Easter 2025

 This post is extremely short, but here are three photos from our Easter 2025. The decorations were very simple because I also did a birthday party on the same day and it felt wrong to combine the two, so I decorated our house for Easter and another house for a birthday. I painted the backdrop, which was an ordinary poster, used sticks outside for the cross, and went for a dramatic complimentary color scheme of dark red and dark green (although the backdrop turned more blue than planned) for the symbolism those colors hold. And also simply because I love that color pairing, and had not done that palette for Easter before. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

-Lauryn 

Louie's Golf Club Birthday Party

 

Hello, I hope everyone's summer is off to a great start! 

My summer has not started off so promising, and while I have hundreds of posts to share and have fallen so far behind, I wanted to start with this one featuring a birthday party for my uncle. 

He could use prayers for healing urgently, for a miracle, so if you're reading this and would pray for him I would be so grateful. 

This elegant golf club party was back in September (I think), and below are the details on all of the handmade elements: 

-The backdrop was made of cardboard tri-fold boards painted green, and I used gold puffy paint for the logo. 

-The golf cart cutout was made of cardboard and either painted or drawn on with Sharpie. 

-The metallic and brown golf balls were from a pack at Dollar Tree (along with the small golf clubs) that I painted with acrylic paints. The mini flag also came in the set, and was likewise painted. 

-The signs reading "Thank you for swinging by Louie's Part-Tee! Please take a favor" and "Have a donut hole in one" were drawn on cardstock with markers. 

-I just wrote "Thanks fore swinging by!" on paper bags with party favors (which I think were candy though I don't remember for sure) for guests to take. 

Everything else besides the balloons (from Dollar Tree) and tablecloth was already on hand, and my grandparents made the strawberry angel food cake. 

Thank you for visiting!

-Lauryn 

DIY Teacher Valentine Gift Idea + Art Class Valentines for Students

 This is a bit late, but here are some Valentine's Day gift and card ideas I created this year for my teacher colleagues and students. Some of the student cards are themed around artworks/artists, such as the middle school ones, which had a Howard Finster pun since we've been studying GA folk art. I found an artwork of Mark from the Bible to go with my markers and marker pun for my second graders. I used sweet treat artwork by Wayne Thiebaud for some of my lower school student gifts. Some of the gift tags just had a pun and I handwrote them. For the teachers, I bought containers of Valentine's Day donuts, put two in each bag, and separately packaged soap roses I fond at a local store in bulk. The poem I wrote for them is below on the free printable, but if you needed to change the wording like the word "colleague" or do different gifts, I made my tags in the Paint program most computers come with. I shopped all over and the stores all kept running out of supplies, so I had to do different things for each class. I gave glitter pens to my first grade class (since they all love glitter) and ice cream pens, chalk markers and chalk tags to my second grade class who expressed interest in using chalk markers, Sharpies or special pens with glitter glue sticks or rainbow pens for my third-to-seventh grade students, note sets with cats or dogs for my high school small group members, and stacked highlighters for my art appreciation class. I decorated my classroom with a balloon arch you may recognize from the party I recently posted (it was still put together, too, which saved a lot of time), and gave the option of spending the Monday before Valentine's Day creating Valentine's cards or drawing animals holding hearts in art class. I unfortunately did not really photograph the beautiful works before I sent them home. 

Free Printable Cards:

I hope you enjoyed these free printable cards and find the Valentine's Day ideas handy for next year! 

-Lauryn