Wrapping up the weekend.

We had a lovely long weekend filled with triumphs at the swimming pool, the beautiful movie Hugo and birthday parties. Lots of birthday parties. The kids had four invitations in their hot little hands but a mom has to draw the line somewhere, so we only went to three of them. We have twice been the only people to show up at a birthday party. The heartbreak I imagine those kids would have felt if no one at all showed up compels us to try to make it to every party. But, four! In four days! Just no.

Mom had a lot of fun wrapping those three gifts.

When I saw these adorable glittered clothespin Christmas gift toppers from Creature Comforts, I knew I had to recreate them for little girl birthday gifts.





I wish Hello Kitty didn't have a metal hook protruding from her head, but I still love how these came out.



And, funny...I didn't remember the clothespins holding gift tags in the DIY. Totally thought I came up with that myself!

Then, again inspired by Creature Comforts, I set out to master Ez's pom pom method. This is so so much easier than the way I've always made pom poms that I want to make a million of them! What I love the most about this, is that Cheeseball decided that this wrap was pretty, but not quite sparkly enough. So, while I was in the shower, she broke out the glitter glue and made the pom poms perfect.



We were rushing out the door, so all I have is an instagram photo. But, I love the collaboration!

I always find boys to be a little harder to get creative with. Probably because I don't get to just glitter bomb everything. But, the little boy whose party we attended today is the sweetest, old soul of a child. So, I dressed up his gift with a windsor knot and tie. With footballs. Because, he's still 10.

Love is in the air. Or, on the wall.

So, let's just skip over the usual intermittent blogger dance and dispense with all the "wow, has it really been this long?"'s and "oh look, my blog still here"'s and get right to it.

When I first saw this I Love You Garland by Lovely Indeed (via Creature Comforts) last year, I knew I had to recreate it in sparkly pink for Cheeseball. And, it only took me a year!





I used a finer glitter (Although looking at the original DIY again, I now NEED chunky glitter. Just to have.)



And, I attached the letters to baker's twine with tabs at the top of each letter instead of mid letter. I printed the letters on cardstock, and if I were to do it again, I would glue the letters to a thicker cardboard first before cutting out and glitter bombing. But, I love it and I'm so glad I finally got around to it!

While we are definitely a "fair doesn't mean equal" household, I wanted to put some love up on El Niño's wall too. He is less partial to all things pink and sparkly than his sister. And he has just recently started to move out of the "I am Child and I am Awesome" phase of childhood and begun to discover the self doubt and concern about peer opinion that plagues us all through most of our school age years. So, I wanted to give him a daily reminder that I am still firmly in the "You are Child and You are Awesome" phase of motherhood.





If you would like to print the same in green for yourself, feel free to click through to flickr - just don't forget to click "view all sizes" and grab the largest. I coordinated the color with the JuneCraft print that I do love so. But, I also put together a file with the print in jpegs in several different colors as well as the original photoshop file so you can customize as you like! Download the file here.

I used Market Deco for both projects. Free for personal use!

Working on these two projects over the past two days has been SO fun. I've been feeling Christmas morning levels of anticipation and giddiness. And now, I can't WAIT for the kids to get home from school and see their little surprises.