What I've Been Up To...

I'm pregnant! 

It's been a pretty crazy few months which is why I've been a little slow on the blog.  My life has been turned upside down with a crazy toddler and having very bad morning sickness.  It's been a struggle to even get through the normal day-to-day when I'm so sick.  But now that I'm in second trimester, things are starting to calm down.  The other big change is that I've been in transition to a new job!  I'm still at the same company and still doing graphic design, but I've switched to product design and product management.  The last few months have been a big blur to me, but I hope to have my life back to normal very soon.

As always, feel free to read my baby blog where I post way too many photos of my son and my pregnancy-related stories as things progress.

I wish all of you and your families a wonderful holiday!

Lisa

Sesame Street Birthday Party DIY

My little guy just turned 2!  (They grow up way too fast!)  I wanted to share some of the cute decorations and designs I made for his Sesame Street party.

I designed invitations and backed them on colored cardstock.  I also printed matching address labels for the envelopes.  (My trick to save money is to buy a package of colored card stock and cut them to size rather than buying individual sheets from a craft store.  I save a lot of money and then I have leftover cardstock to use for other projects.)

Party hat with a yarn pom-pom

Noise makers - not just for the kids!

I took off the fabric garden flag we had up and replaced it with a sign backed on cardboard.  Of course, this wouldn't work in bad weather, but it was a perfect day out.

Front door sign

Right inside the front door, I set up a little table with balloons, Sesame Street characters, goody bags, and noise makers.  On the wall, I hung up photos from the year with the month written on each one so guests could see how he's grown during the past year.

Happy Birthday banner and colored streamers in the kitchen

Chocolate-covered pretzels are always a hit at every party we have!

Cookie Monster and Elmo fruit platters

Rubber duckies swimming in blue jello

We decided on a hot dog buffet for dinner because it's one of Connor's favorite foods.

I put all the utensils in the Elmo basket and hung balloons from the handle.

The one thing I didn't make was the cake, but the bakery did a great job on it.  Connor was so excited when he saw a giant Elmo on his cake!

It tasted good too!

We had a great time and Connor was such a big boy!

Festive Hanukkah Crafts

As I've said in the past (and some of you can relate), it's very hard to find cute Hanukkah decorations that are elegant and tasteful. There's more Christmas stuff than any person could ever want, but Hanukkah decorations are usually tacky and hard to find.

Last year, I made it my mission to start making my own so I could decorate my house. I wanted to share everything I did last year if you're looking for new ideas & tutorials. I also have a few new ones for this year that are almost completed. Stay tuned for those!

Spin the Dreidel Wood Blocks

Cute Address Labels

Glittery Hanukkah Banner

Stuffed Dreidel (tutorial coming soon)

Who uses Blogger?

I'm so needy this week! I need your help again!

Since you all did awesome answering my questions earlier this week, it's time to try again. This time, it might be more complicated.

Does anyone ever notice that when they upload to Blogger, their photos get duller and the color changes slightly? Maybe you don't even notice but the graphic designer in me gets annoyed by this.

Here's an example below. This photo looks awesome on my computer. The grass is bright green and looks very healthy. Here, it looks kinda dead and you wonder why Kitty is eating dead grass.
I did some research and it looks like some people suggested uploading PNG files instead of JPGs, but that didn't change the color. Other people suggested using Picasa to upload, but I can't use it because my mac is too old : (

Any other ideas? Make me feel stupid again with your brilliant suggestions!

Balance - How do you manage?

How do you find a balance between life and work?
Since I started graduated college almost 6 (wow, has it been that long?) years ago, I've had 3 jobs. I struggled with trying not to get too bored each day and feeling like I had an impact on the work that was being done. I used to wish that I could have more responsibility and that people would rely on me to help them get things done. I worked my 8 hours a day and didn't think twice about it.
As we all know, the recession has made everyone's job very difficult. You can't be picky about your job IF you have a job. And you're probably overloaded because some of your coworkers got laid off.
In December, my job changed as I was put in charge of something new in our department. All of a sudden I had to take on a leadership role (without extra pay or a promotion) doing something no one has any clue about. I've really struggled with how to pull this off when most of my coworkers hated the idea and constantly complained to me about it. I was trying to juggle my normal work along with this new job and it was becoming very overwhelming.


There are days when I cry as soon as I sit down in my car to drive home at night. Some days I come home with panic attacks and wonder how I can handle everything. I constantly dream about work and have a recurring nightmare where the pile of folders on my desk keeps getting higher and higher. I don't feel like I can take a day off of work because there is no one to cover for me and I know I'll come back to a huge mess. I get so burnt out and stressed that I don't know how to relax anymore.
I talked to another coworker who is struggling with the same thing and she reminded me how life is not about working. There are more important things than work and we have to remind ourselves of that. But it's really hard to leave work when you have a stack of work on your desk that HAS to get done by tomorrow.

So how do you find a balance between life and work when you have too many responsibilities?

Cute Valentine's Day Heart Banner

I decided our under-construction family room needed some Valentine's Day cheer. So I found this really easy heart banner here.

As I've said in the past, scrapbooking paper is a rip-off and I hate paying a lot for it...I have a SECRET way to find free paper! Check out this post for info.

Anyway, I found some cute patterns and Photoshopped them to pretty pinks and reds for Valentine's Day. I printed out 2 pieces of each of the 5 patterns. If your paper is really thin, I would suggest mounting on cardstock to make them heavier.

Then I cut out my heart template

I traced the hearts on the scrapbook paper

Then I cut out all my hearts
(I saved the small hearts for another small project for the hubby's gift)

I linked the hearts together to create a long chain

Then I taped the slit on the back of each heart

Now I smile every time I walk into our messy family room and see it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A trip to the mailbox brought me...labels!

So remember a couple week ago when I showed you my address labels I made?

These were some of the designs I came up with.

I was sick of waiting for those random free ones to come in the mail.

Literally within 3 days of posting that, I got FOUR sets of free labels in the mail!

Can't beat free, but couldn't they have come a little earlier? : )

Sealed with a kiss...or an address label

You know how you always get those address labels in the mail from random business and charities? Well, I need some with our new address. It's been more than 4 months and nothing yet, so I took matters into my own hands.

Why not make my own? This sounded so easy, but it turned out to be a huge ordeal with label templates, running out of printer ink, crappy print settings, etc. For the next batch, I'll be more prepared : )

Anyway, they're finally done and I thought I'd show you some of the cute ones I designed. What do you think?