Cupcakes & Flowers

On my recent trip to Washington, DC I visited a bakery called Sticky Fingers. It was nearly a life changing experience. I had looked at the cookbook on Amazon before, but after my visit I was sold and ordered it right away. I was actually a little bummed it was only sweets included in the book because their regular food was really good too. So far I have made the blueberry muffins which turned out pretty well, and now the classic vanilla cupcake with almond frosting.

The single cupcake above is on a wine glass turned upside down! Like its own mini pedestal. 

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In other news, the yard is in bloom! I think these flowers are so beautiful but they only last a few days. Look at all the petals packed into each one. We had a rain storm last night that sort of beat them down, but they are still gorgeous.

Flower Headbands

So camp week on the blog got a little derailed due to other work obligations - but it is kicking back off now and will bleed into the beginning of next week. My sister, mom, nieces, and I are traveling to the Big Apple for the 4th - so I am sure I will have lots to report about that when I return. So anyway, at camp I helped out in the jewelry making class with the very creative Miss Chelsea Nimmo - she found all these ideas online and orchestrated the whole shebang. The first day of jewelry making we made these whimsical flower headbands.

Yes, I am wearing a flower in my hair in the woods. :-)

Chelsea bought strands and stems of flowers from the craft store, felt, and bunches of headbands and hair ties for this project. If you want to make these you will also need a hot glue gun and sharp scissors to snip the stem of the flower. Read more about how to make this project with a little different twist here - or read on.

I started with a black headband, then picked out the flower I wanted to use. I clipped the stem of the flower super close to the base so it would sit flat on my headband. Next I cut out two pieces of felt (the felt can either match your hair, the flower, or the headband) about the size of the base/green part on the back of the flower.

Next, I glued one circle of felt to the base of the flower with hot glue. (Thanks goes to the lovely camper who is demonstrating the process here.)

Then I held the headband up against the first piece of felt and hot glued the second circle of felt to the first one so the headband was sandwiched in between the two felt pieces. I was careful to not get too much glue on the elastic so that it could still stretch, but I think it would be ok either way.

That's it! Super easy. Here's the jewelry making class rocking our new headbands!

The Art of Dress(ers)

My poor husband has been using a podium shelf for a dresser for almost a year. When I saw a gaudy bright yellow dresser at Goodwill for $7, I thought I might know just the man who could use it. But the yellow had to go. I collected inspiration photos for what I wanted to do on the dresser for awhile before I finally decided to go with inspiration that was already in our bedroom - our bedspread.



Here's how the magic happened. Check out what the dresser looked like before:

When we took the drawers out to sand them we found this message inside:

Baby D - 1982. I have some 30 year old baby's dresser. :-) I actually really appreciate this little note. It makes me imagine an expecting couple out in their garage getting their new nursery ready - such a cute picture, until they chose this way overstimulating yellow. I wonder if that baby ever slept a wink. Where is Baby D now??

The knobs were all painted on so I had to knock them off with the end of a screwdriver. TJ had to fill some holes in the top of the dresser with wood filler to level things out.

I love the stark difference in the color comparison in these pictures. The gray is just so much more relaxing!

After the dresser was all painted gray (the same gray as the walls in our bedroom - Behr's Gentle Rain) it was time to make some artsy magic.

Needless to say I was very anxious especially when it comes to painting skinny lines. I took solace in the fact that the flowers on our bedspread look sort of wiggly and hand drawn so if it turned out awful I could just claim it was the look I was going for. I decided to just go for it and made a quick drawing of a flower on the bedspread to use as a reference as a drew the flowers out on the drawer fronts.
 

I used pencil first, then went over my lines with metallic paint and a skinny paintbrush. I used a polka-dotter (seen 2 pictures down) to make the dots in the centers.

The last step was painting the knobs and putting them back on. I used Krylon metallic silver spray paint to quickly cover them.

See the resemblance?

I think the actual drawers are much appreciated in TJ's closet - not to mention how much cleaner it looks to not have open shelves in there any more! And it sure looks good with that swanky new floor. :-)

Sunny Flower Pot Holder

I picked up this flower pot holder last summer at Alice's thrift store in Lansing, MI for something like 3 dollars. The legs swing so they can spread out and become compact again, and I remember my sister got her finger pinched when she was carrying it for me. Your pain has finally paid off Kate - the plant holder is finally super cute, and yellow!

It did not start off so cute and yellow though. It was actually a pretty vintagey blue green before, but it blended in way too much with the gray cement and green (overgrown, weedy mess) grass behind it. See below what I mean. None of the curlicues or details showed up.

After I picked the pink and green pots and filled them with flowers and veggies it hit me that the metal plant holder needed to pop too. I decided on yellow and went with my trusty Rustoleum Warm Yellow semi-gloss which I also used on my mailbox, magazine holder, and napkin holder. (I have a lot of "holders" in my house - I wonder what these things are actually called).

 

 

I think the whole set-up adds a nice pop of color to my patio. I think I might finally be understanding why people care so much about flowers. :-) I really do enjoy getting up every morning to check on & water them.

Window box

Our house came with this charming underused window-box right outside our bedroom window. We didn't end up doing anything with it last summer because we were still getting acclimated to our landscaping but I decided this year it was time. I filled it up with dirt and just sort of chose whatever looked good at Menards to purchase for flowers and plants. I tried to buy plants that could be in shade or part-sun because that side of the house doesn't get much sunlight.

While this may seem like a pretty boring thing to be posting about... the real reason I wanted to do this post is because I got a new camera today! I blog worthy one. I worked my tail off this semester racking up extra hours outside of teaching so I could buy a camera with my "extra" money. The window-box was my first muse. What do you think of the pics? I am still experimenting of course, there seems to be quite a learning curve with these things.

Does this one hurt your eyes?