Lets train

Well, CC's party has come and gone and I'm sitting here with a major post-party hangover. Not from drinking too much...although our beverages were pretty fantastic at the party---ever hear of a Milwaukee Margarita with beer, tequila, lemon/lime mixer, and Squirt? Amazing. I'm sure there is a more official name for them but Nate was the one who wanted to make these bad boys and we went through four pitchers if that tells you anything. So good. I want another right now.

But I digress.

Her party was Saturday and it was SO awesome. And I'm sad that it's over after all of the planning and over-thinking and anticipating. But it was fab and therefore I must pull it together and blog about it.

I posted a few of my decorations/craft projects for Cecelia's party in this post, but now I have a lot more completed projects to share. And then I will give you a break before I bombard you with more pictures of the party itself in a different post. My poor camera has not seen this much action in the past few months combined compared to the past week! Love it.

Mantel decor:

When I was brainstorming this party, I wasn't sure what I would do for our fireplace and mantel area. Then Pear Tree Greetings contacted me and offered to let me try out some of their kids party decorations. Um, YES! I spent way too much time going through their website going over my options and then finally decided on a set of the 'Crown Me Princess' giant table confetti. I loved the round shape of the cards and knew I could come up with something fun for our wooden box on the mantel. Then I found this 'Colliding Collage' set and was obsessed with the ability to include lots of different pictures, so that was my second pick. I uploaded my pictures, customized my colors and fonts, and got really pumped when they arrived in the mail. So many possibilities, so little time!



I decided to tape the round cards to straws (classy, I know!), then put a bunch of plastic grocery bags in our wooden box, and covered them with strips of leftover nursery fabric. I stuck the straws in the folds of the bags and voila! A little 'garden' of sorts full of pinks, oranges, sweet sayings, and my baby girl.





And then I used the square cards to create banners---just hot glued the cards to some twine. I'm obsessed with all of the pictures on these cards and am considering hanging one in her bedroom for awhile.  Love how it all turned out!



close up:


I pulled a few frames from the nursery and bought a few tiny ones from Michaels (which are still empty in these pictures, but were filled by the party).




I used a few of the square cards for decor on the light fixture above our table, too. I liked how they would spin around and could be visible from lots of spots in the dining room. I made a small pennant banner and hung it all up together on our lights--haven't taken this down yet either.

I had another long banner hung above our buffet, too.


And I attempted to use the panoramic function on my iPhone to get a feel for the whole room though, which was really fun (time waster) and you can kind of see it here, I guess. Who loves banners? This girl!



Monthly Banners:

After sweating my butt off taking these dreaded monthly shots on the quilt and on the chair, I knew I had to make banners to properly appreciate the effort;) I ended up just printing the images at Walgreens, and they were pretty inconsistent and horrible for a few of the shots---so I reprinted a few on our Canon photo printer downstairs, too. Annoying, but whatever. I found this pack of scalloped papers at Michaels on sale and just put one photo on each paper, hot glued the twine to the backs and was done!









Chalkboard print and menu board:

I think I'm most proud of my chalkboard print I designed in Photoshop for CC's party. These are all over Pinterest, of course, and it was fun to play around with different chalkboard fonts. I had it printed in a 16x20 size and mounted on double weight backboard through my photographer friend's printing company. It turned out so nice and I'm absolutely going to put this in her room or hang onto it for the future. And then there is our menu board we use each week---just a regular frame with scrapbooking paper behind the glass, writing on it with dry erase markers. Big menu for a little girl!


Had to show more pictures of just the chalkboard print;)


Nate's artsy Aunt made Cecelia this giant tissue paper flower, and brought it to the party. SO cute, right? Fits in perfectly in her nursery, too.



Outside:

We hung the wreath outside of our front door and then went with pink helium balloons. Super windy day and those poor balloons got beat up more than I expected, but oh well! They were also a lot more expensive than I expected so we had to make them work....and the kids had a fun time playing with them the day after the party, too.


Crown and hair bow:

GoGo saves the day with a few special crafts of her own! She made Cecelia a felt crown with removable numbers, so that she can wear it for years to come. You can kind of see the high chair banner I made from the Pear Tree Greetings round cards, too;)


And her hair bow? Obsessed. More felt and she even made little felt balls somehow. That GoGo!


Bulletin board and monthly heads:

I posted about both of these before, but here they are totally finished!






Desserts:

Yes, I know that food is not really a craft or 'project' but I'm including them here because they were on my list of things to complete (instead of Nate's, or my in-laws') .

I wanted to make Cecelia a smash cake like you see on Pinterest---sort of smallish, on a pretty cake plate, with fun topper. Lois had a vintage cake plate, so that part was easy. I wanted the icing to be pink so we bought strawberry frosting in a can, and made a yellow cake from a box (fancy!). Then I got creative with round cookie cutters and SHOULD have paid attention to where I cut the big cake. Because obviously, it was a little wonky and uneven. Also, my canned icing was WAY too thick and I almost threw it all away in a fit of rage. But Memaw saved the cake by adding a tiny bit of milk to the frosting can. Much smoother and easier to spread compared to the original stuff that totally shredded the cake. Funny stuff looking back---not at the moment. This is why I don't love projects in the kitchen!


I used this pink doilie (how in the heck do you spell it?) that Nate's patient made for us randomly, simply because it was round the right colors. I had to put the cake down on something anyway, so it worked! Then I made the little pennant banner out of fabric scraps and we had ourselves a smash cake.



And with the cake on the pretty pink table runner that Lois sewed from nursery fabric scraps? This die hard pink fan is in love.


We did cupcakes for the rest of our guests and I made royal icing cookies---putting all of the desserts on the main table was a fun idea in theory but it only meant that kids went nuts on the cookies from the first minute of the party. Whatever goes at a birthday party!


Re: the royal icing cookies--I've gotten a lot of questions about these on Instagram, so I'll talk about them here, too. This was my fourth time ever making these cookies and it definitely gets easier each time. But it's tedious and putsy---which is something right up my alley when it comes to 'projects', so I don't mind the whole process. I'm a total newbie and really have no clue what I'm doing, so it's laughable that I'm even sharing my 'technique' here. But I just like to play around with bright colors and designs on cookies, so this is a fun one for me.

It takes about three days for me to make these cookies: one day to bake the cut out sugar cookies and let them cool; one day to mix up the icing and do the base layer; and one day to do the top layer of decorating. My friend Hannah is really good at these and she taught me her method, which she got from Annie's Eats. Again, I am NOT an expert and it's a learning process but it just takes practice, it seems.

I went with heart-shaped cut out cookies because of our loose theme of 'heartbreaker' for Cecelia's party. Then I used hot pink, made a golden-yellow shade, I tried to make a turquoise but it was a lot daker than expected, and somehow made a periwinkle color, too. Four colors, about 36 cookies and lots of time;)

First step versus second step:




Oh, it's so much fun and so many photo ops with these pretties.








I bagged about half of these and put them in a new pink and orange storage box that I got. I thought about making all of these cookies into favors that were bagged up, but then I decided that I kind of wanted to show them off during the party, too. Didn't even get one myself!


I think that's it as far as projects and decorations. Now onto writing the post about the party itself....because it wasn't ONLY about decorations and crafts;)

I'm excited to finally reveal the kids' shared bedroom with you today! As soon as we found out we were expecting baby #3 my mind started imagining Truman's room as a shared room with his sister. Maybe someday we will move CC back to the nursery and let the boys (!) share this room, but for now it makes sense to have the older two together.

My only real direction with decorating this room was to keep it bright, fun, playful and young. I basically reused everything and bought almost nothing new aside from Cecelia's new big girl bedding and a few new wall letters, so this room was created by blending both of their original nursery decor together. It's a bit of a hodge-podge, rainbow, BRIGHT room and we love it.



The bunk beds:


The split panel wall art, wire hanger for kids art, dresser, and 100s of stuffed animals:


The bookshelves with a bright wall gallery:


And the best panoramic I could manage:




Want more pictures and an explanation? Twist my arm.

1. The bunk beds:

We are so lucky that Nate's parents kept his bunk beds that he shared with his brother when they were little. They can be split up to be two twin beds, and Truman's single big boy bed was one of these. We considered keeping the two twins separated in this room and they would have fit just fine, but there is SO much more room this way. Plus, bunks are fun. If we were buying them new I would not choose a natural wood finish and am trying very hard not to imagine these bad boys painted a BRIGHT color (who is obsessed with painting furniture? Me.). Tony and Lois bought these almost 30 years ago, unfinished, from a local store that hand makes them. Then Tony finished the wood himself---so obviously, way too sentimental for me to go nuts with a can of golden yellow paint on these bunks. Just happy to have them and the natural wood may not be my style but it certainly works!




I wanted to use the kids' baby quilts that my mom made each of them for their respective nurseries. They seem to fit just fine in the room with bright colors although they certainly don't 'match.'




I might get Cecelia a fun pillow to add to her bed, since Truman has his truck pillow. But for now they both have their special blankets and a stuffed animal or two and that seems like enough.

Super fun to climb on the top bunk on this 'special ladder'. Luckily Cecelia can't quite climb up there on her own just yet. I give her about a month before she figures it out.



The giant "T" and "C"--a favorite part of the room for me. We already had the big C in Cecelia's nursery, so I bought the T and covered it in fabric. I got the ampersand on Etsy and yarn wrapped it---a total beast of a job, but it worked. If we would have kept the two twin beds separate, I wanted to put these across the entire big wall as a focal point. Once we bunked the beds I worried there wasn't space for my letters but we made room! Just had to remove a few pennants from the ceiling and now it works.




2. The dresser, art wires, and stuffed animal area:



I am not sure I will keep all of the stuffed animals out like this, but this dresser top is pretty huge so it's fine for now. In fact, this was another awesome Craigslist find for Truman's big boy room a few years ago---the dresser is huge enough to house both of the kids' clothes no problem. These stuffed animals are all gifts from before Truman was born. Added a few of CC's gifted animals to create a few pops of pink in there, too.







Our 'caught ya being good' jars: you can see that Truman 'accidentally' touched my black fabric paint on the T before it was dry. Sigh. But Cecelia had to get a jar now that we are teaching her to stay in a big girl bed until 6:30 am. So far it's working!! Once they each fill up their jars from especially good behavior and 'sleeping in', we take them for a 1:1 parent-kid date of their choice. Truman always picks a theatre movie and I have no idea what CC will want to do with us. She just started her jar so we have awhile before she fills it up.

A few of my favorite kiddos.


Split panel wall art:



I got these from Etsy seller Saturday Designs as a gift and I seriously love these panels! I picked the color and the quote and when they arrived I was excited to see how light weight they are. I hung them with 3M Command Strips--super easy. I like how this adds a little bit of sappiness to the room full of bright and fun and loudness.






3. Bookshelves and wall gallery:




These are all old frames recycled from both nurseries. So are all of the photos and prints. I am seriously in love with the chaos of this wall gallery.


My babies.


The owl print was an Etsy purchase for CC's nursery. A lot of the photo prints I already had stored in a drawer somewhere. It was fun to attempt keeping the photos and prints equal between children, too.





I bought this tiny letter C and we already had the T---added feathers to the C and added felt circles to the T. There are so many other fun ways to cover wall letters online---hard to decide on which craft product to use.

Their 'announcement' prints that I made on Photoshop for each kid after birth. Tear. I made a lot of prints for Truman's nursery just using photoshop--bought two bigger prints for Cecelia's, and they all made it onto this wall.


Closet, night lights, rug, etc:

The closet actually has a LOT of unused space right now. And Cecelia's clothes/hair bows probably takes up 75% of it, too. It's chaotic and not really 'picture worthy' but whatever! This is also their favorite spot to play upstairs right now.


In order to convince Truman that he had to get rid of his lamp for sleeping, we had to find something else 'fun' as a transition to sharing his room with his sister. We found these night lights on Walmart.com of all places, for $10 each. They light up but also shoot a big picture up on the ceiling at night. CC's has Disney princesses that she calls 'Eel' (Ariel) and Truman picked a Monsters Inc. light. They have worked perfectly for our boy that used to be 'too scared' to sleep without a lamp!


View from above---the wall panels and my old favorite rug from Truman's nursery. I briefly thought about moving this rug into the baby's nursery but I just can't do it. It's too 'Truman' and the rainbow colors are perfect for this bright room.

Textures.


They approve.




Progression of shared room:

We started with Truman's single bed against the wall, then moved it by the window to see if there would be room for a crib. There was! And that is when I started thinking about two twin beds instead of bunks. When my mom was visiting us, we needed an extra bed for sleeping so we assembled the bunks AND kept the crib in the room. Mom slept on the bottom bunk, we officially moved Truman to the top, and I realized that fitting three kids in this room wouldn't be totally out of the question (wink, wink, Nate). And then we took down the crib and the room opened up for just the bunks.

I'm too lazy to do actual links and prices here, but you can email me if you need more specifics on this source list...

Source list:

Wall paint color: Gentle Rain by Behr
Bunk beds: hand-me-downs from the in-laws (built locally about 30 years ago)
Bedding: both big quilts and sheets from Target (T's is Circo, C's is Room Essentials)
Colorful quilts: made by my mom for each of their nurseries
Wall letters T&C: Michaels, wrapped in fabric or yarn by me
Fabric pennants around ceiling: sewed from fabric scraps by me and my mom back in 2009
Striped rug: Ikea in 2009
White dresser: Craigslist (find of the year!)
Stuffed animals: all gifts throughout the years
Rock jars: made from old plastic containers and random craft supplies
Art wire hangers: Ikea on Amazon in 2012
Split panel wall art: Saturday Designs on Etsy
Bookshelf: Target back in 2009
Picture frames: some from Ikea in 2009, some old black ones hand painted with acrylics or spray painted by me
Wall prints: made by me in 2009 for Truman's nursery and Etsy sellers in 2012 for Cecelia's nursery
Night lights: Walmart


And now it's time to focus on the nursery!