Macaron Dreams

Lately I've been craving macarons, like, all the time. I love the moist and chewy texture and isn't it just the cutest little dessert? Bottega Louie is one of my favorite restaurants and they also happen to make the yummiest macarons I've ever tasted. Aren't these gorgeous? Check out the gold flakes and the beautiful blue color!

I've also come to find that these make awesome party favors and they fit perfectly into these acrylic boxes that I found at Michaels.  I gave these as party favors at my best friend's baby shower and they were a hit!

I can't wait to share some more details of the shower with you later this week!

Do you love macarons? Where do you get your favorite from?

Make Your Own Pom Poms!

For our wedding recession, Tad and I wanted something fun and unique. We thought about having our guests toss rose petals, feathers, or blow bubbles at us but then we decided on pom-poms. I saved some of them from the wedding and Tad and I had a lot of fun with them on our anniversary photo shoot!

Not only did they make for cute photos, but these were super simple and inexpensive to make. We had help from our friends and family and made them in all different sizes. I even sprinkled them with sparkly powder that smelled of marshmallows! Below is an actual picture from our wedding...seeing all these little pom-poms liter our aisle just made me smile :)

To make your own pom-poms you will need scissors and yarn. Yup, that's it. Here's the tutorial I used from CraftStylish. Just remember, the shorter you trim your yarn ball, the rounder and fuzzier it becomes. I think these would be cute to make in the holiday colors and used as decor. Have fun making your own pom-poms!

The Paper Year

Tad and I decided to give each other traditional wedding anniversary gifts, the first year being paper. (I wonder where these traditions came from). I wanted to get creative with Tad's gifts and made him coupons for a year. I made 52 of them so he can pick one every week. These aren't skimpy coupons either! They have things like "Good for a one hour massage", "A round of golf on me", "I'll take your car the carwash", and even a "Good for one argument win of your choice". Uh-oh, I think I set myself up for a lot of work this year!

I also had the lyrics of our first dance song, Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen, printed out and framed.  I even wrote Tad tiny love letters and gave him mini packages with this little kit. I couldn't help it, it is so gosh darn cute! I placed it in the mailbox and told Tad that he had mail. On a Sunday. He was a little confused but laughed when he saw what it was.

For my gift, Tad gave me an awesome Harry Potter book set- I love it! It came it a cool little box too.

If you are married, do you give traditional anniversary gifts? I'm excited for year 2- cotton! Maybe a new cute little dress? I also sewed Tad a cotton tie for part of his gift this year and thought, oops, maybe I should have saved it for next year. Oh well, I have almost a whole year to think about a "cotton" gift!

Chalk Talk

A few months ago I was in charge of finding chalkboards for my brother's wedding. That's when I discovered chalkboard paint! I thought it was the coolest thing ever; and what's even cooler is that it comes in all sorts of colors. Since red was one of the main wedding color, I thought it would be cool to make some red chalkboards.

I just painted the chalkboard paint onto the glass of a frame

I started to imagine all the creative possibilities with chalkboard paint. I thought of painting one whole wall for kids to draw on (but wait, we don't have kids!), or painting the doors in our house like Elsie's (from A Beautiful Mess) bedroom door, but what I really wanted to paint most was our pantry doors. I thought it would be a cool way to write out our to-do list, grocery list, and to keep track of our busy schedule, not to mention a super cute way to write notes to each other!

It took some convincing for Tad to let me do it. But not without a compromise- instead of the whole pantry, he thought maybe I could just do part of it or little squares. I think he'll agree that it is pretty cool, yea?

It only needed two coats and I still have almost the whole can left! I think my next project will be to paint some of the many glass bottles I have lying around (I save anything glass- spaghetti sauce jars, pickle, jars, beer bottles, you name it) and use them as vases. I'll post pictures of those when I finish them!

Have you been inspired by chalkboard paint? I tend to get carried away with things so it's all I can do to contain myself from painting everything- I can imagine the look on Tad's face if he walked into the house with all the furniture turned into a chalkboard! Ha!

Embossing Fun

Ever since I was a kid, I always loved going to the craft store- I could spend hours wandering the aisles. I love DIY crafts, especially with paper products, and I never throw away the bits of scrap paper left over because they are just too cute to throw out! So over the years, I've collected a bin of leftover paper and I finally decided to do something with them-  so I got out my embossing tools to make some cute cards! It was really easy and simple, and each card only took a couple of minutes to make.

My bin of scrap paper

Items you need:

1) Stock/scrapbook paper

2) Embossing heat tool

3) Embossing powder

4) Stamps and stamp pad

5) Optional: ribbon/embellishments

You can find all these products at your local crafts store 

Steps:

1) Ink your stamp and stamp the image on your paper

2) Pour some embossing powder onto the image while it is still wet

3) Tap the excess powder off (put it back into the bottle to use again)

4) Heat until the powder melts and becomes shiny (usually takes 10-15 seconds)

I made thank you cards, congratulation cards, I love you cards, thing of you cards, etc! I guess I won't be needing to buy cards for awhile. Do you like to do arts and crafts? If you do, you probably have lots of scrap paper saved up too. Well, now you can finally use them up!