Lemonade anyone

Where I grew up there weren't sidewalks, in fact most homes were found at the end of a mile long driveway, so having a lemonade stand was never a possibility. I really wanted my girls to get to experience this, but with a little more pizazz so we made them a custom lemonade stand!
My parents had an island on wheels in their old kitchen, the luckies just remodeled it so they gave us this awesome piece. We took this table and painted it pink. We cut pieces of plywood to fit in each of the openings and painted them with black chalkboard paint and screwed them in. Years ago my parents gave me this beautiful table that had fancy legs and other cute details. One day I stupidly left it out in the rain and the table, which was pretty old, fell apart. I could never bring myself to throw away these beautifully cut legs and pieces so I kept them. They were the perfect addition to our table! Julies only request was that we add a little open/closed sign.
We worked for a few nights and here it is:

Saturday will be the grand opening of J & J's Lemonade Stand! We ordered some adorable pink and black straws and matching bags (for the cookies). Julie has been working on pouring drinks and making change, and Daddy has been planning what artwork he will put on the chalkboards. We will update you with pics from the big event this weekend!

An indoor Easter Picnic

We planned and Easter Picnic at one of our local parks. We invited over 40 of our friends and family, planned tons of games and delicious food. It rained! It poured! The park was flooding, so we had to change our Easter Picnic from the park to our house.

So of course I asked myself, 1. how are we going to fit over 40 people into our house?!?! and 2. how can I make our house look like the cute picnic that we had planned.

I found some really cute picnic decorations on Oriental Trading, there were paper lanterns, pinwheels for our cupcakes, even a pennant cake topper, everyone knows how much I LOVE pennants. They were all light pinks, yellows, and blues which were perfect for Easter, and since they were on Oriental Trading they were a great price! You can find them here Oriental Trading Vintage Picnic Decor

Earlier I had made a million pennants for Jemmas fairy party, I was planning on using these to block off the kids egg hunting site at the park. Since we were inside I decided to hang them on the ceiling with the paper lanterns I had ordered.

We had tons of food to eat so I needed lots of tables, white lace seemed very picnic to me so we set the tables with white lace table clothes, mason jars painted white and tied with the scraps from our pennants, and tons of fresh flowers! I collect egg cups so each table had a few sparkly eggs set in my vintage cups!

I wanted to give each of our guests a little gifts so the girls and I filled 8oz mason jars with Easter M&M's (they were pink, yellow, and blue-I love it when everything matches!), we topped them with little square scraps from our pennants and tied them with a little bow!

As a fun little addition my hubby decorated the walkway to our house with adorable Easter drawings!
Like I mentioned we had tons of food! Everyone brought their favorite picnic treat and we made pressed sandwiches. My newest obsession is bakers twine, I ordered a pastel sampler pack along with some Glassine bags from a great local store Twine and Tape. We made six different delicious pressed sandwiches wrapped them up in the bags, added a label and tied them up-they were so cute!

We had rain the morning of Easter but the afternoon was dry so we got to have a great egg hunt! We visited, ate, and enjoyed the company of wonderful friends and family!

Our oldes baby girl Julie hunting for eggs

The cousins

Each centerpiec had a little garden stake that said, "stop and smell the flowers" each lady got to take a boquet and stake home.

My hubbys easter swirls on the front walk

Baby girl number two, she looked so cute!

Its a Puppy Shower!!

Our good friend Rachael is a vet tech and she LOVES puppies. When it came time to plan her baby shower all she wanted were dogs, so we planned a Puppy Party!!!


We made our own invitations, baby Cahill was so cute in the belly!

We added little paw print confetti to each of the invitations

Cahill's paw print banner

Notes to the baby

We had tons of food but these puppy print cupcakes were my favorite!

If you haven't noticed yet I love pennants, these are made with different puppy fabrics, they are now hanging in Cahills room

Every table had a centerpiece with a silly title like, 'water bowl' 'puppy treats' 'puppy toys' we filled dollar store vases with doggy bones to hold the signs up. After the party the bones went to work with Rachael for the dogs!

I Love Pallets

It is getting warmer here in Norther California so I decided to start working on our patio. The side of the house was full of pallets, I have read lots of tutorials of taking your every day pallet and turning it into some pretty nifty furnature, so I thought I would try it.

A bench for the girls. Take one pallet and cut it in half, cut one of the halfs in half and screw it all together!

Americana wall art. Paint some pallet boards and connect them with two boards in the back.

Our Pallet table, super easy! Add some legs and you are done!

Our little patio made from pallets!



Our furnature has been built so now the hubby is going to stat on his special project-painting the cement patio!

A little birdy told me you would be my Valentine

I love chocolate, and so does the rest of the family, so you know there will be pounds of chocolate exchanged February 14^th at our house. But chocolate disappears (very quickly at our house) and we wanted to make sure that our loved ones had something left over to keep for some time. So we made some special keepsakes for everyone we love.

Birds were our theme this year, the girls and I painted bird houses for all of the adults. We lucked out and found the house on sale for just $1. We copied and attached a vintage bluebird valentine we found in Great Grandmas trunk to each of the houses. For the kids are hand crochet owls in their favorite colors!

Bird houses painted and glittered by the girls

The snuggly owls crochet for each of the kids

I found this vintage valentine in Great Grandmas trunk, it is perfect for the bird houses!

Valentines decor at the Aller Farm

I love the valentines prints you can find all over the internet, print them out, frame them and add a little holiday love throughout your house!

My great grandma owned a florist shop back in Kansas, part of my inheritance was hundreds of vintage vases like the valentines one in the picture

Vintage crystal full of roses and a hand painted sign

Valentines slip ccovers for my throw pillows

 

We love Valentines day around here. When I first started decorating I had store bought streamers and giant cardboard hearts. As time went by I built up my collection of vintage decorations and hand made trinkets. We have found ways to incorporate our every day things with our favorite holiday goodies, like our vintage scale full of hearts.

Our decorations are easy to put up and take down so we will be able to transition to St. Pattys day on the 15^th!

 



Alice in Wonderland

Later this year our first baby girl Julie, is turning 5! I have no idea how this happened, one second she was a baby the next she is a 5 year old! The last two years she has had very small parties (a popsicle party and a rainbow pancake party-what can I say she is a creative kid) so we told her she could have a big party to celebrate such a big age, and she chose Alice in Wonderland. I will admit I may have had a little influence in this choice, I have been wanting to plan an Alice in Wonderland party for a while so I knew how to sell it.

 Julie loves bright colors, knickknacks, clutter, and general fabulousness so an Alice in Wonderland party is the perfect fit. The party starts at the front door where guest are greeted with some mini ‘eat me’cookies (so that they can fit down the rabbit hole), inside the house we will have a huge table set up full of mirrors, hats and gloves-so that our guests are dressed for the party. As our guest walk through the hosue they will see brightly colored paper lanterns, a table full of rainbow ‘drink me’ drinks-with matching straws of course, and giant paper flowers.

Julies birthday is in September and our yard gets sunny and hot, so her party will be held under a set of white patio covers with tulle curtains attached to give it a more private feel. Inside are more lanterns, flowers and pennants, bright, gaudy and eccentric seem to be the mad hatters style! A huge table will be set for all of our guests. Books, flamingos, feathers, teacups, and flowers will be down the center of the table, instead of having a separate food table we will have all the food placed on towers throughout the table.

Daddy has already been working on giant cut outs of characters so that guests can pose and take pictures, and big brother Jayden is planning a Cheshire cat scavenger hunt and flamingo croquet game.

 There is lots of time before this party so we can make a weekly trip to the good will to search for tea cups, tea pots, and other fun trinkets for our table!
We also havent figured out our gift for our friends so any suggestions would be welcome!!