St. Patty's Day Nail Art

St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays, mainly due to 1) being Irish, 2) the abundance of green, and 3) shamrock shakes!  The other day I decided to make my nails festive for the occasion.  The materials needed:

Martha Stewart's glitter in aquamarine is my new Windex.  It will solve any problem, I swear.  The nail polish colors are Essie's Pretty Edgy, and Essie's Navigate Her. (Insert dirty joke here.)

Simply paint nails in Pretty Edgy, and paint the disco nail (ring finger) in Navigate Her.  Once you've done two coats and they are dry, dip a q-tip in clear nail polish, then the glitter, and then apply to the tips of your ring fingers.  (Or if you're feelin crazy, ALL OF THE NAILS!)  After the glitter is well in place, cover with one more coat of top coat.  Et voila!  Instant Irish pride!

Organizing Solution--Chalkboard Clipboards

Keeping track of papers on my desk has always been an issue for me.  I constantly feel like my desk surface spontaneously generates a mixture of coupons, pretty pictures, and grown up paperwork.  In an effort to turn the crazy into order, I came up with the following solution:

It's SUPER easy to execute.  All you have to do is:

1. Buy traditional hardboard clipboards.  (Fun fact: clipboards are twice as much at Staples as they are at Office Depot!  At least, this was true when I did my price matching.)
2. Paint clipboards with chalkboard paint.  This a) turns ugly brown clipboards into more attractive black clipboards and b) allows for easily changeable labeling!
3. Hang clipboards with clear 3M command hooks.  (I promise 3M is not paying me for an endorsement--I'm just obsessed with how easy they are to use!)
4. Label clipboards with chalk, and then load up with papers!

I love how it clears up horizontal space on my desk, and also gives me a visual reminder of things like to-do.  Also, because they are clipboards on hooks, you can easily take down a clipboard to tackle that to do list and empty out the clipboard!

Angry Birds Cake

It was a no-brainer when choosing the theme for my mom's birthday cake last month.  Ever since we got her an ipad awhile ago, she has been obsessed with Angry Birds.  Obsessed.  I first thought about making a round cake and adding angry birds characters on top, but somewhere along the line decided on a cake rendition of an angry birds level, complete with slingshot. GO BIG OR GO HOME.

It actually ended up taking less time than my brother's Mario cake a few months ago.  I think that's partly because I might be getting better at fondant?  But a large factor was probably also that I decided to just frost the cakes, and not cover them in fondant.  (A time saver to note for the future!)  

I had the help of my younger brother (in between arguing over how to make tower structures, we work quite well together!) and we had to wait until my mom went to bed to prevent her from finding out our plans. But it was quite worth it.  She was surprised and we pulled off a pretty cool cake!  I don't think I'm ever going to become comfortable with the cake cutting process though.  

Crayon Art DIY

I've seen this idea all over the internet, and last weekend finally got around to testing it out myself!  It's a simple process--hot glue crayons to a canvas, and then take a hair dryer and melt the crayons down until you get the look you're going for.  

There is a lot of splattering involved, so make sure you cover your space adequately!  The good news though, is if you happen to get crayon wax on your mom's laundry room floor tile, it's pretty easy to scrape off once it's dry again.  Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.  

The hair dryer I used had a concentrator attachment on it, and that definitely helped a lot in melting the crayons.  It made the hot air more focused and effective, and allowed me to minimize splattering as much as possible.


I might be addicted now, and have already bought another canvas to experiment with.  It would be cool to make canvas with only one or two color groups!

Surprise Ball DIY

Last week it was one of my friend's 25th birthday, so I decided to give her something fun to unwrap with a surprise ball.  These are super simple to make--just find a bunch of small presents, grab some crepe paper, and start wrapping!  I found most of these small gifts at the dollar store, Target's dollar spot, and World Market.  You could make these with virtually any theme for any holiday, but in Colleen's ball I included sillybandz, tic tacs (she's obsessed with them), worry dolls, shower gel, a finger puppet, mini colored pencils, bangle bracelets (which work well in helping making the surprise ball more round!) and for the grand finale, a Hello Kitty mega blocks.  As much fun as they are to make, it's even more fun watching the person unwrap the ball and discover their presents!