REAGAN IN WONDERLAND

Today is my beautiful, wonderful, and altogether lovely best friend Reagan's birthday! There are countless reasons why I'm in love with this girl (besides the fact that she comments on my posts), but most recently, I've so admired her passion for serving those in need, literally feeding the hungry as a staff member for Feeding America. Her heart is big and beautiful, and she's living out what is good. To act justly. To love mercy. To walk humbly with our God.

Reagan has long adored Alice in Wonderland, so I decided to make her an Alice-themed cake a couple years ago. I am an absolute amateur when it comes to cake-making, but I was very happy with how this topsy-turvy, fondant-covered cake turned out.

Reagan and her husband Brandon live in the exact opposite of the country from me right now, which stinks, as we probably only see each other a couple times a year. Wish she was here to make pretty cakes and spray paint things with me.

COPY THAT: PAPER ROSE WREATH

The blog world is crammed full of handy dandy crafty people, and in the Pinterest era, it's easy to flat out duplicate something cool that you find. I love sharing my own projects as well as sharing in other people's creativity. So I'm going to start a recurring post called "COPY THAT" to log various projects that have been inspired by bloggers and friends. My first COPY THAT comes from Under The Table and Dreaming, and a complete tutorial can be found here.

The holidays are over, but this wreath can hang year-round.

I dressed the wreath up with a glittery gold bow for Christmas.

Note: A Lord of the Flies and Fahrenheit 451 were harmed in the making of this project. So it's not just pretty; it's subversive.

HEY STUD

If you saw the previous post, you might've caught a glimpse of the studded upholstered headboard that I made for our master bedroom. It combines a couple of my current aspirations for a bedroom--a clean, cream/white color scheme with a little bit of an edge.

THE INSPIRATION:

West Elm Nailhead Upholstered Headboard (Queen: $449)

THE PROJECT:

THE MATERIALS:

MDF or plywood (62" wide x 38" tall for queen)
Spray adhesive
Fabric
Batting
Staple gun and staples
Nailhead trim
Materials for hanging/standing

I neglected to photograph the entire how-to process, but you can find an awesome tutorial on budgetwisehome.com. I ended up not using any foam because it is a bit expensive. I just used batting, and I'm pretty happy with it. I also did not hang my headboard on the wall. I just screwed two scrap 2x4s to the back, threw on some felt pads, and just leaned it flush against the wall.

As you can see, the back of the headboard can be far from perfect! Ain't nobody gonna see it!

DRAWING ON THE WALLS

I LOVE WALLPAPER. Especially with metallic patterns. But living in an apartment makes this a forbidden love, unless I want to go through the pain and heartbreak of removing the paper at move-out time. Not to mention the fact that beautiful wallpaper is just expensive. I've seen some cool removable options from tempaperdesigns.com and whatisblik.com, but the price was still a bit steep for me.

So I decided draw on the walls with Sharpies.

THE INSPIRATION:

L-to-R:
Metallic gold wallpaper seen on emilyhenderson.com
Gold sharpie wall seen on littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com

THE PROJECT:

I bought a 12-count box of gold Sharpies on Amazon for about 12 bucks. That was the total cost of this project, folks! And I only used 9 of them.

I made a stencil of a circle pattern that I like. It was also important to me that I chose a very forgiving pattern to minimize the effect of the inevitable mistakes I would make. I wanted the stencil to be pretty sturdy, so I ended up making it out of an old plastic binder. I have this cool Silhouette craft cutter, which made this process easy, but you can certainly cut a stencil by hand.

I just traced the pattern across my 11x8ft wall.

And a couple LOTRs and one While You Were Sleeping later...

I'll be sad when we have to move and I have to paint over it.

PRETTY IN PINK

My friends Shannon and Berend just had a beautiful baby girl named Amelia. I had the joyful pleasure of planning the baby shower a couple months ago.

THEMES: To match Shannon's ideas for the nursery, I focused on pinks and grays, elephants, and storybooks, oh my!

THE INSPIRATION:

L-to-R:
Little Peanut Baby Shower from karaspartyideas.com
A Book-Themed Baby Shower from marthastewart.com
Once Upon A Time Baby Shower from on ontobaby.com

THE PARTY:

The shower had so many handmade touches like adorable pink and gray bunting and fabric-strip garlands, freshly picked flowers from the hostess' garden, framed quotes from beloved children's books, homemade iced cookies on sticks, and pink lemonade served with striped paper straws.

In lieu of cards, each guest brought a favorite children's book with a personal note inscribed on the inside cover. Now baby Amelia has a fully-stocked personal library! For favors, the Mommy-to-be made bookmarks using the artwork from the invitations.

Instead of baby shower games, we made onesies using cute iron-on appliques. So easy and so sweet.

Many thanks to my crazy party-planning machine friends who made the day so lovely. =)