Feasting and Fun on the 4th of July!


Don’t be stranded without your red, white, and blue. Paint bombs bursting in air with Fireworks on your Fingertips.


Stripe it up with the Nautical 4th of July Nail tutorial. Time to celebrate!


If you are headed to a party, these mini pancake bites are great appetizers to bring. Cook up a savory and a bite size twist on chicken and waffles.


Our new shrimp on a stick recipe is another great choice for a starter. You can even adapt it for chicken on a stick for the picky eaters.


Instead of grilling out with the usual, try some fiesta taco burgers or bacon wrapped hot dogs. Both are an excellent choice with homemade fries and coleslaw. You could even grill some pizza for a snack or appetizer.


For a sweet snack, whip up some star spangled gumdrops for the kiddos.


Make your cupcakes more festive with star sugar cookie toppers for two delicious desserts in one.


Enjoy the classic float with a patriotic twist.


Have a spicy adult drink option with Watermelon Jalapeño Mojitos or a watermelon keg.


Cool off with some Raspberry Rose Ice Cream Pops or some Blueberry Lavender Ice Cream. It will be a refreshingly different change. Of course you can make some homemade drumsticks if you want to be traditional.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July!

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Project Happy Place: A Shared Nursery Sneak Peek

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Who went to the Babies R US Happy Places event this past Sunday? If you happened to attend the event at a store in the Los Angeles area, you may have seen me pushing a cart packed full of goodies with my SIL, daughter, and niece, all in tow. Stevee just moved to Los Angeles with my 4 and 3 year old niece and nephew, Jojo and Johnny. To say she had a bit of sticker shock at rental home prices would be an understatement. Luckily for her, Jojo and Johnny are the two siblings who adore each other most in the world, meaning: They can happily share a room. Our inspiration board is pictured above, featuring Babies R Us dressers, storage bins , wooden toys, and more.

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So Stevee and I headed off to the Babies R Us Happy Places event to plan their shared room and order all sorts of fun stuff. Babies R Us invited us and offered us a gift card, to see if we could use their design services and our own creative minds to plan a happy shared space for the kids. I’d say our day was beyond successful, so thank you, Babies R US! Dressers, desks, bookshelves, baskets, toys, and more were purchased, and now I can’t wait to reveal what we are doing to turn my niece and nephew’s new shared room into an extra-special happy place!

Along with a big room-reveal post this coming August, I’ll also be sharing some special DIYs from this happy place, so be sure to check back in once we’ve taken our vintage eye, our crafty talents, and our affordable-yet-cool BabiesRUs gear and combined them all into a happy shared kids’ room.

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Plan a Family Fishing Trip from Disney to Home

Plan a Family Fishing Trip from Disney to Home
A few days after I returned from the snowy mountains of Iceland, I set out for the sunshine in Orlando, Florida for a weekend of fishing, courtesy of The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation. I should probably point out that I wasn’t headed just anywhere in Orlando, but to Walt Disney World Resort. I had never been and although spending the day on rides would have been fun, I was even more eager to see what fishing was like there. Would I catch bass, trout, Mickey? The closest experience I had to fishing in years was seeing Scarlet fleeing from flopping fish and playing Jacinda’s DIY Fishing Game with my niece. I had also been eating incredible arctic fish on my vacation, and was now more than ready to dive right in.

Plan a Family Fishing Trip from Disney to Home

To give you a little background, The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation created the Take Me Fishing campaign, and recently teamed up with Walt Disney World Resort with two big goals in mind – connect families with nature, while making memories to last a lifetime. I was hooked. They have now developed eleven co-branded locations all across Walt Disney World Resort that are focused on boating and fishing for families to enjoy. You can do everything from cane-pole fishing, to racing mini-powerboats along the water.

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If a trip to Walt Disney World Resort isn’t in the cards this year, not a problem at all. Take Me Fishing and Disney have put together plenty of resources (including an app) that is all about connecting kids and families with nature.

Plan a Family Fishing Trip from Disney to Home

Keep reading to hear more about this family fun experience, and to find out how to plan your next fishing trip after the jump…

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DIY Fabric Crowns (Free Templates)

DIY Fabric Crowns (6 Free Templates)

Right before the holidays last year we shared a DIY Peekaboo Toy Turtle tutorial from the book, Flip Dolls & Other Toys That Zip, Stack, Hide, Grab & Go by Laura Wilson. Today, Laura is back with another awesome project – DIY Fabric Crowns. These adorable dress up crowns are super easy to make and come with six different templates. I tried my hand at making a few out of linen, as you can see here, but you could easily make these from cotton and felt too.

DIY Fabric Crowns (6 Free Templates)

Below is one of Laura’s cute fabric crowns. Head on over to Laura’s blog and shop, We Wilsons and Wilsons on Etsy to see more of her creative projects. You can also pick up a copy of her book, Flip Dolls & Other Toys That Zip, Stack, Hide, Grab & Go.

DIY Fabric Crowns (6 Free Templates)

Learn how to Make these DIY Fabric Crowns after the jump…

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Come Plan a Happy Place for Your Kid with Me on Sunday

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Contemplating designing or redesigning your baby’s room? In collaboration with Babies R US, we’re here to help! This Sunday, June 29th, join me and other pensive parents at your local Babies R US to meet with design-experts and parents alike for inspiration on how to turn you child’s room into not only their happy place, but a jubilant place for you, too.

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If you follow us on Twitter, you may have noticed that Wednesday night we hosted the wild Babies R US’ Happy Place Twitter Party with @disneybaby and @thecandidbelle. We talked about nursery design including buy vs. DIY, and the most popular project we shared was my SIL Stevee’s pink painted thift store camel.

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So why are we doing all this? No, not for cash, ha. We adore all things Babies R US, but we are also in cahoots with them to design a magical room for my adorable niece and nephew, Jojo and Johnny.

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OMG, my niecey and nephew are insane-cute right? They might be the only two siblings who are also BFFs and never fight. No for real, they never fight. Yes, it’s weird. But awesome.

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You’ve heard us gab about Stevee before, right? If not, Stevee is my sister-in-law – our husbands are identical twins, blah, blah blah. If you know who Stevee is, than you know she recently moved across the country with her husband, two kids and basset hound and is currently drowning in setting up house in Los Angeles, a few blocks away from me. Before moving, Stevee literally ditched everything she owned in hopes of a fresh start in sunny CA. So, when Babies R US approached us about redesigning a toddler’s room with their products and a little DIY enguintuity we had a million ideas. Can you guess what we are going to do with this?

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This Sunday, we will be at our local Babies R US on La Cienega in Los Angeles to not only offer design tips, tricks and plans, but to also brainstorm and bounce design-ideas around with other parents. Come meet us!

We can’t wait to share the big reveal of Stevee’s boy-and-girl shared kids’ room in August. Do you have any tips for share boys-girls rooms? If so, leave them in the comments then when we use them we will thank you in our post.

Oh, also, did we mention they’re will be in-store giveaways and prizes on Sunday?!!? Cause their will, you should go. See you Sunday!

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Marzetti Simply Dressed Super Food Salad

marzetti super food

I had nearly given up on feeding the girls salads when, on a recent visit, my mother persisted until they gave salad another try and SURPRISE, they love it. So now this Summer is all about making up for “tossed” time (see what I did there?) Anyway, here is a salad that we tried this weekend that everyone loved. I’m calling it super food salad because it features lots of fresh goodies that are filled with vitamins and antioxidants. You don’t have to believe in the super food fad to love this salad, but I figure you can’t go wrong with lots of fruit and veggies, be they super or just old fashioned good for you. Part of the appeal of this tasty dish is the addition of a sprinkle of Marzetti® Fruit & Nut Salad Accents and Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Pomegranate Salad Dressing. It has just the perfect mix of savory and sweet to appeal to their little taste buds.

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Read on for the delicious collection of ingredients that make up the Marzetti Simply Dressed Super Food Salad. (more…)

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January Baby, June Birthday Party – Dragon-Style!

This post is sponsored by Target. More Playtime, More Together; Immerse yourself in the roles of your children’s favorite characters at Target – and have fun doing so!

How to train your dragon party

Back in 2010, when I learned I was going to have a baby at the end of the year, my very first thought (and I’m not exaggerating) was… I’ve given this poor child the dreaded Christmas birthday! And there’s only one birthday worse than the Christmas birthday, and that is the early January birthday. While in December, you might get Christmas/Birthday gifts wrapped in snowflake paper, at least people seem to be in a festive mood. In January people are just done. Done with parties, done with spending, people just want to clean their house and eat soup.

So when Gordon was ultimately born on January 7th, 2011, I unknowingly had done him one worse than the Christmas birthday. I had given him the soup birthday. Literally. For his first 2 birthdays, we invited a few friends and neighbors over to watch football and eat soup like grumpy old trolls.

If you’ve spent some time around here, you know that we can go over-the-top with our birthday celebrations. Remember Quinn’s Farm-tastic First Birthday? Scarlet’s Indian Elephant 2nd? How about Clare’s Buggie Birthday? Or how about that time I trained myself as a balloon artist just to twist a monkey for each kid at Quinn’s Animal party? While there is something about Spring that brings out the crazy happy birthday party planner in me, hen Gordon’s birthday rolls around 2 weeks after Christmas, extreme party planning is the last thing I want to do. This past year I did manage to pull myself together and throw a fabulous last-minute Batman party when Jaime basically forced me to do so by sending Gordon the best gift ever. She said she owed it to him as a fellow Capricorn. Isn’t she the best best friend? I mean really.

But still there is just something so fun about a warm weather party. Just a bunch of kids running around outside, playing games, and eating some frosty treats, not overshadowed by post-holiday exhaustion. This year I decided to give him a little “1/2” birthday celebration, inspired by his current passion and seemingly undying love of How to Train Your Dragon…

How to train your dragon party (more…)

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Two-Piece Knit Wrap Nursing Dress (with Free Pattern)

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We are starting off the week with this tutorial for new mamas created by Tricia from Leafy Treetop Spot: Made by Me & Shared With You. It’s been a little bit since we’ve had a maternity clothing tutorial, like the cute Shirred Maternity Tunic Top. This sewing project is a bit more detailed, but totally worth it. Conquer your fear of knits first with the How to Sew Knit Fabrics tutorial.

Don’t forget to also check out Tricia’s other tutorials, including the Nursing Bra, Maternity Belly Band, and comfy Cap Sleeve Top.

Check out the Two-Piece Knit Wrap Nursing Dress (with Free Pattern) after the jump…

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