TutorialsPhotobucketSponsorsPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket

PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket
Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Week to Week

I wont be posting as detailed Week to Week posts. They are VERY time consuming and I would rather be spending my time on other projects. However, I still plan on showing you some of the things I LOVE every once in a while! I am in Arizona with a friend this week. Here are my favorite finds this morning!

I bought this antique gold frame for $4 dollars.

I bought this old silver tea set for $7. 

I also bought this geometric mirror for $3 dollars!  
I can't to show you what I am going to do with them!!!
Have a good Saturday!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

DIY Newborn Photography Props


A week or so ago I decided to drive up to Provo to help my little brother and his wife with their brand new baby girl. I brought my camera to hopefully get some pictures of her while she was still in the newborn stages. They have a little bitty one bedroom apartment but the lighting was amazing! They may never invite me back over though because I made a disaster of the apartment moving stuff around to get the pictures we wanted.
This is me hanging out the window to get a better shot. Whatever it takes to get a good picture, right?

We were really unprepared. We didn't have much to make our pictures cute. I brought a basket, a blanket and a few bows. Knowing we needed more, we headed to D.I. to find a little inspiration. Every prop we used in the photo session was either from D.I. or a garage sale. BUT before I show you what we found I have to show you this ADORABLE baby! This is my niece Lilliamae. I LOVE HER!

  I bought the long brown basket and cream textured blanket at a garage sale. The basket was $3 dollars and the blanket was $5. We made the green cocoon that Lilli is wearing from an old sweater we bought for $5 at D.I.

 This basket and the floral sheet inside were bought at D.I. The sheet was $3. We also used it as a back drop in several other pictures. The basket was $2 dollars. We threw some white paint on it when we got home. Here is the before...  

The green fabric in this basket was found in the place mat section at D.I. We paid $3 for it. The brown pin wheels in the background of the picture were made from a roll of paper my sister-in-law bought at a garage sale.

And you will never guess where this cute little lace skirt came from!!!!!!
It's literally the lace sleeves off one of the shirts we bought! 
Here is what we did with the rest of the shirt.
We also bought this shirt for $5.


To make our cocoon for baby Lilli, we literally just laid out the sweater, laid her on top of it, stretched her legs out, traced around her and cut it out. My sister-in-law hand stitched it because we were afraid the fabric wouldn't work well with a sewing machine  
You can use any shirt you find at D.I. for newborn photo sessions! When you are shopping look for cool textures and you will probably want to shop in the plus size to make sure you have enough fabric on the t-shirt to make something out of. For a wrap like the cream one, all you have to do is cut the sleeves and the neckline out, get the baby asleep in a cute little ball, place the fabric on top and start to tuck the fabric under her!(Sounds easy enough right??) There are lots of awesome videos on Youtube that show you how to do this! I really like the videos by Ana Brandt.

Here is a better picture of the pinwheels 

I LOVE what my sister-in-law did with these!!! They cover the entire wall above her couch. She made ALL of these with this roll of paper she found at a garage sale for .25 cents! 
Here is her explanation on how she made them: You start out by folding a long piece of paper back and forth, just like you were making a paper fan. The width of the paper will be the radius (I think that's the right term... distance from the center to the edge?) of your pinwheel. It is also important to note that the bigger the pinwheel, the longer your paper will have to be. Then you cut a circle out of card stock that is smaller than your pinwheel will be. (For large pinwheels 5 inches across is pretty good.) Then take each end of your folded paper peice and glue them together. You'll end up with a long tube of folded paper. Now gently push one end down until you have a flat pinwheel. Apply hot glue liberally to one side of the cardstock you cut out earlier and place in the center of the back of your pinwheel. A button in the front center is optional. Apply to wall individually or arrange and connect as desired. I have also attached a tutorial If you're a visual learner like me. (CLICK HERE)







Here is a list of bloggers that I occasionally link my project:
Mon:
Tues:
Wed
Thurs
Fri
Sat
sun

monthly







Monday, March 17, 2014

My Year From Hell

The last personal post, before I committed blog suicide, was my “Praying for Trials” post. That was a deeply personal post and I am so grateful for the support I was given from it. The posts that I will be sharing about the events that have happened during my blog disappearance will be equally personal. I want to talk about them because writing is a therapy and I want to help anyone that may be struggling with similar issues. I won't be able to talk about everything, but I will talk about most things as they become easier for me to deal with and overcome.  If there is anyone out there going through similar challenges or can relate in any way, I want you to know you are not alone. There were so many times that I felt like I was alone and had no one to turn to except for The Man Upstairs. Essentially, He is enough.  However, it’s still always nice to have someone here on this earth that you can talk to. If even one person benefits or finds strength from the difficult lessons I have learned in the last year, then I will consider my struggles to have meaning.

Last year, I had to press charges against a babysitter in March; had a cancer scare in October; struggled to understand a prompting that haunted me all year; separated from my husband and was on the verge of divorce In November; and ended the year not wanting to get out of bed, having suicidal thoughts running through my head and on depression medication. Although all of these issues have been extremely difficult to deal with, some are easier to talk about than others. I will not be discussing the details of my marital issues on this blog, those are extremely personal to me. What I will say about marriage is that, no one ever told me it was going to be this hard. Whoever coined the term "and they lived happily ever after" should be strung up and hung from a tree. Every marriage has its issues and they are all HARD. The last year of my marriage has been harder than I ever imagined. I want to be clear, I am not in any way blaming my husband. I have been responsible for many of the difficult  issues we have been through but, it came to a point that I realized that there was no one else that I wanted to walk through hell with but the man that I knelt across the alter from. 







“True Love” is not what the media makes it out to be. It's not hot passionate sex; it's not love at first sight; it's not happily ever after; it's not even being in love all the time. Something I heard someone say to a couple who was just married is, "This is the person you will fall in and out of love with for the rest of your life." It’s so true. If you’re marrying someone because you are so in love with them, you are going to be disappointed. Marry someone who you are willing to love trough the difficult situations, when you’re not IN love with them.  Eventually, all sparks die and you are left with an individual that you have to work hard to love and make your life together the best that it can be; a partner who is meant to be there through thick and thin; someone who is there to bear your burdens with you; someone who will be willing to pick you up when you’re down and when your life is falling apart. Just because the sparks are gone and you're not IN love doesn't mean you give up, or that you can't work hard to rekindle the flame. “True Love” is that old couple walking down the street hand in hand; the old man who holds his wife as she takes her last breath; the old woman who spoon feeds her husband because he cannot do it himself anymore. “True Love” is that couple that sticks together through hell and fire, affairs, the death of a child, cancer, struggling teenagers and any other difficult situation. Love is a choice not a feeling. It is the image of a couple that walks through hell together and comes out on the other side hand in hand.-quote from the man who has helped me through my year of hell. Dean nixon over at Turning Leaf 

 At the moment that I knelt down and prayed for trials, I knew the next year would be difficult. In my mind, I thought I was submitting my will to the Lords.  In the last year and a half, not once have I asked “why me?” These were definitely not the trials I was expecting, but they are what I asked for.  Is my difficult year over? Probably not. I am still going through some things I would never wish upon any parent, and still working out some difficult kinks in my marriage. And still, I never ask “why me?” because I know that the Lord is taking a rock that was once rough and had sharp edges and polishing it down until it is smooth and beautifully perfect in its own way. Because that’s the way he meant it to be. The scriptures say that “All of these things shall be for your good." Through the experiences I have had in my life, I’ve learned to trust the Lord. I know that he is there. I know that he hears our prayers. I know that he has a plan for me, for you, and for the world. His plan is better than any plan we could have come up with on our own, simply because He can see things we can't.  He knows things we don't. Trust Him and everything will work out in a way that will benefit you the most. It may not be the happy ever after you expected or wished for all your life, but you will have learned difficult lessons you could not have learned any other way, which will make you a better person and help you to become who the Lord intended you to be. What I know without a doubt and something that has been proven to me over the last year is that the Lord, is always with us. He knows our burdens and He is there and willing to bear them with us if we are willing to let Him. I know that I can get through anything with Him by my side.

I Linked to: