Ready for spring, already

I'm ready for spring.  This past week of snow almost every other day, together with the cold temperatures and darkness has my thoughts turning to warmer weather.  I can't wait until I see the tulips I planted last fall spring to life in my containers.

The talk of tulips and spring got me thinking about the photo I took of a tulip a couple of years ago.  I took it at the end of April and was in a hurry to take the photo as a spring thunderstorm approached.  I wanted a dark background to shoot the tulip against, so I quickly grabbed a step stool and draped over it my husband's black jacket.  A trick that I learned from reading The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby (a book I highly recommend for its many great tips).

I loved the end result of the great lighting the approaching storm gave off together with the contrast of the bright tulip against the black background.

With this same concept in mind, I decided to purchase a black blanket to have on hand for those unexpected photos.  The blanket was used in many photos I took of my daughter when she was first born to give them a more professional look.

So I've decided to combine two hobbies...

I've been thinking for a while about entering the digital scrapbook world.  I confess I have a ton of scrapbook stuff, but haven't had the time to use it very much.  And, I do love graphic design and have the wonderful tools of PhotoShop and Illustrator to help me.  But what has always held me back from taking the plunge into digital scrapbooking is that what I love about traditional scrapbooking is the texture of the papers, the ribbons and the embellishments.

In the hopes of finding a middle ground, I did a Google search today and found out about hybrid scrapbooking.  Hybrid scrapbooking takes elements of digital scrapbooking together with traditional scrapbooking and combines them together.

After sifting through numerous sites online, I found a site that listed some great Photoshop frames tutorials that can be found here.  From this site, I found a tutorial to create a vintage frame at Xtina.

Using the same frame Xtina used in her tutorial, together with a paper I found at PixelScrapper, I created this page: 

During the short time I worked on this page, I could definitely see the benefits of digital scapbooking.  I was able to play with the fonts and the images that I couldn't do with traditional scrapbooking.  But I do look forward to adding physical elements to this piece to feed my need to include those traditional scrapbook embellishments.

Zazzling away...

I had a few hours of much needed "creative mommy time" to myself a few Saturdays ago, so I decided to Zazzle a bit.  Over the years, I've dabbled with print on demand sites including Cafe Press and Zazzle.  I've found the most success at Zazzle and have established two stores there AnderBerry Creations and AnderBerry Beach Wedding Creations.

With Arianna's Sesame Street party in mind, I decided create a fun polka dot pattern that reminded me of the scrapbook paper I used on one of the decorated tables.  I loved this raised, polka dot paper that I purchased at Joanns and was so happy that I thought to include it at the last minute.

I found a great tutorial about creating simple patterns in Illustrator that can be found at Design O'Blog and made a very simple polka dot pattern that I made into an envelope seal on.

Polka Dot Envelope Seal Round Stickers by AnderBerry_Creations
Order cheap custom stickers online at zazzle.com

But if you don't feel like and/or have the time for creating a design from scratch I highly recommend checking out Cupcake Cuties and Pixel Scrapper. They've got great graphics with some available for use on print on demand sites like Zazzle (be sure to check out their Terms of Use).

Saving Up to Purchase Lightroom

I love great deals, saving money with coupons and coming up with easy ways to save money in general.  But like most busy moms, I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to clipping coupons or driving to multiple stores to get the best deal.  Instead, I'm trying to find a balanced approach that doesn't take a lot of time, but helps me save money.

So I've decided to combine my love for saving money with my love for creativity.  I'm going to track the amount I save to help me reach my goal of saving $118.89 to purchase Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4. 

I love photography and have wanted to get Lightroom 4 for a while now, and while I could just purchase it, I'd love to use it as a goal for saving money.

Yesterday, I took advantage of the deal Target had on diapers (purchase two large boxes get a $20 gift card), together with a coupon mailer they had recently sent me and the February P&G brandSaver. Clipping these coupons took me all of five minutes.

With the coupons alone, I saved $4.75.  I also saved money using my Target REDcard (saving 5% per transaction) of $3.89.  I've decided to hold off on claiming that I saved the $20 with the gift card as I'll wait until I use it to actually make a purchase before adding to my savings total.

My total savings so far is $8.64.

My February Resolution??

So, today is the first day of February, and I am way behind in my blogging yet again.  But, who says I can't make a February resolution to blog more.

So where was I when I last wrote?  I was telling you more about the Sesame Street party I planned for my two year old daughter Arianna.  I will say that unfortunately, I learned some of the tips I am sharing with you the hard way.

The Location 
I held Arianna's party in the fellowship hall of my parent's church.  It was absolutely free to use and allowed enough space to easily accommodate our guests. And, clean up was super easy!

The Cake
I had to search several different grocery stores and bakeries before I found the perfect cake for my Sesame Street themed party at Walmart.  The cake was delicious and looked great, despite the Elmo and Abby teeter totter falling over just seconds after I left the store.  The best part for my daughter was that she got to keep the Elmo and Abby figurine.  The best part for me was the $29.00 price.

Hint:  This cake wasn't listed in any of their large cake catalogs.  I told the Walmart bakery employee what I was looking for and she dug a bit and found this kit they had.  If you'd like the same cake, I'd start by asking one of the bakery employees instead of wasting time looking for this cake in one of the books.

The Cake Pops
Even though I've just recently started to ever so tentatively get into cake decorating, I knew I wasn't up for the task yet of creating a cake for my daughter's party.  Instead, I decided to make cake pops.

As I mentioned in my previous post, if you've never made cake pops, do not attempt to start the process at 10:00 at night.  Had I not had the Baby Cakes Cake Pop Maker, it would have been even later.  I also had an issue with dipping the cake pops in the white candy melts I purchased.  I have now purchased the Baby Cakes Chocolate Dipper.  I'll let you know in upcoming posts if it was helpful or not.

Despite the late night and lack of experience, I think they looked fairly decent and they were delicious.  Plus, I felt I had sort of made my daughter a "cake" for her birthday party.

Party Favors
Since there were a number of younger children coming to the party, my husband thought it would be a great idea to get them some toys to play with.  So, we put together these fun Elmo themed treat bags that included a number of inexpensive favors from Party City.  I found the free Elmo artwork at Shery K Designs and printed it on card stock and attached to the plain red favor bags.  The kids loved the favors and it kept them busy for quite a while.


Guest Table

I decided to do simple yellow table cover on all the guest tables with a very simple bouquet of red and yellow carnations as the centerpieces.  I used small vases that I had on hand from previous parties and sprinkled some Sesame Street confetti around them.  If I had to do it over, I would substitute the colorful paper that I decided to add to one of the buffet tables at the last minute (and absolutely fell in love with) instead of the confetti.

I love, love, love this paper and plan on using paper to decorate with again in the future.  I purchased this particular paper from Joann's in the scrapbook paper section.  I loved the raised texture of the dots and the paper was a very heavy and durable stock.  Plus, it makes for a colorful and bold statement and clean up is so much easier than cleaning up little bits of confetti.





Other Decorating
I purchased this inexpensive Happy Birthday banner at the Dollar Store and added paper tissue fans purchased at Party City to decorate the buffet area.

We found these fun Elmo juice boxes at Walmart which were not only decorative but functional as well.

We also found the white serving bowls at the Dollar Store and the white plastic serving tray at Party City.  Plus, what is a birthday party without some balloons.  I selected an Elmo foil balloon with some yellow and red latex balloons.  Three weeks later and they are still going strong!

Trying to catch up...

It's been several weeks since my last post, and my apologies to all.  So much happened all at once that I let my blogging slip.  Trying to put together my daughter's party, dealing with my daughter's ear infection, my own nasty cold and a busier than usual work schedule, made it hard to keep my head above water.

I will definitely be sharing the details of Arianna's party in future blog posts.  I will say that I definitely put more into the decorations for this party than I  did for her first birthday party.  But in my own defense, for her first party, I had just been hit with a nasty stomach bug and had to travel for business several days before.  Why is it that I always get sick on her birthday?  The joys of having a child with a winter birthday.

In the end, I decided on a Sesame Street themed party, and I can tell you that my daughter absolutely loved it.  Her smiles at seeing her favorite characters made up for the party stress I felt.  Note to self, do not attempt to make cake pops at 10:00 at night and hope to get to bed before midnight. 

More to come on my cake pop saga, but I thought I'd give a preview on the end result...

It's party time...

The holidays have just ended and the busyness in my life continues as I plan a party for my soon to be two year old Arianna.

My daughter's birthday party is next weekend and I have so much to do.  Having a birthday so close to Christmas is hard on both mommy and child.  But I'm determined to make her birthdays special.

As I was deciding on a theme for her party, I struggled a bit because I know she loves Elmo (Despite the fact that her tongue is sticking out in the photo below, she really does love her Elmo.  She just sticks the tongue out when she's nervous and she wasn't too sure about this cardboard cutout of Elmo:), but I absolutely hate character parties.  So, I started to look online to get some ideas for what I term a sophisticated Elmo party.

I found some great party ideas that met my need to not have an overload of character paraphernalia and just enough character elements to hopefully make my daughter happy.  There are so many ideas that I found that gave me more ideas.  Now I just have to work at putting them altogether.