Get your craft on: DIY crayons

I've read many articles about making your own crayons from broken ones using cookie molds, so I thought Wavey would find it a fun holiday project for kid-gifts. 

So here's the rub: We didn't have enough organically-derived broken crayons, so we broke a apart a box of new ones...and what an UNHOLY MESS it was to peel the wrappers off of them. 

Did you know generic crayons affix their wrappers with the same glue probably used to hold rocket ships together in space?  Yep, now you know, and I have the wax under my nails to prove it.

We melted the crayons in the oven at 275-degrees for about 15 minutes and let them cool completely before popping them out of the mold.  Success!

Gingerbread house FAIL

My sister is in town and we thought, "Let's buy one of those pre-fabbed gingerbread houses to decorate.  How difficult can that be?" 

I think you can guess where this is going...

It didn't help that Emily and I carry the gene of impatience as we didn't bother reading any instructions. 

Between the two of us, Emily and I carry college and post-graduate degrees...clearly none of which were in engineering.  Or good judgement. 

The walls wouldn't stick, the roof collapsed, and icing was EVERYWHERE.  The kids basically gave up on us, threw a few candy pieces our way and took off.

Even the gingerbread men look zombie-ish and disgusted by our work.  

Hello, holidays!

The over/under of Thanksgiving Day

Wavey threw me for a loop this year by actually eating Thanksgiving dinner.  Griffin, however?  Status quo.

World's greatest understatement

I'm rapidly realizing that I'm trending toward an obsession with cured meats these days, but when I ran across this in my local paper, I couldn't agree more with its sentiments:

Delicious bum

I am a child because I found this sign at a restaurant funny:

And yes, I ordered it, too.

Holiday cocktail party invitation

Can you believe we're pretty close to Christmas already?  I cannot.  But, my clients certainly are on the ball with plans for holiday cheer:

I designed this holiday cocktail party invitation using icicle blue, silver bell and cranberry inks on textured cardstock and matted it to a shimmering silver cardstock.  Very holiday glam.

(Personal information has been modified to protect privacy)

Christmas "cheese"

I've had some decent luck with several props I've been tyring out this year for kids' holiday photos, but I can't quite win with the frame...espec in the "ages 3 and under" group.  The evidence:

Popcorn cupcake wrappers

I love popcorn and I love cupcakes.  So this popcorn cupcake wrapper project I designed for a local bakery was a delicious fit. 

The bakery is going to fuse marshmallows and airbrush yellow frosting for the buttered popcorn effect for an upcoming movie-themed birthday party and will use the wrappers I designed above to tuck the "popcorn" cupcakes inside.  Clever! 

While the party for this bakery hasn't yet occurred, here's a photo I found via Project Nursery to show you the full effect:

Got an idea for a custom cupcake wrapper you'd be interested in having for an upcoming event?  Email me!  :)

Hello, cute microwave.

It is with great regret that I just recently purchased a regular, plain and functional microwave before coming across this Hello Kitty branded one:

It definitely wouldn't match my desire to make my home look more like grown-ups live here.  But then again, all hopes for that flew out of the window once the giant styrofoam doughboy joined the decor.

Family photo: FAIL

Taking photos of other people's children for holiday photo cards is easy for me.  Photos of my own kids?  Not so much:

Though, this sadly is quite the realistic snapshot of our day-to-day.

It's spooky how late this update is

Yeah, I'm a little late on the Halloween update train, but for posterity's sake, here's our annual Halloween photo op with our favorite friends from Into Ablivia:

And now, Halloween with the same group of goofy kids through the years:

Propped up

{Its been a while, hasn't it?  You know when life gets ahead of you a bit?  That was me.  But I'm back, and I've got lots of stuff to share!  So, enough about why I haven't blogged since forever ago.  Let's get back to the present...}

Meet my little friend, Bridget, whose parents graciously asked me to snap a little photo session to use for a custom Christmas card design.  So, I brought over a few props, like my red chair and a open white-washed frame.

And Bridget was having none of it.

So keep this in mind when doing your own photo shoots for the holidays: Kids, especially little ones, will not hold still for anyone. Or, get creative and crop out dad's arm: