Wedding update and a HUGE THANK YOU!!!

It's a GREAT day today!!!  I received a WONDERFUL package in the mail this morning!!!

As most of you know planning a wedding or any party or event can be stressful.  Especially when there's so much that has to go into it and you're making a lot of it yourself.  Well since I've started this blog I've met a lot of interesting and wonderful people that I wouldn't have met otherwise and I am so grateful for that!!!  One of these wonderful people is Cameron over at Paint Myself Pretty.  She loves to plan events and knows how stressful they can be and she volunteered to help me with anything I needed help with.  I didn't take her up on her offer immediately because I was afraid to put her out, but she was very serious about her offer, so after talking to my honey I decided I would take her up on her offer and I plan to make something just as wonderful for her as a HUGE Thank you!!! 

I cannot even put into words how much I truly appreciate what you did Cameron!!!  They are beautiful and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them!!!  They will be a perfect match to all of the other decorations at the wedding!!! 

Now would yall like to see what Cameron did???  I promise yall will love them as much as I do!!!

Ok first off it was wrapped in white tissue paper, but I was so excited I forgot to take a photo of it before I unwrapped it.  Isn't that "bow" adorable???  It's on a clip and can be removed and reused :)
Are you excited to see what's inside??  I know I was!!!












Ok, I don't know what's up with Blogger today, but the photo of the back will not upload the right way it's suppose to be turned on it's side.  So frustrating!!  I can't stand it when it does that, but you can still see how great they are!!!  I was looking at them and I wanted to show you what some of them say, I don't know if Cameron realized it while she was making it, but the sayings on some of them are so perfect!!!  I forgot to mention that these are the favors for the guests.  They have flower seeds in them!!

There are many, many more but blogger is not cooperating today!!!  She also sent me some blue buttons to decorate the paper bird seed cones with!!  I told her that she could make them however she wanted and she did an amazing job!!  So once again THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH CAMERON!!! 

I wanted to show yall 2 more things for the wedding today while I was filling yall in about the wedding.  My mom made our invitations and I absolutely love them so I thought I would share a photo of them with yall today.

I love the owls on the invitations and the fact that the paper has plants and seeds pressed into it!!!
And one more thing a preview of what my boys will be wearing.  There will be a few alterations made to the outfit, but this is basically it.  What do yall think?

Doesn't he look adorable?!!  He loves his out fit it took me forever to get it off of him.

Well I will be gone atleast until Wednesday, I may sneak in a post before then, but incase I hope yall have a wonderful weekend and a wonderful start to next week!!  So until next time........

Happy Crafting!!!

I'm on Facebook!!!

Good Evening everyone!!!

I don't usually post in the evenings, but I was so excited to share this with yall!!!  Thrifty Crafting is on Facebook now!!!  This is completely new so it's not all set up yet so please be patient with me while I work all the kinks out.  So feel free to like me on facebook.  There is a like button at the very top of my side bar.  So anyways I hope yall have a great evening and here's a photo to look at because what a post without a photo?!?

Isn't it pretty it's a solar powered butterfly that Justin was amazed with so I took some photos of it because it was so pretty!!!  So until next time........

Happy Crafting!!!

Pinch me please!!!

Good morning everyone!!!

Ok you remember how my last post was titled Crafty Overload???  Well apparently that doesn't mean very much to me, I think I have lost my mind for good!!!  Yesterday I was thinking about how the end of the year is right around the same time as our wedding and how I would run out of time and wouldn't be able to make anything for Landon's teachers if I didn't get started on it.  Ok notice I said started, not finish it right.  Well I started it yesterday and finished one of the gifts yesterday!!  What is wrong with me?  Do any of yall ever have a billion things going on and then decide oh I'll just take on one more project and finish these when I finish this one, please tell me I'm not the only one???? 

See part of the reason this is all such a horrible idea is because I have arthritis in my spine, so I'm paying for it BIG time today!!!  I am in so much pain that I want to crawl back in bed and I have 3 projects I MUST, MUST finish today for swaps on whoopdwhoop (which by the way if you haven't checked it out yet click on the button over on my side bar, you won't regret it I swear)!! 

The bag I made wasn't hard to make at all, but there was a lot of sewing involved, since I quilted the straps and did an inside pocket with a zipper on it for the first time EVER and appliqued the apple on the front.  It's really cute and I love it, I just think I need someone to reach through this computer and pinch me really hard!!!  Well enough rambling here she is in all her applie splendor............

She's more of the size of a beach bag, but that was intentional on my part.  I thought that since it was for a teacher, she probably has alot of things she carries around with her and would need plenty of room in her bag.

You see the fabric I used??  I actually bought an ENTIRE bolt of it when it was on sale, I only paid $7.00 for the whole bolt!!!

Close up of the quilting on the straps.  Isn't the fabric cute?  Very teacherish don't you think?

Close up of the apple applique.  Now that I see it on here, does it look like a cherry to anyone else but me??
Oh and I guess I didn't have the bag a nice a neat before I took a photo of it so don't mind the crunched fabric and messed up bottom corner they look much better now.

This is the pocket on the inside, I lined it with the same fabric that I used on the outside of the bag.
I think it turned out pretty good, what are yall's opinions??  I do think I'm going to avoid Bella (my sewing machine, yes she has a name) for a few days though!!!

I'm gonna go get my heating pad, I hope yall have a great day and weekend and I'll be back Monday!!!  So until next time............

Happy Crafting!!!

Crafty Overload!!

Good morning!!!

I swear I'm on craft overload!!  With the wedding only 2 months away and the boys birthdays only 3 months away (their birthday's are the 17th and 18th of June) I have so many things to do!!!  I've been bouncing back and forth from my sewing machine to my desk where my modpodge is all set up waiting on me to use it. 

I even went thrifting last week and never got around to posting my finds!!  I'm going to my Mom's on the 31st so I'll be getting a break for a few days and I think it is overdue!!  She's going to take me to the Canton Trade days and I couldn't be more excited!!!  I've always wanted to go, but have never been able to afford the trip because it's so far from here, but my mom is only about an hour away so this is my chance!!!  I wanted to show you a few things I've been working on, keep in mind most of them are not finished and some are a rough draft of the finished project.  I have a tendency to try something before I decide if I want to actually continue on with it first, so I can see if I need to make any changes or if I even like it.  These are the things I have been working on for the boys birthdays............

First off, I followed this tutorial for the car caddy.  I was blog hoping one evening and my oldest son was sitting on my lap when I came across this tutorial and he got so excited I knew I had to bookmark it and come back to it later and give it a shot!!  Now let me explain something about my trial run, I learned a couple of things from it.

1.  How to sew on piping, this was my first time to use piping.  It was also my first time using my zipper foot for my machine!!

2.  I thought I should use interfacing on the turquoise corduroy since it wasn't as stiff as I thought it should be, but I was SOOOOOOOOO  very wrong since I used denim for the pockets!!!  It was so bulky that it was almost impossible to turn right side out!!!!

Now, I did purposely make the applique look a little sloppy since it is for a little boy.  On my second go around (which is not finished yet), the only thing I did was not use craft felt for the road so that I can wash it and I starched the material instead of using any type of stabilizer!!  Much, much better I must say!!!

This one is not finished either.  The explanation behind this one is, my Son's love fishing!!!  Every fishing toy I have bought them has broke within an hour of bringing it home and I'm so tired of waisting money on those cheap toys!!  I saw where someone had made something similar awhile back (can't remember where though) and it inspired me to make one for my boys.  I still have to make the pole for it and maybe a few more fish.  These are made of felt and have heavy duty magnets in their noses so that the boys can catch them with another magnet that will be attached to the pole somehow.

Do you remember this fishy sheet from this post????  I knew I would have plenty to make a quilt and a few other things :)  It worked perfectly for this project!!

This is the cape that I made for my oldest son.  I didn't follow any tutorials for this one, although I've seen them everywhere, it was so simple to make!!  My honey is a die hard Cleveland Browns fan and I'm a die hard Packers fan and seeing as how my team won the super bowl :)  I let him choose the colors for Landon's cape and these are the colors he chose!!  It was really plain with just the L appliqued on it so I used my sewing machine and added some of the decorative stitches around the edges.  Perfect, quick and simple gift for my little super hero!!!

Now let me show you what I need to get done for the wedding!!!

Those 2 fedora's need new hat bands so that they match what the boys will be wearing in the wedding and those 2 suspenders need to be made shorter so that they will fit the boys!!!  All 4 of those things only cost me $3 because the fedora's came from Burlington coat factory and were only $1 a piece and the suspenders were $.50 a piece at the thrift store!!!

I am working on making 2 of these ties smaller to fit my little guys and using the excess that I take off of them to make the hat bands for the fedora's.  All of the other projects I haven't managed to take photos of, but I will make sure that when I finally get around to it I'll share those with yall too!!!  So what have you been up to???  Until next time..........

Happy Crafting!!!

Our Spring Break

Hello Everyone!!!

As I promised in my last post, I'm going to share some of the details from our tea party along with a few other fun things we did on spring break. 

All the kids went back to school yesterday after a week off, so it was a pretty busy day around here yesterday.  My youngest son Justin and I stayed around the house and cleaned all day while Landon went to school.  Well I did make a few things for their birthdays that are coming up in June.  Ok enough rambling.......

We had our tea party on St. Patty's day, so we all had on green.  It was a fun day we had gone to the sand hill's the day before so the kids were very excited because they didn't know where they were going all they knew was it was going to be fun. 
                                 

Our tea party was kinda like brunch so we had finger sandwiches, spinach artichoke bread bowls, crackers that were shaped like Texas, cubed cheese, baby pickles, pretzels with creme cheese filling and wafer cookies.  We made cherry cool aide with sprite so it would be fizzy for the kids.  I was in charge of the decorations, because of all my thrift store shopping :)  I made a ribbon bunting to hang from the tree and used one of my vintage sheets as our table cloth.  It wasn't overly decorated because it was a bit breezy outside and I didn't want everything to blow away. 

Let me just say those spinach artichoke bread bowls were DELICIOUS!!!!  And what is a party in Texas without Texas shaped crackers!!!  The girls wore their pillow case dresses and crowns I made. 

My nieces and nephew were given their hooded bath towels I made awhile back, you can go here for the tutorial.  They were such a big hit that my niece Samantha didn't want to take hers off, she wanted to wear it while she was swinging on the swings.  After we had our tea party the kids were free to run and play all they wanted.  They spent most of their time on the swings pushing each other.

Justin was so excited that bubba was pushing him, every time Landon pushed him, he giggled and giggled.

Now I want to show yall 2 of my favorite pictures from our spring break fun.  Actually I just showed you one of my favorites (the one of Landon pushing Justin) but these other two are great!!  The first one is of Landon and Samantha sitting on a park bench with each other while everyone else was off swinging and playing, the other one was taken when we went to the sand hills of Justin's booty covered in dirt.  I laughed so hard when he stood in front of me and I noticed all the sand on his shorts.

Isn't this just the sweetest photo, they are only a couple months apart in age.  She was born April 26th and he was born June 17th so they have been close since they were babies.

Now, if that doesn't make you giggle or at least put a smile on your face, I don't know what will.  I hope yall had a great spring break, or have a great spring break.  I know we did!!!  So until next time........

Happy Crafting!!!

Happy St. Patricks Day!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

I hope yall are having a great St. Patty's day!!!  I also hope you've avoided people in the pinching mood if you're not wearing green.  We had our tea party for my nieces this morning and it turned out so great and they had so much fun!!  I plan on sharing the details and photos with you probably tomorrow or the beginning of next week.  In the mean time I wanted to show you the other pillow case dresses I managed to get done.  These didn't get modeled like the first one did, but they did try them on and wear them for quite awhile!!

I actually sewed my first pocket and attached my first elastic to a pocket with this first one!!  I was so proud of myself, I didn't even follow any tutorials I just did some thinking before I started.  Actually after I cute the arm holes out in the pillow cases, I noticed that the material I had just cut off of the pill case was shaped like a pocket and that's what started the whole thing :)

The pocket is not perfect, but not bad for my first attempt I don't think.  What do you think, any suggestions?

Landon actually picked out the pocket for this one, he said it needed to be green, so green it is.  These 2 are shorter than the first one in the previous post.  I think the pocket turned out better in this one.

This is the only dress I've made so far for my older niece, I needed her to try it on first to make sure it would fit her before I could make more.  I love, LOVE, love this material!!!  Aren't they pretty?  And they are so pretty and easy to make.  4 down and a million more to go before I have reduced the amount of pillow cases I have!!!

Well I hope yall have a great rest of your day!!!!  So until next time........

Happy Crafting!!!

She's a one of a kind!!

Good morning everyone!!!  I hope the sun is shining bright where ever you are today!!  We took our boys to the park last night and they got to throw the baseball with daddy and my oldest son Landon actually hit it with the baseball bat about 8 times.  I WAS SO SO PROUD!!!  Having boys is so much fun!!  Sometimes the urge sneaks up on me to want a little girl, and that's when I make things for my nieces :)

Yesterday I kept my nephew (he is right between my boys age wise) for a little bit while his sisters went to get their hair cut and while they were gone, I got busy!!!  I have a huge stash of vintage sheets and pillow cases and I promised my honey that by this summer my stash of pillow cases would start to fade :(  I have so many that they don't all fit in one closet anymore (I know, this screams HOARDER right).  I don't have a great explanation for this other than they are absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!!  Well enough with the rambling.........

While they were gone I decided I would try to make a pillow case dress for my youngest niece.  It was so simple, ok let me tell you this way.  Their appointment was at 3 o'clock and they were back by 3:30 and it was done and ready for her to try on when she got here!!  I was so proud of myself!!  When they got here I showed it to her she was so excited to try it, a matter of fact she didn't even want to take it off.  She so got her way too!!!

Let me tell you a little something about Ms. Samantha before I show you her picture.  She is a one of a kind little girl.  She will dress herself and she wears her boots with EVERYTHING!!!  I told her that she looked like a bohemian princess in her dress and her brown boots.  She is so photogenic, as soon as I told her I wanted to take her photo she was all smiles.

See, doesn't she look like a bohemian princess with her brown boots on?  I didn't get any close-ups because as soon as she put it on she never took it off!!  It made me so happy to see her loving it!!!

And of course she had to spin in it!!  Do you see that smile, makes Aunt Alley's heart melt!!

So until next time.......

Happy Crafting!!!

Wedding Update

Good morning everyone!!!  I hope y'all are enjoying your coffee this morning!!  Now as I promised I have something to share with y'all today and I need your opinions please.

Let me start out by painting a picture for you.........

Our wedding will take place at a historical place here in our town called the million barrel museum.  There is an old house there, that is very beautiful!!!  We will have the wedding right outside of the house here is a photo I found of it on the web, it's not the best, but you can see how pretty it is.

You can follow this link to get more info and see some photos of the inside of the house, We will be taking some photos inside before the wedding.

Ok now onto painting the rest of the picture........

All the men including my 2 boys will be wearing dress pants (I'm not sure what they are actually called for men) that are styled like the one's men wore in the 50's, suspenders, white button up shirts and ties.  The girls which are my very best friend and one of my beautiful nieces, will be wearing these dresses.

This is my dress, it is not a traditional wedding dress, but it is very much me!! 

This is my matron of honor's dress.  It is the exact same as mine just in lite blue.

This will be nieces dress, isn't it cute?  I think she is going to look adorable in it!!  You should really go here and check out all of their beautiful dresses (these are their photos)!!  Ok so far what do you think?  I guess I should tell you what our colors are shouldn't I?  Ivory, Lite blue, dark blue and black.  The theme which I'm sure you've figured out by now, is the 50's.  It will be very pin-up, kinda in away.  I have several tattoos and my honey has a few so it kind of fits the theme.  The only things that are actually being bought brand new are the dresses that I showed you above, everything else will be coming from our local thrift store, goodwill and a few garage sales.  We have a budget of $1,000 and after I've paid all of the deposits and bought the dresses we will have nearly $600 left :)  I am so excited!!! 

Now onto the reception..........  It will be indoors because our weather here changes every 5 minutes, I don't want to take any chances that things will be blown away.  Our family's are pitching in to cook the meal (big money saver).  The tables will have thrifted white sheets as table cloths with burlap running down the center, decorated with thrift store milk glass vases and mason jars with fresh flowers in them that we can buy at our local grocery store.  We will have one table dedicated to photos of us when we were smaller all the way up until recently with our children.  At the end of the same table where everyone will come in at there will be a white and rust colored bird cage that I bought for $3 at a local garage sale (will show you photos of this in a later post) this will be for the guests to put personal notes in.  Our wedding cake will be made by my grandmother, she is the BEST baker I know and her cakes are the pretties I have ever seen.  I cannot for the life of me remember where I found this photo at so if you know where it came from or it belongs to you please let me know so that I can link back to it.

Isn't it beautiful??  I love it because it is so simple and fits perfectly with the rustic vintage theme we are going with.  I'm sure I have left out a lot of details because I have so much racing through my mind that I want to tell and show y'all.  I'm sure after I go back and read this after I've posted it, it will dawn on me what I've forgotten.   But I do have one more thing that I want to show you and ask your opinion on, now be honest because I'm not sure if I love them or if I just like them, or if I should do something different to them like add some twine around them or use tulle on the inside of them......

These are paper cones I made out of an old torn up book that I found at a thrift store.  They are for tossing birdseed after the reception when we leave.  They will be sitting in an old suitcase by the door for everyone to grab on their way out.  So what do y'all think?  Do they need something or should I leave them just like they are?  What do you think about everything else so far?  Thank you for all of your opinions and I can't wait to share more details!!!  So until next time............

Happy Crafting!!!

So Exciting!!!

Guess what, guess what!!! 

I have been asked to host a giveaway over at Kitty's blog  A Law Student's Journey!!  This is the very first time I have been asked to do anything like this and I couldn't be more excited!!!  This is Kitty!!

She contacted me through that wonderful craft trading site I told you about (whoopdwhoop).  There are a lot of wonderful people on there and she has decided to shine the spotlight on a few of them and I get to be one of those lucky people and I am so thrilled!!!  You should really head over and check out her really cute blog and enter in the giveaway!!  And while you're there you should really take a look around because she has some great ideas and wonderful tutorials!!!

Just click on the button below and it will take you to whoopdwhoop so you can take a look around and open up an account if you're interested!!!  You won't be disappointed!!

Big Apology!!

Hello Everyone!!!

I feel I owe you all a HUGE apology for my lack of posts here recently!!!  This week has been nothing short of chaos!!  Monday was the only slow day all week, Tuesday I took my 4 year old to the Dr. because he has been running a very strange fever off and on for the last 3 weeks and come to find out he is having a very severe allergy to our wonderful West Texas weather.  I was suppose to take my soon to be sister in law to the Dr. to find out if she was having a baby boy or a baby girl and I had to cancel on her early in the morning so I could take Landon to the Dr.  (She's having a boy by the way!!!!).  Wednesday I babysat for a very close friend of mine so she could make it to an appointment and my back was killing me all day so needless to say I did absolutely nothing other than babysit that day.  Today I took my Aunt to the dentist to get 2 root canals done (keep in mind I am TERRIFIED of the dentist), then when we got home I had to pick up my kiddos from 2 different places, go get groceries, go sit down with my Grandma and tell her how I wanted our wedding cake to be and as I'm typing this right now I just realized I forgot to go to one more place before I finally made it home!!!  I really hope tomorrow is a MUCH better day, because next week is spring break and Momma is so ready for that!!!  I hope to finally show yall some of the things I have managed to get done this week!!  So until next time............

Happy Crafting!!!

Head on over.........

To Crafts & Sutch and check out her 1000 follower Extravaganza giveaway from Antique Paperie!!  They have some beautiful stuff and you will love Erin she is a wonderful person and she is the one I owe the biggest thanks too for making my blog beautiful!!!!  So hurry....... yes you hurry over and check it out!!!

Thrifty Thursday and my garage sale finds!!

First I am happy to announce that my mom loved her package!!!  Now onto what I promised to share with yall earlier in the week (my great garage sale finds)!!!

I have been slowly working on getting my bedroom decorated how I wanted it and there have been several things I've been looking for and I finally found a few of them.  And since I am a very cheap thrifty person I will only buy things like that at thrift stores, garage sales or things that are being thrown given away.   So because of this it has taken me awhile to find these things at resonable (cheap) prices.

Don't you love it?!!!  It has so much charm!!!  And what's even better is that it was only $5.00 and compared to the other one's that I've found that were $20 and more I couldn't be happier!!!

I love this gumball machine!!!  Not sure if my kids will be lucky enough, to have it filled with gum balls though.

Look at the rust!!  I'm so giddy over here I can't even type without looking over at it!!  The face plate is upside down, but I think I'll leave it that way, I don't want to mess anything up by taking it apart and I don't really mind it.  See I told you I found some really great stuff while I was out garage saling!!  I found a few more things too, but my computer seems to have eaten the photos because I can't find them anywhere!!

So what great thrifty things have you found recently???  So until next time.............

Happy Thrifting!!!

Some inspiration for everyone

Well, this morning I decided I would share some inspiration that I found out in the blogging world.  There are some really crafty people out there that inspire me and I thought yall might enjoy some inspiration as well. 

Now as some of you know I have 2 little boys, so because of this I love any craft projects that have to do with boys.  There aren't a whole lot of crafty things out there for boys so when I see one it inspires me instantly, which is why I had to share this Eddie cap from Mushroom Villagers.  Isn't it cute?  Who am I kidding isn't that little guy adorable?

This flower is truly beautiful, but I don't think I have the patience to even give it a try.  If you think you have the patience to try this you can find the full tutorial here.

Look at these great pinwheel coasters, aren't the just perfect?  I love them and I am on a coaster kick so I may have to give these a try and I will definetly follow this tutorial.

Ok, and last but definetly not least, this clock has to be one of the greatest teacher gifts I have ever seen.  This is on my to do list!!!  Just go on over here and make your kiddos teacher feel appreciated! I hope that yall feel inspired, I know I do!!  I know that after all the chores are don't I'm gonna get crafty.  So until next time............

Happy Crafting!!!