Monthly Archives: June 2014

1st Birthday invitations

Miss P is turning one this summer! I’ve saved each of my children’s 1st Birthday invitations. I’m not much of a saver, but those handmade invitations are very dear to me, and I wanted to continue the tradition with Miss P.

I went to Hobby Lobby with a few ideas in my head, but when I got to the paper craft aisles I felt completely overwhelmed! So many pretty options but nothing was jumping out at me. I wanted them to be sweet and lovely but simple too.

I was so close to leaving empty-handed when I came across this packet of papers. I loved them! I stood in the middle of the aisle staring at those papers trying to come up with a good way to use them, when inspiration struck… they would make perfect envelopes!

When I opened the package, not only did it have full sheets of beautifully patterned paper, but there where sheets of small tags that could be cut apart. They were supposed to be used as gift tags but I decided they would make perfect address labels.

I downloaded and printed off this free envelope pattern, and spent a blissful hour cutting, folding, and assembling party envelopes.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the way they turned out!

I like that each invitation will be a little different.

The address labels are one of my favorite parts of the envelope!

This little striped envelope is so sweet, but I wish I would have been more careful about lining up the stripes with the envelope template. It makes the envelope look a little slanted and not quite squared up.

For the actual invitation I decided to keep it very simple. Just a pretty shade of pink, a playful font, and a boarder of white lace sewn to the bottom.

I used a little strip of washi tape to seal the back of the envelope.

Naturally I want to make a million more of these darling envelopes in ALL shapes and sizes, because… hello! you can’t have too many pretty envelopes!!

PS- if you’re interested in making your own envelopes there are lots of free downloadable templates on the web. A quick search on Pinterest will give you lots of great templates!

The Week that Was

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Pictures from our week and a few words to go with them:

1. Imaginary worlds

2. Colorful blocks scattered on the floor

3. Silly girl

4. Daddy and the boys find cool new storage for the boys’ room

5. I take advantage of half price bins from The Land of Nod, and replace the tatty fabric bins that were falling apart. Which reminds me, when J saw the three huge boxes that had been delivered to our door the fist thing he said was, “Whoa Mom! That’s a lot of fabric!”. I think it’s pretty telling that his first guess was fabric

6. Miss E gets a hand-me-down desk and insists we put a jar of flowers on it

7. I do a little sewing for a sweet friend and neighbor, to welcome their new little girl.

8. Another small gift for a baby boy, soon to be born

9. Momma gives the baby the spatula. The baby is surprised and then delighted.

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10. The same baby girl spent the week not feeling well and needing extra love, which her daddy was happy to supply

11. Mr. G wanted to sleep on his new toolbox and much to his momma’s surprise he was still there come morning light.

12. We all want to be the one who snuggles with her at the end of the day.

My thought for the week:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.“ G.K Chesterton

Some how I like the idea of our Heavenly Father doing each day’s work with a child’s unbounded enthusiasm. It gives me the strength and courage to do the same in my small way.

Sub-par Vegetable Gardener

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Things I like/am borderline obsessed with: snacks before bed, British sitcoms from the 1970′s, Italian cream sodas, polka-dot fabric, harmonicas, and cut flowers in the house. All of the flowers, all over the house, all of the time.

As soon as we moved into a house with a little bit of land I started planting flowers. For the first few years I would plant a vegetable garden with a couple of rows of flowers mixed in for good measure. The truth is I’m rubbish at vegetables. I never harvested them at the right time, I quickly ran out of ways to cook them, and my efforts to unload them on all my friends and family failed 9 times out of 10. You can only give squash to the same group of people for so long before they start politely refusing. But here’s the brilliant thing about flowers… no one ever turns them down!

“Would you like 74 zucchinis?” “No?”

“Would you like a bucket of sunflowers?” “You’d like that very much? Well great! Because I happen to have a whole bucket full!”

Do you have any idea how much fun it is to have a bucket full of sunflowers?

{flowers from gardens past}

I’ve given up all pretenses. No longer will I be a sub-par vegetable grower. It’s all flowers from here on out.

In past years I’ve had trouble with gophers. They’ve eaten over 70 daffodil bulbs, 4 lilac bushes, half a row of sweetpeas, and a couple of rose bushes. I got so tired of spending time and money on flowers that only served to keep the gopher population fat and happy. So this year Justin made me three good-sized raised flower beds, and lined the bottom of them with gopher wire. Now I can plant to my heart’s content and gleefully thumb my nose at all those dang gophers.

This summer I planted dahlias, two varieties of zinnias, a whole box full of cosmos, cornflowers, a row of cutting sunflowers in a variety of colors and sizes, and a few herbs.

Right now the boxes are all full of summer flowers, but this fall I plan on planting 4 English roses, 100 daffodil bulbs, and a whole row of sweetpeas!

I thought that three boxes would be plenty but I’m already daydreaming about three more. A girl needs room to plant flowers! So many more types of cutting flowers that I’d like to grow… more dahlias, bells of Ireland, amaranth, hollyhocks, iceland poppies, a small hoop-house for peonies… {sigh}

Maybe someday

InAnOrchard

Life in an orchard

Monthly Archives: June 2014

1st Birthday invitations

The Week that Was

Sub-par Vegetable Gardener