Baby Shower Decorations

My sister in law Hilary is having a baby girl!  The baby shower was last weekend.  I volunteered to make a hot air balloon decoration.   At first I planned to cut them out by hand.  I did my usual search on Pinterest for inspiration and free templates.  These were some of the ideas I considered:

 

 None of these ideas seemed quite right. I decided to make my own version. I wasn't happy with how this first attempt turned out. 

My free hand version

  

Fortunately, a friend of mine said that she had a Silhouette machine that could easily cut out beautiful hot air balloons. 

I decided to make a 6 sided hot air balloon.  I used 3 solid colors and three patterned papers.

The balloons were scored by the Silhouette machine which made them easy to fold.

I glued half of each balloon to the half of another balloon. 

Since the balloons were cut by a machine, each balloon lined up perfectly.

I was really happy with how the balloons turned out!  They looked really great when they were hung from the dining room chandelier.

At the shower, I strung the balloons over the dining room table.

My mother in law and sister in law also made some super cute decorations for the shower. My mother in law cut out the adorable paper dolls by hand.  I also love that they strung baby pictures of the new mommy and daddy.  It was so fun trying to picture what my new niece will look like!

My sister in law made this cute "baby" garland.  It was really cute that she spelled it out in Spanish since my brother in law is Colombian.

Now we all have to wait and see when this little girl will make her entrance to this world.  They are keeping her name a secret until she is born.  I can't wait to meet this little sweetie!

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Ella's Birthday Banner- Pintastic!

My sweet Ella Grace is turning ONE next week!  

I decided to make a banner for her first birthday.  I searched on Pinterest for ideas and there wasn't anything that I felt was right.  I did find a template and decided to design my own.  I cut each layer of the banner by hand.

I used three patterned papers
and three different colors

This is the template that I used

This is a photo of the entire banner 

I am not sure how long it took me to complete it since I worked in little bursts. I worked on it when I had a spare minute here and there.  It also didn't help that I had it half finished when Lucas got hold of a pair of scissors.  He destroyed most of it.   So I had to start all over.  I was able to salvage some of it.  

I used repositionable adhesive to attach the "1st" to the banner.  I am hoping to reuse the banner each year. I want to take a picture of Ella with it and document how much she has grown with each 

year.

Thriving in a small space

Our family lives in a small space.  It is a two story townhouse with about 1,000 square feet of space.  It is 

2 bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room and 

2 1/2 baths.  Sounds spacious, right?  Did I mention we have 5 people living here?

I am so grateful that we own this home- I am not complaining.  With a place this size, there are challenges.  Aaron and I have done what we can to thrive in this small space.  We plan on being here for at least 4-5 more years so we need to find ways to make living here enjoyable.

So here is one way that we have made this place seem larger and have made the space work for us:

Aaron got this TV cabinet on Craig's List and we transformed it into a scrapbooking armoire.  It stores all of my scrapbooking supplies and everything is organized.  Now I am able to work on my scrapbooks without having to hunt for my things in three different closets.  Before the armoire I had shoved my supplies into any spare space that I could find.  I had things spread our into almost every room.  With the doors closed you can't see all of the clutter.  It is a neat and clean look.  Most of the furniture in the living room is darker wood so eventually we will stain the wood a darker color.