My Favorite Posts of 2012

I had a lot of fun being creative this year.  Here are my favorite projects from the past year.

 

ModCloth Dress Tutorial 

Baby Dear Baby Shower



Weeping Angel Costume

 

 

Entryway Makeover 

Upcycled Card Holder

 

 

Envelope Clutch Tutorial

 

 

Mother Quote Printable

 

 

 The Pillow Chair

 

 

 Bored Board Revamped

Trip Fun Binders

Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective

This summer I got the chance to visit the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.  I felt so lucky that its only North American stop was right in my backyard.  

On my way into the exhibit, I stopped with my kids at a fun design station the art museum had in conjunction with the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit.  There was an activity for each step in the design process.  My kids loved doing it, and I thought it was pretty fun too.  :)

First, we made inspiration boards:

Then we sketched.  If you weren't artistically inclined, there were lightboxes you could use to trace templates.  I drew my own clothing, but I'm awful at drawing people, so I traced the form.  Now I kind of want my own lightbox--that would making pattern tracing SO much easier!

 

 

Here's my sketch!  

After sketching, you could drape a dress form, make a little tiny draped dress on a toy dress form, and model dresses on the runway.  I didn't bother with these, since I couldn't actually make what I wanted.  :)  But my kids thought they were great, which was kind of the point anyway.  :)

 

 

After having fun with the fashion design, I entered the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit.

 

Photography is absolutely prohibited in the exhibit (and they mean it!  I saw one lady get angrily booted from the exhibit!), so I got a few pictures from the Denver Post website and the Denver Art Museum website to show you (The two above, however, are mine.  No rules against taking a picture of the entrance...).

The exhibit starts of with his years as a designer at Dior.  

And then moves, somewhat chronologically (but not strictly so) through his other designs.  

They also had an area with his world-inspired designs...

...and an entire hall dedicated his use of color...

...not to mention, all of his tuxedo suits.

At the end of the exhibit was a display of his ball gowns.  

 

Since photography wasn't allowed, I took notes on my program about which dresses were my favorites, and then looked them up later in the exhibit's book.  

The Dior years are my favorite, since really I'm a Dior girl at heart.  The 1950s silhouette is my favorite.  

The colors in this one were amazing.  

I thought this was such a cute secretary-style dress.

Grace Kelly wore this one! 

I typically prefer the dresses, but I liked this pantsuit.  I especially liked the bow blouse and the cute hat.  Hats need to make a comeback.  :)

 

This one was from a collection of his that did not do well. I love this dress though.  It was made in the 1970s, but with a 1940s flair.  I'd wear it.  

This cape was amazing.  

There were so many beautiful clothes in that exhibit!  I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did! 

Trip Fun Binders

We took a family vacation this year for Spring Break. It was the perfect time to visit my hometown in Texas, before the sweltering heat of summer.  It's was a long drive, though, so I made up some activity books for my boys.

 

I was trying to do this trip on the cheap (isn't that what I say about all my projects?).  Let's face it, the way this economy is, we can all stand to save our pennies.  So, I didn't want to go out and buy a ton of stuff.  Free printables to the rescue!

I gathered up some old school supplies--binders, pencil bags, and various and sundry markers and colored pencils.   

I used Picasa and Google Image Search to put together a bingo card for things we might see on our trip (I saw everything except the roadrunner...).  I made a collage in Picasa, then shuffled the images to make a different card for each person.  I put the bingo cards in some plastic sleeves that I had laying around and included some dry erase markers in the pencil bag so that my boys could cross things off right on the plastic sleeve.  

 

I printed out a few mazes and coloring pages as well.  

The mazes came from mrprintables.com.  They have tons of great free printables for kids.  They're super cute.

We all had fun doing the State License Plate Bingo by The Dating Divas.

I got some fun travel games from Whimsical Fig.

And some from LilSugar, too.  

The printable Battleship game by Cathe Holden at Just Something I Made is so fun, and SO cute!

I also added some maps.  A good way to stave off "Are We There Yet?" is to give the kids a map with your route on it that they can follow along with.  Each kid got a map of all the states we drove through, plus a Google Maps printout of our route and directions.  

 

 

 Plus, since we were going to be traveling during my church's General Conference, I printed out some Conference Packets from Sugardoodle (oh how they love their conference packets every 6 months!) for them to work on as we drove as well.  

 

 And, of course, I added a bunch of notebook paper for each binder, as all of my boys love to draw and write.  

Though not in their binders, I also had some conversation starters with me (in MY binder--of course organized me has my own binder!) from iMom and Sissyprint.  A long road trip is a great time for great conversations.

Each boy had a backpack to put their binder in.  I added to each backpack a magazine (copies of The Friend and Boy's Life), Where's Waldo books (that I keep stored with the suitcases so they're still interesting every time we take a trip), a couple little snacks (Tic Tacs and Barnum's Animal Crackers are favorites), Kleenexes and a package of wipes (do you know how nice it was not to have to twist around and get my allergic boys Kleenexes every 10 minutes?), and a teeny tiny stuffed animal each.  

 

These binders and backpacks kept my three boys happy and interested for most of our 40+ hours of driving.  We didn't even have to break out the DVD player once.  I call that a Family Vacation Miracle.  :)