Friday, August 26, 2011

Abbie in Wonderland

A very merry birthday to Abbie! She turned 7 today and was so excited. She has been asking for weeks "how many days until my birthday?" We whipped up some decorations for the house to make it a little more "wonderland"ish. Fortunately our guests did not have to produce a key or cry a river in order to get through the door.

Now you know it's all about the cake at our house these days. In order to make the Alice in Wonderland cake I had to take the majority of the day off from working. It took about 6-1/2 hours to do by myself (the downside of Drew working in SLC is that he can't get off early to help with cakes any more). It is a little crowded because I wanted all of the elements to show from the front and placement is not really my forte, but all in all I'm happy with the results.

The Rabbit's pocket watch and the club painting the roses
The Mad Hatter's hat, the Cheshire Cat and the "eat me" cookies (note: the "drink me bottle is down at the bottom on the cake board)


The doorknob

Another big day this past week was the first day of school. Cary is in 3rd grade now and Abbie is in 2nd. We are all very excited to be starting a new year!







Sunday, August 14, 2011

New Rooms!

Oh, where to start? We've been pretty busy around here. Drew has been working on remodeling the basement for the past couple of months and the project is now complete! We switched around everyone's bedrooms to try and give us all a little more space. Carly moved out of the room that she used to share with Abbie and into Savannah's old room. Savannah moved in with Brooke to our old bedroom, and Drew and I moved down to the basement. I have to apologize for the pictures. It's hard to get a shot of the whole room with my dinky little point-and-shoot.

First on the list is Brooke and Savannah's room. We searched high and low for a big girl bed for Savannah and lucked out with a find on KSL. We painted the room green (used to be blue when it was our bedroom) and hung wallpaper along one wall. I sewed some simple curtains out of the old bedskirt that went to the crib set and then made some pillows for Savannah's room so that her bedding would match the baby's.



Next up is Abbie's room. We didn't make too many changes here, just moved her bed to the other side of the room and moved her Barbie house in. I also got a dresser for both her and Carly because we were tired of hanging up all the pants, skirts, etc. and now that there was room for more furniture, why not?

Here's Abbie's dresser that I got at a yard sale for $15. It needed a little work.
Here it is after. I cleaned it up ( it had been stored outside for who knows how long and was pretty nasty), painted it, and glazed it. Total cost: $45.


Now onto Carly's room. We didn't repaint in here either, just bought her a new quilt set that matched the walls and got her a dresser too.

This dresser set me back $20 from a yard sale.

Here's the after with a fresh coat of paint and stripped hardware. Total cost for this one was around $45 too.


And last but not least, our room. I'm so excited with how this has turned out. Drew put in a lot hours and did it all himself since I was very pregnant or taking care of the new baby during the process. So a big thank you to my sweetie for working so hard.


These projects have sucked us dry as far as money goes, so I was pretty mad when I couldn't find decorative pillows for our bed for less than $20 a pop. I was able to find the white one for $10, which I was willing to pay, but the other two I made for about $2 a piece. The black one has some ruffles on it that you can't really see but I'm happy with how they turned out.

One of my favorite parts of the room is the walk-in closet that Drew built. He had to tear down the existing wall, move it over a few feet and then build all the shelving in the closet by himself. He did a great job and the pictures really don't do it justice (sorry that they're sideways too).
We also made a cake for a friend of Drew's a couple of weekends ago. It is from the movie "Firefly." I guess the birthday boy is a big fan of the show and one of the characters wears this hat. We hand piped all the knit detail so it took quite a while.I also made another pillowcase dress. This time it was for our friends who just had their 4th baby too. I had a little extra fabric so I made a matching burp cloth.


And the parting shot this time around is of our little cuties. I found this super SWEET hot pink crushed velvet chair at a yard sale this summer for a whopping $4. I bought it for the sole purpose of taking the girl's photo in it. We took a whole bunch of pictures but for the sake of time I'll just post one for now. Enjoy!