Simple inspirations

Do you sometimes have a feeling that someone said something just the way you thought about it? It happens to me all the time and I love it. For today, I'd like to present you little inspirations found in the Woman's Day magazine (click to see enlarged view):

Smile (you just did, didn't you?) and have a nice day !

Simple inspirations

My froggy's birthday

My bébé celebrated her birthday yesterday, a very important one for me, like every single birthday since the day I looked in her eyes for the very first time. I looooove being mom, especially her mom: she is so beautiful, loving, intelligent and strong. I dare to think that I helped a little making her that way (well, ok, her father contributed too...in so many loving ways). She now lives in the big city 300 km south of her nest. We drove this weekend to see and to hug her and to give her presents and of course her special birthday cake. Here is what it looked like:

And before you even ask me, here is the answer: the frog is sitting on the cake because I call her "froggy". Yes, I'd like to think that I'm a good mother but I admittedly call her names, in many different languages: frog, froggy, froggilein, frosch, grenouille, fröschlein, žaba, žabica...

I don't even remember why I gave her this nick name but we all love it!

We really managed to surprise her with this cake - she had tears in her eyes and she asked  What on earth did I do to deserve this?! Well, sometimes we ask ourselves too: What on earth did we do to deserve YOU?! We love you soooooo much, bébé!

To create this little frog I was inspired by the lovely book 50 Easy Party Cakes from Debbie Brown:

I don't know if the frog survived this weekend, I'll keep you posted on this one...

My froggy's birthday

Decorating with (Love) Letters

The Apartment Therapy website is one of my preferred interior design sites and I read it daily for inspiration. In one of their October posts they presented decor inspired by old letters, postage stamps etc.

I immediately thought of my old letters that I framed in a shadow box and decorated my bedroom wall with it. Those are my long lost young girl letters that my sister sent me to my birthday last year. What a surprise it was ! She found them in the attic of my parents house, carefully hidden behind one of the wood beams. The letters were bound with the red ribbon exactly as I left them there long time ago. And even though I was very curios to read them again - I somehow couldn't do it. And there is also my first love letter ever among the others...

So I took the letters and put them carefully in a shadow box that I had for another project :

Decorating with (Love) Letters

Before and after : my cosmetic drawer

What you need to know about me beforehand : I am not a messie but I'm not a neat freak either. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I can have my days more in the one or the other direction, it depends...

Last week I had my pointer moving in the neat freak direction so I finally saw the cosmetic drawer under my bathroom sink for what it was : a major MESS ! I am so ashamed of it that I can NOT show you a big picture of "before" nor can I show you the complete "before" drawer in its messy gorgeousness, sorry...

Here is the picture of the left side of my drawer before I put my "neat freak goggles":

 To find a cheapish solution I went to the dollar store of course, my wallet isn't comfortable around the designer stores ;-) This is what I found :

 

That is what I call cheap: 3 containers for 1 $. And lovely colors to... Talking about recession design !

And just by chance they fit perfectly in my two drawer compartments. I started with the right side of my drawer and what a difference it made immediately :

Before and after : my cosmetic drawer

His first Halloween costume ever

Would you believe that I am about to sew my first Halloween costume in my very long carrier as hobby sewer ? First of all, where I grew up, we didn't have this holiday at all ! Last week my coworker / friend asked me if I could sew a costume for her 3-year-old son Noah, she wanted to have something more original then things she can by in stores, especially for his FIRST Halloween costume EVER ! I almost jumped for joy ! Of course I will : I love kids, I love sewing, I love Halloween, I love creating stuff of all sorts...
So I send her some pictures with the propositions of costumes for which I have a pattern. She picked this one with her son:

 

This pictures are rather small, sorry, they are the only ones I have. The costume and the pattern are from the Spanish sewing magazine called Patrones, issue 34 from January 2006. Aren't they adorable ?! You really should see all the others too, soooo cute, incredible ! I can post some other pictures,  if you are interested just tell me.

Well, needless to say, I went RUNNING to the fabric store to find all the necessary material (as if I needed a reason to yet another trip to fabric heaven...). I'm so excited, here is what I found :

  I especially love the printed one, I am going to make that lovely Chinese hat from it. Well I love it so much I am going to create Halloween candy bag in form of a Chinese lantern. This is what I'm using as an inspiration :

What I didn't find is a decorative ribbon to sew around the seams of the costume. We don't have lots of choices in my city and I can't order on the Internet because of the time / cost factor. I have only 25 $ to spend for all the materials so I have to find a solution for the ribbon that costs less then 5 bucks ! Sigh... Would you happen to have any ideas on this ? I would be really grateful for any helping suggestion of yours...
I'll keep you posted on the advancement of this project, there are more pictures to come next week!

His first Halloween costume ever

Confession of an image junkie

I have a confession to make, I must share this secret with you : I am an IMAGE JUNKIE ! Those of you who suffer from the same addiction know what I am talking about... My computer is full with pictures, thousands of them, heck, tens of thousands of all sorts of pictures found on the Internet. I love them dearly, I save them, organize them, watch them for inspiration, or just so, because they are beautiful and they can lift my mood any time ! I organize them in folders (or at least I try to...) by interest : deco, toys, craft, vintage, sewing etc. I am especially flabbergasted by so many talented girls out there, from all over the world, who share they talent with as others, less courageous to show off our work. Thank you all, girls !

My family mocks me about this addiction of mine, but, nonetheless, they bought me a brand new computer with loooooots of storage space for my little darlings - did I say that I love them ?

What about you ? Do you have the same (no, I won't say "problem") hobby ? Tell me about it !

Confession of an image junkie