I'll Be Getting Crafty

Is it just me or do the weeks just seem to be flying by lately? I can't believe that the weekend is already over (sigh).

So thanks to Pinterest, I have now discovered the wonderland that is Etsy. I had come across a t-shirt for Paige a while back that I knew the moment I saw it, she was getting it for Christmas. See, she has a bit of a Harry Potter obsession and you can't just stroll into JC Penny and expect to find the contents of Diagon Alley on the shelves. Etsy however, is a whole different ball game!

They had more Harry Potter stuff on there than I could have ever imagined. Over 250 pages worth in fact! I did order her Make Love Not Horcruxes shirt off there last week and I've been browsing ever since. I even went and installed the app on my phone and have already created a decent sized list of favorite items.

Now, I've never really been good at arts and crafts despite having an over abundance of crafting supplies. We have glitter literally coming out of every nook and cranny of the house (even when we've vacuumed 100s of times between uses) and enough glue and stickers to put back together the London Bridge if need be. Owning said craft supplies, does not however, make one good at being crafty. The attempts have always been there in spurts over the years though. Yesterday, we pulled all of this out because Anne had a project to make Naked and Thankfully Un-Anatomically Correct Santa a new suit.

Ultimately she only asked for my help with this because she wanted me to decorate Santa for her. I did help her cut things out and did the gluing, but all the decorating was her responsibility.

Once the craft supplies were scattered around the living room like a vast array of glittery landmines, it did spark that urge to get creative. I had seen these awesome photo transfer blocks on Etsy this week and now I've got it in my head that I don't have to order them, I can simply make them myself.

I found a video on YouTube that seems like it will be simple enough to follow and went through 1000's of pictures yesterday and picked out the one's I like for each person in my family. Last year, I did goodie baskets because frankly, if my family wants something they just go out and get it. It makes Christmas maddening sometimes, so it seemed just the thing I was looking for this year.

We don't have any of the girls this weekend since Lena is headed to my sister's house and I will be taking over the kitchen in an attempting to pull this off...

The Best Presents End in Tears

It's been a very busy weekend around our house. Yesterday we celebrated Lena's, Paige's, and my sister Frissy's birthday with my family.

I have lots of photos from the party, which I will get around to putting up in the next couple of days. In the meantime though, I wanted to share our gift to my sister. My sister Frissy is an amazing person. When she was younger, she was the family wild child. However, she's long since grown out of her rebellious teen angst phase and transformed into one of the kindest, most responsible, and one of the hardest working people I know. I'm so proud of who she's grown into and I'm excited to see how she'll evolve in the years to come.

As you know, we're currently trying to purchase a home next summer, so the decision for the gift was certainly one James and I put some thought into. However, we both agreed that no one deserved it more than she did and he knows that she's always been my rock.

So we decided to contribute a piece to her upcoming wedding in August. Granted it's not even a dent in the cost to have 50 people at Brookfield Zoo sipping down cocktails with the dolphins, but we knew it would be a huge contribution anyway. We figured it would mean way more than a Starbucks gift card...