Easter Inspiration 2013 and Silhouette Peeps Design

This year I am again embracing Easter crafting and fun desserts. Last year I went a little overboard, but I couldn't help it. I just love pastel colors, and anything that involves making food items resemble baby animals. Plus, Easter is pretty close to my birthday, so while I'm too old to throw myself a party with streamers and a dessert table, instead I'll just do it for Easter!

Here is this year's Easter inspiration board. Last year I did a BBQ inspiration board, but since it's not going to be super warm out, I'm doing a more traditional ham this year instead.

From left to right:

Honey Baked Spiral Ham

Sweet and Salty Spring Mix Popcorn

Skinny Rosemary Parmesan Oven Potatoes

Whiskey-Glazed Carrots

Bunny Pretzels

Daffodil Candy Cups

Carrots in Hummus

Chick Cupcakes

Pretty Easter Table

Easter Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Peeps Garland

Peeps S'mores

I've been crafting away this week to bring my inspiration board to life, which has been a nice excuse to avoid some painting I've been putting off, and thinking about patio furniture and front yard landscaping, which have been consuming me lately. Little crafts just have such a quicker payoff, so it's a nice change of pace!

And I've been trying to put my Silhouette machine to work too. But I was surprised to find that there wasn't already a Peeps style bunny outline available in the Silhouette store. So I made one myself.

Project: ME

The past couple of weeks I've been spending several of my weeknight evenings here, on a pretty lakeside trail not too far from my house.



You might have noticed that I haven't been posting as much the past couple of weeks. But it's for a very good reason, I've been focusing on myself a bit more, leaving less time for house projects.

It will be summer in a few months, which means vacations and swimsuits, and so I've been making more of an effort to work out 3-4 days a week. I realized after our big early year push to get things done around the house that I just wasn't making the time I needed to focus on me. After running a 5k last fall, I really slacked off, especially once the holiday season arrived. But no more!

House Tour: One Year Down

Exactly one year ago today we closed on our house!

So I thought it was finally time to do an official house tour post. Back when we were playing the House Hunters game, I showed photos of the house with the old owner's belongings, but since some things are definitely looking different now, it was high time for an update.

It will probably be pretty obvious, but I should note that we are still planning on changing a whole heck of a lot in the house. Like take our front yard. We haven't done anything at all to it (except I keep changing out the front door wreath, right now I've got my Ruffled Felt St. Patrick's Day wreath out), but hope to start making some landscaping decisions soon, before the weather heats up. It will be much greener in a month from now though.

Oh, and before I jump into the house tour, a refresher on the floor plan might be useful.

Playing With A 3D Printer

If any of you were around back when I was blogging for Weddingbee, you might remember that I have a fondness for using some of my husband's more techy work machines to adapt to make fun things. Like his laser cutter, that I used to make custom rubber stamps, our 6 foot tall cupcake tower and even our wedding invitations.

And now his company has sent him a new "toy" to play with!

This week he received a 3D printer, to help with some of the rapid prototyping stuff he does. Have you ever seen these things? They are incredibly cool, and it does exactly what it says it does, it prints in 3D.

Teal, White and Grey Guest Bedroom Reveal

Last weekend we had visitors, so I'd been working hard on fixing up our guest room, and I can now say it is guest ready, if not 100% complete yet.

There are still a few things in here that I'd like to do, like build a bench for the end of the bed, and I still have one blank wall with no decor on it yet. And someday we'll get to scraping the popcorn ceilings, like we did for our downstairs rooms. But it's definitely an improvement over how this room first looked after we moved in!