In love with my nursery!

BEFORE

AFTER!

It's funny – in some ways it's similar to the virtual nursery I made a while ago, but in other ways it's completely different.

I didn't put the finishing touches in there until a couple weeks after the baby came home.  I took a look around and instantly thought, "vintage!"  It wasn't really my goal, but it totally worked out that way and I love it.

Shall we take a tour?

This mirror came from my grandma's house.  My aunts gave it to me when she passed away.  It's made out of plastic.  I love the gaudy gold pop it gives the room.

The craft hoops are filled with leftover fabric I had after making the birds you'll see below.  The silhouette is of my mother-in-law at the age of 6, I believe.  I used a stamp to paint the face of that hamper, which I've had for a long time. If you can see the ivory pillow on the bed, that's made with with two Pier 1 napkins sewn together.  The little white shelf holds a bud vase of my mom's and my dad's silver baby cup and rattle.  The infamous sewing table sits beside the bed and is normally stacked with dirty bottles!

I spy a baby below!  Above her hangs my homemade mobile.  It turned out completely different than I intended, but I like the dimension that the branches add to the room.  I found the pattern for the birds here.

Like the crib skirt?  The look was inspired (stolen) from this website, but the pattern on that site made no sense to me.  A gal from high school emailed me a step-by-step of how she made hers, and I found that much simpler.  Not simple, but simpler.

This hand-stitched quilt is more than 60 years old!  It was my dad's.  It's pretty worn, but it's (mostly) clean and soft and has held together beautifully.

Here we have a gift from Kate's great-grandma, an owl from Pier 1 that I am obsessed with, and a little lamb from my friend that prays "Now I lay me down to sleep" when you squeeze it.  Kate doesn't sleep in the crib often.  Once she starts, I'll clear this stuff out.

 Here are my beloved grandparent photos!  I love the way the concept turned out, even though we're still missing one.  Workin' on that!

Austin made the little K above the dresser.  Before she was born I handed him a wooden block, a wooden K, fabric swatches, scrap paper, Mod Podge, paint, a staple gun and more.  He was instructed to do something -- anything -- to contribute a personal touch to the nursery. (Other than replacing that awful brass ceiling fan. PTL!)  He chose a sparkly gold knit to cover the block and painted the K yellow and gold.  Cute!  I wish the lampshade showed up in the photos.  It's killer.

And that's it.  What do you think?

A year's worth of birthdays

Hi, handful of blog readers.  I'm back!  It's been more than a month since I've posted anything, and for a good reason: motherhood!

Now that my little bitty baby is one month old today (which is the purpose of this blog post!) I'm a little more comfortable putting her out there, so to speak.

So since the trend these days is to take a picture of your baby holding a sign for how many months he/she is turning, I decided to take it a step further and whip up a little birthday outfit.  And by whip up, I mean labor over it for 30 seconds at a time all day long.

Since this is my first craft project since she was born, I wanted to make it special... so I went ahead and created all the numbers for up to 11 months now for both consistency's sake and to save myself time in the future.

I made number outlines in Photoshop and printed them large enough to fill up these little 4x4 fabric swatches that I received from Land of Nod.  I KNEW they'd come in handy one of these days!

I then ironed the swatches on to Heat&Bond and taped the pieces up to the front door to trace them, a la third grade art class.  I'm sure there was an easier way, but mommy brain got in the way.

Plus, I had a human strapped to me.

I cut out the one, ironed it on to a newborn onesie that's almost too small and sewed a zigzag stitch around it.  I saved the rest of the numbers in an envelope in my sewing box so they'd be easy to find and place on whatever size white onesie fits her on the 21st of every month.

And, without further ado, here's my beautiful one-month old!

 

Nursery update!

I don't have a lot of time to post right now but here's the crib skirt that my friends helped me tackle on Sunday!  We also painted the walls of the baby room and got a few other projects done.  I'm so grateful to them for making the 180-mile trip in the rain just to help a girl out!

I'll take better pics with my real camera asap... This grainy one was taken late into the dark hours on Sunday so it's really hard to make out how crisp and bright this baby is!

Rules of Engagement

1.  Create a memory worth remembering
2.  Trick your girlfriend into getting dressed up
3.  Bring along a hidden camera (or seven)

Our friend Tyler gets an A+ for his proposal last night!  Check our other blog for a video of the big moment, and enjoy a couple of the pics I was able to snap.  (I'll only dwell on the positive here, ignoring the fact that most of my shots feature the backs of people's heads.)

Here's how it went down: Tyler was live on the air at Taste of Abilene last night -- which really didn't make any sense, since he's a sports reporter.  In the middle of his live shot, a dude with a microphone walked up behind him and started singing "All My Loving."  A flash mob started to form, and Tyler eventually joined in, making his way over to his unsuspecting girlfriend at a nearby table.

She said yes.

Baby Kirk... the Sequel

What a difference five months makes.  My little Viking Babe buddy, Kirk, isn't so little any more! 

We headed to downtown Abilene in March for his six-month photos. Mom Amalyssa dressed him in a ridiculous adorable bunny outfit and we took some fun Easter pics.

The unsung hero of this photo shoot was our friend Carolyn, who made a fool of herself for nearly an hour to keep Kirk smiling.  I want to bring her along to every baby shoot!  But soon she'll be in front of the camera as I snap some super fun pics of her in front of the B-1 that her husband flies!  Stay tuned for that – I'm stoked!

Autumn wedding bells!

My beautiful, blushing friend Emily is tying the knot in an outdoor wedding this fall!  She has asked me to make the ring bearer pillow and we've talked about a couple other handmade things as well, including a bow tie.

I put together this little virtual inspiration board so I won't forget what we discussed.

The bridesmaid dresses will be made of a taupe/champagne Dupioni silk and the flowers will be a variety of bold autumn colors.  While looking up trims and fabrics online I happened upon a few plum options, which is one of the colors she mentioned loving.

I can't wait to get started!  It's really far in advance, but that gives me plenty of time to raise the white flag and offer to buy her something on Etsy :)

And the Cooke Razzie goes to...

My Andes mint cookies are award winning.  Best Overall Cookie of 2003.

Yes, the award was handed to me at a cookie party with about 10 other people present, but I'm running with it.

They served as a bonding tool between my grandma and I for many years, as the recipe came from her and we often baked them together during visits.  We even attempted variations on our own using different kinds of mints and wrote letters back and forth about the results.  We were great pen pals, Grandma Katie and I.

They're so good they won over my brother-in law.   Not won him over on my cooking...won him over on me.  Upon the first crunchy, chocolaty bite he instantly forgave all my previous transgressions: sarcastically challenging a decision he'd made (I was joking, but it was during intermission at a play and the lights went down before I had a chance to clarify), sweeping into the family as the only girl (therefore stealing a little bit of attention during his senior year of high school), and talking during the West Wing one time (how dare I?!).  He's now one of my best friends.

I'm telling you, these cookies are magical. 

So magical, in fact, my friend Lane asked several years ago if she could submit the recipe for the Junior League of Shreveport cook book – in her own name, of course :)  I then received a copy from my friend Shannon after it was published.  So exciting!

Last week I had an important occasion for which I needed to impress someone.  Well, I didn't need to, but I wanted to. So of course I decided to make my award winning cookies, which I hadn't done in a while.  The plan was to wrap them up on a pretty plate with this VIP's initial on it.  That way it just looks like a batch of homemade cookies and the recipient doesn't realize it's a cool gift until getting home and polishing off the sweets.  (Great hostess gift idea!)

But I couldn't seem to find my recipe.

You'd think I'd have it memorized after making them dozens of times, but I don't.  I finally remembered that hello, I've been published, so I whipped out my trusty Mardi Gras to Mistletoe cook book and flipped the purple ribbon bookmark straight to page 199.

I started taking pictures in order to share this recipe and baking process with my adoring 14 blog followers, but let me just refer to the foreshadowing title of this blog post and hint that something went terribly wrong.  So follow this recipe at your own risk.

I don't use a microwave for the chocolate.  I use the stove top.  If you've ever melted chocolate before, you know how precarious it can be, and I'd rather have a bird's eye view of the whole thing.

It was a pretty standard evening in the Kellerwoman Kitchen.  I didn't notice any textural difference in the dough, didn't make any substitutions, and definitely didn't foresee the awfulness that was to emerge from the oven.

The cookies were paper-thin and mildly resembled E.T. in the scene where he's in a coma.  That didn't matter as much as the fact that they were glued to the pan.  I went ahead and "iced" them with the Andes mint – an assured sign of denial – and asked KellerMan taste one.  The second he politely used the word cracker I cut my losses.

The next day our VIP received an assortment of Starbucks pastries.

I'm sure they were delicious.