Sonogram Heartbeat Art Canvas

A year later (yes, my baby will be ONE this month), I still love Calvin's nursery.  Now that he's a little older, we spend so much time in there playing, reading, and that's the main place where I nurse him.  I didn't do a lot of DIY projects for it (hello, exhausted all the time during pregnancy haha), but I did this one piece of artwork a little while before he was born.  It hangs in his bathroom and perfectly ties all the colors of the bathroom and bedroom together.  That's the best thing about this sonogram fetal heart rate art: you can use as many colors you want (and whatever colors you want!). 

It was pretty easy to make, and it's so meaningful.  All you need is a canvas, paint, paintbrushes, and a sonogram photo (with fetal heart rate) from an ultrasound. 

I love the way different heartbeats look, so it was difficult to choose my favorite!  I thought this one had the most opportunity for color variance and was from Calvin's 24-week ultrasound. 

All I did was start by sketching the outline of the heartbeat.  Then, I filled in the same colors for each segment of the heart rate to keep it symmetrical and blended them all together. 

Now, it hangs in the jack and jill bathroom just off Calvin's bedroom.  I smile every time I see it!

Masters-Inspired Welcome Sign

Happy Masters Week, friends!  This week is basically a national holiday at our house, and we find a way to celebrate each year.  Whether you're going to the tournament in Augusta, Georgia or hosting your own watch party at home, I have tons of suggestions for you (click the links in the text above to learn more!).  This year, we won't be going to the golf tournament, so I decided to make a little sign to welcome friends in who are coming over to watch the coverage on tv.  

Obviously, I had to use the famous logo, but I changed it up a little, putting the flag and hole over Charleston (where we live) instead of Augusta.  One of my absolute favorite things about visiting Augusta National (or even watching it on tv) are all the bright flowers, so I made sure to incorporate some of those into my sign, as well as the famous colors!

Here's what you'll need:
- slatted wooden sign
- multi-surface paints (green, white, yellow, and red)
- USA cutout (I printed off Google images)
- silk flowers (I used daffodils and a magnolia)
- hot glue gun
- scissors
- green ribbon
- spray sealer

1. Start by placing your USA outline on the wooden sign and tracing it with green paint.

2. Make the outline pop off the page by adding 3D depth with white and green paints around the outline.

3. Fill in the USA with yellow paint.

4. Remove the flowers from their stems.  This is usually really easy to do with silk flowers, and they will pop right off.  If they don't remove easily, you can cut the flowers right at their stems.  In addition to the flowers, also cut a couple of leaves from each stem to use.

5. Hot glue the flowers to the sign and add a few leaves to make the flowers look more life-like.

6. Paint your saying at the top of the sign.  I chose "welcome y'all," but other options are: "happy spring," your home's longitude and latitude coordinates, or simply "hello!"

7. Tie the green ribbon into a bow on the top hanger.  I hot glued the ribbon down so that it wouldn't move or come untied.

8. Spray all the paint with a sealer and allow to dry for 24 hours before hanging outside your home!

Kitchen-Themed Easter Basket

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser, Mars Wrigley Confectionery US, LLC. All opinions are mine alone. #SweeterEaster #CollectiveBias

Easter was always my favorite holiday growing up!  Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and my birthday, but looking all over the house for eggs was just so much fun on Easter morning.  My mom would always leave an empty Easter basket on the coffee table and let me search high and low for eggs all morning.  Truth be told, there were a few years where we'd find plastic eggs in crazy places like the back of the utensil drawer and in a glass in the cupboard months after Easter.

The real reason I always loved Easter wasn't just for the candy eggs but also because it's my unofficial start of spring!  Growing up in New England, Easter was the first holiday where I could wear a pretty new floral dress and spend time outside.  Easter still says "spring is here" to me, and I love sharing this holiday with my friends and family.  This year, I put together a kitchen-themed Easter basket to gift to my neighbors.  It has some of my absolute favorite baking tools and accessories, as well as some of my favorite Mars candies, and I'm so excited to show you how to put together one of your own - let's hop to it!

1. I love to start with a basket that can be used again.  We all have a ton of those colorful, woven Easter baskets that we can bring out once each year, but when gifting, I love to pack in something versatile.  To go with my kitchen theme, I chose this metal utensil holder.  I love reusing these for picnics and summer parties, plus it looks great in the kitchen.

2. To go in the basket, I chose a variety of spring-themed and colorful kitchen essentials: cookie cutters, sprinkles, cupcake liners, dish towels, straws, and kitchen utensils (whisk, spatula, and scraper).

3. After layering all of the kitchen items into the basket, it's time to add the most important items of any Easter basket: candy!  In addition to finding all of my kitchen and baking essentials at Walmart, I also purchased some Easter treats: DOVE® Solid Milk Chocolate Bunny, M&M'S® Caramel Laydown Bag, and STARBURST® Original Jellybeans Laydown Bag.  Ready to shop for some Mars chocolates?  Hover over the photo below to click through to walmart.com to purchase!

4. In addition to sharing whole bags of candy with my neighbors, I also bought this adorable bunny jar for some of the M&M’S® candies.  Sharing these candies out of the bag made the basket even ore colorful!

And now my basket is ready to deliver to our neighbors!  I love the combination of useful items and something sweet in the basket.  The STARBURST® Jellybeans and M&M’S® candies are perfect to enjoy on Easter as a treat, mixed into delicious baked goods, or to decorate your favorite cookies!

How will you be celebrating Easter this year?  What's your favorite part of an Easter basket?

Family Traditions: Cinnamon Ornaments

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, INC. and The Coca-Cola Company, all opinions are mine alone. #ShareMagicSpreadJoy #CollectiveBias

Growing up in New England, the holidays were everything.  When I think of the month of December, I think of snow on the ground and bundling up in the car to go on drives to see Christmas lights.  Now, living in South Carolina, life is a little different.  I was still in shorts last week, and we take our golf cart out to see the lights around our neighborhood.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love where I live, but nothing beats heading "home" to see family.

This is why I'm so excited about Publix's Home for the Holidays Sweepstakes.  Visit Publix this holiday season and shop for Coca-Cola® to find the code to text and enter to win airfare for two, anywhere in the continental United States to travel home for the holidays.  Five winners will be chosen and the sweepstakes ends 12/30/17.  If I won the sweepstakes, Mike and I would use the money to make our annual trip back to Rhode Island and Connecticut for the holidays.  Mike has so much family in Connecticut that we would not be able to see everyone if we didn't travel there.  Plus, my parents dress my childhood home up so nicely each year with their tree and Christmas village that it's always a highlight for me.

Because we only spend a few days home with family this time of year, we've begun incorporating some of our families' traditions into the holidays at our own home.  From filling our stockings the same way Mike's mom did each year (complete with an orange at the bottom) to opening each door of our advent calendar with excitement (which is still filled at Thanksgiving by my mom), we are all about traditions.  Each of the last few years, I have made cinnamon ornaments for our home, and they smell so much like my childhood.  Growing up, my mom and I would roll out the dough on the kitchen table each year, and cut them into holiday shapes to hang on the tree.

Last time I was at Publix, I grabbed the apple sauce and cinnamon I needed, along with a 6-pack of holiday-themed Coca-Cola® for a fun afternoon of crafting.

What you'll need: 
- 1 cup apple sauce
- 1 1/3 cups ground cinnamon (plus a little more to keep dough from sticking)
- 2 tablespoons school glue
- rolling pin
- wax paper
- cookie cutters
- straw
- cookie sheet
- ribbon

What to do:
1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
2. Combine apple sauce, cinnamon, and glue in a large bowl and mix until smooth.
3. Lay one piece of wax paper on a flat surface, and place the dough ball on top.
4. Cover the dough with a second slice of wax paper, and roll out the dough until it's just thinner than the diameter of the straw.
5. Uncover the dough and cut out shapes using the cookie cutters.
6. Place another piece of wax paper on the cookie sheet, and lay each ornament on the covered cookie sheet.
7. Use the straw opening to cut out one hole on each ornament (for the ribbon).
8. Bake in the oven for 1 hour on the wax paper.
9. Take the ornaments out of the oven, remove the wax paper, and place the ornaments back on the sheet (same side up) to cook for an additional half hour.
10. You will know they're done when they are no long doughy on the bottom.
11. Let the ornaments cool on the cookie sheet and when cool, tie with a piece of ribbon for hanging.

What are your favorite holiday traditions?
Where would you travel if you won the Publix Home for the Holidays Sweepstakes?

Learn What You Love: Hand-Lettering

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and the Coca-Cola Company. All opinions are mine alone. #MyTasteOfLife #CollectiveBias

Has anyone else heard the mantra that you should have three hobbies in life: one to make money, a second that keeps you in shape, and a third to be creative.  My answers to the first two are blogging and golf, and I've been looking for my third passion for a while.  Around our wedding, I started learning calligraphy for our invitations and place cards, but after some time practicing, I got a little bored with how rigid it felt.  I followed certain shapes and lines from a book for each scripted letter with the specific pens and didn't feel like I could be as creative as I wanted.  Recently, I discovered hand-lettering on Instagram and fell in love.  You can hand-letter on paper, chalkboards, canvas, and with a variety of pens, markers, and paint.

Diet Coke® and Publix have teamed up to offer $2,000 to people from all over the country to help them learn and continue to appreciate their passion.  If I was selected for the grant, I would take hand-lettering classes from one of the very talented creatives here in Charleston as well as purchase supplies to grow my creative ability with more designs and mediums.

Head to Publix for the text to win code to enter the Diet Coke Taste of Life Sweepstakes.  20 winners will receive a $2,000 scholarship to fulfill their dreams and passions.  Sweepstakes ends 11/3.  While you're there, you can save $1 on any one Diet Coke 12-pack, 12-ounce bottle, or any two Diet Coke 2-liter bottles (from now until 10/27). 

 

On my own, I've had fun making some notes for friends and monograms, but I would love to expand, especially on other mediums such as chalkboards and tea towels like I've seen all over the internet!  All around Charleston, I see so many talented artists sharing their skills, and while I am practicing on my own, I'd love to learn more about hand-lettering!

If you had the opportunity to learn a new language, take an art class, cooking class, try a new sport, what you would do?