Life, through aqua-colored glasses

Last week the kids were out of school for Fall Break. That combined with The Mister staying late at work on two nights plus working the entire weekend meant that by the time Saturday night rolled around, I was anxious to get out of the house alone! After dinner I sneaked out for a quick hit of the local thrifts. I was really hoping to find a motherlode of vintage Christmas ornaments (not very likely, since the early Saturday shoppers would likely have snapped them up first) and I was rewarded with one (1) old plastic Santa ornament.

Boo.

Even though I wasn't swimming in Shiny Brites, I did find something I love:

What used to be my favorite thrift store underwent some big changes recently as part of being bought by Saver's. I'm not at all a fan of most of the changes, but one thing they do now is maybe not so bad. When someone donates a set of matching dishes or glassware, the workers pile it all in a basket, tape the heck out of it and charge one price for the lot, rather than each item individually. That's how I found this basket of turquoise glassware on Saturday night. The color caught my eye first, but when I noticed that it just happened to be 50% off that weekend I knew it was meant to be!

The next day I was able to untape the whole thing and figure out just what I'd bought. I was happy to find 6 of the coupes, 4 of the tallest glasses, 8 of the water goblets, and a full dozen of the smaller wine glasses on the right. That makes 30 glasses (plus a giant wicker basket) for just $15, which I think is a darn good deal, especially for something so pretty! Honestly, full price of $30 for 30 glasses still wouldn't have been too shabby, but cheaper is always better, amiright?

While I've been contemplating just where exactly to put 30 new glasses in my already-full cupboards, I've been admiring them all lined up on my kitchen island. I've come to the conclusion that part of the reason I love them so much is that they're just a hair darker than the antique blue glass canning jars that I love so much! My wedding china is a pretty but quiet bone/platinum neutral, and I think these beautiful aqua glasses will add a lovely shot of my favorite color to the table. I think tonight's meatloaf and mashed potatoes will look awfully nice with my fancy dishes and new glasses, don't you?

A Very Despicable Halloween

 

In July I was sitting in the movie theater with my family watching Despicable Me 2 and before the movie was even over, I knew that this would be the theme for our Halloween costumes this year!

Gru was an easy choice for Quin, as he already had most of the outfit in his closet! The gray pants, gray turtleneck sweater, black zip-up jacket and black shoes and belt. I found the striped scarf at Old Navy (bonus that it's something he can wear again) and we added a bald cap from the costume shop and a homemade paper nose.

I knew immediately that I wanted to be Dr. Nefario--I'm not afraid to dress up as a male character (see my Ferb costume from 2010) for the sake of the group! We already had the lab coat in our costume box and the hideous plaid pants were something I thrifted a few years ago to use for another project entirely. I thrifted the yellow t-shirt and wore my own black boots. I ordered the welding goggles and black gloves from Amazon, and added the yellow Gru logos on the gloves using sticky-backed yellow felt from the craft store. The bald cap was from the costume shop and I hot-glued a tuft of batting to the top to make Dr. Nefario's wispy white hair. My kids were completely freaked out at the vision of me in a bald cap and couldn't wait for me to take it off!

Porter was a shoo-in for a yellow Minion because he already owned the crocheted Minion cap. I get comments every time he wears it--I bought it from Etsy a few years back and it really is hilarious! I thrifted his overalls and yellow fleece jacket, bought the black stretchy gloves at the Dollar Tree and he wore his own snowboots. I made a Gru logo for his overalls out of black sticky-backed felt.

Maren wanted to be a purple Minion this year. Now, if I'd been smart I would have ordered her a matching crocheted purple Minion hat from Etsy, just like Porter's. That would have been SO much easier and I think it would have looked so much better. Unfortunately, I didn't have that light bulb until it was too late because all of the listings I could find on Etsy were for custom orders, nothing ready-to-ship. Rats! Her purple hoodie and overalls were thrifted, more Dollar Tree black gloves and her own snow boots just happened to match perfectly! Getting the purple Minion hair right was really tricky! I started out with feather boas but those didn't look right. I finally ended up buying a purple wig at Target and cutting it all apart, then hot-gluing the strips to the hood. It wasn't perfect but I think it gave the effect. I made an El Macho logo for her overalls out of gray felt.

Halloween night was cold and windy here, the coldest it has been in a few years, so our costumes had the bonus of being warm already! We layered long-sleeved shirts and leggings under the overalls, which really helped. Porter got cold and bailed on trick-or-treating pretty early anyway, but he did the same thing on a much warmer night last year so I wasn't too surprised. He was perfectly happy to sit near the neighbor's bonfire and eat his candy. Maren lasted a little longer and had plenty of candy to show for it.

We're already planning next year's costumes! Maren told me she wants to be "something scary" so I found a beautiful red and black princess-type dress at Marshall's. I think we'll turn her into a pretty vampire or spider queen. Maybe I can convince Porter to do something similar, and I'm already thinking ahead to having a 9-month-old baby--perhaps I can be a spider web and he can be a little spider in my arms. I have a whole year to plan!

Vintage-style Christmas Box Class

I'm excited to announce that I will be holding a craft class in my home on Saturday, November 9 at 7:00 pm to make these darling vintage-style Christmas boxes The box measures 5.25"x7.25" and is the perfect size for storing keepsake Christmas cards. It makes a lovely gift or can simply be used as a part of your Christmas decor. The vintage-style details include fabric, lace, gems, pearls, glitter, and ribbon. There is rubber stamping involved but it is easy even if you've never stamped before!

Your kit includes the box and everything you will need to embellish it. You will leave my house that evening with your beautiful finished box and the leftover supplies from your kit.

The fee for the class is $18 and I have 10 spots available. Prepayment is required to hold your spot. To sign up or if you have any questions, please contact me at themerrymagpie@gmail.com.

Book page decoupaged pumpkin

When I was unpacking my Halloween decorations a few weeks ago I found a pumpkin that needed a makeover. It had previously been painted silver in a failed attempt to make it look like faux mercury glass, then I covered it up by putting it inside a black fishnet stocking.

For a change, I decided to decoupage my pumpkin with torn dictionary pages. This is an in-progress Instagram shot so you can still see the white Mod Podge. (After I saw this photo I didn't like all of that white space in the middle so the next day I went back and put more paper over it.) This was the first time I've ever decoupaged something round so I did one side, then propped the dry side in a cereal bowl and left it overnight to dry before doing the other side the following morning. I ended up leaving the stem un-papered because it was already painted silver and it was just easier that way!

To finish it off, I sprayed the top half with spray adhesive and dusted it with coarse clear glitter, then attached a bow made from lace and cream seam binding that I 'aged'. My favorite way to do this is to run it under water and scrunch it in my hand, dry it quickly with my heat tool and then smear on some brown chalk. I added an old blingy rhinestone earring and a vintage silver foil leaf.

I thought it was pretty darn cute, and someone else must have also because it sold from my little booth space! I have one more pumpkin that needs a makeover so I think he's going to get the same treatment!

Costumes of Halloween Past

Witches' Night Out, 2004

Maren's first Halloween costume, 2005

Maren, 2006

Halloween party, 2007. Dog the Bounty Hunter and June Cleaver

Mermaid Maren's first Trick-or-Treating, 2007

Superhero Halloween Party, 2008. I'm The Junker and Quin is Michael Phelps

Fairy Princess Maren, 2008

Mary Poppins, 2008

Haunted Library Halloween Party, 2009. Where's Waldo and that Greg guy from Three Cups of Tea

Porter's first Halloween! Alice in Wonderland, 2009

Phineas and Ferb, 2010

The Scooby Gang, 2011

Disneyland, 2012

One of my all-time favorite pictures of my kids, 2012

I'm working on a little photo album with all of our past Halloween costumes and have had so much fun looking at the past. I love to dress up and I'm lucky to have a family that will go along with my love for costumes!

The Night Circus book club

Have you read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern?

If you haven't yet, then put it on hold at your library or grab it the next time you're at the bookstore, because it is fantastic! I first listened to the audio version (read by the fabulous Jim Dale) last year but later bought my own copy because I knew it was one I'd like to read again. When my friend Becca invited me to join her book group last month and told me that October's book was this one, of course I agreed to join! And because Becca is a very kind friend, she even agreed to let me put together a display of treats for the book club meeting.

One of the things about The Night Circus that I love is that the author is good at describing the details of the beautiful, magical circus. I find it to be a very creatively inspiring book--so much so that I even created a Pinterest board devoted to the world of the book! As I was reading again this time, I kept notes of details from the book that would be fun to include in my display.

For treats, Becca made ooey-gooey caramel popcorn, which we served in black and white striped paper popcorn bags. Peeking from behind the popcorn you can just see a big, glittery raven (to represent Celia's raven). I also tucked a black and silver feather boa around the platters and the whole display sat on a base of black satin fabric.

I made cinnamon twists from puff pastry brushed with butter and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon to represent the ones that Poppet, Widget and Bailey eat at the circus.

My favorite treat to make were these chocolate mice, served up on a pair of black glass pedestals that were ringed with a black mirrored wreath. Their bodies are made of Oreo truffles and then I rolled them in more crushed Oreos to look like fur. I gave them sliced almond ears and a black licorice tail (it was actually cherry flavored--it's made by Wilton). They were darling and delicious.

To drink we had spiced cider (ours was cold, though the cider in the circus was served hot) and I got to use the absolutely fabulous owl and pumpkin punch bowl that I bought last year. We served our treats on black and white striped plates with matching paper napkins.

I had fun incorporating details from the book into my display. I just so happened to have one little white glove, perfect to represent the one that Poppet gives to Bailey. The bottles represent Widget's Bedtime Stories tent. I wish I had thought to print off some of Isobel's tarot cards.

The black and white striped paper lanterns are actually a string of lights I bought at Target last year. I forgot I had them until I opened up my Halloween boxes this past weekend and I knew I had to use them in my display. The black and white striped candles stood in antique cut glass candlesticks that are hung with crystals. Very elegant!

The glittery vintage-style banner with the moon and stars is another part of my Halloween decorations that I forgot I had. I think it was a perfect touch for this theme!

Somehow I managed to forget to take a picture of the whole spread at once but hopefully you can imagine from glimpses what I looked like. I had such fun putting it all together and I think it looked really great--definitely evoked some of the sparkle and magic from the book. It was very creatively fulfilling to put it all together--the only thing I had to buy were the plates and napkins! All of the rest of it came from my stash. I even got into the spirit, dressing like a reveur in a black and white striped cardigan and a red scarf. What a fun night!

Is it a catastrophe or an opportunity?

Until yesterday afternoon, this was what the wall adjacent to my front door looked like (well, not exactly like this because this photo is several years old but the arrangement on the wall is just the same):

I found the trio of antique oyster plates back in 2009 at a thrift store. I seriously love these plates even though I've never eaten an oyster in my life (unless you count Rocky Mountain Oysters--those I have eaten!) They have an awesome scowly Neptune face at the bottom and then mermaids around the sides. I looked high and low for the fourth plate but never found it, though it all worked out in the end because I was able to use the three plates in a nice symmetrical arrangement.

The mirror in the middle of the wall arrangement was an early thrift find when we'd just moved into this house nine years ago. The small silhouettes are actually John Derian coasters from Target that I have stuck with poster putty to some of the saucers from my wedding china.

Yesterday afternoon I was in the kitchen when I heard an almighty crash from the front room, and walked in to find this:

Somehow the mirror came off the wall and took out an adjacent oyster plate on its way to the ground. The plate shattered into a zillion pieces and the corner of the mirror made a nice series of gouges and paint marks on my wood floor. Boo!

I'm bummed to lose one of my pretty oyster plates and now my nice symmetrical arrangement is toast too. I suppose I could move the top center plate over to the side and find something new to fill its space, and I may just do that for a while but I think actually that I might be ready for a change! I'm bored with that mirror and I wouldn't at all be opposed to sending it right back to the thrift store--it has been nearly nine years, after all! I bought a new chair last weekend at World Market so I'm in the mood to switch things up a bit. I love a new decorating challenge so maybe losing one of my pretty plates isn't such a bad thing, after all!

The Minion Birthday party

 Hello, everybody! I have a husband again and I couldn't be happier! I mentioned before that he was gone for a while--he left on August 6 for a school and didn't come home until September 18. Oof, that was a rough one; really difficult on me physically, mentally and emotionally. SO glad to leave it behind. I feel 500% better in every way now that he is back again.

Porter turned 4 on September 17 and we decided to let him have a 'friend' party for the first time this year. Of course we had to to wait until Daddy came home to help us celebrate, and after throwing Maren's LEGO Friends party back in March solo (which I have just now realized that I never blogged), I was more than happy to wait for reinforcements.

I talked Porter into having a Minion party. He did insist on a Spiderman cake, and I gave in on that one because, let's be honest--the Minion thing was kind of all about me. I found some really great printable resources through Pinterest that made the party really easy to put together.

For party favors I made Minion Twinkies using this free printable, which was originally designed to go around push-up pops but happens to fit perfectly around Twinkies! I will recommend that if you make these, you buy the Sara Lee or Little Debbie versions though, because they come in clear wrappers whereas the Twinkies have Hostess printed in red all over the wrapping and that annoyed me. I used the free printable from here to make the little labels to transform tiny squirt guns into Vector's Squid Launchers. Because my guns were smaller I had to closely trim the labels and then I ran them through my Xyron sticker maker to turn them into labels. The favors also included a few Minion bandages (Wal-Mart), and some little candies and Minion tattoos from Party City. I packaged them all up in large cello bags (Dollar Tree) and tied them with yellow ribbons.

I found this fantastic printable download for Minion goggles on Etsy and it was absolutely worth the $2.99! It gives you three different sizes of goggles and mouths. For my Minion balloons I used the largest size of goggles printed onto full-sheet label paper (Wal-Mart) and cut them out and just adhered them onto the balloons.

I also used the printable goggles for our Pin the Goggles on the Minion game, though I forgot to take any photos of them. I printed those onto regular paper and just cut them out and put tape on the back--no point wasting the sticker paper for this task. For the picture I free-handed the Minion and Maren helped me color him.

And the third use for the printable goggle download was to make the faces on the bottles for our Minion bowling game! I used the smallest size goggles and I did print these on sticker paper. I used 1 liter bottles of clear flavored water, then wrapped a piece of yellow cardstock around the top and a strip of blue around the bottom. The sticker paper goggles and mouths were easy to adhere and the bottles cracked me up! We set them up and let the kids roll a basketball at them.

There is also a free printable available to make your own Minion goggles available here. I printed these out on white cardstock and then cut and assembled them. I ended up adding a piece of elastic string to the back, attached to each earpiece, because they wouldn't stay on the kids' heads with just the cardstock. I forgot to get any photos of those, darnit! Between the goggles for the kids, the ones on the balloons, bottles and for the game, I cut out SO MANY GOGGLES!

The other game we played was made also using a free printable from here. The original idea was to use a Nerf gun to shoot the aliens but don't have one of those, and instead found a 3-pack of water guns on super clearance from Target. I printed the aliens and space ships on plain printer paper and then 'laminated' them using clear packing tape on the front and back before I cut them out. I did have to tape tongue depressors to the backs to keep the aliens from flopping over. I cut slots into the top of some plastic cups and poked the tongue depressors through there so the aliens would stand up.

The plastic cup setup wasn't ideal, as our water guns were too weak to knock over the aliens but the kids didn't seem to care much and just had fun squirting water all over!

I even got to draw Minions on my cute chalkboard banner! Hooray for colored chalk. Oh, and one last thing we did was that I found Despicable Me printable coloring sheets for the kids to color as we waited for all of the guests to arrive.

The party was really very easy and fun. I made everything the morning of the party although it would have of course been a lot easier to get it ready beforehand (hello, procrastination). We had 4 little guests besides Porter, which was the perfect number. The weather was beautiful (unlike Maren's snowy party) and we were able to do all of the party games outside so I didn't have to worry about 5 excited little boys trashing my house. :)

I think Porter had a happy day! This is him exclaiming over his gift from us, a pet fish. :)

The FREE antique typewriter

Antique Royal typewriter:  $65.99
plus tax                            $5.28
total                                 $71.27
less store credit                -$73.88
Final price                        FREE plus $2.61 left over


That's right, FREE! It must have been my lucky day, right? I stopped into my favorite little consignment store yesterday afternoon and spotted this awesome Royal typewriter with a price of $65.99. Now, that really is a pretty good price by itself because I regularly see antique typewriters around this area priced around $100. But the best part is that I had consignment credit that was $2.61 more than I needed, making the typewriter FREE!

It looks like it has been living in somebody's very dusty attic or shed so I'm going to need to clean it up a bit, but I'm excited to have it. I'm sure I could throw it on Craigslist and sell it pretty easily, but I think I'm going to hang onto it for a while and have fun using it for display. Hooray for FREE!

Youth Conference carnival-themed decorations

Thank you all for your well-wishes about my big news! I have to admit that I have had a difficult time being really excited about being pregnant this time around. I don't know if I truly was more sick this time or if it just seemed that way, but June and July were pretty rough for me. Having to deal with my father-in-law's sudden illness and death, my dog's sudden illness and death, being on the road (and therefore sleeping poorly) for nearly three weeks total in a four week period and my kids being out of school and home all day was not made any easier by feeling nauseated and exhausted 80% of the time. Feeling like poo didn't make me thrilled to be pregnant--it only made me wonder why on earth I'd done this to myself when I clearly knew better?

However, sharing the news and having my first ultrasound last week and seeing a photo of my little guy have really helped, as have all of the well-wishes from all of you and my other friends and family. I think I'm finally pulling out of the queasiness and not a moment too soon because The Mister had to go out of town for work and he won't be home until late September. I am definitely looking forward to the start of school for my kids next week! Even though Porter will only be in preschool two days a week for a few hours each time, it will be a small break from kids and I'm looking forward to it.

I haven't done a whole lot this summer that's worth blogging about but I do have a few things that I'd like to share. Back in the first week of June, I got to decorate for the opening night of a multi-day conference put on by my church for 200 or so teenagers.

We decided on a carnival/fair sort of theme, and I had fun sketching and dreaming up ideas for how I could decorate a huge church gym on a budget. This was my first sketch and it was fun to see that many of the things I made actually turned out like my initial ideas!

I sewed miles of garlands from pink and yellow tickets. In the end, we decided to cut them and hang them vertically and I love how it filled up the space and contrasted with the pennant banners. I also sewed all of the miles of pennant banners--they are made of red, yellow, turquoise and white plastic tablecloths from the dollar store. I know that you can purchase pre-made plastic banners from the party store but they wouldn't have fit my color scheme so I was willing to do it myself. It really wasn't difficult at all and you'd be surprised how many triangles you can get out of just a few tablecloths!

I ordered a large roll of red and white striped plastic from Oriental Trading Company. My initial idea was to use it to drape the doorway to the gym to look like curtains, but logistically it just wouldn't work because of the way the doors open. Instead, I had my helpers use it to make bunting across the bottom of the stage. It didn't swag quite the way I had hoped but I think it looked fine in the end. I did use some of the brightly-colored Christmas lights that I borrowed to light up the front of the stage.

The giant arrow was a DIY project. The theme for the entire event was "Know It, Live It, Love It" and my original plan was to make these marquee letters spelling out the theme in lights to place across the stage. While I still believe that would have looked really cool, it would have been an immense amount of work to make all of those letters and expense to purchase enough strands of lights to light them all. Because I was using church funds for my budget, I felt a responsibility to only purchase materials that could be used again or that were so inexpensive (ie, dollar store tablecloths) that it wouldn't matter if they were thrown away.

In the end, I made only the arrow and used my own two strings of lights for it. It really wasn't difficult either and it looked really cool when it was plugged in! (I will say for anyone wanting to make these letters--with all those bulbs so close together, it got HOT quickly and I was a little nervous about the hot light bulbs up next to the foam core, posterboard and paint. We actually put it on a metal cookie sheet from the kitchen because I was anxious about it sitting on the carpet.)

My signs even looked similar to the ones I originally sketched! I used sheets of foam core from the dollar store. I cut each in half and used a piece of posterboard to make a mortise mask so that I was making a border. I used the same red spray paint from the arrow project and sprayed around the edges of the mask, then traced around the inside edge with a Sharpie to add definition. I even made the side lines wavy to simulate the torn edge on a ticket. My friend Angie used her Silhouette to cut the letters from black cardstock. The font was from the Silhouette online store and it was exactly the look I wanted!

After I made all of the pennant banners, I still had tablecloth leftover so I cut it into strips and made ruffles with my sewing machine. To make the ruffles I just pulled gently on the plastic as I fed it into the machine and it ruffled itself. We used some of them to swag on the fronts of the tables.

I even snuck in a few of my vintage treasures like this old blue canning jar full of pinwheels (made by my mom for my birthday a few years ago, but the perfect colors/motifs)

and I dug out a few of my vintage boxes and baskets to be used to hold bags of popcorn.

There was a fun photo booth set up as well. I specified red and white stripes and they used dollar store tablecloths for it as well, and it looked fantastic! I made another banner to hang across the backdrop.

 My very favorite decorations were at the front of the room. I had two big empty wall spaces on either side of the stage that I needed to fill and when I saw them, I knew just what to do!

I found scrapbook paper at Michael's in various patterns in the color scheme of red, turquoise and yellow with touches of royal blue and pink. I couldn't have done this without my sweet friend Angie, who graciously made one million paper lollies for me over a weekend.

For the backing, I taped together two more sheets of dollar store foam core to make a nice, large surface. Then I simply arranged the paper lollies to my liking and used a hot glue gun to attach them to the base and each other. I absolutely LOVE how they turned out and they were a nice way to make a big impact without spending much money (especially if you can catch the paper when it is 5/$1 at Michael's!)

I ended up spending about $125 on all the materials. It was actually a bit less than that, as there were some materials that I didn't end up using but wasn't able to return (a can of spray paint, a few more sheets of posterboard/foam board/tablecloths from the dollar store). The largest expense was the roll of red and white striped plastic (around $25) but we used it on the stage and then cut the rest of the roll into shorter lengths and used it as table runners on all of the many tables around the room so we certainly got our money's worth out of it. Also, a friend who is in charge of another church activity this fall took nearly all of the decorations home with her and she plans to reuse them then, so they will do double-duty!

In the end, I'm very pleased with how it all turned out. Our church gyms are notoriously difficult places to decorate because they're huge, have harsh fluorescent lighting (hence the bad color in all of my photos), giant tall ceilings, and a basketball court painted on the floor. I knew I couldn't turn it into a wonderland on $125 with just a few helpers, but I do think that my decorations made it look happier and more festive and hopefully made the atmosphere more fun for the kids that attended that night. I'm thankful that I had this opportunity to use my creative talents and thankful that I have friends who had the confidence in me to entrust me with the responsibility for doing it. It was fun!