handmade cass

We had a John Deer birthday party for my daughter's 2nd birthday this year.  She is a little girl that LOVES trucks and tractors!  And this is how it all turned out: I made a little "farm-scape" on a bale of hay at the snack table. Individual portions of popcorn and green M&Ms were a big hit at the party.   Sunflowers were placed in mason jars and tied with natural raffia. Mini party guests received a personalized treat bag with truck books and a green bandana.  See my previous post for more about the party bags. Green bandanas tied together served as party banners.   Green and pink sugar cookies in tractor shapes. Even Frank got dressed up for the party. Yellow cake cupcakes with lime frosting fit the color scheme. It took so much time to get all the different pieces together for the party, and it wasn't perfect, but my daughter had fun and that is what counts!  If you would like to see the sources for some of my party ...

Merry Christmas!  My Christmas cards this year (and every year) are a labor of love.  I had purchased some green honeycomb paper a while back, as soon as I saw this Tim Holtz video  (you can skip to 7:45 to see his tree).  And I'm glad I finally got the cards out this year.  The feedback has been pretty great - they even survived the mail. The cards arrived like this, with a Post-It protecting the honeycomb and giving assembly instructions. Under the Post-It you can thee the honeycomb with an adhesive strip that needs to be removed. And once you fold it over and push gently you have a 3D Christmas tree. This angle shows off the honeycomb dimension a bit better. Every card was different because I hand cut the trees from the honeycomb paper.   Supplies : Honeycomb paper - Inky Antics HoneyPOP Sentiment stamps - Papertrey Ink Background stamp - Hero Arts Ink - Brilliance (Moonlight White) and Stampin' Up (Gumball Green and R...

I am getting so excited for my daughter's birthday next weekend!  I finished up the treat bags for all the kids in record time.   It probably helped that I had borrowed my cousin's awesome Janome Memory Craft 6600 sewing machine that also happens to embroider names.  So each mini party guest is taking home a personalized treat bag. Only downside is that I just had to tell my husband I am going to have a very expensive item on my wish list next year.  I love my vintage Elna sewing machine, but there is a lot to be said for a computerized one that does a lot of the work for you.  

Since most of my blog readers are friends and family that will receive one of my lovely {labor intensive} Christmas cards....I am only going to give a sneak peek for now.  But I'm almost done!   I just put one in the mail that had to fly to Germany and I'll be giving more out in person this weekend.  Hope all you other card makers are almost done too.  It's a great feeling of accomplishment.

I still had all the pictures from last year's Christmas cards displayed in our dining room...I know it sounds crazy.  And when it came time to take them down for all the new Christmas cards this year, I still didn't want to throw them away.   So I made a really simple picture book for my little girl to flip through and see all of the people she recognizes.  All you need to do is punch two holes in each picture and use some ribbon scraps to tie it all together.  I tied the ribbons pretty loosely so the pages would be easy to turn.