This is the concept board from the How Beautiful, Que Bow-nita (get it, bow?!?!), welcome home baby shower I put together a few weeks ago. Let’s just say there were bows everywhere including edible fruit roll-up bows, hair bow favors for the girls, and neck bow tie favors for the boys.

The kids and I decided to make these bracelets as a Mother’s Day craft. You will need old, plastic, bangle bracelets that you don’t care for anymore. If you don’t have any, you can pick some up from a second hand store. I picked up a few for about $0.70 each. You will also need scissors and colored string from the craft store. Wrap the string around the bangle in any design that you want.  Pretty Easy!

This is a follow-up project to the chalkboard garden stakes that I made for our garden.  They look and work great, however, if you water the garden liberally like my husband (and I am sure most people do), your garden stakes will also get wet, and then, you are back to square one.  So, I moved our chalkboard garden stakes to our potted plants (my hubby is more careful while watering these) and replaced the stakes in the garden with rock garden signs.  The kids and I collected the flat rocks that we had in the backyard, painted them with black craft paint, and used a metallic marker to label each rock. Now he can water away. The rocks won’t mind!

Today, I decided to take a little break away from getting ready for an event this weekend to enjoy the wonderful overcast morning with my kids. Overcast turned to very windy, which turned our yard into a yellow mess thanks to our blooming palo verde trees (already there when we bought our house). As the yellow blooms went flying with the wind, I thought to myself, our neighbors have got to hate us right now and that my husband is going to be in for a task cleaning this up. But then I thought to myself, why worry about that now? Why not try to enjoy this tree (minus the wind). I cut off some of the floral branches (careful, those things have thorns) and placed them in an amber class bottle.

Tomorrow, a yellow mess!

But today, beautiful!

I love this man.  Happy Birthday to my amazing hubby.  In celebration of this day, download a free 4.5x5.5 inch half fold version of this colorful happy birthday circle card.

What a difference a year makes. Easter 2011, my baby, uninterested, lays in the grass, feet from a colorful egg. Easter 2012: This same baby, running with a bucket full of eggs.

I admit it, for most of my life, I thought eggs were only white. When I found out that some were brown, it shook my world. And light blue eggs just seem like unicorns to me. I still don’t entirely believe they exist since our little chicks are still babies and haven’t provided me any proof yet. So this year, for Easter, I will have to settle for dying them natural colors using natural dyes from the things we already have in our home or garden.

For our egg dyes, we used our spinach, green tea, red onions, and carrots.

1. To start, boil your vegetables (or tea) in water for about 15-20 minutes. Experiment with the hues by adding more vegetables or steeping longer. I didn’t want to use up too many vegetables, so I only used half of a red onion, 4 large carrots, 10 leaves of spinach, and 3 bags of green tea in 16 ounces of water.
2. Strain out your vegetables and set the water aside in a bowl to cool.
3. Place your hard boiled eggs in the dyed water. For more intense color, add 1-2 tablespoons of white vinegar for every cup of dye (helps to hold the color). For longer dying times (and safer to eat eggs), move the eggs in dye to the refrigerator. Take them out once you have achieved the desired color (could take minutes, could take hours).

Very subtle, natural looking eggs. Maybe next time we’ll go a little bolder. I will be passing on the glitter though.

I’m slowly making progress on the concept boards for my website and portfolio upgrade coming this summer.  I love this paper airplane/cookie fest birthday party.  Four year olds are so creative.

I love peacocks. After all, it does happen to be a teal bird. Whenever I take my kids to the zoo, I try to get a shot of one of these amazing things showing it’s full feathers. Never, ever, ever happens! It’s seriously on my “to do” list (along with bake macaroons, do 50 off knee push-ups in a minute, and a bunch of other things).

Well, a few weeks ago, while preparing for a photo shoot, this bird BEGGED me to take it’s photo, so I did! Yes!!!! These photos, along with this Crate & Barrel vase that I received as a gift from my Mom 2 (mother-in-law), serve as the inspiration for my master bedroom.

Next stop, pistachio macaroons…I gonna need more time on those push-ups.