My New Love: Chalk Paint!

Have y'all tried chalk paint? OMG, its fabulous. No sanding, no priming. Just painting, and then playing. We like that in our house.... the getting right to the playing part. 

A sweet friend gave me a little, old table and chairs for miss caroline. It was the perfect thing to jumpstart my thoughts for a little person playroom. That is still the works, but the table and chairs are finished, and caroline is already loving them!

Here is what they looked like before:

I painted a coat of gray on the chairs to start. I wanted them to have gray under tones instead of the brown of the original oak chair. 

This is how they turned out:

There were exposed screw holes on the sides, and I found these fun colorful buttons at Michaels and hot-glued them over the holes. Love the punch of color!

Caroline enjoys climbing up and down because they are the perfect size for her to maneuver independently. 

I used CeCe Caldwell's Chalk paint and Satin finish over top. It worked great, and is mineral based, VOC free, no oder, so easy to clean up, washes out easy with water... basically the perfect paint. Did I mention you don't have to sand off old finishes or paint. AMAZING!

I used two sample size containers of Carolina yellow and two of Seattle mist gray for a total of $36. Which is a little more pricy than regular paint or acrylic, but it is so worth it because it was that easy! And our table was free, so 36 dollars sounds awesome :)

Have you found and fallen in love with chalk paint? Give it a try! 

Love Bug Party: Party Details Edition

Two Saturday's ago we had Caroline's first birthday party. I kept repeating all day, "How has it been a year" and "Oh my goodness, Caroline is really ONE, we're having a party to prove it!" It was kinda silly since I had been planning for weeks and obviously knew it was coming. I just don't know where the last year has gone?

Anyway, I LOVE a good theme, and I knew that a Ladybug theme was perfect for our little Love Bug who has a spring birthday! Everything was ladybug and polka dot, and red, black, with some bright spring green. It was fun, and fairly easy to find cheap ways to stick with my theme using stuff I already owned.

First off, the invites:

I love invitations. If I could make a living just designing invitations for parties, I totally would. I just have a thing for fun fonts and mixing colors and patterns. Anyway, I am really happy with the way these turned out!

I framed an invite at the entry way for the party.

I found the cute wooden lady bugs at Micheals for .49 cents each and hot glued one to the big wooden"C", and tied it up to a hook with polka-dot ribbon. I loved how simple and subtle it was. I already had the red and white flowers from ikea and they worked perfect in a plain white pitcher. 

I LOVE how my party wreath turned out so much it is staying up as a spring wreath. Ladybugs are spring right??? Anyway, I just covered a wreath form with burlap strips {that I already had!} using hot glue. I really like how the texture of the imperfect burlap looks!

Then I just made several flowers out of polka dot ribbon and scrap white and black fabric that was left over from curtains in a guest bedroom and random buttons. They are really simple... I made these flowers using scissors and a hot glue gun. I also made an extra red polka-dot flower that was easy to attach to elastic for a headband for the Birthday Girl!

I found the ladybug circle printable from this website here. I made additional circles that just said "Happy 1st Birthday Caroline" in the same font from her invites to alternate with the lady bugs.

I printed and cut out the different circles, and hot glued them to abstract "flowers" that I free hand cut out of polka-dot paper. I then hot glued the whole "flower" to a clothes pin to hang up Caroline's Monthly Bib Pictures Pictures {from my sweet friends at this shower} across the mantle and our ledge shelves. It was simple and fun to look back through at how much she has changed from a baby to a little girl in the last year!

My Mom found this cute lady bug frame at Hobby Lobby. It was perfect. We took Caroline's picture in her 1st Birthday shirt and red homemade tulle tutu the day before the party so I had some pictures already printed out for the party. I found her lady bug shirt from this Etsy Shop. 

I made these simple water bottle lady bug wraps that said "happy 1st birthday caroline" and printed them on sheets of 8x11 label paper. I then cut apart the strips and had 6 water bottle wraps per sheet. I love details and these were a favorite detail for sure! 

I painted a few different flower pots in bright green and red to hold straws and others for the utensils. I already had these chalk board labels that I tied on with bakers twine. Easy! 

In sticking with our red and black theme, we had bottled cokes! Such fun and a big hit. We also {of course} had Chick-fil-A tea and lemonade too. 

We were lucky to have a beautiful spring day. I was praying hard for this because we had been itching to grill out hamburgers after a very long and very cold winter. It was the perfect day for an early spring cook-out. We kept it pretty simple with burgers, chips, fruit, guacamole, and then cupcakes, chocolate covered pretzels and Lady Bug Oreos. 

The cupcakes were vanilla cake with cream cheese icing, and I sprinkled mini chocolate chips on top. Once again, easy! 

The lady bug oreos were a big hit too and very simple. I used red melts from Micheal's to dip oreos. I then just used a black M&M and more mini chips and black icing for make the lady bug on top. I left them in the fridge to get hard overnight. They were super sweet, but very yummy! 

It was such a fun afternoon celebrating our girl. I am big on the party details because thats fun in a weird way to me, but Caroline actually really seemed to enjoy having so many people over to "party" with her, and that was the best part! 

Pictures of the birthday girl coming next!

Our Little Cow's First Halloween!

We were very original for Halloween and decided Caroline would be a Cow... ha! It was an obvious choice for this Chick-fil-A Cow Loving family. Cliche or not, she was ADORABLE, and had a great first Halloween.

We were so glad Gram was here to celebrate Caroline's first Halloween! 

Our Little Cow Trick or Treated to see Baby David who was a Football {and 2 weeks old and PRECIOUS!}

 Next Halloween these two will be quite the pair running around and even more excited about Halloween.

 Little Cow also gave out lots of candy at our house with Gram. 

And Miss Cow went to visit Mrs Joyce who gave her a stuffed Tiger for Halloween. She is the greatest!

 Gavin was a Pirate and also pretty darn adorable!

 Little Miss Cow's loved playing with her two Caroline pumpkins while waiting for Trick or Treaters at the door. She got so excited to see all the other kids! 

 Cow on the Mooove! 

{ha! cheesy I know, but she is crawling and quite active these days! Baby proofing the house is in our very near future}

It was a GREAT 1st Halloween!

And this morning we quickly moved on to celebrating Thanksgiving... 

 Gram had a fun craft planned, and before she had to leave we painted Caroline's foot and hands to make a Turkey! 

 It is proudly hanging on our Fall Mantel in place of the word Boo. I painted legs on the turkey and added the words "Give Thanks". Great reminder of how thankful I am for my girl.

I am already excited for a Month of Thankfulness for my wonderful family. Thanks for a great craft-y morning Gram!