loving his stocking stuffers way more than his big gift. I think its because I can find things that he would never think he needed or wanted but I wrap it up and boom... its the "best gift ever."

So Mike's big gift this year is this baby:

He is constantly stealing my iPhone in order to check his football fantasy team, baseball fantasy team, e-mail, or the ESPN app. So now he will have all of that and more on his own iPod touch. Thank goodness. Plus he is a painter so I don't know how he has lived without his own music to motivate and recharge him throughout his long days.

So here are his stocking presents all wrapped up:

And here's whats under the BEAUTIFUL wrapping:

1. American Spoon Food Jalapeno Pepper Jelly
{His favorite snack. Put this over cream cheese and the boy is in heaven.}

2.       MLB The Show 12 PS3 Game

3.       AXE Excite Body Goods

4.       Havoc Hockey Stick Bottle Opener

{For his hockey celebrations in the locker room, perfect for his hockey bag zipper.}

5.       Chaps Golf Water Bottle and Sleeve

6.       Nike Juice Golf Balls

7.       iTunes Gift Card

8.       Battleship DVD

9.       Gym Towel with a Hidden Zipper Pocket
{This is the most practical of the gifts… yet perfect! He can have his wallet/phone on the bench for away games so it’s not left in the locker room.}

10.   iPod Hockey Goalie Case

There you have it. I think it is going to be a great Christmas and I cannot wait to see his reactions.

Anyone else have more fun finding/buying stocking stuffers instead of big gifts? Any ideas for a golf playing, hockey obsessed, and music loving boyfriend?

Christmas Prep.

So after 4 days off from work and plenty of shopping, I am now back in the engineering office trying to get motivated for a week of craziness. I miss "vacation" already.

Over my time off, I started to decorate my apartment for Christmas. It's a family tradition to go tree shopping the day before Thanksgiving, so I picked out my beautiful tree and couldn't wait to decorate it. I was surprised to find out that the boy is kind of obsessed with tree decoration. It was the first time I had gotten all my ornaments I have been collecting for years out and it was fun to see what I have purchased over the years. 

 

I still want to make the Pinterest inspired tree skirt... so thats on the to do list. I bought a dollar store one (shown above) to revamp into a ruffled-filled white skirt.

I made Mike a stocking... the store bought ones are never big enough. I put one DVD in a stocking and boom its filled...so I decided to go BIG. You can't really tell but this stocking is as long as the window. Amazing! So I just sketched out an "m" and added some sparkle. Love it. (Now I need to make myself one!)

I wrapped his stocking stuffers.

It definitely helped that Black Friday was a HUGE success. After spending 4 1/2 hours at Walmart, Mike and I walked away with a 40" TV, Blu-ray Player, new sheets, and enough DVDs/TV series to keep us occupied for another year.

Christmas is so soon and I am ready for it. I only need a few more presents and I am done with my gift-buying. I cannot wait to just kick back and relax once Decemeber hits. I want to enjoy next month.

Are you Christmas decorating? Did you partake in Black Friday? Any good deals? I want to hear about it!

Pocahontas + Romney.

Last minute Halloween costume touches were performed this morning. I finally finished my Pocahontas necklace! Now I need to throw some more fringe on my dress. Can never have too much fringe!

I have to admit it... without my half hot chocolate/half vanilla cappuccino in a Romney cup it would have been impossible.

I am loving that 7-11 allows you to use these election cups as a way to scream, "yeah I am a Republican who is about to conquer her day!" Love it. I brought my costume and glue gun with me to work so looks like my lunch break is gonna be taken over with DIY projects. Sorry engineering staff for the hot glue gun smell... I am just being creative over here.

Thirsty?

All week I have been preparing for my Halloween party. The guests will be arriving around 8 pm Friday night and since I work 10 hour days, I have realized that I need to do a few projects a night so the party will come together slowly but surely. Last night I tackled the drink table.

My favorite part is the featuring of a signature drink. I made this print to put in the picture frame sitting on the table (above) to tell our guests how to make the parties' special drink! Here's the recipe:

Sounds so tasty. Its kind of girlie but with a black straw or those fun skeleton stirrers, I think the men in my life will love it too. One of my favorite things are the "thirsty" labels I bought last year on clearance for my to new and even my open red wine bottles. It looks creepy yet so pretty.

So I think a few more bottles of wine and a pitcher of orange juice should really pull the table together. I am just excited to see how the recipe print looks inside my furry, feathered picture frame.

 

Is it Friday yet? Anyone else planning a Halloween bash? Any ideas for me?

Weird Combinations...

Last night was very interesting...
After a birthday dinner for my dad, I headed back to my apartment with my boyfriend to curl up with some red wine and watch Game of Thrones season one episodes. Of course, I couldn't sit still regardless of how epically great that show is, so I started brainstorming a little DIY project to do while watching. Little did I know this combination:

Creates these beautiful, glittered, dazzling, and brilliant pumpkins:

Mike just laughed at me as I am sprinkling glitter over cheap looking pumpkins and said, "Wow, those turned out really cool."

Of course I just smile and say, "Do you know how much these babies would be at Pier 1? Yeah, see with a little creativity, wine, and mid-evil violence anything is possible." (Why is he dating me?)

Now I just need a trip to the local farm market for some real pumpkins and autumn corn to create a centerpiece with these glittered pumpkins. Pictures of that project are coming up!

Safe to say I am fully throwing myself into this fall weather. Michigan is freezing so as long as there are fun projects to do, I will be game. Anyone else doing fall-related DIY projects? Come on, give me something else to do while we finish this season and continue onto the second season.

Gallery Accent Wall Project

I had always envisioned myself having a blog that would feature all of the little DIY projects I have conquered, but at the time when this blog was created I was in college and didn't have a place of my own. So in turn this website became a diary of sorts, which I have loved because it has captured moments in which I would have forgotten. I am hoping to revisit the earlier posts years down the road and relive my 20's. But now there is a new chapter in my life... I am going to try to switch this blog up a bit.

Today I have my dream apartment. It is located downtown my hometown above little stores and sits in an alley that provides the back entrances to my favorite bars. Go figure, huh? What comes with our outdated and old downtown is outdated, yet charming apartments. Just what I wanted. Before I even moved in officially, I was already talking accent walls and fresh paint with my boyfriend... who happens to be a professional painter. WIN!
Like this wall for example:

It was desperate for some paint, so I decided on a nice green color.

Sherwin Williams - Artichoke

I came home from work one day and this surprise was waiting for me. The boy got done with a job early and headed to my apartment still in his painters pants and finished this in probably 5 minutes. But as you can see, there is arleady a huge difference.



My favorite project so far has been putting up a gallery wall on the accent wall of my living room area. It turned out way better than expected. First I started with sketching out the arrangement I wanted for the frames:

Then I traced each picture frame with newspaper or scrapbook paper and postioned them upon the wall. I also drew a dot where to position the nail. Saves a lot of time and takes out the guess and check of where to postion the pictures.

Final product:

This has become my favorite corner to curl up and read at the end of the day. Surrounded by my favorite people, places, and of course, Audrey Hepburn. So has anyone else thrown together a gallery wall and fallen deeply in love with it? So far this is my favorite DIY project for the apartment... Don't worry more pictures of the apartment coming soon!



Come Have A Ball! Party

Well it looks like my little blog hiatus is officially finished. I apologize for the lack of blog posts the last few months, but I needed to take a break from the constant updates and hours spent online in order to get a few DIY projects and party ideas completed. Now I am logged back on and ready to share what I have been up too. (Also, I was peer-pressured by one of my girlfriends to get this baby going again… cough, Kate, cough.)

So why not start with the fact that my “little” brother graduated a week ago. Yeah I can still call him little even though he’s 6’4”and 200 lbs, right? But he is the baby of the family and the last one to graduate high school, so of course I have been living vicarously through him and started planning his graduation party.

My brother played three varsity sports - football, baseball, and basketball - throughout high school and most of his life. Since my family has spent a majority of our lives sitting in the stands of stadiums, ball fields, and gymnasiums, I thought the best idea was to do a sports theme. So here is how it turned out:

My favorite feature of the party - The Candy Bar a.k.a The Concession Stand

All of his favorite candies - Hot Tomales, Sour Patch Kids, Laffy Taffy, etc.

Getcha Popcorn!

Now onto the food... We had two options to choose from for lunch, either BBQ pulled pork sandwiches or...

Build Your Own Hot Dog!

Thanks to Pinterest, I was able to find the idea over on Hostess with the Mostess blog and use her free hot dog menu templates. It was a huge hit and everyone liked how they could try new combinations instead of your typical ketchup, mustard, and relish combo.
After creating your hotdog masterpiece it was off to round up some sides. This is where I got to use all my sports related serving trays and bowls.
{Yes, those blue things are Jell-O Jigglers football helmets. Told you I went all out on this theme, ladies.}

My favorite serving tray... its a referee uniform. Love it!

Here you will get to see the final project of my cupcake dessert table. Be expecting a post on this experience alone. It was quite the endevor to get 150 cupcakes baked and decorated. I had three different kinds for each of the three different sports.

Football Cupcakes = Chocolate on Chocolate
Basketball Cupcakes = Funfetti with Vanilla Frosting (dyed orange)
Baseball Cupcakes = Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting

Safe to say he was this excited on his graduation day and during his party. Looks like all the hard work really paid off! Thank goodness...

Anyone else have a themed grad party or attended one lately that they loved? I want to know.

Pinky Promises Do Come True.

Here's a few things I am loving on this snowy, Michigan morning:

Last night was Date Night! This included finally getting to see "The Vow" with the boy. I know I am behind the times (I originally wanted to see it on Valentine's Day but he had other plans), but I couldn't agree more with all the reviews... it was amazing. I cried from beginning to end and thank goodness, the boy was there to squeeze my hand as I watched. Go see this movie! Mike and I couldn't stop obsessing with how great Rachel and Channing played their characters... Perfection.

The text message leading up to watching this movie is one of my favorites, I made him pinky promise we would see it. Hey I am not taking any chances!

Yeah, we are losers... Other than that, I also did a little shopping on Etsy yesterday for new artwork... Purchased this card which I will be framing as soon as it arrives. How cute?

If anyone has some favorite prints or know of a great Etsy shop let me know!! I need fun pieces because in a few weeks I will be getting my own place and there will be plenty of decorating needed to be done.

This weekend we are going to finish the project I have been working procrastinating on for the past 2 months. Painting and organizing my family's back porch/laundry room. Thanks to plenty of Pinterest inspiration, I will be in charge of making sure it ends up looking like this:

...while the boyfriend, who is a professional painter (thank goodness), will make sure it is painted beautifully! Cannot wait to see him work his magic.

Swoon! There will be more on this later.... it will get its own post since it's going to entail a ton of hard work and probably really good stories. I cannot wait to do a little DIY project with the boy... bonding time!

Anyone else planning on getting their hands dirty this weekend with a little DIY project? What are your weekend plans, I'd love to know!

Busy, Busy, Busy

First of all I have to apologize for my lack of blog posts, but life has gotten crazy… a good crazy though. My job has been keeping me busy while my social/love life has been nothing short of amazing. This is one of those times when you feel truly blessed for the family and friends in your life. I am feeling inspired and spontaneous so here are a few things I want/will be doing the rest of this week.

Tonight I will be making this cake for my best friend B’s birthday:

Peanut Butter Cup Cake

Friday will be his birthday party at the restaurant on the foot of the ski hill here:

This is his birthday card:

I'm getting a haircut with lots of layers and face framing like this:

Saturday I will be headed up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Lake Superior State University for a little Miami University hockey game:

Sunday will be a day of men’s league hockey games and DIY projects like these:

Looks like I will be even busier than before. But I like it. I wouldn’t have it any other way! What do you guys have planned for the rest of week? Are you busy or taking it easy on yourself?

Happy December.

I cannot believe it’s finally December!

Cheers to gallons cups of egg nog, the smell of pine, and many wrapped presents. Ahh, I love this month and to celebrate properly, I did a little project last night. We bought a wreath a week ago when we picked up our Christmas tree and it looked sooo boring. Kind of depressing actually… So I decided to jazz it up with some gold accents and a new bow ornament that I picked up at Pier One.

Nothing like a little wreath to liven up the house and our spirits, right? What do you guys think? Any little projects you are creating to bring some Christmas cheer?