6 months in the making

My graduation party has been on my mind for quite some time. And I have continuously had little thoughts floating in my head for the big day. It was exactly what I was hoping for!

The theme was a vintagy-adult carnival, and I got my graduation announcement ideas from vistaprint.com (whom I LOVE).

 picture booth

 bucket later fulled with rubber ducks that had drinks written on their bottoms

 I stamped the background myself 

 made the cake. I love fondant

 popcorn machine- $7 thrift store. great find mom!

 fruit bowl with ferris wheel backdrop

 my mom made these cute little centerpieces with different college activities I was involved in

Brandon (and his tip jar he put on the bar), Kayla, and the aforementioned ducks

3 of the 4 :)

 we go wayyy back

 Some of my favorite dance factory dancers

 Kier (looking beautifully preggo) and Anson

 Some of the Allens!

 that would be me

 Kier, Anson, and I

 Marsha and I (she was an original founder of the 1954 ADPi colonization at UA- to the left of her, a colonizer of the 2008 chapter at UA)

 Mom and I (soooooo mad this came out fuzzy)

 Dustin and I, obvi

 Grandfather and Miss Craig (now Mrs. Harvey- my kindergarten and first grade teacher)

 George was in town and surprised me!

 sisterly love

 Me, opening a grad gift (which turned out to be my nanas wedding ring). pictures after its resized

 Mrs. Harvey and I

 some of the ladies

 this is a picture of stripes. not pictured, nicki. 

 woo!

 haha

 not really sure

 party alphie

 Amanda and Tony

 Gabby stepped in a cactus

A gift from my parents- isn't that a cool way to display your grad gear?

This was a night I won't soon forget and I am so grateful I had so many wonderful people there to celebrate it with me!

celebrate good times, come on!

I am so grateful, day 10

I am so grateful for Shutterfly, and the awesome 50 free prints discount they offer every once in a while. bomb.com

Scrapbooking made affordable, which I love. :)

day 10. 

Old Chair, New Chair

So we have had these hideous kitchen chairs for a while now, and it got to be too much to handle. So mom and I went to JoAnns, got some fabulous fabric (on clearance), and took it upon ourselves to make new chairs.

beginning product. what appears to be bum wearing area,

little house on the prairie print, (not pictured)

poor attachment of whoever put this disaster

of a fabric on before, etc. = HOT MESS

Step 1: take apart said horrendous chairs

step 2: rip old nasty fabric off and find vibrant orange beautiful cushions. They don't match the house, so they had to go... but the buttons explain the bum marks before picture.

step 3: Mom and I were looking for a quick fix, so we filled the button dents with batting

step 4: lay out material, place cushions, cut material to fit (we used square shapes, which proved to be a pain later, but I think it would be harder/riskier to cut to fit)

step 5: go around with a staple gun and start stapling. Key to this: put weight on the cushion and pull fabric tighter than you think you should. As the material relaxes on the chair, and people use it, its going to stretch out and look baggy on the chair if you don't. Our technique? For the second (and quicker half) I stood on the cushion, pulled the fabric, and shot some staples.

Step 6: Now you have this. But it wasn't pretty enough for me. It's hard to see but excessive amounts of material are in the corners, its bunchy, bla bla bla. Fix for this? Glue gun and scissors!

Step 7: Cut all the loose chunks off.

Step 7 continued: glue down the material all the way around!

Step 8: put the chair back together!

We found (after assembling all the chairs) that there

is a side to the legs that says FRONT... if it's not in the "front"

of the chair it will lean. SO if you do this...

Step 9: re-put together all the chairs, correctly.

Step 10: Take a looksie of your fabulous finished chair.

Step 11: Threaten to kill others with tools.

It took longer than expected, but I think thats because I automatically assume all projects take 20 minutes... what project ever takes only 20 minutes?! My back felt like I was dying when we were done but it was totally worth it. Those beauties are... beautiful.

HGTV ain't got nothing on me.

Confession Wednesdays: 8

I craft, when I have homework to do.

And love it.

made these today

and these

thinking of you

Hoping to sell some cards. If you're interested in any of them, check out my etsy!

crafty.