Choosing Exterior Paint is alot like naming a child.

I mean, not to put pressure on myself or anything.

But we close on our house next Tuesday (YAY!!) and I need to find a paint color.

Some things to think about.

1. The house was built in 1895 and is Victorian style, with trim, woodwork, and wrap around porches.
2. The house is currently painted the lovely hues of seafoam green, mint green and pink. Yes, you heard that correct.
3. My husband is probably not too thrilled on living in a house that looks like the tears of a sad clown, and neither am I.
4. Painting a house takes considerable time and expense, and will likely not be completed again, even if we hate the color we pick. We will be living with it for thousands of dollars thousands of years.

So, I guess I am a feeling a little  bit of pressure.

Oh yeah, I am also needing to pick interior colors. For every room. See above tears of a clown colors and apply that to the inside.

Sigh. (insert whiny voice). Finding paint colors is hard!

So, I have been scouring Pinterest, books, magazines, blogs, websites, and casing the historic neighborhood to see some sort of concoction of hues that might work for us. I think I have settled on a color palette for the exterior. What do you think about these options?

I think this might be my first choice. Taupe, white and accents of red.  I mean, its no seafoam green and pink, but it might be a little more our speed.

 

 

Although I do really like Grey.

 

Light grey is nice too....

But I keep going back to the taupe and red, though.

 

Hm..I am not sure. We could do grey and red, too.

At least I have a reason to spend all this time on Pinterest.

In the name of research, right?

I welcome all opinions and thoughts. I will share the final result whenever I make up my mind.  :)

(all images are from Pinterest)

Best of the Web Birthday Party- Cars & Construction

I am always impressed once I start looking for ideas and see the creativity of people. Did we ever have cute parties before people started posting them online? Where did we find our ideas? What? People actually thought of them in their brain? I have heard of no such thing.


Last post was an adorable take for an Airplane Party.  Boys of all ages love transportation, so this time we are exploring great party ideas for other modes of travel. There are a lot of great ideas out there- so get ready and on your mark, get set, go!


First lets examine the oh-so-creative Construction or Dump Truck Party.

This party won most creative in a British Party blog! I love the sugar cookie tools.

For a construction party, of course, you have to start with- what else- a Dirt Cake. This mom had some great ideas for how to display the cake...

 Dirt cake, housed in the back of a (clean - and I also lined it with wax paper for easier clean up) toy dump truck and served with a toy shovel. The cake is simply chunks of chocolate cake layered with chocolate pudding and topped with crumbled Oreos. I also added some gummi worms, which were a bit hit with the kids. I think the original "recipe" came from Familyfun.com
 
For more details, visit her here: Dump Truck






Do it Yourself Signage
In her words: Inside, I whipped up some signs using scrapbook paper, markers, my computer, and stamps. The truck and loader are clipart I found using google and used it as a pattern for the silhouettes.


I love the trash bag tablecloth (can you say easy cleanup?!) decorated with white running stripes made to look like a street. 

These signs are cute and sound to be pretty easy! You can even customize them to include the birthday boy's name.

Car party




Game ideas:




This is a construction game that could be used for a car or truck party as well. Just set out some large containers, fill with sand, and host a DIG.


 

And how cute is this Construction Cone Party Cup?

Construction-Cone-Cup

Drink Table

I would have never thought of this. And if I did, I am not sure I would have the guts to pull it off. These drinks are in gasoline cans!!!! Wow. Just the whole look of it gives me the heebie-jeebies, but what an adorable idea! And, obviously, if you buy the gas cans new and wash them out, it is just another container.

Gas can drinks found here

I love this party idea-- especially if your child is a big fan of Lightning McQueen, Mater and the other characters from Cars and Cars 2. This is a creative and unique way to decorate a character party without it looking so cookie cutter and commercial.

This is a great take on a Cars Birthday party, and this one has a Vintage Feel...

These "spare tire" cakes are just too cool.
And chocolate donuts as spare tires? Yes, please.

This Cars Birthday party follows more of a traditional racing motif, with black and white checkered flags and bold accents of red.

Vintage and Racing Car Party


I love this idea! How adorable to make a race track with cupcakes! I love that all the cupcakes, when combined,  make something together.

Via The Celebration Shoppe  by Rateuk

Hopefully these ideas get your motor runnin' for your next Cars or Construction Birthday Party!

Rock on! Concert Poster Art

I live in Texas, and that means that we all love Willie Nelson. Okay, maybe not, but he's a Texan, so he is one of our own.

I may not love his stand on drugs, but I do love his concert poster! What great design. So simple, yet so creative.  Who would think braids could be iconic?

(via CMYBacon)

It made me wonder what other great Concert Poster Design I have been missing...

These are from the same Willie Nelson design agency...

This is my very favorite! I love it!

Concert posters

Hatch Show print has super cool vintage-looking letterpress posters...

Hank Williams Vintage Poster

And in honor of one of my favorite shows, here is a Flight of the Conchords poster. So just pick up a ka-bob and a lasagna for one and enjoy...

flight of the conchords

While this is not a concert poster, I found a fasinating new site called letterheady.com. They have letterheads of famous people. Marilyn Monroe, Adolph Hitler...its fasinating. I thought Johnny Cash's was cute, optismtic, and not black.



Johnny Cash Letterhead



Which poster was your favorite?

Maybe the cutest summer cupcake ever

Well, this just warms my heart!

A recent mom shared this photo of her one month old and said that they made Watermelon Cupcakes for her one-month birthday!

How great is that?!

First of all, that she is even baking to begin with. I think I was pretty much a walking zombie when my infant was 4 weeks old.

Secondly, that someone tried out something I shared on the blog. Its always nice to know someone is enjoying!

Thanks for sharing, Lori and sweet little Madelyn Rose!

And since the Watermelon cupcakes were to celebrate her one month birthday, here is an adorable idea to celebrate next month!

THIS IS A CUPCAKE.
IT LOOKS LIKE A SNOW CONE, BUT IS ACTUALLY A CUPCAKE.

Do other people get excited about this dorky stuff, because my heart beats faster when I see a cupcake that looks exactly like a snow cone. I am not even sure if this photo makes me crave a cupcake, snow cone, or both. I think my taste buds are a little confused, but still overall happy because I like food that looks like other food, and I like cupcakes. Everybody wins.

This adorable recipe is on the Celebrations.com. If anyone makes these, please emulate sweet Lori and Madelyn and share a photo! If you do, I will be really excited and less confused.

Wedding trends I love

I'M ALREADY MARRIED.

So, why, oh why, do I love to look at wedding blogs?

Its certainly not because I am planning my next wedding in my head. Although, I do secretly think it would be hilarious to start introducing my husband to strangers as "my first husband, Joel". And it would also be very cruel and very UNfunny to him, not to mention not AT ALL true, so no, I am hitched and here to stay. No more weddings for me, unless it is a renewal of our vows in Maui and I can get a vacation out of it.

But I DO love to look at all the great creative ideas brides-to-be are coming up with these days.

For instance, photo booths and photo walls. Genius. 



Creative wedding photo wall via

How did they get that baby to look the right way?!?

And I saw these and thought they were beautiful.

Hand illustrated maps to include in the invitations. Wow.

I can barely draw a map to my house with the major highways, and look at this amazing detail!!!

The last one is my favorite- I love the little magnifying glass that shows the detail of the location. Beautiful!

This artist sells these on Etsy for each wedding and customizes the map to fit the exact detail of the wedding.

While I was in the wedding mood, I happened upon these adorable personalized favors matchboxes! So cute. The bride is a calligrapher and that is her amazing handwriting on the boxes. She provides a great tutorial on how to do this yourself on Style Me Pretty

And could these illustrated wedding invitations and fans be any cuter from Rifle Paper Co?!? I just want to chuckle when I see that adorable bride and groom. But then again, I am kinda a paper dork.

Here is a post with Come Together Cards Wedding Invitations custom designed for a client....

If you are a bride, consider yourself lucky! I mean, I know you do because brides are glowing. Or is that pregnant people? Probably both, and you should be because there are so many cute, creative things you can use to make your day unforgettable. And then you can put it on your blog and I will stalk it with my first husband.

Classic Movies revisted with all the details you forgot

I am a huge movie buff and seeing these drawn recreation of some movie classics takes me back to the first time I saw them.

The “OUTATIME” license plate and Calvin Klein Briefs? Juno’s Hamburger phone and orange Tic-Tacs? Forrest’s crunches and running shoes? And of course, the poloroid from when Maverick and Goose take their flight together and memories are made upside down.

via cmybacon.com

What a fun set of movie posters from Emma Butler!

Which one is your favorite?

craft room dreaming...

I have a dream of having a craft room. Right now, we are in the process of moving houses so we are renting a garage apartment while our house gets ready, so something like a craft room seems a  million miles away.  I don't just mean a room to DO crafts. I mean a pure, frivolous, whole room of the house DEDICATED to crafts and organizing them.  Oh yeah, I am a die hard crafter.

But one day, I might have one, and if I did, I would want something like this Craft Cabinet that Martha Stewart makes. It has several variations that can be seen here.

Martha Stewart Craft Hutch

Is it strange that I have dreams of how to organize my gift wrapping supplies?

Maybe one day....

making ordinary into art

The premise of the Phraseology Project is so clever.

They ask you to submit a phrase, symbol or word, and they will make it into art.

And they really do-- even though they say mundane or weird things, like "analog blog"!

What a fun idea and talented designers.

Here are some of my favorite posters made from submitted phrases.

via cmybacon

Road Trip and Renegade Craft Summary

We went on a road trip this weekend and I wanted to share some photos with you!

I heard about Renegade Craft Fair last year and didn't have a chance to make it to Austin from Dallas. So, this year, I put it on my calendar and didn't want to miss it! Its a bunch of indie designers who make handmade goods- like a craft fair for Etsy shops!

We stopped by my FAVORITE small town, Gruene, Texas, on the way..

and made a couple of trips to the fantastic San Marcos outlets. Nice.

Once we got to the fair, there were all kinds of creative and fun things! I loved this plush food with cute faces. They even had a fortune cookie in a little Chinese take out box. So adorable.  I mean, you can't look at cute food with eyeballs and not feel a little happier.

I loved these knitted dolls that are fashioned after celebrities. Do you recognize anyone?

 Here is a mishmash of what you might have seen if you walked the aisles at Renegade...

photos

Is it weird that my other favorite thing is also a food related knitting item?

These are cheeseburger mittens. How funny is that?! I am not sure that I am the person that can pull this look off, but I sure did think they were fun!
Here is the designer in a Pizza Scarf. That just cracks me up! Her site is FULL of crazy, unique things!

Thanks for coming on our trip! Hope you were able to shop vicariously through these photos...