Letter to the Week

This has been one crazy week. For some reason this holiday month is proving to be rather difficult for me. One thing after another. I hurt my arm on Monday and it just seems to be getting worst. It is pretty difficult to get anything done. My right arm is my dominant arm and man is it hard trying to do everything with your left arm that has had the short end of the stick forever. Don't worry it I am not being negative. I love sharing about little random things from my week that I normally wouldn't make a blog post about.

Dear YMCA child watch, I am deeply saddened that our first experience led to my children leaving with an unknown adult and the caregivers didn't even notice they were gone for a still unknown amount of time. Thank goodness the Zumba class was only an hour and my children were in the gym watching a soccer game. Thanks for adding even more stress to my week and even though you apologized and gave us a month free....I just don't trust you anymore with my kids. One time of jeopardized child safety= me saying adios to child watch. We have searched for a gym that had child watch for so long...so this disappoints me. Apparently our case was the one time incident they have ever had. 

Dear Mother Nature, 20's-50's, and then bam 70's for 2 days then back to frigid air. It was nice to have two days for everything to kind of defrost, I hope it doesn't rain today like it has for the last 3 days. Rain, Rain come again another day.

Dear Christmas movies, I look forward to you every year and I really cherish the quality family time you provide. <3 The Grinch! 

Dear Christmas decorations, sorry my busted arm is preventing me from getting you up. With my husband gone for work throughout the week. We shall meet soon.

Dear CW and ABC, I am so addicted to way too many of your shows. Thank goodness in my free time I can catch up on all of the shows I missed during the week. 

Dear 12 day of Christmas, where in the world can I find you in small decorations so we can make a 12 day of Christmas wreath? I have been to countless amount of stores with no success. I haven't even had luck finding pieces of other things to even contribute. I love you so. You are my inner Christmas child.

Dear Frozen, I want to see you so bad. I mean, I want to bring my kids to see you so bad. I would love to have Olaf the little snowman!

Single most funniest yet most relatable things I have came across this week: 
26 Problems Only Anxious People Will Understand

{My favorite is the blow your anxieties into a balloon and then.....go watch it, you will laugh}
{2nd favorite is the car noise with the little black cat}

I hope you have had a great week and I hope you have a fantastic weekend. How was your week? 

Fabulous and Repurposed- Party Decorations!

I love decorating for little gatherings all the time.  Celebrating Americas Birthday is no different.  All that sparkling, red white and blue!  I was completely inspired for this month at Hobby Lobby.  We do not have a Hobby Lobby like this by us.  I think I like it as much as I like A.C. Moore.  I was really sad to see there was no A.C. Moore here, but was so happy my mom took me to experience the awesomeness at Hobby Lobby.  Okay, enough of my ramblings.

What did we come up with for our festivities?

Personalized and Crafty all the way!

Plastic ware set up:

Napkins- rolled and secured with a cupcake ring.

Coffee Filter- cut in 4's, red napkin square side up and blue napkin triangle side up.  Fold and Roll.

DIY Containers:  Scrapbooking paper wrapped around cleaned out spice containers and twine wrapped around 2 of the containers.

DIY Paper Pinwheels:  Depending on the side of the fan you would like fold your scrapbooking paper like you would fold a fan.  Once, you get to the end all you have to do is stretch to get your circle and glue the ends together with super thick tacky glue.  You push the center down and glue card stock on the back to hold in place and something like a bling on the front.   There is two ways to make fans.  I made the larger ones buy folding, tying and folding in half and then fanning out to glue.   I will do a more detailed post about this soon.   I used gold glitter for added sparkle and to jazz up the pinwheels a bit more.

Blinged out bottles:   Personalizing is such a great thing when you are going to a party or even a family gathering.  I know I am always losing my drink; my kids lose theirs and everyone else is asking..."Is this your drink?"   I wrote out the first initial of a guests name and applied the little bling beads for that personalized touch.  There were just a few kids, so that is why I only did a few bottles.  My son was the only boy and I made him a star on his.  Personalized water; you can do the first letter in bling and jot down the rest of the name.

Name/Food Tag holder:  Up to the left there is a little striped and starred jar holding the name tag/food tag stick.  All that jar is a empty dip jar with scrapbooking paper attached to it.  I did the star paper strip on top of the striped.  Really simple and super cost friendly.  I love repurposing.  You can do so many things with all of your old jars.  We do recycle, but some things are just cooler made over.   

*You can place your name tags or food tags on the outside of food or as a place marker if you have more guests.   

Personalized Gatorade Bottles:  Cut a strip of scrapbooking paper to fit around the bottle and attach with glue.  Tie metallic red tinsel around the bottle top or center and run your scissors blade down it to make it curl.  You can always put the persons name on it some where with a paint pen or permanent marker.   You can tie a label into the metallic tinsel or even place one of the toothpick labels behind the strip and write the name of the guest the drink belongs too.  

Personalized Name/Food Tags:  Rectangle shapes from scrapbooking paper and the white/cream strips for writing details is card stock.  Accessories include:  blings and squares from other scrapbooking paper.  Once assembled, I glued them to a popsicle stick. 

Toothpick Labels:  I cut 2 squares that was on side of each other on a really cute scrapbooking paper sheet and put hot glue on the center line and placed a toothpick in and pressed shut.  The ends was left open so I can attach a small piece of card stock sticking out for a label, cupcake topper, cake topper or other food labeling.  I cut a triangle off the end to make it look like a little ribbon. 

Scrapbooking paper was my best friend in almost every part of personalization.

Scrapbook paper sale: $.44 for small, .69 for standard 12x12 paper and .49 card stock....all 1/2 off!

Blings- different sized clear- normally $15.99- 50% off so 8 bucks.  What a steal right!

Aleene's- Super Thick Tacky was $3.77

You can get your plastic ware, colored napkins, straws, plates, table clothes and even the metallic tinsel at the Dollar Tree.

I hope you all had a wonderful and safe Fourth of July with your family!