Photo Credit: Amy Atlas

Mmmmm, isn't that a delicious photo to wake you up on a Monday morning? Don't those colors, textures, and designs just scream wonderful things at you? I know they do for me- totally makes me want to go make something in my craft room!

 If you're in need of some inspiration to start your week, or if you just want places beyond scrapbooking blogs to look to for inspiration, why not try out a few party planning or wedding blogs? They're full of all kinds of lovely photos, guaranteed to make your creative mind go haywire with possibilities.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Style Me Pretty- a simply gorgeous (and very prolific) wedding blog that includes photos of everything from the stationery suite to little details like placecards. 
• The Inspired Bride- photos of weddings, DIY projects, and a selection of color palettes that's not to be missed.
• 100 Layer Cake- inspiration boards, wedding and engagement photo shoots, and DIY projects are the hallmark of this lovely blog.
• The Sweetest Occasion- a more general event planning blog, ranging from birthdays to showers to weddings.
• Birthday Girl- Inspiration boards for parties of all kinds, photo shoots of real parties, and links to all kinds of other goodies.
• Tomkat Studio- Gorgeous blog of a small business that creates both custom and pre-designed printable party decoration packages.
• Hostess With the Mostess- another beautiful party-planning blog full of inspiration boards and real party photos.
• Amy Atlas- blog of the dessert-buffet designer extraordinaire herself- not to be missed!
• The Party Dress- party and holiday decorating ideas, including tons of inspiration boards.

Yum!! Now I need to make cupcakes after work today. :)

John Deere Themed Cupcake Tower - Huntsville Dessert Buffet Designer

I've been going through my photos lately (I just switched to Lightroom about 6 weeks ago and love it) and realized that I never posted this one!

I was hired to do a John Deere themed dessert/snack buffet for a birthday party, and I was super tickled with how it turned out with all the yellow and green. Hopefully I can book a few more of these soon!

Introducing the ScrappyJedi Etsy Shop!

I finally did it! I've been wanting to open my own Etsy shop to sell cupcake wrappers and toppers for months, and since I had this week off I decided it was a good time to start.

As of right now there are only two listings- one for the toppers pictured below and one for the wrappers.

One of the cool thing about these is that they can be customized in so many ways. Over the coming weeks and months I will be designing more color sets to add to the shop, but I also welcome (gladly, with open arms) any custom orders. I also plan on adding coordinating favor bags, invitations, thank you cards, and whatever else I can come up with. :)

I have the following shades of crepe paper on hand (I'm pretty tickled that I found polka dot and zebra print paper!). Mix and match as many different colors per set as you like.

And for the toppers, I have the following center designs available in addition to your choice of colors above. If you want to order but don't see exactly what you need here, please send me a message and I'm sure I can find something that will be perfect for your next party. :)

You can find a preview and a link to my little shop just to the right of this post.

And not to worry- I definitely do not plan to turn this into an all Etsy, all the time blog. I expect I'll only have a shop related post every week or two, and the rest of the time will be regularly scheduled scrapping and sci-fi content.

I'm so excited to finally have this little venture started!

More Baby Shower Planning

The preparations for Beth's baby shower have definitely been in full swing around here for the last couple of weeks. I feel pretty safe posting this here since my brother reads the blog, but I'm pretty sure Beth doesn't unless he shows her something on it. :) That, and I'm going to throw another post right on to of this one to push it down the page a bit...

I've folded dozens of sheets of tissue paper...

 

And made lots of cupcake toppers using various punches and my Sizzix. Yes, I even took my Sizzix outside on a pretty day to work for a while. :)

 

 

 

 

The candy has all been sorted by color (I pulled out just the purple and green ones)...

 

And a lot of the stuff was taken to Mom and Dad's and left piled on my bed there the weekend before last when I went to the shower that Beth's Mom gave her (more on that when I've had time to edit the pics).

 

 

Oh, and the invitations are all out! I guess they'd better be since the shower is next Saturday. :)

I've been finding tons of cool ideas on blogs like Hostess with the Mostess and Amy Atlas, especially when it comes to making dessert buffets. After a lot of searching around, I finally found some suitable jars and glass dishes at Home Goods, so I think I'm all set to go on that front.

In other cool news, I've been given a blog award by Scrappy Mel! Thank you!

In honor of this award, here are 10 random things that make me happy (in no particular order):

1. Cherry blossoms
2. Thunderstorms
3. A fresh, new Star Wars book (non-prequel era, of course) in my hands (bonus points for Kyp Durron related content)
4. Chipotle. Or sushi.
5. Starting a new project (but not necessarily finishing it...)
6. Warm, sunny days
7. Organizing stuff (subcategory: office supplies)
8. Finding an awesome sale on something I really like (scrapbooking supplies especially)
9. Snuggly cats
10. Traveling (almost anywhere...the Dutch Antilles are next on the list, I think)

Of course God and my family make me happy, too- those go without saying!

 And now to pass this on to 5 other blogs that spread happiness (listed in no particular order)...

• Kitschalicious- she's in the process of buying a new home right now, so please congratulate her! I'm still insanely jealous of all those beautiful apothecary jars she found at her goodwill store.
• Scrappy Jessi- always posting something happy and beautiful
• Christina's Creative Expressions- I love her Finish It Friday posts...they motivate me to get my own stuff finished. And she's a fellow geek...gotta love that!
• Stephanie Howell- this girl is an awesome scrapper, and she keeps it totally real on her blog. Did I mention that she's also an amazing photographer?
• Club Jade- for Star Wars (and other sci-fi) randomness, it doesn't get any better than this place. Sorry, just had to mention them since I visit the site twenty bazillion times a day.

Okay, over and out!

Baby Shower: In Progress

 

I've been a busy, busy bee getting things ready for Beth's baby shower. She requested a purple and green color scheme, so I pulled out some gorgeous American Crafts paper and started in on cutting cupcake wrappers (they're all done), making toppers, and trimming and rounding the corners of many, many pieces of kraft cardstock to make invitations.

Oh, and the butterfly punches. Where oh where would I be without my Martha Stewart butterfly punch? :)

Cupcake Obsession (and a little party planning bug)

I have been bitten by the cupcake bug! More specifically the cupcake decorating bug. It all started with Dad's birthday cupcake tower and got a little sidelined in all the Christmas craziness, but now that it's a new year, it's back in full force!

I have at least one baby shower to help make a cupcake tower for (and another I may be helping with that may or may not be Hello Kitty themed...not sure yet), and the first item on the list of things to make is definitely a bunch of these cupcake wrappers, either on my Wishblade or Mom's new Cricut Expression. Luckily, I found a great stash of American Crafts paper on closeout at Tuesday Morning- it'll be perfect!

And of course the cupcakes need cute little toppers. I made the ones for Dad's party using a dingbat font I found on another blog, but now I'm eying these Hello Kitty cutting files.

This one is from GSD Junkie.

And this one is from The Quilling Patch. Both are free!

The cupcakes will need sprinkles, as well, and Jessica over on Such Pretty Things posted a great tutorial on coloring your own.

She also has this amazing cabinet full of all kinds of wonderful sprinkles and decorative candies. I want!!

And, while it's not cupcake related, she also can do this to sugar cubes. Color me jealous!

Once the cupcakes have been made and decorated, they need to be presented properly. I have dreams of being able to put together something as coordinated as this party setup by TomKat studio.

I'd want, of course, an assortment of pretty serving platters. The ones below were DIY platters found on Design*Sponge. I'd seen them made before, but it seemed that the week I thought of them, everyone posted them on their blogs!

Even IKEA Hacker had one that week. These are super easy to make- all you need is a pretty plate, an inexpensive glass candlestick holder, and some epoxy (I like to use E6000).

The cake stand below is from Mia Rosa (via Visual Notes) and is a little more sophisticated. I think I could make one of these, too, as long as I can drill through the plates without shattering them.

And how about decorations above the table? I'm partial to tissue paper pom-poms (if you can't tell by the bunch I put over my desk in my scrap room) like these from Martha Stewart.

And maybe a pretty stitched banner to go along with them?

Yeah, I dare you to do a search for "garland" on Flickr and not get sucked in by the pretties!! :)

Happy Birthday, Dad!!

Last weekend I got to take a break from working on one house or the other and instead go visit my family for my Dad's birthday party. His birthday was actually in late October, and we'd planned on having the festivities the week before, but then I found out I was having Revenge of the Knee Surgery and the party was put on hold for a few weeks.

I got in pretty late on Friday night, but when I got there I found a beautifully made bed and chocolates by my pillows. :)

We almost always have a bonfire for Dad's birthday, and luckily the weather cooperated and it didn't rain and wasn't too cool or too warm that night. It's always a busy morning and afternoon beforehand, though! Dad is chief bonfire builder and tender, and the fire has to be started fairly early in the morning in order to burn down enough to be comfortable to sit by in the evenings.

He did take a break from that, though, to attempt to decipher the ingredients list on the back of a truly cheap can of store-brand orange soda. Darren and Jon really enjoy their cheap store-brand orange sodas. :)

I didn't get to see Dad nearly as much as I would have liked during the day because I was busy making cupcakes and decorating for the party. Plus there were a couple of trips to run errands in there, too!

Since we ate outside, there weren't any decoration in the house, but I did dress up a tiered cake stand, and I'd cut lots and lots of cupcake wrappers with my Wishblade the day before.

Please excuse me if I'm including too many photos of this, but I'm rather proud of how it turned out! I made all the cupcake toppers, too, and taped them to lollipop sticks before sticking them into the tops of the cupcakes.

It's really hard to take pictures of people sitting around the actual bonfire- I have to use the flash and they get kind of annoyed. :) Tina said she was holding up her hand to block the heat from the fire- not to keep me from taking her picture. I think Avery actually was blocking me, though. :)

Dad does good bonfires, doesn't he?

The next day Dad and I were able to fit in some time to take the cameras out and shoot photos of the fall leaves. We had a lot of fun arranging them in the creek. I haven't gone through them all yet, but I've seen several that I really like already.

Dad also tried to help me cut some books apart to scan in (I'd already confiscated the bindings from them to use for a scrapping project), but we broke his bandsaw in the process :( and the jigsaw was just too difficult and slow.

And I caught this shot of my brother and one of his cats out on the deck. J found Azzy while he was in college (J was in college, not Azzy :) ) and the cat now lives full-time with Mom and Dad and is spoooooooiiiled!

It was a such a fun family weekend. :) And I get to go back to see them again the day after Thanksgiving. Dad and I will shop black Friday sales from the comfort of their living room. :)