Scrabble Wall Art

At a gift shop near my house, I saw a similar Scrabble wall art that used all of the names of the local towns and lakes.  It was cool, but it was $200!  

I had an old scrabble game at home that I used for mine. I had to buy another game at goodwill to get more of the letters that I needed, but that only cost $1.99.

The letters are just glued to the board, which is inside a shadowbox I bought at Michaels. 

I used "family game room" words to create mine.

To make things easier, I created a crossword puzzle on-line to determine the word layout.  I typed in the number of squares and the words I wanted to use, and it created the crossword for me. So much easier than trying to figure it out on my own!  I used this site, but I'm sure any puzzle maker site would work.

DIY Photo Booth

For our Valentine's Day Party we created a photo booth in my craft room so guests could take their photos throughout the night!

We took photos using the Photo Booth program on my Mac, which is this Icon:

It's so easy, all you do is click on the camera and it counts down, 3..2...1... and starts taking pictures!

It takes 4 pictures and they end up in one photo like this:

To create the background, I used rolls of pink paper which we just taped to the wall. I added some Valentine's decorations to give it a 'Prom backdrop' feel:

We set out props for people to use in their pictures, including pink boas, 'LOVE' letters to hold, angel/cupid wings, valentines antennas, and a fun hat.

Here we are! It was a lot of fun and basically free to make, we just had to pay to have them made into 4x6 prints at Target!

Cupid's Cocktail Valentine's Day Party

I just LOVE Valentine's Day, and this year was the best Valentine's Day EVER!

The theme of the party was 'Cupid's Cocktail' so everyone wore cocktail party attire. 

Here are some pics from before the party started:

Chris let me go all out which was awesome!  We rented a helium tank and blew-up 150 red and pink balloons.  I had wanted to do this for  party ever since I saw it on Sex and the City the movie!

We created a photo booth in my craft room, another thing I've always wanted to do for a party.  After the party I had the pictures printed and sent to everyone in homemade valentines.

Instead of a table cloth, I put red mylar gift basket stuffing all over the table to glam it up.

The dessert bar, complete with chocolate dipped strawberries,

 four kinds of homemade truffles, and mini cheesecakes.

We served cosmos to fit in with the cocktail party theme, and they're red so it was perfect!

Valentine's Day Decor

Here are some of the decorations I have up for Valentines Day! They'e all very inexpensive or free, most are just paper!  Swapping out my regular frames with seasonal printables saves a lot of money on decorations, and storage space!

 Free printables found here

 Cans of fake roses over the kitchen sink

 I made this by cutting paper hearts, folding down the center, and gluing the hearts into the shadow box along the fold.

 Free printable found here

 Just glitter paper hearts on a scrapbook paper background

 Tissue paper puffs

Entryway

Felt heart garland is from Pier1

 Free printables above and below are from this site

'LOVE' Letters cut out of glitter paper

S'Mores & Schnapps with your Sweetheart Party

A couple of years ago for Valentine's Day we hosted a 'S'Mores & Schnapps with your Sweetheart' Party.  

It was so much fun! We copied the idea off of ice bars. We had gourmet S'mores and hot chocolate 

with peppermint Schnapps.

Here is the S'more Bar!
Graham cracker and cookies for the outside
Regular and Strawberry marshmallows
White, milk, raspberry, and Caramel filled Chocolates!

 
Chris shoveled the backyard to create a snow hole for the fire pit

The fire area, complete with tikki torches and marshmallow sticks

Here is everyone drinking hot chocolate around the fire!  We had a secondary party with snacks, wine, and a fire inside too so no one got too cold.

White, Gray, & Yellow Couple's Shower

We threw a couple's shower for our friends Jesse and Patty who were married last year.  The theme was gray and yellow. I thought the yellow was feminine and the gray was masculine making it great for a couple's shower, but I love the color combo too!

Here are the details:

The invite, found here

Tissue Paper puffs for decor

Lemontini's--the perfect yellow drink!

The food table. I created a table runner by placing 12x12 scrapbooking paper in the center of the table

LOVE Cookies-just sugar cookies cut out with letter cookie cutters and decorated

Snack cones made out of coordinating scrapbook paper

Brownie pops in a styrofoam block wrapped with scrapbook paper

I covered my normal wall Art with 'Jesse & Patty' signs for decor

Soothing massage CD and lemon massage oil for couple's favors

Wine Tasting Party

A few years ago I had a wine tasting birthday Party for my Mom.  

Here are the details:

The invitation.  Printed vellum over wine themed scrapbook paper

I got wine in mini plastic wine bottles, made everyone drink white Zin for a week until they were all empty, rinsed them out, and used them to mail the invitations.  I rolled the invites to fit inside and sealed them with a fresh cork.

The food table decorated with fake grapes and vines

Christmas lights draped over empty wine bottles made for easy decorations, and look really cool when it's dark!

We kept the wine cold in a decorative punch bowl filled with ice.

I made wine glass markers by printing wine sayings on paper and tying them to the glass stems

Wine tasting bookets so everyone could mark their favorites

For Favors, I made wine glass markers using colorful beads and charms that said 'Thank you'.  I tied the charms to little individual serving bottles of wine.  Everyone got to pick out their favorite kind to take home.