Crafty Tuesday

Yesterday I sat down to make a little gift for my friend's birthday. In the process I was totally inspired to do some crafts for the afternoon. Over the past few years I have accumulated a bunch of scrapbooking stuff, but I just don't have a lot of time to scrapbook or the need to scrapbook. I decided to use all of the supplies I had to make some fun greeting cards.
Here is a little preview of what I was working on...

 This is my Christmas 4 pack...

 "First Day of School" cards

 Happy Thanksgiving!

 These are "miss you" and "hi from San Francisco" cards...

 "Sorry"

 The one on the left says "home sweet home"and the one on the right says "home" on the outside and on the inside says "congratulations on your new home"

 This says Family and Memories

 Friendship cards. The one top right says "I call you friend"

and the one on the bottom says "friendship".

 Engagement/Wedding Cards

The one middle right says "happily ever after"

The one on the bottom says "harmony"

 This one should have been on the engagement/wedding ones, but I missed it..."Together Forever"

 Just because cards...

 Happy Birthday

 Baby Boy Cards

Top right says "Welcome Precious Baby"

Bottom right says "Children are a gift from God"-inside says "Congrats"

The 2 on the left say "It's A Boy" on the middle ribbon

So, that is all of the cards so far...we will see if I feel inspired again today. I am now trying to decide what to do with all of them. They obviously are not good enough to sell on Etsy or anything like that, but we are having a garage sale in a couple of weeks and I was thinking about maybe trying to sell some of them there. We will see, maybe I will just keep them all for my own use. :)

Don't forget to check back for an update on the garage soon...

The Dreadful Garage

Lately I have been absolutely disgusted by our garage. It has (like many garages) become a place to throw all of the junk that we do not know what to do with. My first thought was, "where did all of this stuff come from?" We have not even lived in this house for a year and the garage is so full of stuff. Before we lived in this house we lived in a townhouse that did not have a garage, or any storage for that matter. So, somehow in the last 10 months we have accumulated enough stuff to fill the garage. Ugh.

Today I decided it was time to start going through all of this junk and organizing it. First I had to start getting rid of all of the cardboard we have accumulated. The problem is that we have made some big purchases in the past 10 months and they have all come in cardboard boxes, but the boxes are too big to fit into our recycle bin so we have just been letting them pile up. Bad idea. We will be making a trip to the dump to get rid of all of them in the next few days.

Once the cardboard boxes were out of the way I was ready to get started going through everything else. First I went through the stuff that I knew was mine. Most of it was stuff from high school and college that had been in the same plastic bin since then and I just kept toting it around for some reason. After looking through it, I realized that most of it was just stuff that I didn't need. Most of it went to the garage sale/goodwill pile.

All of my hubby's stuff that I came across I put in a pile for him to go through when he gets home from work. I have no idea what most of it is, so I don't want to through something away that looks like junk to me but is actually his most prized possession from high school. :)

My favorite part of the day was when I came across a box that his mom had dropped off a few months ago. It is his keepsake box and has tons of stuff from when he was a little kid. I spent probably 20-30 minutes looking through his baby book. Precious.

For now, I am done with the garage. Although it is not finished I am very satisfied with how it looks now, opposed to how it looked at 11:00AM this morning. My next step is to go through all of the Christmas boxes and organize them. Luckily, we have not accumulated too many Christmas decorations yet.  Once the garage is completely done I will post some pics.

Brad and Sonya's 30th Anniversary Party

My in-laws recently celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. My hubby and I decided to host an intimate dinner party for them and some of their close friends. We had so much fun prepping, hosting, and serving. Their actual anniversary was on June 27th but we hosted the party on July 1st. The dinner menu was as follows:

~Pear, walnut, and gorgonzola salad
~Homemade Focaccia Bread
~Grilled Asparagus and Grilled Sweet Potato
~Stuffed Pork Roast or Spinach and Cheese Ravioli
~Dessert: Creme Brulee

I made all of these courses, down to the salad dressing, myself (except for the ravioli). Everything turned out amazing...which was good considering it was my first time making all of these items.
If you are interested in any of the recipes I am more than happy to share. All of the recipes except the creme brulee came out of a cookbook that my mom let me borrow called "The Gathering of Friends."

I also did all of the decorating for the party. We decided to have the party out on our back patio. I hired my good friend Julia to do the flowers for me.
If you like what you see check her out at http://www.flowersbyj.com/Site/Home.html

We went with 3 cylinder vases filled with water, yellow floating orchids, and a floating candle on top. In the middle is a large cylinder bowl that has pieces of the floating orchids and several floating candles.

 One of my favorite things to see at an anniversary party is the bride's dress. My mother-in-law graciously let me display her wedding dress. Beautiful. (P.S. The secret to making it stand up is an ironing board.)

 On a table I had displayed their wedding picture, their wedding album, Sonya's bouquet from the wedding, the tie Brad wore when they were leaving the reception, the newspaper clipping announcing their wedding, and an arrangement of yellow roses (also done by flowers by j). The flowers they used in their wedding were yellow roses.

 My father in law brought me a bunch of pictures that he had recently found to display. I found 2 trellises in our backyard that I used to display the pictures. One of them had pictures from the wedding and the other one had pictures from Sonya's bridal shower and one from Brad's bachelor party.

 Our 8 dinner guests...

 Brandon decided to use the blow torch (that we were using for the creme brulee) to light the floating candles in the centerpieces. He was quite the entertainer that evening.

It was a great parry and we had so much fun doing it. Congratulations to my in-laws!! You are a great example of marriage for us.

So apparently I am not very good at keeping up on this blogging thing but life has been a little crazy lately. Summer is now in full swing for me. The hubs and I spent about 2 weeks in San Diego with both of our families. It was a great time to be with everyone.  Then when we got back from San Diego we were planning and preparing for a dinner that we hosted for my in-laws 30th Anniversary (blog to come about that with pictures soon).

For now I want to update you on the garden. Can I just say that I am pretty much in shock because this whole gardening thing is actually starting to work!! I was SO skeptical in the beginning because in the past I have killed just about every plant I have touched.   A few weeks ago we cut the cilantro and used it in some fabulous guacamole. We are hoping that it will continue to grow back throughout the summer.

Exciting News: I HAVE 7 TOMATOES!!! Woo Hoo!!!! It is so funny because I planted 3 different tomato plants from seedlings and one plant does not have any fruit on it yet, my biggest plant has 2 tomatoes, and my smallest plant (seriously, like a little midget tomato plant) has 5 on it. The small plant is a Roma  and the biggest one is a Better Boy. I also planted some tomato seeds and those plants are really growing but I think we are still a little while away from seeing any fruit.

My zucchini plant has a HUGE flower on it this morning, which if I remember correctly means that the zucchini cannot be too far behind.

My cucumber seeds all failed! BOOOO!!! Oh well, next time, I guess.

My bean plants continue to take off, but I have not seen too many "bean" looking things yet.

The other exciting thing is that my Dahlias have started to bloom and they are so amazing. Each plant is a different color and each day there is a new flower. They might be one of my new favorite flowers.
The hydrangea have also really taken off. Even though the plants were completely dead when we moved in, they have come back to life. I cannot take any of the credit for those though, my hubby is the one who did all of the maintenance on those.

I am just so excited to continue to watch all of the plants grow and change. And I really can't wait to eat my first tomato and zucchini!!