10 Day Vlog Challenge

I've decided to challenge myself to upload 10 vlogs in 10 days on my youtube page (newfamilygal). This will really push me to be more creative with my outfits of the day and crafting. I'm reading an article seen on www.heartifb.com about treating blogging as though it's your day job.
I get discouraged when I see not many people visit my youtube videos or my blog, but I figured if I dedicated more time and effort, it will truly be a fun little community for me, so this blog will be seeing a lot more attention as well. I enjoy blogging, so I really need to make time for it.
I'm going to concentrate on the 10 vlogs in 10 days, then I will give myself a blog challenge. Side note : Check out mamushkamarie on blog spot. Oh my word - LOVE HER!!

Never

This is why you never buy pre-made cookies from The Dollar Store.

Jeans to Skirt

Hey everyone! I've been checking out sewing blogs quite a bit lately - I can't get enough of them! I found this quick, easy idea on one of them. Take an old pair of pants/jeans that you don't wear anymore for whatever reason, cut on the seam between the legs, cut the length you want, then insert fabric. One idea that I found on a separate blog was to cut in four (4) different "V" shapes, so that would be an additional two (2) on the side. I thought it was unnecessary, so I didn't do that, but once I put the skirt on, I could see why. Since they were once pants, they were kind of wide at the hip then narrowed out in a funny shape towards the bottom when on. I'll definitely do this again, but with the two extra pieces on the sides.

One down, a million to go!

As I may or may have not mentioned, I can't wait to start an online boutique.

There were a million tiny steps to proceed with the process, and a big one was having a dress makers dummy...they are so expensive!
So, I searched online and saw how to make my own...so I'm proud to present my own dressmakers dummy!
I'll be making another one tomorrow of my good friend, which will be a small size and will help me gauge body types when I'm making clothes and/or creating cute vintage outfits.
I'm excited to share this with you all, it's the beginning of a new chapter for me...!

Overcast Sunday

It's an overcast Sunday, my fiance is watching football after we had a large, yummy breakfast. I think today will be nothing but relaxation and coffee, and I'm ok with that!

xoxo
Miss Irish

Busy Bloggin'

She's baaaaack!

Yay, we finally got internet back at the house!
Stay tuned this weekend, I will be doing posts, posts, posts and MORE POSTS!

xoxo

One Year

It's officially my one-year anniversary of having a blog!
I have not been doing that well lately with posting things, but I have been doing a lot of crafts at home - lots of scrapbook pages and helping the girls out with creating their own crafts.
I had a fabulous weekend away to my fiance's brothers house for the weekend, and it was nice to celebrate my birthday that way.
Chris got me a digital photo printer for my birthday, I can't wait to use it! I now have a craft room, yes, an actual CRAFT ROOM now, I set up the desk so far and am just organizing things...can't wait to post pics and videos of my crafting & vintage endeavors, so stay tuned!!
xoxo
Miss Irish

I soooo heart vintage!

Ok, so my surprise that I mentioned earlier is...I'm starting my own online vintage boutique! I'm so very excited and I have been dreaming about this for years. I absolutely love looking at blogs, my favorites of which I've posted a few posts down. Check it out! I'm really coming into myself on the crafting realm, and excited to put some hard work and a love of vintage fashion into making the world a cuter place, one outfit at a time!
So, my first vintage "quirky" piece is the necklace at your right -->
I posted this on ebay about a week or so ago, and decided this would be my dipping-my-toe-into-selling-vintage pool. If the necklace sold, I'd post a few more items...if those sold, then I would just keep posting more and then go onto my own website. I'm doing a lot of research right now, not just the vintage fashion, but what's selling right now, looking around online at prices, looking at my local thrift stores, getting prices for business cards, reading books on women in business, etc. I really enjoy doing research, so this is actually all fun for me!
That's my big surprise...what do you think? I'll be posting items on here as well as my facebook page so you all can keep updated on my new vintage world.
Great night to you all and God bless!!

xoxo

I heart her!

I stumbled across a show on mtv.com called Downtown Girls...I nearly slipped off my bed when it's discovered by me that the lead lady, one Shallon Lester (really?) is a writer for Glamour.com.
I found her personal blog, posted here shallononline.com for your enjoyment. She's cute. She's witty, understands she's awkward and is a California girl...but most importantly, doesn't have an annoying or whiney voice. Big plus with me. So check out her show, check out her blog, I think you'll enjoy!

xoxo

Just Scrappin'

After I made my wreath, I did a few scrapbook pages, then arranged them all into a cute binder from my mom:

This one is of my best friend and her her husband on their wedding day...she's not a traditionalist, so instead of the white dresses and pictures of cake, I decided to go with a spring theme...I found the butterfly pattern a scrapbook magazine my mom gave me, then added a bunch of flower cut outs, layered in two's and three's.



Here is a clost up of the cutouts. Very simple to do, and very cute.

I got the idea from the cover of a magazine my mom gave me (not the same magazine that provided the butterfly pattern), so I layed them side by side so you could see a magazine idea and a homemade version of it.

I found these three hiking photos and wanted to do a page...I got the tree cut-out idea from a magazine, thought it would be a cute idea for a hike page...I did some journaling, by hand, around the curvature of the tree, and in some funky lettering, labeled the page "Feather Falls 2009"

Hope you all enjoyed the pages I did, I had a lot of fun, just ran out of time. Show me your pages!!

xoxo

Miss Irish

Hand-made wreath

Happy Sunday!
I've been crafting today, thought I'd share the fruits of my labor - have to go start dinner so please enjoy!

Books, Books, Books

Up past my bedtime adding fabulous books onto my amazon account

I have a surprise...

I'm busy sewing and crafting today for an upcoming EXCITING adventure for myself...stay tuned for the fabulous surprise!

More Blogs I heart

So to make up for the fact that I'm so lame and not blogging much, I'm going to post some of my favorite blogs.
Due to the fact that my summer is SOOO busy @ work, I've only been doing a few videos on my youtube channel, newfamilygal, so you can check those out as well.
I may have posted some of these blogs as my favorites before, so I apologize...enjoy them as much as I do!

http://lovelylittlethingsblog.blogspot.com/
http://lisatutmanoglesby.typepad.com/
http://www.amyconard.typepad.com/
http://candimandi.typepad.com/
http://www.rachiesplace.com/
http://racheldenbow.blogspot.com/
http://www.lunevintage.blogspot.com/
http://colormekatie.blogspot.com/

A month?!

Wow - it's been almost a month since I last posted?
Let's see, what have I been up to?
1. Camping
2. Boating & fishing (way fun!)
3. Bar-b-que's
4. Sunburns
5. Learning to play dominoes (Slappin' Bones)
6. Graduations
7. Neglecting laundry

I'll have to post some pics soon, but I haven't had hardly ten minutes to myself for weeks, so no telling how soon "soon" will be! :o)

Lovely Saturday

Hello all!
I'm just checking in, I had a lovely Saturday so far. Chris had a late, late, LATE softball game last night, we didn't leave the park until nearly 2 a.m., just hanging out with some work mates. So of course bedtime was super late, but we woke up early.
I wasn't feeling so well, still kind of a wonky tummy, but we relaxed around the house, I did some laundry, then we went to pick up my fabulous almost sister-in-law and went to an awesome lunch of yummy fish and chips and great conversation. Four hours later, we came home, I napped, watching an episode of The Office (The Chump) and now Chris and I are going to marathon play Phase10 with preztels :o)

Lovely weekend to you all!
xoxo
Miss Irish

Garden

I thought this would be a fun post to look back on...


Pictured is our little flower area...we switched these out once before as we found the little cement holders we have the flowers in don't retain enough water to actually GET to the flowers...now we drown them and it's worked so far!

Aww...my little veggie garden I'm so proud of. We have two types of tomatoes, greens, a tiny little strawberry plant and some onions Chris planted during Mother's Day weekend.

This is our little backyard tree....I love how Chris planted the flowers around it. Simple, but very cute.

Another little planter area...Chris got these bricks from my dad, and created a little corner of gorgeous plants. My favorites are the Breath of Heaven's, at the end.

Couldn't resist taking this cute pic of Miss :o)

Where I spend 8+ hours of my day...

Evenin' chicklets! So this may be boring to some (most) of you, but I decided to show a photo of my desk at work! Considering I sit here a majority of my day, this is a huge part of my life and I wanted to share with all of you!
Pictured is what my desk basically looks like on any given time of day...but usually with more papers! I didn't clean up my area for the picture. It's all real, all the time, baby! A quick little tour...clearly, my computer with my oh-so-comfy keyboard. I have a little tower on the right side of the computer, facing, that has pens, highlighters and paperclips, respectivally, in the three-tiered drawer. On top of it are some sticky notes and a photo of my co-workers baby (my bean!). To the left is my coffee cup and some animal crackers. I also have a dictionary and then other random work stuff.

Here is a face-on close up of what I literally look at all day everyday. Tres chic, no? :o)

What does YOUR workspace look like?!

Scrapbook Pages

Above is a close up page of the pages I did for the marathon Chris and myself did in Sacramento last weekend. I had some spare ribbon lying around, so I decided to boarder the page on the inside, just for some difference and some texture to the page.

On the left are the tags we wore on our shirts in the race, as well as the timers we had on our shoes with a parking pass. Just some momento's I wanted to save as well as some pictures.

I like this page - I had some cute paper of color crayons and thought it would be cute as a school page of the girls. I used pictures of Zina doing her mission project, as well as Lizzy on her way to school.

While Zina was doing a girl scout activity, we took Elizabeth with us to Table Mountain. It was a gorgeous day, kids were flying kites, there was a nice soft breeze. I played up on the wild flower picture of Elizabeth and made some flowers of my own. I found that cute idea in one of my mom's scrapbook magazines. The flowers will also be very cute if you use ribbon instead of paper.

This is a close up of the flower I did. It was very easy and took no time at all! I sewed thread into the button holes just to give it a more finished, put-together look.

Scrapbook Pages

Spending a weekend with my mom to hang out on Mother's Day and do some scrapbooking...hope you enjoy the pages!


I made this little Girl Scout page for Zina. She has been helping out with horses, so I dedicated a page to a gorgeous Sunday she spent removing old fencing and installing new for some rescue horses. I chose a darker color paper to make it less "girly" as it's an outside page and to blend with the color of the horses. I chose orange to accent a photo of Zina as well as my journaling as I felt it looks pretty next to the brown. I used photo corners on the top photo of Liz & Zina, clearly exhausted, and had some old Western embelishments that I decided to use a horse on the page.

Next is my dear sweet neice. I had some school photos of her I wanted to put onto a page, and saw a cute idea in one of my mom's scrapbook magazines to make a collage of school photos. I had on hand three pictures of her and I together, so added those to the page as well. I love this paper, I got it in a big packet at Ross. I wanted to dress up the flowers, so I added the buttons and I think it turned out great! As for the journaling, I wrote a few of the inside jokes we share.

A "play page" of the girls. I found these cute little monkey stickers at Wal-Mart for only a dollar, and thought it was perfect. I call the girls my little monkeys, and the center photo is of Liz climbing a little play rock wall, with dad standing next to her, so it really ties the stickers together! I'm excited to make a lot of "play pages" of the girls...

This one was a challenge for me. I had some good pictures of Chris' 42nd birthday party, which would not all fit on one page. So, I just made it really simple to get the photos on there, and cut out my own balloons, adding ribbon as the balloon string.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is Chris and my one year anniversary! Holy cow, what a journey it's been! I never thought that a year ago today I'd be living in a new, larger house, engaged with three children. Makes me kind of nervous to see where we will be a year from now! :o)
I received a super cool gift card to a nice restaurant, so we are going to dinner right after work today (after I change into a cute dress, of course) then to a Comedy Show, so I'm really excited about today! Happy Anniversary baby, the first of a thousand! xoxo

How'd it go? I NAILED it!

It has been one week since I have bitten my fingernails. They're lovely :o)

Report by Zina....

The nine year old has a report due! Her class is studying missions in school, so we typed up her report together, and I wanted to save it because it's soooo cute. I got tears in my eyes as she was reading her report back to me, I hope you enjoy this tiny piece of history in my life! LOL. When she is older, I will let her read this and I think she will get a kick out of it....enjoy !!

Mission San Miguel
by_____________

Mission San Miguel was founded in 1797 by Father Fermin Francisco de LaSuen. It was called

Vahca by the natives. In English it is called "The Wells." The first church was built in 1797. It

was lost in a fire in 1806. It took ten years to re-build again. In 1821 it was finally re-built.

There was around a thousand Indians. By 1834 there were only 30 Indians. In 1846 it turned

into a hotel, saloon, and like a store just not like today's Wal-Mart.

The Missions were given back to the church in 1859. I thought that it was for the Indians. And

a priest moved in 1878. In 2003 which was seven years ago there was an earthquake, so now

there is a crack from the roof to the floor.

In 2008, October the 2nd, it was opened with a cemetary. Clearly it was today a church, a place

where people can become a priest and a cemetary.

It was named after an Angel. I thought if I made San Miguel, I could find out why it has it's

name today. It is cool being named after an Angel, Saint Michael, just like my grandpa on my

mom's side and my grandpa on my dad's side.

The End

Two Things...errr...Three Things Sunday!

Below is my weekly edition of "Two Things" where I post two things around my house that I love. First off, I love thrifting...I love vintage stores, thrift stores, yards sales, etc. I have a lot of cute decor (and clothes!) that I have found hunting around shops and front yards of complete strangers, and would LOVE to share them with all of you!!
Some of the blogs I adore and check out everyday (oh, like 50 of them!) have started this "Two Things" and I would LOVE to see this trend take off! I like looking at other crafts, clothes, baking, hair styles and more that people show off, but come on! Let's see what you adore that is in your home!

I have this lovely teapot from my darling niece. She gave it to me last summer, it was from her neighbor, I believe, and thought of me as I love teapots. I only have a select few, but they are all gorgeous and will end up in this blog eventually :o) This is a good-sized teapot, it stands total about 8-9" and is heavy ceremic. I remember when my neice saw it displayed in my kitchen, she got such a cute little kick out of it, so that was special, too. I have it on top of some cupboards in the kitchen with all my "vintage" kitchenware.

Here are some Irish foods I got online from this company in Ireland. The name escapes me now, as I haven't ordered from them in YEARS. One thing that I love (among millions others) about Ireland? They have a chocolate brand called "Kimberleys" (ummm...how perfect and a sign from God is that?!) that make little treats that are very similar to the US version of moon pies (again, banana moon pies are one of the favorite treats). So these Irish foods are a small symbols of where my heart really is, but that is years of therapy and another blog in and of itself...they make for a cute display, no?

I decided to add one more item to my Two Things as it is, right now, my favorite thing in the evenings. My fiance goes off for military duty, sometimes out of the country, most recently out of state. That gorgeous man of mine purchased this webcam for the house computer, so now we can chat online and see each other. If I'm not mistaken, although he's been gone a little over a week, I've still been able to see him everyday. God bless modern technology!

Hope you all enjoyed this post, what's in YOUR house?

Scrapbook page - Snow Day

Here is another page I completed today. For this snow trip we took with the girls, I chose plain white paper (major faux pas in the scrapbooking world?) to keep it nice and simple. Again, a fan of the construction paper, I used pink and blue pieces as backgrounds. I found the snowflake stickers at walmart for a dollar, and used some lettering I found. I used a picture I love of me and Chris (it's also currently hanging in the living room in a frame) as the main focus. The smaller photos to the left are of family, then with me and the girls. This was a super fun memory, I think I will do another page, one with actual "action" (such as Chris and the girls falling down) photos.

Scrapbook page - Military

Good evening, all!
I did a military page for Chris, I posted this before without the pictures added. I found the adorable jacket at walmart, as well as the stickers below. I used a cloudy-blue page to go with my red white and blue theme. I used plain red construction paper to be a backdrop of the main picture of my fiance - isn't he so handsome! - and red backdrops to the stickers. This page actually isn't quite complete as I want to add one more picture to the right of the bottom photo. But I just had to show off my handsome guy :o)

Easter 2010

This is my Easter page...it was fun to do, I liked being able to add such bright, fun colors to the page.

I had a half sheet of this super cute polka-dotted paper that I knew I had to use for this page. I don't think you can tell from the picture, but my main sheet of paper has very tiny, light pastel colored polka dots as well. I used the polka dot sheet to be a backdrop of my journaling.

Below is a close up of the smaller photos that I printed that I decided to turn into a collage to make use of what I have! I love how the easter eggs the girls colored really pops on the page. I made the family photo the largest of the group with some random Easter stickers scattered about.

My mom gave me a small bag full of little foam flowers that I love, so I mixed and matched them to layer and color-contrast each other. I also had little tiny "bedazzles" that my mom gave me, so I decided to center those in the flowers. The page had a weird gap at the top between my journaling and the flowers, so I decided to add some pink, sheer ribbon I had from a previous craft project. I centered a little green flower and a bedazzle onto that.

What do you think? I'm happy with it! I hope you get some good ideas from this page, and make it your own!

xoxo

Miss Irish

Scrapbook Page - Valentine's Day

Now that I moved my craft table into my bedroom, I decided to do a little scrap booking!
I printed out some pictures on my fiance's printer, but although the photo paper is 4x6, the pictures printed out as 2x3...not sure how to change that setting, so I decided to keep printing some pictures as I knew I could do something creative with them.
I decided to print my Valentine pictures. I wanted to make the one of myself and my fiance the main focus, so I printed this on plain copy paper...but it still turned out superb!
I used some cute pink and red striped paper I have on hand, and some pretty pink construction paper as the photo's backdrop. Fits nicely with the color scheme of Valentine's day, as well as my scarf!

I am learning journaling - which is actually much harder for me than one would think, but that is an issue I can get into later...lol. For my journaling backdrop, I just used a piece of red construction paper, again, to keep with the Valentine color scheme.

This is the close-up of the photo of myself and my fiance. This was taken in San Francisco, in an Irish pub near the pier. The fireplace was GORGEOUS and some very kind and very hilarious Irish bar back offered to take our picture...he also loudly proclaimed that I am so "white" that I look like the "Virgin Mary." Us Irish sure have a way with words don't we? I decided to add two cute little foam hearts on the construction sheet. My mom gave me a little bag full of them, so you may be seeing more random hearts popping up on various pages! :o)

With the small photos, I decided to do a sort of collage at the bottom of the page: pictures of my gifts from the kids, the infamous picnic basket, etc. I also added ribbon - I love ribbon - that Chris had in my picnic basket, and a beautiful LOVE sticker, just to bring it all together.

I hope you enjoy this page, I'm very happy with it, and get some good ideas from it!

xoxo

Miss Irish

Easter

I know it's belated, but Happy Easter from our family to yours! Side note, I love the gorgeously colored Easter Eggs!

Two Things Sunday

Due to the fact that I am lying in bed with pneumonia, this will only be a One thing Sunday...but the picture does have two of my favorite things! Is that cheating?
Anyway, pictured is my sweet puppy, Missy, laying as she usually is on a pillow. So cute. Next to her is a bear Chris got me from the Air Force Base PX back in February. It's just really cute and I love it...

Book Review

I just finished reading The Shack, an amazing book, and have decided to read it again. It is a gorgeous book about a man who is broken and hurting who encounters God (in the form of a big, black woman who informs him too many greens will give him the trots) in the very shack where his young daughter's life was taken by a serial killer.
I can barely begin to describe how wonderful this book is and how it has effected me. It was given to me at exactly the perfect time in my life, where I really needed the love of God to seep into me to be given to those around me. My heart and my life felt very full while reading the book, which is why I have started it again. I lost count how many times my eyes filled with tears while reading passages of the book. I've never really been able, try as hard as I might, put Jesus in the role of being "human." And it's beautiful. I encourage you to read this book, you will want to read it over and over again, I guarantee it! And I can promise that you will be blessed by this book.