My Funny Valentine: James Bond is crafting KING!!!

Ah, Valentine's Day! A day to pay twice as much as normal for flowers and big ugly heart shaped boxes of chocolates. Ah, amore!

Well, Indy had cooked up a plan with Gigi (my mom) to take us out for dinner and buy me flowers. Indy said this was a very special V-Day as it would be the last one that it was just the 3 of us. Awwwwww.....

I got these flowers:

And these:

Indy told me he looked at the premade bouquets but could get me more flowers if he bought the loose flowers and if he did that, I could put my "special touch" on them.  What a sweet boy!

James Bond had been specifically told (by me) not to buy me chocolates (pregnant + chocolate = disaster) and said he couldn't step on Indy's plans to buy me flowers so he had to think of something different.  Let me back up here.  James Bond works in a very secure building.  Let's just leave it at that.  I'm not even allowed in without surrendering all my electronics and having an escort.  It's not worth the hassle, so I don't go to his office.  This secure building has to be locked up every night by an officer, so they rotate out this duty.  James Bond had been tasked with it for the first 2 weeks of Feb, which meant he would be getting home late every night.  Why?  Because not only do military work there, but civilian contractors too, many of whom do not have their families with them (and often forget that most military members do), and who like to work late into the evening.  James Bond had to stay until the last of them was gone.  A few nights, he had to throw them out because it was pushing 9 pm and he was ready to go home.  Civilian contractors also like to work late so they can come in late in the mornings, not thinking that they are keeping someone else there at night waiting on them.  Got that?  Yeah, so while James Bond sat and waited for the civilians to leave (believe me, if they can, the military flee as quickly as possible after 5pm), he thought about what to do for me for V-Day.  He's very artistic (he's a lefty, which means he's incredibly right brained) and came up with an idea.  He had paper clips and coffee filters aplenty, so he googled how to make flowers from coffee filters.  He watched a tutorial by Martha Stewart but decided he didn't like the way she did them (take that Martha) and could come up with his own way.  He started cutting the coffee filters and experimenting.  He started hand coloring them with markers, but decided that was too much work, so the next morning he smuggled out our food coloring (good thing I had no plans to use it) and his box of water colors.  While he was in charge of the building, he also couldn't leave for lunch, so on his lunch break and after he finished work, he made flowers!  His co-workers thought he had lost it, but when they saw them beginning to take shape, actually commissioned him to make some for their wives and daughters!  Ha!  He told them when he finished mine, he would get to work on theirs.

So, on V-Day, he pulled out a little vase of these:

Can you believe that????  I was totally blown away.  Of course everyone says homemade gifts are the best, but rarely get around to actually making them (especially guys).  Let's take a closer view at a few of them, shall we?

He decided to use some old buttons he found at the Re-Use-It center for the middle of several of the flowers.  He hand cut each of these petals and leaves!  The stems are straightened out paper clips.

This is my favorite flower.  It's actually the very first colored one he made.  He hand colored the petals with a yellow marker and put the detailing on with an orange marker.  This one is very full and looks real to me.

This flower is ingenious!  He wanted to do something "different" (as if he wasn't already!), so he found some sheet music online, put it into a PowerPoint slide, taped a coffee filter to a piece of paper and ran it through the printer.  He then reversed the coffee filter and ran it through again so there would be music on both side.  He's very clever! Isn't it neat???

 

He knows I love tulips, so he made one too!  I didn't get a photo of the center, but he covered a button with a gold Hershey Kiss wrapper that had a heart on it!

The button used on this one is from an old pillow he found at the Re-Use-It.  He pulled off the buttons and tossed the pillow.  He said it was gross anyway, but he liked the buttons.

A lily.

A peach rose.

And the last one I took a close up of, is his least favorite, but I think it beautiful because of the paint details.  It's a carnation bud.  Look at the coloring!

He didn't wrap the coffee filters like many of the tutorials suggested, but rather hand cut each and every petal on every flower.  No two flowers are alike!  I almost cried when he handed me the vase (it is actually an Old McCormick's grinders salt shaker that he pulled the top off of) because of the amount of work and thought that went into this gift.  He's been showing me how he makes them in the evenings (he's not closing the office anymore) and really, this is a detailed process.

After I got my flowers, we went to our favorite Italian restaurant, Casa Sorrento.  Indy paid for dinner (via money Gigi sent him) and then we went to see Tangled (which is awesome).  It was indeed a very special Valentine's Day. 

BTW, James Bond said he might be willing to do an online tutorial if anyone is interested. If not, he said he'd show me how and I'll do one, though I don't know if I'd be quite as good at it as he is.  He's super talented, isn't he???

Project completed(ish)

You may remember my post last week where I wondered how some bloggers get so much done.  My mom thought I was griping, but I wasn't.  I was genuinely curious.  Well, anyway, between crazy contractions (this child wants out!), I actually got something done! Three somethings. Sort of.

Since everyone else in blogland is ripping apart old books, I thought, hey, why not? and attacked some old books I got for free. Huzzah! James Bond thought I had lost my mind when he saw me ripping off the covers.  I think he thought I'd finally been pushed too far.  Hahahahahah!  Oh, sorry.  I liked the look, but thought it needed something more.  I printed off a French postcard from The Graphics Fairy {heart!} and put it under the twine.  Cute, eh?

Here's a closer shot of the side.  The webbing and paper didn't want to come off in two ares, but had a small strip between, so I took the rest off in a similar pattern.  I like the effect.

I also put some of my mini Eiffel Towers in (under?) my cloche and printed off some more post cards from The Graphics Fairy to place behind them.  I think it looks nice.  Not really a project per se (unless you count the whole process of sizing, printing AND cutting-whew, I'm exhausted), but still.

A while back I saw these awesome Hanging Flower Balls over at House of Smith (actually I saw them on another blog that led me to the HoS, but I can't for the life of me remember which blog-sorry about that!) and knew I wanted to make a smaller version of them to...I don't know.  Sit around?  Put in apothecary jars?  In my bread bowl?  Whatever, I just knew I wanted to make them.  I got my crepe paper and read the tutorial about a million five times and went to work.  Now, over in the tutorial she says "Seriously, you CAN'T mess these up!"  Well, to quote a famous little, yellow cartoon bird "She don't know me very well, do she?" Oh believe me, I could (and did) mess more than a few of these up. Badly.  It looked like a crepe paper massacre had happened at my house.  I may have even uttered quite a few very unpretty words. Maybe.  I don't really recall.  I'm just saying it's a possibility.  I persevered though and finally got my groove on and started cranking out the crepe paper roses.  I then glued them onto styrofoam balls.  Side note: I'm afraid my glue gun, Matilda, may be on her last legs.  She's not working very well anymore.  Poor, sweet Matilda.  She's been so loyal and only burned my fingers a few dozen times..  Anyway, because of all the complete goofs minor mess ups, I didn't have enough to finish the pink rose ball and then when I went back to the store, they were out of the pink crepe.  Gah!  I got most of the ball covered though and then just put the blank spot down.  I'm smart like that.  Can't even tell can you?  Here's a close up of the white rose ball.

And finally, here it is all together.  I had to use the flash though (ick) because I didn't have enough light to get a decent photo. 

Hope you all have a lovely Valentine's Day!


Linking to:

Birds and Bees Baby Shower (not for me!)

You all know by now that I'm pregnant (or if you didn't, you do now), but you probably didn't know that Chiquitita, my neighbor is too!  In fact, she's due in 3 weeks!  I threw here a baby shower today and it was awesome (if I do say so myself-which I totally do).  Her last name is Byrd (I asked if I could put that online and she said sure), so I decided to go with the theme Birds and Bees.  Get it?  Byrd/Bird?  Yep, I'm clever like that.  These are the invited I made.  I used 2 different scrap book papers, a Martha Stewart 3D bee sticker and a clip art bird (I put a sticky foam under the bird to give it a 3D look too).

This is the food table.  I made tissue paper pom poms (OMG, so easy!  I can't believe I haven't done this before) and cute out some birds from the same scrap book paper I used for the invites.  Oh, BTW, the first tissue paper pom pom I made was a hot mess.  I folded the paper on the long side instead of the short side and it so did not work.  D'oh!
For food we had Bruschetta, pasta salad, fruit skewers, hot spinach artichoke dip, cookies, punch and cake.  The super awesome Hoosier Mom (who will one day update her blog!) made the cake.  There are close ups below.

Tissue paper pom poms (there are a million tutorials online, just put "tissue paper pom poms" in your search box and they'll pop up) and cut out birds.  Since I don't have a Silhouette (sadness), those birds were all cut out by hand.  I printed off a bird from MS Word, traced it onto the scrap book paper and cut them out.  I think the effect is cute.

Cutlery and napkin caddy.  I used some left over tissue paper to make the little flower on top. I also made a corsage for Chiquitita the same way.

Fruit Skewers!  Yummy!

The gift/favor table (before all the gifts arrived).  The favors were personalized candy bars and egg shaped candles.  BTW, James Bond made all the bird's nests for me.  He's my new crafting hero!

Look at this cake!!!  Is it not adorable????  AND it was delicious.  Hoosier Mom rocks!  We took some left over bee stickers and put them on wire to make it look like they were flying around the hive.

Me and Chiquitita.

Since I too am pregnant, I didn't want to do any physical shower games (and I'm not a fan of the games where you have to taste things-especially that dirty diaper/candy bar game), we did a simple game where the names of animals were listed and everyone had to write down what the baby is called.  This is harder than it sounds.  Do you know what a baby platypus is called?  A puggle!  Who knew?  Well, actually I did, but only because it was mentioned once on Phineas and Ferb.  The prize was the two potted plants on the gift table.  Things got really serious when they found out the plants were up for grabs.

We mostly sat around and chatted and ate (way too much).  It was loads of fun.  I hope you enjoyed your peek at the birds and bees baby shower!

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Crafty girl-y gifts

Yesterday I was feeling crafty (okay, let's be honest, I'm always feeling crafty, but yesterday it was more craft crafty than "crafty"), but also girly. With Indy, I can do lots of craft things, but not girly. Sometimes I just need to be girly and luckily TOM and TOM's wife (who will now be known at the Contessa, for while she is Hispanic, grew up in Italy, speaks Italian and loves Italian foods and wine) have 2 girly girls. The younger one (Principessa) is more girly than the older one (Mona Lisa), but they're both girly and I love it. I decided to make monogrammed canvases for them last night. Pink and purple and green and jewels! Hurrah!!!!!

Principessa is 5 and super girly. She loves pink and green. My kind of girl.


Here it is from the side. Principessa is more of a go with the flow free form kind of girl (who loves my shoes, thus showing she has excellent taste), so I didn't want to center her initial or make the decor around it too balanced.

Mona Lisa (so named because of her love of all things Davinci, especially the Mona Lisa) is 9 and much more structured than Principessa. Mona Lisa is also a HUGE fan of purple. Big time. She also really likes things to balance out, so I went a little more traditional and even for her. Well, it's hand done so it's not perfectly even, but that's okay. Hers has pink polka dots on the side, but I forgot to take a photo of that.


Here they are together. The canvases are small, probably 5x5, and the perfect size for a cute little gift. They took me about 30 minutes total, plus drying time. The girls loved them and I got to do something girly.