Pocketful of Joules

And yes, I know the title of this post is a bit redundant… but I wasn’t sure whether to go with make your own facinators or DIY facinators, so I went with both! And why are we talking facinators at all? Well, my sister had a tea party themed bridal shower!

For those keeping count, there are four of us: Me, Jason, Katie and Kelsey (twins). Jason got married in September, Katie got married in December and Kelsey is getting married in May!

For Kelsey’s bridal shower, Katie and my mom put together the sweetest little tea party themed event. There was beautiful china, pots of hot tea, lots of little finger sandwiches, and pretty little desserts! My job was to be in charge of the facinators.

For those unfamiliar with the idea of a fascinator, it’s a fun little headpiece – similar to a small hat – that is made from feathers, flowers, beads, etc. They are artistic and the best ones are rather obnoxious. So yeah, they are right up my alley!

I started by ordering a couple packs of plain metal headbands (I got these from Amazon) They were only $10 for a pack of 12, which is pretty reasonable. I ended up buying 2 packs to make sure we had enough.

Then, I made a trip to the Dollar Store and FILLED my basket with handfuls of tulle ribbon (white, sparkle pink, sparkle blue, bright blue and bright purple), some wire wrap, sparkly green hats (yay for St Paddy’s Day!), and lots of packs of little flower/butterfly ornaments. All in all, I ended up spending $35 at the Dollar Store on supplies.

My last stop was the fabric store (I went by JoAnn’s) where I bought a couple packs of glue dots, some black tulle (it had a wider grid, which I liked) and a pack of feathers. I think I spent about $15 at that stop.

I made a couple fascinator samples at home, grabbed a few pairs of scissors from Jack’s craft table and spread it all out on a table at the bridal shower:

I purposefully provided the wire wrap and glue dots to secure everything together, because I didn’t want anyone burning themselves (or ripping out their hair) with a glue gun. Everyone had a great time and we came up with some super obnoxious fascinator designs!

My total for supplies was just about $70 and we had plenty of supplies for the 15 facinators made at the party. I also have lots of leftovers… so for the next year or so I’ll have some really nicely wrapped gifts!

What do you think… do you want to have your own DIY Facinator party?

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If you remember all the way back to last month, I shared all about my sister’s fabulous wedding cruise. Once we returned, I planned to make her a special wedding portrait (like the one I made my brother) and I kept putting it off for a bit. I finally sat down and sketched out the plan based on her beautiful wedding photos.

I love that you can personalize every bit of the portrait so for Katie and Craig, I made sure to mirror their hairstyles, height difference, styles and colors of their wedding outfits, and Katie’s bridal bouquet. I was terrified that I was going to run the whole thing by trying to freehand a bouquet, but their wedding was held at a botanical garden… so I really wanted to include the flowers if I could.

I’m so happy with the finished project!

And here it is compared to my brother’s wedding portrait. It’s it amazing how distinctive you can make the little guys?!

I’m already looking forward to doing another one for my sister Kelsey after her May wedding!

Netflix is brilliant. I mean, think of how many people have New Year’s resolutions to purge stuff out of their house and then BOOM Tidying Up with Marie Kondo shows up on their Netflix account. Brilliant!

In case you are in the dark, here is the trailer:

Isn’t she adorable?!

This little sprite of a lady comes into your house and helps you tidy up your life. It’s basically like Hoarders, but less hoarder-ish. And yes, it is the biggest first world problem to have too much stuff…

I LOVE purging, so this show totally sucked me in. I’ve only watched three episodes so far (and wanted to throw things at my television during the first one), but every time I start watching I find myself making notes in my phone like “purge DVDs” and “go through unused Christmas décor items”.

I’m not going to go full Kondo and start rolling my clothing, but I am certainly taking away some of the lessons from the show. Already I have attacked my pantry, my storage container cupboard and the great abyss of random kitchen crap that lives in my kitchen island. Oh, and I went through my underroos drawer and threw out anything that gives me a wedgie!

Next up on my list is:

• The playroom (again). As Jack grows out of toys, I’m really good at donating them or giving them to friends. It’s TIME again.
• The Christmas decorations in the basement. I still haven’t taken down our Christmas décor this year (it makes me happy and I need all the happy I can get this month), but we have some stuff that I haven’t put out for the last few years. I think it is time to go through the unused stuff for a purge while I’m packing things away.
• Our DVDs. We basically never watch our old DVDs, so I think it’s a good time to go through and get rid of 90% of them. I’ll probably check eBay to make sure we don’t have anything that we could resell, but I anticipate I’ll just drop them all off at the thrift store.

How about you? Have you been watching Tidying up with Marie Kondo? Are you currently ripping apart your house in a purging frenzy?

I had thought I’d lucked out this year when Jack wanted to wear a previous Halloween costume again. But I forgot all about ‘dress like your favorite book character day’ at school… Sigh. Because what working parent DOESN’T want to throw together a second costume the week before Halloween?!

Last year for Halloween Jack was Batman, so he used his monkey costume (from the previous year) to be Curious George for character day. Well, this year he wanted to be a monkey (again) for Halloween… but didn’t want to be a monkey twice.

Which brings us to Pete.

Pete the Cat is Jack’s FAVORITE book character right now. We literally have a dozen Pete the Cat books that we read on regular rotation and still tend to pick a few more up each time we visit the library. So, Jack decided he needed to be Pete the Cat.

First I did a quick online search to see if there were any cool (and inexpensive) Pete the Cat costumes out there. And found this, which is horrifying.

Source: HalloweenCostumes.com

Yeah, that’s not happening. Also, it was $50. So… no.

I then did some pinterest searching for homemade versions. Most of them were also kind of weird and creepy. Finally, I found one where the Pete face was on a baseball cap.

THAT I can do.

Jack actually had a blue baseball cap from a previous Halloween costume of Fix-it Felix… so I ordered some felt, bought some glue and assembled my supplies.

I started by cutting out some vague eye shapes and when I found a set I liked, I copied it for the other side.

Then, I cut out a triangle nose, some whiskers and started gluing.

It’s kind of Pete-ish…right?

I let it dry for a few hours and had Jack try it on when he came home from school:

For character day, the plan is to have Jack wear the Pete hat, a blue school hoodie, blue track pants and his chucks. So, basically his normal school clothes and a baseball hat.

I’ll go ahead and call this a lazy DIY because I know you’re already thinking it! However, it cost less than $10 (I had to buy the felt and fabric glue) and used stuff we already had around the house, so I’m going to call it a win!

What last minute costume ideas have you thrown together? Does my hat look close enough to Pete the Cat to pass?