Creating Kris ~ a young mom blogs…

Valance #2 ~ family room (blue)

Encouraged by my first attempt at sewing a valance, I decided to go ahead with my idea of sewing box valances for the family room next. Of course they didn’t turn out exactly as planned (does anything?), but I’m happy with the results and it’s created a much “homier” feel in the room where we spend a lot of our time together.

The materials – a good match with the paint colours (blue), the blinds (stripes), and our furniture (light wood)

Improvising on the corner pleats – I couldn’t get proper ones so I went backwards and just kind of made it up as I went lol

Getting the hubs to put them up – you can kind of see the “before” look when the blinds’ hardware was in plain view

When all is said and done, they fall quite nicely!

Other than a few yet-to-be-unpacked boxes, our family room is mostly assembled the way we’d like it

And it’s so great to have at least one room that you can go to that’s mostly complete. We’ve been moved in about 2 & 1/2 months now but there are a lot of rooms that are still really “in process” as far as decor is concerned – including a couple spots where we’re using storage bins for coffee tables.

I look forward to our Family Movie Night (a weekly Friday tradition since Harmony was about 2!), and one of the features that drew us to this model of house was the open cut-out between the family room and kitchen. We start our movie and watch from the table, then tidy up our messy selves (especially Avery… OK and me too, what can I say? I’m a bit of a sloppy eater) and go sit on the couch.

stamped cards: fall & thanksgiving

I pulled out my Harvest stamp set yesterday to create some fall and thanksgiving cards… I remembered the masking technique from last fall’s class (the one that prompted me to get the set in the first place!) and practiced that again!

For most cards, I used Stampin’ Up papers and inks from the Earth Elements series. For the inked leaf, I used my SU blender pen but the inks were from ColorBox. Each card had at least a couple special techniques used, like embellishments, paper-piercing, or textured materials – I love that my SU scalloped circle punch can punch through a thin layer of cork!!!

Here’s what I came up with…
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new blinkies: “Back to School” + grades

Since my “Back to School” blinkies were pretty late this year (only created last week), I also made sure to include some blinkies in the collection that can be used year-round. There’s “proud mommy to a __ grader” from Kindergarten up to Grade 8.

You can check out the whole set here: Back to School Big Blinkies.