Best Friend Birthday Gifts

My best friends are twins.
Yes both of them are equally my best friends and yes they are different people.

Their birthday was yesterday and they are the girls who have everything so it was a little difficult to think of something for them.  They are the sweetest girls, always thinking of others, and are so generous and always think of something sweet for my birthday.  This year they sent me flowers to work!

Thankfully we live in an age of Pinterest and you can find out exactly what kind of things people like! 

My friend Kristen pinned a prayer journal and a few verses and quotes that she liked so I compiled them into a book for her.  I knew a prayer journal would be perfect for her because they recently lost their father and she is getting married this weekend and has a lot going on in life, so a place to write out her prayers will be so nice.  And she can look back and see all the things that God has answered and worked out.

It's just a re-decorated a composition book!

 And for my other twinling I made her a bird's nest necklace with three little eggs because she has two boys and is pregnant with a little girl!!

My sister made one for my mom for mother's day and she of course got the idea from pinterest! 
What did we do without it?!

It is fairly simple and cheap to make.
I simple put three beads on wire and wrapped it until I thought it looked like a nest, then added a chain!
Check out pinterest if you want a 'real' tutorial.
Or let me know and I'll have my sister make you one ;)

Our 1st Christmas

As Lee and I are approaching our 3rd Christmas together as a married couple {7th otherwise!}
I thought it would be fun to take a look back at our first Christmas together.
We were living in my sister's basement apartment because we were about to move to Grenada!
I was thrilled to decorate for our 1st Christmas.... all our decorations came from the Dollar Tree or were handmade!
{I'm so glad I took all these pictures even though I didn't blog then, whew}

Mom loaned us the tree :)

ignore the rustic fishing lodge boarder, this room was formerly my brother-in-law's man cave before Lee and I took it over for 4 months :)

my Willow Tree Nativity set my mom got me for Christmas that year!
& you can sort of see my awesome vintage mirror I got for $5 behind it! Can't wait to have house where I can use it someday.

Our ornament we bought on our honeymoon in Mexico.

I worked at Pier 1 Imports this Christmas and when it was slow I would select ornaments I liked, like the elf boot and the birds, and trace them on scrap paper!
Once I got home I'd re-trace them on cardboard and cover with scrapbook paper!
haha! sneaky!

I was also inspired by a wreath I saw at Pier 1 and decided to make my own!
The silver ornaments are all from the Dollar Tree and I hot glued them to a metal wreath form and stuck tinsel in to fill any gaps and covered up all my glue marks!
This may be one of my favorite things I've ever made.

Oh and the outside looked like this....

should I mention that my husband is 6'5? 

I'll share some of our "Christmas in the Caribbean" pictures soon! :)

Twig Stars

I saw this image on pinterest the other day and knew they'd be super easy to make.

Source: farm6.static.flickr.com via Kelsey on Pinterest

I didn't have much going on yesterday evening so I went for a walk down my street looking for sticks to make stars out of.  a normal thing to do right??

You need 5 sticks of the same length per star.
I laid them out and decided which order I liked them in best, then hot glued them in place with just a dab of glue on the ends.
I wrapped twine around the ends of some of them, but a couple of the stars I liked the way they looked just as they were.  I think the inspiration image might have had too much string and twine for my tastes.

These will be great Christmas or patriotic holiday decorations and were practically free to make and only took about 5 minutes!!

AND on my walk I discovered this old sign!  It had more words but I just broke off the Grenada portion.
I don't know what to do with it yet, but I love it!

Back to the future

Have you seen those images floating around of re-created retro pictures?
like this

via here

Haha, amazing right?!
My plan for this Christmas is to have this image of my mom re-created for my Dad as a gift!!
He will LOVE it!
and I can say this here because I'm sure the man has never, ever been on this blog.

First off, how more adorable can a person be? 
Second, she is FOURTEEN here!!!! 14!  Doesn't she look like a grown woman??
Third, this was taken in 1966.
Fourth, my mother still looks exactly the same. exactly.  and she is almost 60.
Don't believe me?

Dear God, please, please, please have let me have inherited these genes!

Here is another photo taken the same day of my parents!  They were 14 & 16 years old. 
Can't you just see them in Grease?!
Dad is 100% a greaser, a T Bird & my Mom is totally a pink lady :)

So does anyone know where I can find a tee shirt like she is wearing??
Looks like something Forever21would sell now, eh?
If I can't find one I guess I can just draw this image out on a plain tee... and finding those glasses should be a snap.

Have you ever done anything like this?  Do you have a picture you'd love to do this with?
& honestly..... are you parents nearly as cool as mine? ;)


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