Styled! :: Reused Starbucks Glasses

Hello lovelies!

 Today I am going to share a {not so secret} tool that party planners use to create those adorable milk jugs and juice bottles for events.  

Ever since a little beauty called Pinterest has entered my life, things have never been the same :)

source

I just followed the link above and used her step by step directions to get those gorgeous glasses sparkling.

Once you have you clean glass, the possibilities are endless!

For the jungle themed shower I just styled, I knew that I wanted to use burlap to create a more organic feel. For this party I created water bottle labels and printed off a few extra to use for the juice bottles as well. I love the idea of using them for something other than their intended use.

I cut the burlap into ovals, placed on our glass, and wrapped our water label around, securing the back with tape. Straws and flags completed the look!

For a softer look, you could wrap scraps of fabric around you bottle with a little bit of twine or ribbon, like I did here:

There are so many adorable ideas out there, like this one I did for our annual Christmas Eve cookie decorating party {found on Pinterest, of course!}:

Or these adorable swamp juices, an idea I am definitely doing this Halloween:

source

(isn't the color combo just perfect for a monster truck party??)

Spray paint the tops {maybe even with chalk paint???} and glue printouts on them like this blogger did:

source

Or just add on a little twine or ribbon for a simple and beautiful look:

source

Have any of you used the glasses for your event? What did you think?

I am hooked! Plus the fact that you can save and reuse them again is a big deal to me. Not to mention it's a good excuse to buy all those frappuccinos ;)

xo,

Rachel

Weekend Wrap-Up & a Sneak Peak

Wow, what a busy weekend and an even busier Monday!

We started work on one of my big to-do list items: our family room.

And by work, I mean shopping ;). I also happened to find this little gem:

Although nothing to do with our family room, it is absolutely perfect for a little spot I have in mind upstairs. 

Although I wanted to do a fun post on staging tonight, I am just T.I.R.E.D. But I figured it was no fun leaving you with just nothing, so here's a little sneak peak:

Hope everyone's week is off to a great start!

xo,

Rachel



Friday Freebie :: DIY Chalkboard Labels

Thanks to everyone that came over and checked out my blog from A Thoughtful Place. 

Today I wanted to share with you how I made all the chalkboard labels that I used on our pantry jars seen here. This project was super easy, and I am sure that there are a ton of different ways to do it. I chose this method because I love spray painting.  Combine that with a love of contact paper, and this project was an all time favorite for me :)

You see, for this project, I really wanted to use these chalk labels from Martha Stewart. In fact, I even bought a pack. But I would have needed to get more packs and different sizes to accomplish what I needed.  Spending $30 on some labels does not sound like a good idea to me. Especially when I knew I could do it myself!!

First, I bought some chalk board spray paint and gathered up the rest of my supplies.

Since I was testing this whole method out, I only cut out a small piece (about 2' x 18"). The next part is not fancy: I used painters tape to tape the ends to two boxes. This is because if you left it flat against a surface to paint, it would then stick to it. I suppose you could use painters tape all around the edges, but I hate using up product if I don't have to. I'm pretty cheap like that ;)

It took me only ONE coat. Wowzers.

1. Using my template I made, I traced around the edges on the back of the contact paper

2. I cut a long strip down the length of the paper and folded it a few times (3 times max), so I could cut multiple at the same time (yes, I am cheap and lazy!)

3. Cut along your tracing

4. Write on your labels before placing them on the jar-it's easier to write then

Peel and stick!:

I LOVED this project, and really the possibilities are endless: you could make dinosaur shaped labels, you could make a huge one and stick it to the wall......

I barely tapped into my spray paint with this project, and I have a ton of labels left over.

Wanna try it yourself? Well, today's Freebie Friday are the templates I used to create mine:

Just go HERE to download the templates, print them up on cardstock, and cut out!

I hope you do something amazing with them:)

Have a great weekend!! I hope to have the Jungle party ready to show next week, so keep an eye out!

xo,

Rachel



Linking Up.....

House on the Left :: Pantry Overhaul

Hi!

Things have been crazy {as always} around here, and it's really had me thinking ahead to fall when the kid's go back to school. {more like dreaming and counting down....ha!}

There's a little list of things that I want to get organized and projects completed *hopefully* before life really starts to get busy with homework and soccer games.

One of the top projects is our snacking situation. I don't know about anyone else, but my kids would snack all day if I let them. It's a fairly big issue over here since portion sizes have gotten out of control and snacks have begun to eat up too much of our grocery budget. I showed a sneak peak of our new plan last week, and hopefully will get to share all the details with you next week.

Before a plan can go into action, though, organizing must be done. {and not just done, but done pretty, right??} Enter our pantry.

It's been a work in progress for a few months now, and this week I have finally gotten the bulk of it done. Wanna see??

Of course, we must start with the ugly. Keep in mind, this picture was taken soon after we moved in, so at that point, we would 'unpack' our food and just throw it on a shelf.

First things first, everything came out to leave a blank slate. So basically, for a solid 3 hours, it looked like our pantry threw up all over our kitchen:

{keeping it real! :)}

Next up, I gathered all our "organizing supplies" (misc. jars, baskets, and tubs I had gathered from the dollar store, thrift stores, and our own personal stash)

I had a plan to upcylce the pasta jars, but in the mean time, I just wrote what was inside on top of the lid.

While I was at the dollar store collecting anything I thought might be helpful in organizing this space, I stumbled upon decorative rolls of contact paper. You must know- I love me some contact paper. As a renter and lover of all things removable, I could come up with a hundred different uses for the stuff. In this case, I knew it would make the perfect (and cheap!) decorative backdrop for our pantry. In a perfect world, I would put beautiful wallpaper or paint inside, but since we still don't know if we want to buy our house, I don't want to do anything too permanent. So up it went, and in went the containers I bought.

Already looking better, right?? The thing on the door was a great find at Target and really increased our pantry space.

And this is how it has looked for the past, oh, four months :) Finally, I got my rear in gear, and fixed up some of the uglies that were in there. First up, the cheap, black, plastic tubs I picked up at the dollar store. I taped off the top and spray painted the bottom and then added some of the DIY blackboard labels I made.

This was one of those little projects that was so easy and the transformation was really just amazing.

Next up were the random glass jars I had been collecting. Paint for the tops, labels for the front, and voila!

Ready to see the results??

During the whole redo, Ollie stood ground in front of his wet food, like he was guarding it ;)

Here's a reminder of how it started off:

I am pretty excited with how it turned out!

Make sure to come back tomorrow for a tutorial on how I made the labels. It was such a quick and easy project, that I just know you will love it!

xo,

Rachel

Linking Up.......






Inspired :: Olympic Party

Good morning!

With the Olympics right around the corner, I wanted to share with you a little inspiration to throw an amazing Olympic party.

 Find all the sources on my Olympic Party Pinterest Board

What a great way to introduce children into this great tradition!

Are you doing anything special to celebrate the opening ceremony??

xo,

Rachel

Inspired :: Under the Sea Kids Room

One of my passions is interior design. Since the addition of my 3 children, my passion has quickly developed into an obsession of kid's spaces. It's a topic that I want to share on this blog, although lately, parties have taken the upper hand :)

Over the next week or two I want to share a little room I did about a year ago.

I am usually not the type to do a "theme" room, but sometimes we are so focused on creating a space that our child can "grow in", it's nice to design a room that a kid can just be a kid in and feel iinspired in for a change.

Today I am going to share some of the inspiration I used as a jumping off point for this project.

1. / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

 First thing we did was paint a dresser we had on a hand a beautiful yellow. The results were beautiful...can't wait to show you! For now, here's a little sneak peak of how the room turned out:

Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!

xo,

Rachel

Happy Weekend!

I cannot believe it's almost Monday AGAIN.

We had a pretty good weekend; hope you did as well!

Another weekend, another party, right??? This one was actually pretty special, because it is for our former neighbor, a little girl {now 8!} that Cayden personally calls "her big sister".

Yes, you will be seeing these extra lollipops around a lot :) I think our order came in two dozen, so there is more where this one came from! I just added a scrapbook sticker, and instantly created a personalized look--a super simple way to dress up plain lollipops at any party!

And take a look at the amazing cake her parents made for her:

can you believe this is the first time that they have ever worked with fondant??

We also got a little shopping done for our little soccer players.......

And remember our little kitty, Domino whom we just got? Well, he seemed awfully lonely, so we decided to get him a little buddy. You could say we bought our cat a cat ;)

So meet Ollie {short for Oliver} our newest and last addition to this crazy family of ours.

We {well, I} were worried that they wouldn't get along. But it was love at first sight.

Squeeeeal... they are so cute, right???