It was so fun to be invited to be part of Treetopia’s Design Council for 2017. I love a beautiful Christmas Tree, especially when I can let my imagination run wild with a themed tree.

I wanted a more homey tree this year, but also with a bit of glam in the mix.

During the holiday season, I am part of the Goode Time Carolers of Phoenix. We sing 4-part a cappella harmony in glammed-up Dickens era costumes. Since music is such a huge influence for my family–especially around the holidays, a Christmas Carol theme is perfect for our tree.

I found some vintage Christmas carols on-line and printed them out to make these ornaments. I used decoupage medium to make them more stiff and give them a bit of shape.

For the Dickens part, I found various silhouettes on-line and designated them as various characters from Charles Dickens’ famous “A Christmas Carol.” I had the chipboard frames on-hand from another project. I spray-painted them a deep green to match the plaid ribbon you may recognize as part of the new Hearth and Hand line at Target. I felt like that plaid would be right at home in Charles Dicken’s world.

I was so happy I was able to get a flocked tree! I’ve been wanting to try one out for many years! BSB prefers the more traditional green tree, but I love the way that the green colors pop against the flocked tree. They would be lost in a regular evergreen.

I purposely chose a lot of white, gold, and silver ornaments to fill in the rest. They blend in with the tree and let the green and black elements really stand out!

Here’s a shot with the lights off so you can see the ornaments better. The draped gold beads add that Victorian feel to the tree.

I wasn’t quite finished with the tree when I had my daughter pose for some pictures with her dark-green Christmas dress.

I just love the mix of old and historic with new and trendy!

Thank you Treetopia for giving me this opportunity! These are the products they sent me:

 Snowy Spruce Flocked Christmas Tree 7.5’ Clear

Harvest Pine Wreath 24” Unlit – Shown here above my mantle with more Hearth and Hand ribbon wrapped throughout to tie it in with the tree. For a simple look for the mantle, I gathered our antique brass candlesticks and lined them up. Our dark green velvet stockings work nicely with the tree, as well.

Sadie Fir Wreath 24” Clear Led – This wreath is currently adorning my front door. I tucked some gold and copper dipped faux magnolia leaves into the pine branches. This made for a nice transitional wreath that could work for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Milady Pink And Plum Glass Ornaments – These didn’t actually make a showing on this tree. I’m saving them for when I do a nutcracker/ballet-themed tree. Won’t that be pretty!

Hurry and take advantage of Treetopia’s 6th Annual Secret Santa Sweepstakes happening between now and Nov 25:

You and your loved one can get a chance to win a tree and an ornament set by choosing your favorite look from our 2017 Design Council (eh hem…mine!) and telling us why it suits your holiday style. Ready those sleigh bells and sing your way through the merriest time of the year! Head over to one of Treetopia’s Social Media Accounts to participate:

#SecretSantaxDesignCouncil

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Pinterest

The post Dickens Caroler Inspired Christmas Tree from Treetopia appeared first on My Insanity.

Respecting the bird, before I move on to Christmas posts, I wanted to share the simple tablescape I came up with for last year’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was a different kind of year for us. BSB’s parents were on a mission for our church and we weren’t traveling, so we didn’t have a huge crowd to worry about. We ended up spending the morning volunteering at St. Vincent DuPaul and had such a great experience there that we are planning on going again this year.

I realize that this isn’t what everyone’s backyard looks like in November, but here in Phoenix, November is when it starts to feel pleasant to venture outdoors again (but you still want to stay in the shade). Can you see how enormous our garden was then? It made a nice backdrop for our meal to give thanks for our harvest.

I bought the paper tablecloth at Target, then used my Tombow Calligraphy Markers to trace a place setting for each family member/guest and wrote their names directly on the table cover.

I clipped a bunch of branches off of our tree to line the center of the table. All of the brass candlesticks are family heirlooms handed down from BSB’s grandparents. We shopped the house for candles to fill them. All the pretty colorful pumpkins came from an earlier family field trip to Mortimer Farms in the Prescott area.

Mixing the fancy and the casual, I pulled out the gold chargers and pretty gold-trimmed white plates, but settled for pretty paper napkins (from World Market, I think?).

It was a nice and fairly relaxed day celebrating as a family with some of our close friends, and of course, eating delicious food! I love when pretty and simple can co-exist!

And here is a quick peek at last year’s Thanksgiving Mantle. Gather banner from Target Dollar Spot.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Come back tomorrow for my Christmas Tree reveal!

The post Simple Thanksgiving Tablescape appeared first on My Insanity.

Over the year’s we have had some fun themes for our Easter celebration. It makes me happy to try and coordinate outfits and table-setting around a theme. Last year, we had fun combining two hot trends: floral and gingham.

The gingham tablecloth from my daughter’s 14th camp/dance birthday party worked perfectly as a backdrop for all of my florals, which included a real garden rose centerpiece picked from our friends’ beautiful rose garden. I had also been wanting to try some of the buttercream rose piping techniques I had seen on-line so we made these little rose cupcakes for dessert and had fun making this mini-tiered cake with my daughters.

The trick is to pipe the roses on to wax paper and let them harden before transferring to the cake. Then you can add leaves.

I am in love with beautiful paper plates. They answer the age old question of fancy vs. convenience. And these ones are so pretty, that people didn’t believe they were paper until they touched them. It took me a while to hunt them down. I am including affiliate links at the bottom of this post to save you some time, if you love them as much as I do.

And since the love is in the details, these floral straws tied everything together perfectly.

Here is our obligatory family Easter picture. There was supposed to be a little more gingham to go with our floral, but son #2 couldn’t find his cool blue gingham shirt that day. But they still clean up pretty well. Who else still tries to coordinate their family’s outfits for special occasions?

For your convenience, here are affiliate links to some of the items I purchased for this occasion:

Truly Scrumptious Tea Party Plates

Truly Scrumptious Floral Plates

Floral Napkins

floral straws

Blue Gingham Tablecloth (not the one I used, but looks nice).

Men’s floral necktie

Retro floral dress

3D Flower Children’s Place Dress

The post Floral and Gingham Easter appeared first on My Insanity.

We had an awesome Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. Sadly my computer crashed shortly there after and I lost the photos, but I still wanted to share our menu and set-up ideas. We had a gourmet-style menu, with a dessert buffet and Hot Cider Bar. For more fun and delicious Thanksgiving ideas, check out my Pinterest.

Menu:

Bacon Sage Turkey

Bobby’s Sausage Stuffing

Mashed Potatoes

Breaded asparagus

Sweet potato fries with sriachi Sauce

Fruit Salad

Pumpkin-style rolls

Dessert Menu:

Bourbon Pecan Pie (Gigi’s)

Pumpkin Gingersnap Pie (Gigi’s)

Caramel Sea Salt Cupcakes (Gigi’s)

Apple Cider Cupcakes (Gigi’s)

Strawberry Cream Pie

Pineapple Pie

Apple Crumble Pie

Hot Cider Bar:

Fresh Apple Cider (heated in Crock Pot)

Caramel syrup

whipped cream

Cinnamon candies

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Sources:

Copper Plates: Hobby Lobby

Give Thanks Printable Banner: TomKat Studio

Be Thankful Napkins: World Market

Pies and Cupcakes: Gigi’s Cupcakes

Thanksgiving printable word art: I’m Thankful For printable

Disclosure: I was provided Gigi’s Cupcakes and pies at no cost in order to review. The rest of the food was prepared by me or my family without compensation.

The post Thanksgiving Tablescape Menu and Dessert Bar appeared first on My Insanity.

Is there anything that says summer better than lemon?

I know!

How about ice cold, fresh, homemade lemon ice cream?

My husband’s family has a long held tradition of making lemon ice cream when the temperatures rise. He made it for me when we were dating. It might just be one of the reasons we got married.

The other day he got a hankering (probably inspired by the fact that I cleaned out the pantry and now the ice cream maker was in plain sight), and made a batch. He has doctored up the recipe a little from what his family did originally. But the end result is absolutely delish!

I posted a picture and some commentary on Instagram and based on the response, decided I’d better share the recipe here, with his permission, of course.

The recipe I’m sharing is BSB’s version. The original did not include yogurt, used heavy cream, and not quite so much lemon juice. So there is room for adjustment according to preference.

But for me, the fresh lemon juice and lemon zest are the key to this recipe. It makes this ice cream so flavorful and refreshing!

Hope you enjoy! What is your favorite summer treat to make!

The post Homemade Lemon Ice Cream appeared first on My Insanity.

Many years ago, I created a Father’s Day banner out of paper ties. I have loved this banner and used it repeatedly, but it has become apparent that making the banner out of a different material would transform it into something that could withstand the years! Here is my wooden version of the Father’s Day Tie banner! This is a fun project for a craft night or to do with the kids. You could give each kid their own tie to paint. You could add letters to spell something–I had originally planned to on these–or you could just let the ties do the talking–which is what I decided to do, since I loved the way the patterned ties look hanging together. You also have the options to leave some the wood exposed–like I did on the striped ties–for a more rustic look, or paint each tie entirely–like I did on the polka dots.

But before we get too carried away designing the banner, we should make sure we know what we are doing.

SUPPLIES:

• Thin plywood (1/4″ thickness)
• acrylic paints in color scheme and paintbrushes
• Twine
• sandpaper
• jigsaw, (or friend with saw)
• Drill

I made these in preparation for a craft class, so we purchased a large sheet of thin plywood and then had the gentleman at Home Depot cut it into one foot squares. Then I created a pattern (sharing below) and we traced the tie shape onto the wood squares. BSB was able to cut through multiple layers of wood at a time with his saw, making this a pretty quick project to prep.

He then drilled two small holes in the top of each tie. I sanded any jagged edges left after the cuts were made.

Then comes the fun part of choosing and painting designs on each tie. I went with primary colors in a combination of traditional striped ties and dots. There are so many fun color-schemes and designs you could use. This would be where you would paint on letters if you want to spell something, or let each child or grandchild design their own tie for the banner.

After the paint has dried you can string the ties on to the twine. If you are giving this to Dad as a gift you could wrap it up in a tie-shaped gift bag. Or save that for his wearable tie. You can find instructions for the gift bag by clicking on this post.

You can use any tie shape, but for your convenience, I am attaching a basic pattern which can be used to trace your ties. Click the image below for the free printable.

Do you decorate for Father’s Day? What are you giving your dad this year? I was inspired by these top gadgets for men, but what do your fathers enjoy receiving? Leave me a comment if you can.

The post Wooden Father’s Day Tie Banner appeared first on My Insanity.

Yes, I admit this theme was all my idea. I don’t know that many five-year-olds would know to ask for a Cinco de mayo fiesta for their birthdays. And it was a little bit of a tough sell at first to talk him out of things like robots and transformers, but once I started talking about how this would be his Piñata party, he got pretty excited. This kid loves Piñatas–and the candy that comes inside of them! So true to my word, Piñatas were a main feature everywhere. 

There is a little piñata on and some of the other recurrent themes I sent out these digital invitations I made with elements from Happy Thought.

Mini Piñatas decorated our tables and went home with guests as party favors.

Aren’t they cute?!? I found these at Target.

We played pin the tail on the Piñata! This game and decorations were provided by Celebrate Express. (See product links at end).

I love how colorful and friendly it is, and also how they are literally playing “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” but it is a burro and a piñata!

The cake by Pixy Cakes was so piñata-riffic!! I told Tina some of my crazy ideas, which included adding real Mexicancandy to the cake and the gorgeous papel picado detailing and here’s what she came up with.

I also requested this guy to be on top of the cake, which I’m pretty sure had the decorators cursing my name, but didn’t he turn out so cute!? The cake was definitely a main highlight of the party–both in decoration and taste!

But Piñatas didn’t get to have all of the fun. Cacti made repeat appearances. As in this Cucumber cactus made with a pineapple base (I believe the rest of the pineapple went toward pina coladas. Yum!), a cucumber body and pickle arms. A pair of these were on the serving table.

We also made these pretzel cacti with green candy melts and green sour straws. (My kids were helping with these, so they aren’t perfection, but per-fun!)

She was excited about her candy cactus!

I had to jump on the succulent bandwagon for a bit and put these cute desert dwelling plants in empty cans of hot sauce found in the Mexican food section of the grocery store, as part of our centerpieces. They made another appearance in our Mexican Mother’s Day Meal a short while later. (Click through for more images of the various succulent centerpeces)

Another recurring theme was mustaches (again, jumping on the trend, but it fit in so why not?). Our birthday boy and his guests got these fuzzy mustache favors to wear and role play–it was perfect when he put on the Zorro costume his grandma made for him (sadly no good pictures of the outfit, but you get an idea in the piñata picture below)

The rest of us got to be silly with mustache straws. They work pretty well, too!

In other dress-up news, our Mexican Sodas got all dressed up in Sarapes for the occasion. (Printables by Happy Thought).

And you could certainly try dressing up in these candy sombreros…

…though most of us have heads that were too big to make much of a fashion statement with these. They were yummy however, and easy to make. Simply poke colorful gumdrops through the center of peach rings (or other jelly ring candies), until they are snug.

As for the rest of our food and decor, sadly mother nature wasn’t in as festive of a mood and kicked up some crazy winds. I was barely able to get these few pictures before we were being attacked by my beautiful taco shell garland (inspired by this awesome party by Grey Grey Designs) and had to take cover indoor. Still, this will give you some idea of the yummy fiesta food.

We started with these lovely ruffled plates I found while visiting Zurcher’s party store in Utah and some colorful napkins.

Dinner was a complete taco/nacho bar to appeal to hungry guests young and old. Laura from Pink Cake Plate, slow cooked the taco meat. She is such a great foodie! Check out her great recipes. My good friend Rosie, made these beautiful taco salad bowls with her fun pan and tortillas.

Even the toppings seemed to scream, “Viva Mexico!” I promise it was all more delicious than my wind-rushed pictures show.

When the wind died down a bit, Zorro and his brave compadres went back outside to battle those pinatas!

You can see who won the battle.

They kept warm munching on hot churros.

And you can see how he felt about that!

One last shot to show you what the treat table was almost supposed to look like before wind-mageddon got into full swing. The giant numero cinco was not supposed to be flying like a kite, but rather hanging above the awesome cake. I also had these beautiful paper fan decorations that were the first casualties of the windy weather. I will link to them below because they would be beautiful at your party, if the weather isn’t ridiculous. (Can you tell I was a bit bummed by this?)

Overall, the party was still muy divertido and the birthday boy and all who came had a great time! If your little guy or gal doesn’t happen to turn cinco en mayo, you might still want to do a celebration for their friends, or better yet, invite several families over and have a celebration all ages can enjoy!

Sources:

Thank you to Birthday Express for providing the following items:

mustaches,

table coverings,

mylar balloon,

Fiesta party decorations

donkey piñata

and more! I am having trouble with my links so click through and search for whatever.

Cake: Pixy Cakes – Avondale, AZ

Plates: Zurcher’s Party Store – Utah and online

Graphics for invitations, lime banner, sarape printables (etc.): Happy Thought

Slow Cooked meat – Pink Cake Plate

Parrot Piñata, mini piñatas, pin the piñata game – Target

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and I was provided with some products at no charge in exchange for writing about them. I was not compensated to write this post. All opinions and insanity herein, are–as always, my own.

The post Cinco en mayo — A Cinco de Mayo Birthday Party for Kids appeared first on My Insanity.

Last Spring my daughter and I were honored to be asked to put together a large-scale floral arrangement to be displayed at the pulpit of our church for an important meeting. We were given a modest budget and instructions that it would be on a shallow shelf, so the arrangement couldn’t be too deep. Other than that, we were pretty much on our own to design and put together whatever we chose.

I have really been loving the more natural garden-like trends I am seeing a lot in modern floral arrangements. I wanted to use garden roses and other large blooms in spring colors. I used to do flowers all of the time, but things have changed quite a bit in the last decade or so. I first had to find a place to get wholesale bunches of flowers that is open to the public. The guys at Arizona Flower Market were great to work with (This is not a sponsored post. I just wanted to share their info because I know others are looking for the same kind of business). They could’ve ordered what ever flowers I needed, if I had given them a little more time. As it was, we were able to select many beautiful varieties from the stock they had on hand. I love the floral cabbages and dahlias for the texture and garden feel they provided. I also love using hypericum berries and bells of ireland. Or course, we used roses (not technically garden variety–per our budget–but full heads that mix well with the garden feel) and the dark scabiosas provided just enough contrast in color and texture to bring our arrangement to life

This was my first time experimenting with this shape of arrangement, but I love how it turned out. The look we wanted was asymmetrical with kind of a lower center and more fullness on the sides. I kind of makes it look like the flowers are just spilling out of their container. I do use floral foam (oasis) so that I can have more control over where the flowers end up, but didn’t want this arrangement looking as stiff as a lot of the funeral sprays and such can end up looking.

Although we don’t want symmetry, we still want balance, so I mentally used a triangle type shape to help me position the line flowers–in this case Stock and Bells of Ireland, to give a little structure to our looser style arrangement.

We then positioned the largest flowers–the cabbages, then dahlias and roses–so that they would be balanced throughout the arrangement. Then filled in the gaps with the smaller flowers and berries.

It was so fun to get to work alongside my beautiful daughter and create a thing of beauty together. Do you have a favorite flower? Or a favorite trend in floral design?

The post Modern Garden Floral Arrangement appeared first on My Insanity.

I currently am an assistant Cub Master. Assistant is the operative word here. There is much about Cub Scouts that I still have to learn, but basically, I help make Pack Meeting a party each month. February was our Pinewood Derby (maybe a post to come?), so we are getting ready to have our Blue and Gold Banquet this week. As I am making preparations, I referred to last year’s banquet which was a lot of fun and wanted to share some of what we did with you. We went with a western or cowboy theme for last year’s banquet. We served BBQ sandwiches and chips.

I spent a lot of time on the Chuck Wagon table you see above. In theory it should have been really simple, but to get everything to stay where it was supposed to be was a little harder. We attached PVC poles to both sides of the table with duct tape, I believe, to create the curved top of the “wagon.” We attached a white sheet to give the appearance of a covered wagon. We had to make it a little higher on this side so people would be able to reach in and get their food.

If you love my Patriotic Bandana Tablecloth, I wrote all of the details about it in a couple of earlier posts. The wagon was a bit of work but it was very high impact!

I used old pallets to make some other stations around the room. I don’t have a picture of the jail. This was the watering hole where we served lemonade and water to our thirsty cowboys and their families

As awesome as my table and other stations were, the real showstopper of the night was this amazing cake by Pixy Cakes! Tina, the owner, happened to have a son in our pack. We were thrilled when she offered to provide the cake. I sent her some ideas and this is what she came up with.

Much to the surprise of many of the children in attendance, the entire cake is edible! Including the logos for each of the dens. Everyone was in awe!

I had plans to have a photo op for the kids with some western garb. My plans to get hay fell through at the last minute. I was wandering around trying to come up with a plan B when I stumbled across a couple from church who are real cowboys and had a jackpot of western memorabilia decorating their house that the graciously allowed us to use.

As a result, I was able to set up this awesome Photo Booth area. Everyone had a great time being a cowboy/cowgirl for the night.

I edited many of the photos I took with an old faded effect, so they could make believe they had been transported back in time in the Wild Wild west. (Don’t ask me why my son is growing a mustache out of his eyes in this one).

Is your family involved in Scouting? What are the favorite Blue and Gold Banquets you have been to? Any guesses what we are doing this year?

The post Western Themed Blue and Gold Banquet appeared first on My Insanity.

I had a moment of bloggy brilliance last Easter, inspired by the butterfly-tattooed Easter eggs from a previous year, and my love of adding a little gold bling to everything these days whenever possible. 

I figured that if other temporary tattoos would stick to colored eggs, then the metallic tattoos I had picked up at a favorite things party, would be the perfect way to glam-up this year’s eggs.

I simply dyed my eggs with solid colors to the desired intensity. Both neons and pastels can work well with gold. I went more neon, but played with getting a little bit of an ombre effect on some eggs. Then I picked the best tattoos for each egg. The peacock feather was perfect on the bright blue.

You know I love pink with gold, so used a chunky bracelet-style tattoo to wrap around this egg.

The word “dream” looks dreamy on the pale pink and white egg. 

Apply the tattoos according to the directions. Just try and be really careful not to move the tattoo around while it is adhering. Chances are you will end up with a little wrinkling, but that just makes it look like gold foil, right?

Easter is coming early this year! What do you have planned? I have a bunches of fresh Easter ideas in the archives if you are looking for more inspiration!

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