Hot Air Ballon Baby Shower

To celebrate a long time friend of my daughter's baby coming soon, me and the girls collaborated with Cindy's mom Nancy to throw a Hot Air Balloon Themed baby shower. My daughter Jenny thought of the theme, so we did the decorations and provided our house for it, while Nancy did all the cookies and sweet treats and most of the food. Christina (my other awesome kid) and a few other friends also brought some delicious shower foods.
The Balloons are made from paper lanterns, crepe paper streamers and little baskets. Easy to make and so fun looking!
Nancy made these cookie pops and marshmallow flower pops. Perfect for a spring shower, don't you think?

Favors were hot air balloon note cards from Michael' s Crafts with some stick candy from Cracker Barrel displayed on the old crib spring that Angela from Pickles on Pizza gave me last summer!
Mason jars and paper straws in a vintage suitcase with paper balloon corsages. Two of the corsages had a hot air balloon stamped on the back for prizes.
So simple to make but so pretty was the crepe paper fringe made by looping it over twine and securing with a dot of glue stick.

Also made some on some empty metal planter frames

Jenny wrapped some crepe paper on our front tree and I stuck some azalea branches on it for more color

This shower was fun and festive and the food was delicious!

Last week I made these Whole Wheat Oatmeal Peanut Butter cookies, because I was looking for something sweet that actually had some nutritional value. They were really delicious. Really! Everyone in the house loved them.
Now tonight I made the same cookies, except I substituted extra virgin coconut oil for the butter. The batter felt wetter, so I baked them a little shorter in case they ended up too crispy. Man. Still so good, but with a hint of coconut flavor which I love anyway.
You can read about the health benefits of coconut oil here.

TRY EM YOU'LL LIKE EM!

heeee...hawwwww

this is my photo inspiration

my rendition of a smiley lookin donkey

Last Sunday, we went to Oak Mountain State Park about an hour away in Birmingham with my daughter, son in law and grandson, Kavi. Since we had eaten at Flip Burger first, we only had about 15 minutes at the petting zoo barnyard. One of my favorite animals are the donkeys which I think have the cutest, friendliest looking faces. I snapped a bunch of pics with my phone camera, and a few days later used on of them for reference for a painting. It was my first try at doing a whole scene with foreground and background, using watercolors and ink. One of my challenges is knowing when to stop adjusting the picture. But I am having fun experimenting with ink and watercolor and figure that practice will do me good!

my arti-sh dabblings

A few weeks ago, I was attempting some moose drawings, since I just love moose. They have the kindest looking faces, I think! But then I began to branch out to trying to capture some other of my favorites.
I recently saw a NGW channel documentary about beavers. I then realized that I loved beavers. They are amazingly intelligent and as I have said before, if they could speak, they would most definitely have British accents. Indubitably.
Foxes are so darn cute, too. Crafty, agile. Things I would aspire to be. And what a lovely red coat they have. Possibly British accent there too!
HOT AIR BALLOONS! Especially vintage looking ones. For some reason, I am sooo obsessed with them now. I imagine them floating gracefully over....you guessed it...London ... England!
I made this sketch into a poster after adding text and background effects with picnik online photo editing. I figured I would get some use out of picnik before it closes down. (Booooo hoo to its closing) I then uploaded it to the Walmart online photo center and had it printed as a poster which now hangs over my fireplace.
**as a footnote, I have been adding the color to the sketches with watercolor pencils and have also tried the watercolor and ink style which I hope to master a lot better. I also enjoy just using basic drawing pencils because of the vintage effect I believe they give a picture.