Week Four: Final Pinterest Project

When I saw this alphabet book on Pinterest, I just happened to have an expiring Groupon for Shutterfly that I needed to use. In preparation for the book, I went to Facebook to pull down photos for the book and renamed them by what letter they were going to represent in the book. It was the most efficient way for me to choose photos, but I was having some trouble identifying things for some of the letters. C, I, and Y were difficult for me at the time to identify, but I only spent two nights working on this part of the task.

Once I had the letters identified, I went to Shutterfly and chose the book with pre-loaded alphabet settings, which made this Pinterest project a heck of a lot easier. I did have to move some of the letters around based on the number of photos I wanted to include, but their Customize feature allowed me to easily move the letters around and add embellishments as needed. (Note: make sure you check out any coupons online that you can apply to your order or any special deals they're running. Just search "Shutterfly coupons" in Google and you'll find a plethora of resources. You can do the same for the production site you use, or anything you order online for that matter.)

The focus of our alphabet book is more focused on what our baby can expect from our crazy family. :) I will definitely have a version two when the baby is a little older so I can include photos of him and how it relates to the alphabet.

Week Three: Finished Project

I saw this really cute watermelon train on Pinterest and wanted to try it for a BBQ I was hosting with some of my freight rail colleagues. I wanted it to be functional though and not just a pretty centerpiece.

Other than watermelon, the only other fruit I was serving for the BBQ was strawberries, so that helped decide the design of the final product. We'd just need one "railcar" to hold the strawberries. I purchased two watermelons from Costco, just in case one wouldn't be enough, or in case I messed up the first one. See the graphic to the right on how the watermelon fruit train came to life.

I was missing some serving platters, hence the foil platter. I would make that change for next time and also use more black licorice to make tracks underneath the kiwi fruit wheels.

Week Two: Finished Project

We had our parents over for a
gender reveal party and wanted to have a fun way to reveal the gender of our first child. I had seen some cakes on Pinterest, but wanted to do something that was still edible, but something I could make myself.

What I did was make cupcakes and had everyone choose which gender they thought the baby was. Once everyone had a cupcake, they opened them simultaneously. Here's how I did it:

Week One: Finished Project

Well, almost a finished project. There's still room to grow. I had some pictures already framed and ready to go with the basic theme of having black and white photos in black frames. Now that didn't exactly work out as you can see some red in the photo to the right "Initial Layout" photo.

First thing's first with this project though - I needed to find the perfect letter. I started at Michael's first and found something that I thought might work, but it was a little small. It was already painted black so I bought it. The second stop was JoAnn's and they had a great variety of cardboard and wooden letters. I got the size I wanted and headed to Home Depot to buy black spray paint for under $1. They had matte and glossy and I chose glossy.

Once the letter was painted and dried, it was time to layout the photos. Some photos did not end up making the cut because they didn't have proper hanging hardware on them (I'll save that for another week's project).

I wanted the bottom three photos to be lined up along the bottom, so measurements were made so that the bottom of the frames were eight inches from the top of the mantle. My husband measured and tested out the spacing on the wall. As for the letter, we needed to make sure that you couldn't see gold nails sticking out, so I marked the top of the nails with a black marker so that it wasn't noticeable.

As you can see in the "After" picture, there's still a ton of space up there, but I'm seeing that as room to grow. Lesson learned on the picture frames that didn't make the cut too - even if you find good deals on the frames, make sure they have proper hardware installed for hanging, otherwise you have that obstacle in your way.

Week One Task: Photo Wall

I saw this nicely organized photo wall with a letter for the family name and wanted to give that a try over our mantle. I already have the black and white photos in frames, so I just need to get the letter to decorate and organize the photos on the wall. Starting off pretty easy the first week - I think.

The Latest Addiction - Pinterest

My name is Ashley and I'm addicted... to Pinterest. Facebook doesn't do it for me anymore, now I find myself checking Pinterest a little too frequently to see what new things my network has posted. The first step is to admit you have a problem right? Although I'm probably not a hyper user as compared to my Pinterest brethren, I am currently at 22 boards, 496 pins and 66 likes.

I have decided that now is the time to actually start implementing some of these ideas that I find through Pinterest and discuss the implementation/usage/consumption here.