Sunday, September 25, 2011

Fall is in the air......

Fall was in the air on Friday so I decided to spruce up my worn out wreath that has been hanging above my door for about 8 years.  It only gets changed out at Christmas... Poor Poor Wreath.  I wish I would have taken a before picture but honestly I'm too embarrassed.  


I cleaned the dust off a 36 inch grapevine wreath and made a sunflower bow.  (I used my floral design skills that were pretty rusty) and wired/hot glued it to the bottom.


Since all of the stores are covered in Fall right now I found one bunch of all of my favorite colors and flowers for $5.00.



Then the hot gluing began.  I usually wire the larger flowers to the wreath but was being pretty lazy today; so hot glue it is........


I start out on side and move up the wreath and then move on to the other side.  Always make sure you use the 1, 3 or 5 ratio.  You always want an odd number of each flower to balance your design.



Tada!!!  All finished...Now time to plant- It's never ending around here.........

Thursday, September 15, 2011

My Rubber Stamp Giveaway

This is my first giveaway and I'm so excited.  I ordered a logo stamp from MyRubberStamp and Eunice the artisan quickly emailed me that she was doing a giveaway and would I like to be a sponsor.  Ofcourse I do!   It ends up that there are 22 Handmade Sponsors in this giveaway and 12 ways to win each prize.  How exciting!  Who doesn't like 22 free things? Especially handmade "things". 


 Its easy to enter- just go to HERE and follow the instructions...... 

I'm #5 (hint, hint)

Have a great weekend,

Allice

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Fresh Basil Pesto Pasta

My husband and I decided it was time to harvest the fresh basil I have growing in my garden (honestly, it was really overgrown).
I decided there were too many bugs so he plucked and pulled all of the basil leaves while I prepared the ground for new planting.  (definitely organic basil)
We decided to bring it in to the kitchen and wash it in the sink as we separated the leaves, twigs, buds and foreign objects.....
Hubby separated and washed as I dried and prepared for blending.  We thought we had a lot of basil..........


Blended some basil, olive oil, salt and a few rosemary sprigs


And the blending starts.......pulse, pulse, pulse......... This is what we ended up with.............




After all the hard work we decided to enjoy some for dinner and freeze the rest for winter.....




Happy Cooking,


Allice

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Trip to the LA Fashion District

My sister-n-law decided it would be a great idea to take a trip to the LA Fashion District to buy fabric.  She has been making my niece some pretty cute outfits and was looking for fall fabrics.  Im not gonna lie; I like to travel- I need fabric and trim- so why not?   We decided to drag our mutual friend along on the trip; Danyell from Bellawink.  So we stalked a few blogs to find out where to go, Julia made the hotel reservations, Danyell printed an 11X17 map of the area and our top 5 places to go and I got my oil changed-  We were off!


My husband is such a sweetie and bought the 3 of us Starbucks Travel cups- So it's our first stop!


We were so excited when we saw the signs................................




And then we arrived at our first stop on the top 5 places to go:


We walked in to FIDM and in the front entrance was wearable clothing.  Then we found the hidden walkway in the back where the left over fabric and trim was sold.  Yep, $2 a yard and I got rolls of trim for the price of a cup of coffee.  I don't know what I'm going to do with it but it was a good deal so I bought all I could.  Hey, I got a free measuring tape with purchase!


Our 2nd stop was Michael Levines Loft- we heard fabric was $2 a pound and you had to dig for the good stuff- Well, it was true.


Julia found 8 pounds of fabric and got her Michael Levine card- Definately a good stop.
I had to park downtown in the middle of NO PARKING ZONE- I could see my car across the street from the Michael Levine window-  Just checking on it since I had to park on top of a building and left my keys with some random guy.


Then we found The Trim shop- This was my best stop- There were so many choices of ribbon, elastic, flowers, rhinestones and trim it was a little overwhelming... Okay, a lot overwhelming.

We had a great shopping day, found everything we needed and filled the truck-

We left the Fashion District and found our fabulous hotel downtown across the street from Staples Center and went to dinner at Wolfgang Pucks.  Oh the Truffle Chips....-  I think sometime during the evening we ended up at a club but that's for another blog time ;)


Now I have to start crafting and figure out what I'm going to do with all my wonderful finds......






Happy Crafting! 


Allice