Kristin's Baby Shower

My friend Kristin is eagerly waiting for her little girl to arrive in June, and I had the honoring of hosting a baby shower for her this past weekend.

Every great baby shower starts with cute invitations, right? I designed the invitations in Adobe Illustrator and printed them out at home on plain white cardstock.

Please excuse the censored text...but you get the idea. Then I added a special touch to the blank space at the top of the invite, bunting!


I cut out small triangles of scrapbook paper for the bunting, and attached them to the invite with a little bit of glue before using my sewing machine to sew them to the paper. Sewing through paper will dull your needle quite a bit, so be sure to replace it with a new one before you sew any fabric projects.

For decorations, I sewed a pink fabric bunting for the mantel and made crepe paper balls of roses (tutorial here), which I hung above the table. If you'd like to try your hand at making one, give yourself plenty of time, because they are very time consuming to make! The larger balls took two full rolls of crepe paper. I skipped a couple of steps in the tutorial to save some time, and found that it didn't really affect the appearance of the ball. First, I didn't crumple the crepe paper. I simply folded over the top edge of the crepe paper when rolling my flowers so they would look more natural. Second, I only used two drops of hot glue, one at the beginning, after a few rolls, and another at the end, to keep the flower from unraveling.

Her crib bedding is bird themed so I made a bib, burp cloth, and blanket using a black and pink bird print. Instead of using a gift bag or box, I packaged it all up in a metal bird cage.

I followed this tutorial to make the heart cut-out in the blanket. Here's a view of the back of the cut-out after it's been turned and pressed:

And here's the front before adding the lining fabric:

There were little flags for the cupcakes...

and bunting for the cake...

In lieu of a traditional guest book, I designed these little cards:

Guests wrote a special message then tied them to a vase of branches with ribbon. Later, I put them on a ring for the mom-to-be to take home with her.

Each guest got to take home some homemade beeswax lip balm.

Congratulations Kristin, we can't wait to meet your little girl!

Transformer box in disguise

We have an electric transformer box in in the corner of our back yard. Not the most attractive thing to gaze at when enjoying a meal on the patio. We planted some cast iron plants around it last year, but they haven't done much to hide it.

We had thought about building a small fence in front of it, like many of our neighbors had done. However, whatever we built could only cover the front of the box, since we had to leave at least 8 feet of clearance on the side for the electric company. So I thought, why not use an old headboard? Hours after this idea popped into my head, I was driving home for work and saw a twin headboard in the parking lot of our local thrift store. They always have good prices so I stopped in to take a look, and I'm glad I did, because it was just $7! Before sealing the deal I made sure it was made of solid wood, not particle board, which wouldn't last long outdoors.

Before

Before putting it in the ground, we extended the bottom of the headboard with some scrap wood, then primed and sealed it with a coat of white paint.

After

Patio Steps

Since I failed to get a good before pic of this project, I'll have to make do with this old property listing photo. See that lattice that closes in the patio? And that teeny tiny opening to the backyard at the right?

At some point there was a hot tub out here, so we figure the lattice was there for privacy. Along with those red shades that you can just make out at the right of the picture. Steamy.

Here's a picture of Zach working on the sprinkler system, during which he got sidetracked and tore down one of the lattice panels. You can also see the edge of the flower bed, which had to be moved over a few feet.

Here's how it looked after we moved the flower bed and removed the second panel:



Next, we needed to extend the step so there wasn't such a sharp drop from the patio to the yard. We tore out the old step so we could build one solid step that extended all the way to the flower bed. We used pressure treated pine and secured it to the concrete patio slab using masonry screws. We also filled in around the step with gravel to improve drainage and prevent the boards from rotting.

You can spy the beginnings of our next project in the photo above...any guesses? It's got something to do with that white blob behind the bushes.

Moss Letters

Image from Pottery Barn

Image from dear lillie

What you'll need:

Wooden craft letters (I used 6" letters)

Reindeer moss

Hot glue gun + glue

Total project cost for 6 letters: $11

Using a got glue gun, glue the moss to the front and sides of the letter. I suggest doing one small section at a time, so the hot glue doesn't harden before you have a chance to stick the moss on. For six 6" letters, I used one 4 oz bag of moss. The moss tears easily and is very pliable, so it's not difficult to fit it to the shape of the letter. However, to help define small curves, I found it helpful to wrap the moss around to the back of the letter and secure with a drop of hot glue.

You run, you slide...

you hit the bump and take a dive! (If you have no idea what you just read, click the video below and be transported back to 1991.)

So why the reference to backyard summer fun in the middle of March? This is why:

The sprinkler system is finally done! But I'm getting ahead of myself...let's recap the final stage of the project (Read the rest of the story here).

We dug up and replaced all of the valves and valve boxes and did a little rewiring.

And since we're now experts at replacing sprinker heads, here's a brief how-to:

What You'll Need:
Riser
Teflon tape
PVC pipe cutter
Sprinkler head

First, dig around the old sprinkler head until you reach the white PVC pipe at its base. Take care while digging so you don't break the underground line. Unscrew the old head and throw away. You may need to clean out the PVC pipe if it has a bunch of gunk in it. Wrap the end of the riser with teflon tape and screw in to the sprinkler line. Screw on the sprinkler head to determine the right height. You want the top of the head to be level with the ground so it doesn't get damaged by the lawnmower or foot traffic. Unscrew the sprinkler head and cut the riser at one of the unthreaded sections, using a PVC pipe cutter. One you've cut your riser to the correct height, wrap the top with more teflon tape and screw on the sprinkler head. Fill in the hole and your done! Repeat 30 times.

We also installed micro-drip lines in some of the flower beds. Adapters are available that can be easily screwed onto a riser where you would normally install a sprinkler head. From this adapter you can run flexible rubber hosing that connects to a variety of drip irrigation heads, like the one below.

Flagstone Walkway

Before

Before, you had a direct line of sight from the street to our lovely brown trashcan. This area was constantly muddy, and despite our best efforts, we couldn't get any grass to grow here....of course the weeds and moss had no objections.

We removed a couple inches of dirt to make room for the gravel and flagstone, then dug a trench around the perimeter of the walkway for the edging. We went with a composite edging for it's affordability and resistance to rot. It's also made from recycled materials and more flexible than metal edging. It's very easy to install; all you need is a rubber mallet and the metal stakes included with the edging to secure it into the ground. We added a wooden trellis and framed out a small flower bed in front of it.

The next step was to lay the flagstone. We started with a layer of limestone road base then layed down our flagstone pavers. On top of that went crushed granite, to fill in all the cracks between the stones.

After

We planted a knock out rose bush in the front flower bed and a bougainvillea in the bed along the fence. They should be very pretty when in full bloom, and the rose bush will help disguise the trash can even more.