Abbie's Wreath

My baby sister Abbie is graduating from college next week. My mom and I are planning a party in her honor to celebrate this huge accomplishment. Since she's graduating from University of Oregon, we decided to do the university's colors of green and yellow as the theme for the party. One of the reasons I love this theme is that Chris and I are also huge UofO fans, so some of the decorations that I'm making for the party can easily be used in our house during football season. For example, I made this wreath to hang on the door to welcome guests to the party, but it will also hang on my front door this fall.

I am really pleased with how it turned out! Have you ever seen a craft tutorial and thought that it seemed easy, but when you sat down to do it, it was actually really complicated? Not the case with this burlap wrapped wreath with Oregon rosettes and pennant banner. I bought a flat wreath form for this one, but you can easily do round. I cut the burlap into three inch strips. I would recommend 2.5inches-3inches, but really no larger.

Do you know the trick to cutting burlap in a straight line? Once you measure off three inches, select one of the threads on the end...

...and pull (and pull, and pull, and pull!)

This is what will happen to the burlap when you pull that thread out, it leaves a perfect space to cut a straight line.

Then hot glue the end to the wreath form and start wrapping, gluing every few layers. I didn't spray paint the wreath form because the burlap overlapped enough to cover up all the foam.

I added some fabric rosettes (tutorials available on Pinterest) and a pennant banner, and voila, the finished product!

As soon as the party is over, I'll remove the Oregon decorations (they are just pinned on), and place red, white, and blue decorations on it and hang it on my front door for 4th of July. The burlap wreath is such a versatile base for most holiday decorations. And, it's super cheap. I am so excited for how this turned out. I'll post pictures of additional decorations we're making for the party soon.

What We've Been Up To

Sorry it's been so long since the last post. We are without a camera right now, but my dad let us borrow his so I've finally got a few new pictures to share. Starting next week we are super busy until mid-August, so the last few weeks we've just been hanging out. Here's what we've been up to:
Building forts:

Wearing as many hairbows as possible:

Playing in sister's dress-up shoes:

Reading to each other:

Double fisting:

Enjoying our hairbow of the month bows:

Hitchin' a ride on great-Grandpa's walker:

Trying to dress up like a cowgirl:

(I love the rainboots)

Preschool Graduation

This last week Sydney had her preschool graduation. For a five year old, it was quite the event and she was super excited to get all dressed up and wear her little graduation cap. I can't believe she's all done with preschool now! We have a year off before Savannah will start. Here are some pictures from the graduation ceremony.

Teacher's Gifts

The end of the school year really snuck up on me this year. All of a sudden, I realized that school was ending in a few weeks and we should probably do something for Sydney's amazing teachers. All the parents went in together to chip in for gift baskets. I volunteered to get the gifts and I was really pleased with how the baskets turned out.

Here is a breakdown of the gifts:

1. A personalized tumbler cup with an apple from MaggieBelle's. I have ordered from her before and always been really happy with the products.

2. Personalized apple stationary from Delightfully Noted. These turned out so cute with three little apples printed next to each teacher's name.

3. Coffee cozies with apples stitched on them from The Cozy Project. I love these cozies, I have quite a few myself. I love how these turned out!

4. A personalized apple sign from Sassy Signs by Andrea. These just were perfect and tied right in with the theme. I thought they came out pretty cute! I also included a gift card for a local coffee shop and brick oven pizza restaurant. I made it a priority to buy things from local or small businesses.





Sydney's Last Day of Preschool

 Today was Sydney's last day of preschool.  Doesn't she look so grown up?  She also looks slightly drugged, which I promise you she's not.  She's got a cold and is just a little bit out of it.  I can't believe she has already had two years of preschool and will be in kindergarten in the fall.

 Savannah was just six weeks old when Sydney started preschool.  Now she's almost two and thinks she should go to preschool, too.  One more year and then she'll be in school, too.  I can't even think about it!

 I am so, so thankful that Sydney and Madison got to go to school together the last two years.  They will be in different schools this fall and I'm sure that will be very hard on them.  They are getting so big!

 Here are the girls with one of their teachers and friend Micah.  Micah goes to church with us, too, so it was fun for the three of them to know each other when they started school.

The girls with their other teacher.  I am so thankful for their amazing teachers, they did such a great job with all the students!  Sydney has come so far and I feel very confident about her heading into kindergarten.  I am so thankful for the cheerful, Christian environment that the preschool provided for her.

Toy Story Party, for reals this time

(Sorry to anyone who tuned in earlier this week to see the random "Toy Story Party" post with only three pictures, none of which had anything to do with Toy Story, and no narrative.  I started uploading photos and clearly saved them as a draft but for some reason it posted.)

Last week Melissa's twins turned THREE.  I can not believe they are getting so big and a huge hats off to Matt and Melissa for surviving three years with twins.  Those boys are cute but they can be stinkers and you know, there's two of them, so it's never ending!  We were lucky enough to be able to go with them to a pizza place with an amazing indoor play set up on their actual birthday.  (Cue the pictures for the off-timed, random post below.)

Last weekend we had their birthday party.  I feel completely comfortable saying "we" had their party even though I didn't come up with the theme, book the venue, or pay for it.  However, as in all our parties, Melissa and I planned and discussed and debated and compared and perfected all the tiny details.  She did the lions share of the work (and paid for it all...ha!) but I got to help in making some of the decisions and I worked on some of the paper goods.  It was a Toy Store themed party and it turned out so, so stinkin' cute!  As a general rule of thumb we try to stay away from character parties because they can be really cheesey.  But, the boys love Toy Story so it was fun to take a potentially challenging theme (think, the horrid character invites at the store) and make it completely customized, spectacular, and special.  There was nothing cheesey about it and it was so much fun!

Cute boys!  They were so excited.

The whole room.  Can you see the "Pizza Planet" sign to the left?  Brilliant idea of Melissa's for over the pizza table.

Melissa also set up a photo booth area and made a bunch of really cute props.  The kids had a lot of fun with it!

Check out Melissa's 5M Creations blog for more details and party pics!

Toy Story Party

What a Cutie!

Sorry I've been MIA lately.  It hasn't been by choice.  My camera completely died.  Like can't even turn it on died.  So now I get to save up for a new one...hooray!  So unfortunately, no new posts until I have some pictures.  Melissa got this one of Savannah for me this last week.  She is looking so grown up these days, especially when she has little ponies in.  I can't believe she is almost two!

The Little Lovebirds

I pretty much adore this picture of Savannah and Micah.

We always see Melissa and the boys at preschool drop off and pick up. Whenever she sees her boys, Savannah runs up to them yelling, "Bubbas!" (They both are called Bubba at home) She is just all over those boys with loves and smooches. She got Micah a few weeks ago and Melissa was able to snap this picture on her phone. I love it! They both adore her and she just can't get enough of those boys. I'm going to have to keep my eye on them when they're older!