A Shabby Chic First Birthday

Little sis turned one this month.  I had a blast throwing all the details of her party together... a shabby chic sorta affair with a little country garden feel to it.

The Invites
I design the invites myself using Photoshop Elements and use a business postcard printer online to print- for about $25 I can get 50 of these on heavy duty card-stock, rounded corners, and envelopes!  They also print the back- so all the details (and more adorable pictures) go on the reverse side!  Love this little trick to help save money!!

 Making the Banners
I went to our librarian at school to see if she had any discard books (older books usually missing pages) and I was in luck!  I used old book pages, packaging paper (which is kind of a paper bag feel and you can get at any hardware store), and I printed out the letters on 4X6 lustre finish paper at Costco.  To make things go quicker, I used a spray glue I had left over to throw them together- and I loved how they turned out!!

The Outfit
I made this shabby chic little outfit {the tutorial is HERE} for under twenty dollars and only about an hour of time.  It turned out super cute when paired with boots and some ruffly socks!

The Decor
I went with a country garden feel... think burlap, red checkers, and mason jars!!  I found favors in Target's dollar section: hand shovels and rakes, bubble wands, and pin wheels.

The Grub
The hubby got up early to smoke us a pork shoulder... YUM!  So the menu included chips and salsa to snack on, BBQ Pork sandwiches with a homemade Carolina style BBQ sauce, sweet baked beans, salad, watermelon, and a fresh strawberry-cucumber water, lemonade and sweet tea to drink.  The cake was a delicious dark chocolate with strawberry filling with a smoosh cake in white cake for the munchkin... so fun!  A perfect welcome to summer :)

I had a blast putting it all together and most importantly, little sis had a great time with family and friends!!

PS- I am all about sharing... you can download all of the following tags and birthday banner letters HERE (They are JPEG files designed to print on 4X6... I use Costco and choose lustre finish which is similar to matte)!  Just share the love by following my blog :)

An Upcycled Garden: Toilet Paper Roll Planters

 

It is sprint which means... time to PLANT!  I love spring and I love gardening.  It is so fun to get something of value out of something of very little to no value.  The past few years we have been planting from seeds so we aren't spending money on buying plants, but we usually start them in the little mini green houses (just wait till you see what I found that makes a perfect upcycled green house!) and compostable containers that you can get from your local garden center.  This year I am on a mission to find things we can re-purpose... and the little compostable planting containers were the first to go!  In their place??  Toilet paper rolls!

We saved toilet paper rolls (and paper towel rolls too!) for about a month and just cut them in half (or in fives for the paper towel rolls).  We placed them so they fit snug in our little green house starter container then filled them with dirt, planted them with seeds, and kept then moist in a sunlit window.  Because they have no bottoms, we were careful not to bump them too much. 

 

After a few weeks they had sprouted and were ready to be transplanted.  You can see that some of the toilet paper rolls started to unravel a bit, but it did not seem to disturb the plants. Plus, I unwrapped before planting anyway!  However, you could most likely plant with the rolls still on and have no issue!

The most curious thing I noticed about doing it with the toilet paper rolls is that the roots grew along the bottom of the tray and did not ball up like when confined to a container.  You can see how long and nice they were and I am expecting these plants to do well now that they are planted! 

I have some other fun bits and pieces of upcycling that I am going to share for the garden... but I am curious... what have you upcycled to use in the gardens??