Seakettle

I just can't get enough of polka dots. Just like the polka dot pumpkins that I made for Halloween, I decorated a batch of eggs with a little gold paint. [...]

Our goddaughter's second birthday was a Sunday-morning donuts-and-coffee celebration. The kids were adorable with their donuts, sugar rush and all! [...]

This shape is my new favorite for banners! I don't know what it's called — notched rectangle? Forked flag? But it works well with plain or patterned paper, with letters or not. It's so much more fun than triangles, and so much easier to hang than circles! [...]

Way back in the fall, two of my dear friends had special parties on the exact same day. There was a baby shower for a friend's first boy here in LA and a first birthday for my friend's son 2,000 miles away. I already had my tickets to St. Louis (to be in this starry wedding!), so I had no choice but to miss the LA baby shower. (Otherwise, I may have been tempted to attend two parties across the country in one day, like what Greg and I often do on Christmas!) [...]

Bird Seed Snowman [...]

If you have mini pumpkins left from Halloween and you're up for a tiny bit more carving, these vases make great Thanksgiving decorations! [...]

What's Halloween without pumpkin carving? Just an excuse to wear a costume during your Saturday morning surfing session. (No, seriously that's a real thing.) While I love the idea of pumpkin carving, when it comes down to it I always struggle coming up with a design that is sufficiently cool to merit disemboweling that poor, innocent little—or not so little—pumpkin. Last year I managed to tap my Mexican ancestry and carved a calavera (skull) for Día de los Muertos, which also gave me a good excuse for why I had carved my pumpkin several days after Halloween. (Día de los Muertos is November 2.) [...]

We have so many pumpkins this year. It started with a handful of super cute mini white pumpkins at our local grocery store, and I just went crazy from there. Once we decided to throw an autumn party, we just kept accumulating — more mini pumpkins and then large ones from three other stores. I love our pumpkin patch of assorted sizes and colors, though, and I have lots of pumpkin projects to share! First up, how I decorated "my" pumpkins. (Greg's carved pumpkins up next!) [...]

Greg turned 30 this month! I wasn't in the same city as him on his birthday, so I turned it into a ten day celebration. Ten days, three gifts per day, starting five days before his birthday. [...]

I'll be the first to admit that I've been slow to embrace the ombre trend that's now so hugely popular. I think it's because I spend a lot of my day job arguing that clients don't actually need to add gradients to every. single. little. thing. And let's be honest here — ombre is just a fancy French word for gradient. [...]