Where I have been & What I have been up-to

Life has been busy and here is why:

Everyones Mad Here

This year for our joint birthday Jayna and I decided to have an Alice in Wonderland themed tea party. It turned out great and everyone had a wonderful time in "Wonderland" celebrating with us.

We sent our invitations out with little skeleton keys attached to them with direction to bring the keys back to the party. I copied the invitation idea from an Alice in Wonderland comic-con party Disney held. It was easy to find a free Alice in Wonderland font online too. The skeleton keys were a little tricky to find at first. I kept thinking I needed antique ones, but they were really expensive and ranged in price a lot from place to place. Then I tried my luck at Lowes and to my surprise they had the perfect little key. The secret is to go ask the "key making man". They were not out in packages, he just had a little box of them behind his desk. If I remember right they were like $3.00 each which was cheap compared to the $10.00 antique ones.

Pottery Barn Kids Light Knock Off

I just loved this light featured in a Pottery Barn playroom and wanted something similar for my Dr. Seuss playroom. So I went about trying to figure out how I could make one myself and I succeeded. Gosh I love it when ideas work out!

Fun Kids Valentine

I saw these cute kids valentines on Martha's website, and decided to make some with Jayna for her to take to her play group on Valentines Day. They turned out super cute. 

A Slide In-side

example of what we are going for

I am really excited about my little side slide project Jayna and I have started on. So far it has been pretty easy, but that may be because I have only done demo.

What's Cooking Good Looking?

The "Elves" finished Jayna's play kitchen tonight and it turned out great. Here are some pictures of it staged. I only wish my kitchen looked this fun. 

On the 9th Day of Christmas...

*i love tilt shift photography it is so fun to play with*

On the 9th Day of Christmas... Santa's elves are just about done making Jayna's present. We have been trying to squeeze in time to work on it in here and there in-between shopping, making neighbor gifts, mailing gifts out, going to a live nativity, visiting friends, and trying to catch the Christmas mouse that decided to join our family this week. But tonight all we have to do is cut the bead-board and attach it to the back of each kitchen piece. Friends and family keep asking for a sneak-peek though so here are some pictures to hold you over until I can take pictures of the finished kitchen tonight. 

Play with Your Food

Even though the play kitchen still needs to be finished, and the hour glass to Christmas Day is quickly running out of sand I couldn't help but make these for Jayna's Kitchen.

Santa's Workshop is Now Open

It's official Santa's little elves are hard at work at the Hutchings home. Jayna loves little play kitchens and since she does not have one of her own to play with at home we decided that is what we would get her for Christmas this year. Shhhh!


Of course you know me I couldn't just go out and buy one...So this is post one of the home-made play kitchen we are making Jayna for Christmas.

The "Queen" has arrived

This year I made Jayna a little queen costume for Halloween. She had this cute white dress that would be for a wedding or fancy event and since we have not had any of those I thought it would make the perfect queen dress. The best part about this costume was that everything was so simple and fun to make. 

Halloween Outdoor Decor

I try to add a little to all my Holiday decorations each year, and this year I decided to take another que from Martha and make a "spooky" wreath. 

My Achy Breaky Heart

Now I know it is not Valentines Day or even close to it, but hearts have been on my mind as of late. I feel like I have fallen off of the Blogging World these last couple of months. There have been lots off life things going on that have been occupying the part of my brain that used to be dedicated to blogging. On-top of all that I have had some unexpected health issues. I have 5 million issues as is that I am working on, but the other week by heart started acting up and was racing and skipping beats. So after an EKG and emergency cardiologist appointment. I ended up on a heart monitor for 24 hours and had an uncomfortable tiring week to say the least. 

Thanks to my wonderful husband and brother-in-law I made it through and feel like I am slowly recovering and coming back to life. My husband even witnessed that I am life force of the house when he saw that as soon as "Mom" went down the garden started to die, the fresh cut flowers on the dinning room table wilted, and everything else went to pot. I told him it was kinda like Avatar. 


So to top off this post I thought it would be appropriate to include a tutorial I found for a cute little heart pin you can easily make with craft scraps. So here is to Hearts and all that they do for us. I know I am more grateful for mine now.

Lemonade Anyone?

The Lemonade stand went well last week with the girls. The weather cleared up just long enough for us to get a good hour of selling in. Only two out of thirteen girls showed up, but I am sure it was because a lot of them probably thought it was cancelled due to the weather. When life gives you Lemons you just make Lemonade though right? Or in this case Rosemary Lemonade and Pink Lemonade Cupcakes!

Princess Perfect Gift Bags

We have a trip to the Magic Kingdom coming up soon and we are going with my husbands whole family. I am super excited to take Jayna for the first time, and know she will have a blast since she has two cousins about her same age. One that is four months older, and one that is 4 months younger. So when I came across a cute little tank top with three Disney princesses on it at Walmart it seemed like a no brainer times 3. From there I kept finding cute little things for the girls and finally had to just stop myself and package them all up. These would be really cute gift bags for a Princess party though.

Daddy O Ideas: Video Flip Book Tutorial

Fathers Day is coming up soon so I wanted to share some fun gift ideas I found via Martha. I added my own little twist to some of them and a tutorial so 
"Read On".

Perfect Plastics

I am not a big fan of plastic cups, plastic plates, and plastic bowls. Which I knew might pose a problem when having a child. I just hate it when people have nothing but cupboards full of plastic. So I have been determined to find a kid friendly solution to this idiosyncrasy I have, and I am happy to say that I have found it.

Kids Picnic Bench: Finished and Painted

I finally finished painting Jaynas picnic bench. My husband thought I was crazy to do two coats of paint, antiquing, glazing, staining, and two coats of top coat on an outdoor kids picnic bench, but I love how it turned out.

I am hoping this will be one of those items that Jayna will want to pass down to her kids someday. I built it well enough and treated it well enough that it could be. That is if I can part with it and the memories it will hold by then of her being a little girl playing in my backyard.


For Painting Technique How To Click the Read More Button Below...

Cowgirl Cookie Mix

I am busy working on making these wonderful cowgirl cookie mixes from Bakerella for my Bake Sale coming up next month. I am trying to make it easy on myself since I will be the only on baking for it. I thought these would make a great Mother Day treat too, since the Bake Sale will be right before Mothers Day. Now I just need to print her labels out and slap them on the jars and I am done. So fun and easy! See you tomorrow!

Bakerella has full instructions on how to assemble and make this cookie mix if you are interested in making them yourself.

Marbleized Easter Eggs

This post is obviously late since easter is done and over with, but I thought I would share this fun egg marbleizing technique we used on Saturday. The results were fun, and the combinations of colors you could play with to come up with your very own unique easter eggs are endless.

All you need to make these eggs is water... vinegar... food coloring... and olive oil.

Our dyes were slightly on the light side. I think our results would have been even better if they were a little stronger, especially the color you swirl the eggs in to marbleize them.

I even thought these eggs would make a cute craft or decoration for a little boys dinosaur party.

Bake Sale Baby!

I keep forgetting to share this on the blog. Awhile back the Husband and I decided that we wanted to take a trip to Southern California this summer. We had even more incentive since Disney was doing their day of service campaign, where if you signed up to do a day of service with a registered organization you could get free tickets to one of their theme parks. So I got online and signed up for a day of service that sounded right up my alley. A Bake Sale! It is a bake sale with Bake for Hope, which benefits Susan G Komen for the Cure. Anyone can be apart of it and you can make it as big or little a deal as you would like. We are going to be holding ours for our neighborhood and are just going to set-up in the front yard.

I plan on passing these flyers out door to door a couple days before the bake sale and then baking my little heart out and hoping for the best.

I really want the husband to make this for me for the bake sale (I found it online, but can't remember where, sorry). Out-look not so good though. When I told him what my ideas were he just looked at me and said "I might as-well just buy our Disney Land tickets". Which would probably be true if I did everything I wanted to. I just have big visions. Hopefully I can scale back a bit, but still have the cutest Bake Sale the neighborhood has ever seen. Mark my words though one day I will build that. Jayna would love it, and so would I.

Side Note: You have to know how many projects my husband helps with and does. He makes all my visions and dreams come true. We are always teasing each other and anything I say about him is all in good fun. Just wanted you to get the tone I was saying that in.

I plan on mostly making cupcakes.

Then having fun side things like chocolate dipped pretzels with sprinkles, bags of candied jewels, maybe some cake pops, jars of pre-made cookie mix, etc.

I just hope people come. So come if you would like.

*For information on where and when the bake sale will be, or files for the flyer shown in this post click here.