Hey all!

Today I'm going to do something a little different - my very first tutorial!

I've seen a few different doily dreamcatcher tutorials around the web, but was super eager to make my own and figured I would share with you guys!
The sky is the limit with these, they can be as busy or as simple as you want it to be.
I mixed vintage and modern elements with feathers that match the colorway of our living room, but with a pop of royal blue and some copper tones to spice it up!

Lets get to it!

Supplies:

One round doily! I'm in love with "pineapple" doilies, but whatever you love works best! 

Embroidery hoop that accommodates your doily, I used a 12 inch hoop for mine. You want there to be a little gap between the doily and the hoop itself so the doily is able to be "suspended" in the middle

Cotton crochet thread

Aleene's tacky glue or your glue of choice. (I use Aleene's for everything!)

Ribbon/beads/crystals/buttons/whatever you wish to jazz it up with!

Feathers

Small vice clamps, I used these to hold things in place while I strung up the doily, or while things were gluing. Totally optional, I just like having a "second set of hands".

(I got my ribbon at michaels, but everything else except for the doily itself, and the buttons which are vintage, from Hobby Lobby.)

So the first thing I did was sit down and do my layout. I laid out all the feathers and crystals on my work surface and decided what flowed best and how long I wanted my strings hanging down to be.

Following that, I took my ultra sparkly gold ribbon and wrapped it around the embroidery hoop, starting at the screw of the hoop and wrapping in such a way that the wood of the hoop still showed through so it would still have a natural feel to it. Once I got around the hoop and back to the screw I added a little bit of my trusty Aleene's and clipped one of my vice grips in place.

The wood showing through was important in my case because I wanted it to match the hoops (pictured below) that I made for our wedding. I made these by stretching thrifted curtains and remnant fabric from JoAnn's through the embroidery hoops, cutting off the excess fabric as close to the hoop as possible and hot gluing all around the seam of the hoop in the back. These hung around the porch of the cabin where our reception was, as well as in the gazebo where we said our vows, and now reside in our living room! We have 13 of these bad boys hanging up, and they make me smile every day!

Moving on!

After wrapping the hoop in the ribbon, center your doily how you want it inside the hoop.
Starting with the top point of the doily and using the cotton crochet thread, weave the thread through the loop at the edge of the doily (whichever works best for you - mine was the outermost point of the "pineapple!") and around the hoop, stretching the doily as you work. Repeating until all the points are secure and smoothed out nicely. Don't worry about it being perfect! I went until the thread was at the point being held down by my vice grips, cut off the excess, added another drop of glue under the sparkly ribbon, tucked the thread underneath and clamped the clamp back down.

(Before I attached the doily to the hoop - centering the doily & watching people spend insane amounts of money on houses on HGTV.)

Following that, I took my crochet thread and cut 9 (excessively) long strings from the spool. I wanted them super long to be able to adjust as need be.
Feel free to be more precise, you know, if you're a show off. Haha.

After deciding which of crystals and feathers I wanted to be paired up, I took the crystal, put it to the nozzle of my glue bottle and squeezed until the hole of the crystal was completely full of glue and then slid the feather inside. Once dry, the glue is clear and you can't even tell it's there! Magical!

I then took one of the aforementioned super long strings, put the tip of the string inside the hole of the crystal full of glue and pushed it in until the tip of the thread touched the tip of the feather that's inside of the crystal. Thus, coating the string in glue, and holding it in place for eternity. I used a sewing needle to aid in this process because once the glue touches the thread it doesn't always cooperate. Patience is key. Repeat until all of your crystals and feathers have a matching string friend.
(And your hands are most likely covered in glue. No? Just me? Okay.)

These pairings take a while to dry!
(Mine took a few days!)
More patience, darlings.

I added the small white beads (and my brass buttons on the strands that contained the feathers that are going to hang centermost) while everything was drying. Do not, however, slide the beads down until everything is dry. You can risk dislodging the string from inside the crystal, and that's no bueno.

 Once your crystals are dry inside enough to support the weight of the crystal on the string and hold up the feather (and please for the love of popcorn, make SURE they can) you can start attaching the strings to the hoop! 

Making a loop with the string, come under the hoop and put the feather/crystal combo through the loop you've created, then pull tight.
(I'm demonstrating the string being under the hoop, but looped to pass the feather/crystal through in the crappy cell phone photo above)

After that was set, I took a little ribbon and my handy dandy glue yet again, made a loop for hanging behind the screw of the embroidery hoop, clamped it and let it sit to dry for the remainder of the afternoon. When I came home I hung it up and couldn't be happier with the results!

And that's it!
It's a great weekend project, and I love how easy this can be made to fit any room of a home. Bedroom, living room, even a nursery! The options are endless!
Make one of your own? Post a link to it in the comments below, or shoot me an email!
I would love to see!

Love,

Fawn.

Hey all!

With 2015 coming to a close and Thanksgiving THURSDAY (yes, already!) I figured I would do a #goals post.
Hashtag. Goals. 

Haha.

Pickle & Pear: Goals 2016!

- Project life and/or finally scrapbook our wedding and honeymoon. 

I've wanted to start officially scrapping for so long and project life albums always come out so gorgeous. I would love to do one page monthly! These pages here and here really inspire me!

-Read 3 books over the course of the year

This sounds small but it totally isn't these days. I have about 20 books on the shelf with bookmarks in them that I haven't touched in ... A while. 

- Read to my little guy more. 

Same umbrella. The problem with working late means that usually when I pick him up he's either sleeping/almost sleeping or falls asleep in the car. It makes our bedtime book time non existent most days. Not an excuse though, I need to carve out more time. 

- Manage our budget better. 

This is a loaded one. We have a lot of things we could allocate differently as far as finances go. We've already done a pretty good job whittling down the unnecessary but I know there's more I can do! (Always!) My bestie Laura is the budget queen and is going to show me her ways. Thank goodness - numbers make me queasy.

- Get rid of the unnecessary. 

This goes under the previous one as well. We've done really awesome with donating our clothes and small things like that this year, if I do say so myself, but there's so much more we could donate or sell! I'm really trying in earnest to declutter our somewhat tiny apartment, it's so satisfying!

-Stay on top of eating breakfast every day. 

I am so bad at this, you guys. Like, super super awful. My husband makes me a cup of coffee in the morning, I'll drink it in one gulp as I'm putting my makeup on and get halfway through my work day before I realize - hey! I'm HUNGRY. And dizzy. And feel gross/sluggish/angry/etc. So then I usually eat something terrible for me (like a Dunkin donuts breakfast sandwich...) and feel worse. Packing small and actually healthy breakfasts is a bit of a challenge with my line of work and how much I rush around all day every day, but something I need to commit to. 

-Keep up with my blogging schedule. 

Or you know, actually come up with a proper one. I bought a planner and a wall calendar to assist with this! This is my first time actually fully committing to a planner, too! Year of change!

-Get Pickle & Pear into at least 2 local stores. 

Our craft community around here is just starting to blossom a bit more and I feel like it's a good time to get myself back out there!

- Plan one day a month for myself, one for a date night. 

My husband and I tend to be passing ships with our schedules, and we never really make time to find a sitter/have a proper date. We do payday takeout and watch a lot of our shows together but nothing beats an excuse to wear my favorite red lipstick and dress up all fancy out on the town! 

As far as a day with myself goes, back at the beginning of the summer I took some of my vacation time and had a day out in town while little man was in school to just be alone and explore! I used to do that a lot before my big guy and our little guy came into my life, and I forget sometimes that self love is super important too! I spent that whole day drinking delicious coffee, thrift shopping and wandering in the perfect weather and I'm definitely WAY past overdue for more! 

- Create a better studio space. 
 The word "studio" is a very loose term. My work space is actually a little section of our living room I carved out. I get beautiful views of the sunset every day, the snow in the winter, and the cute birdies on the fence next door. I'm in eye shot of the TV so I can watch all of my shows while I work! (Hello, Parenthood - my newest Netflix addiction) But, the redeeming qualities basically end there. Because we're renters I can't hang shelves, which means I have ugly, industrial looking rolling carts flanking each side of my desk. Infinitely functional and I'm so thankful for them, but they're not the cutest things to look at. My work station chair is actually one of my dining room chairs. My scissor fob/ stitch marker supplies sit on the bottom shelf of a particle board bookshelf that used to be my sons across the room. It's kind of a chaotic little nook and doesn't have much "flow."
I would love to revamp the space: Add some inspiring art, FINALLY buy a nice chair, and maybe even throw a new coat of paint on desk and give the old particle board shelf a face-lift once the weather gets nice again in the spring!

- Refrigerator organization!

My husband laughed at me for this one and said "this one makes no sense! You have all these other big goals and then you want to make the fridge neat?!" But I do! Ever see those pretty pictures on Pinterest of people with these fridges full of mason jars and labeled bins and those adorable fridge mats? I crave it!! Our fridge is decently sized but crammed full of nonsense and since I'm the one that does the majority of the cooking - why not make it pretty?! (And more functional, of course, but pretty totally takes the lead.) 

 -Plan at least one trip out of the state, day trip or otherwise

Last spring I went down to Gettysburg and it was such an awesome trip - I never wanted to come home! I felt so carefree and I LOVED exploring the town, trying new foods and seeing all of the history. Plus the people in town were the absolute sweetest! (in addition to the picture perfect weather all week - people were walking around in jackets and I was in sundresses!)
I haven't gone on a vacation with my husband since our honeymoon (eek!) so heading out to explore another state and seeing all that another town has to offer would be wonderful. We're thinking of hitting Vermont for our 2 year wedding anniversary so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that we can actually make this goal come true!
--
And that's it for now!
I'm looking forward to this time next year where I can write about what I've actually accomplished!

If you have a "goals" post of your own, feel free to drop it in the comments! I'd love to see what you guy envision for the year!

Love,
Fawn.

Hey guys. 

This isn't going to be the most positive weekend update, and I'm sorry for that. Please hold tight. Brighter posts are coming. 

(Also let me add in; for those of you that follow me over on Twitter - yes I was supposed to post a tutorial on Friday. I got into step one and realized I'm missing something essential to finish it. I'm aiming for this coming Friday. Bare with me. This is all new to me still!)

-

(If you're interested, you can click here to find some reputable places specifically for donating to the victims of the Paris attacks.)

When my husband finally came home from work I was exhausted, both from the news and from battling this cold all week so we called it quits early after some Chinese food and a little bit of comedy to try and turn our moods around. (John Mulaneys new comedy special on Netflix is absolutely hysterical.) We laid in bed and the sir couldn't fall asleep at all. Once I actually fell asleep I had bad dreams all night. I tossed and turned and woke up several times.

Finally on Saturday morning after about an hours worth of sleep, I woke up to a message from my best friend/coworker that just said "Oh my God, Chuck." And my heart dropped from my chest down to the pit of my stomach immediately. I logged into Facebook to find that the same pals that did pumpkin carving and all of that with us (in my fall updates post) had a horrible house fire the night of 11/13 that completely destroyed their house and all of their belongings. My husband came into our room and I was white as a sheet, and since I'm forever the bearer of bad news in this house, had to tell him what had happened. Chuck's cousin Pat got ahold of us shortly thereafter and gave us the lowdown and I just cried and cried. I'm an extremely sentimental person as well as a very sensitive one and because they essentially are my family I just fell apart. I keep saying it over and over, but I'm so thankful they weren't home and that everyone is okay. They are absolutely wonderful people that I personally couldn't imagine my life without. You know how there's just some people you bond with on a soul level? They are those people to me.
(If anyone would like to donate, there is a GoFundMe up and running for them as well.)

We headed out for me to be able to grab a coffee while we contacted some people about physical donations and decided that while we were out I could use my Kohl's coupons to get some clothes for my little big man. This growth spurt is still happening, and the more I get him dressed the more I come across clothes that are getting smaller and smaller. Even the coat we just got him for winter, the inner light fall jacket is already creeping up at the sleeves. It's incredible! I ended up getting him a stack of Jumping Beans stuff (Some of which is pictured as the photo for this weeks post, and I got it all with a 15% off your total purchase coupon. Mom jackpot!), that way if he grows out of it by spring it won't be so detrimental to my wallet. Everywhere I go people tell me how huge/tall he is, I'm almost scared to see what he's going to be like as a teenager!
We ran over to the mall as well and it was Santas first day on the job! Bee is OBSESSED with Santa and Christmas right now, so I was very excited to have him meet the jolly ol' fella. We walked to the center of the mall and he was walking around outside of his designated sitting area so I told kiddo he can say hello if he wants. As he was waving hello, Santa came right over to him and said hi, complimented him on his Peanuts sneakers and asked him about his beloved stuffed animal. This was a VERY one sided conversation because my child was wide eyed in stunned silence. All of his answers were barely audible whispers and he totally had ZERO idea what to do! It was Christmas magic right in front of my eyes, and with how emotional my day had already been, after we said goodbye to him (and he booped kiddo on the nose!) I just burst into tears. It's something I'll remember for a lifetime. I was super annoyed that the "assistant" wouldn't let me film the moment (she did everything but swat my phone away...sigh.) because I would love to re-watch his face lighting up over and over again. I don't know if anything else this year is going to top that moment for me.

Sunday we went on an outing with my father to do something I'll discuss at length at a later time. My dad is a blacksmith (and super cool!) and at some point I plan on doing a whole write up on him/what he does/what we've accomplished together. We had a great day! He made me some orange flavored cinnamon rolls which always take me right back to my childhood. He spoils me! Bug has been SUPER cranky lately, what with the growth spurt/coming down from a cold/general threenagering, so it was a bit of a challenging afternoon, but overall a successful one.
After dropping my dad off, we grabbed some lunch at Panera, where my son refused to eat turkey because it's him, and he refuses to eat anything even vaguely not shaped like, I don't know - waffles? He hates anything we offer him until he's given no other option, then he tries it and loves it. It's one of those frustrating motherhood moments that I'll laugh at someday.
(Right? Hopefully? ...Bueller?)

November has already hung us out to dry, and we're only heading into the third week. Thankfully we have some things to look forward to in the next couple of weeks with our friends doing a comedy show this weekend, as well as a benefit for Chuck & our other friends the night before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving itself, and holiday prep, which means I can FINALLY start getting into the Christmas mood and take all of my decorations out of storage! Yay! I love transforming the house into our little winter wonderland and can't wait to share that here.
All that aside, I'm just really hoping for a brighter December, both on a personal level and globally.
My fingers are crossed.
It is the season of loving, giving and being thankful after all.
Love one another & be well.

Love,
Fawn.

(This post title comes from my child that is forever asking that exact question!)

Hey all! Happy Wednesday!

Right now I'm desperately fighting off a cold-turned-sinus infection, and would love nothing more than to be sleeping the day away. Unfortunately, work and toddler wait for no colds. (Mucinex is my BFF right now, and I've been carrying my own special box of tissues around from place to place as several of my coworkers are also facing the same runny nosed fate as myself currently - which means there are tissue thieves abound!) I feel terribly sluggish and sleepy, and I'm so annoyed that I can't taste anything. Especially because I had a work function to go to today and it was catered with Italian food.
Know what's worse than not being able to eat Italian food? Not being able to eat free Italian food.
Literally the worst. 

Anyhow, on a lighter note, here's what I've got going on right now! 

Currently: 

Watching - HGTV programs with my husband on Netflix. It's our "thing" at the moment, and his commentary makes me laugh until I cry every. time. / @Midnight on Comedy Central / Bobs Burgers (We still need to watch season five. Whoops!) / This mermaid afghan tutorial!

Got a "currently" list of your own going on right now?
Leave a link below or tell me what you're into!

Love, 

Fawn. 

Hey all! 

This weekend went by entirely too fast, didn't it? To be honest, November already seems as though it's flying by. This afternoon my sisters in law contacted me about who's making what for Thanksgiving.
THANKSGIVING, people!
I cannot believe it's already time for the holidays again. This is my fifth set of holidays with my husband and his family, so I'm obviously very excited. Especially since bug is WELL aboard the "Santa" train this year. My goodness.

Here's a glimpse into my weekend!:

On Friday afternoon when I got out of work I got the chance to dress up all cute and go watch my husband's band play a show, which I don't get to do nearly as much as I'd like to so it's always a treat! It's a lot of fun hanging out with the other girlfriends and being silly together while our guys do their thing. There were a few negative things that happened about midway through the night that I'd rather not get into here, but overall it was a great time! Those boys practice and practice so it's nice to hear them all polished up, but my favorite part by far is seeing other people dance and sing along to their songs - it makes me super proud!

Afterward we went to my favorite pizza place in town, I got a huge slice of taco pizza and another of the loaded baked potato. It's seriously the best. I could eat there every day for a year and never get sick of it. (If you're ever in Providence, RI: check them out! ) We were out WAY past my usual bedtime, so I got home and crashed harder than I've crashed in a LONG time. Momma can't hang anymore!

Saturday My "get up and go" got up and went, so to speak, so I had a bumbling start and an aggravating day from start to finish to be quite frank. It was one of those "best laid plans of mice and men often go awry" kind of days, so I did what I could to salvage it and it end up turning out semi decent. I ended up calling/making plans with my dad. He had told me a friend of his thought that he would be into Hobby Lobby, but my dad isn't one to venture out of his set "circle" of stores, so I knew he would never go and check out the one by us. Being in the funk that I was (and HL being one of the happiest places on earth for me!) I roped him in to coming with me. He didn't quite realize that craft store shopping with me is a LONG event (he asked me if I was "wrapping it up" when I was only about 1/3 of the way through doing what I was doing. Eek!) He said he liked it, but I think he liked being with his grandbaby the most. I caught him pushing him around in the cart every time I turned my back!

Sunday was our nephews 5th birthday, which is insane to me. These kids and their growing! It was an adorable race car/ Hot Wheels themed party and all of the kids had a blast. My sisters in law did such a nice job putting everything together. I wish I had gotten some pictures, especially of the awesome trophy in the center of the table (full of popcorn, no less!), and the little "apple cars" butttt... auntie of the year accidentally left her camera at home. Sigh.
While we were there I got to catch up with a mutual friend of the family that I love very dearly. (She is on the micro sized list of people I trust to watch my child. That's love, folks.) She's an inspiring mother of 4, who's now tackling seminary & college with finesse and hilarity, and she has this ability to get the biggest belly laughs ever out of me. I LOVED chatting with her all afternoon! (She's blogging about her experiences here if anyone's interested in reading about her incredible journey!) Seeing all of the kids together was awesome, and our nephew was stoked on what we got him. Win-win!

Following that, we got to spend the rest of the afternoon with my husbands 90 year old grandmother. We spent just about 2 or so hours going through some things over at her house (digging around the attic/in spare rooms/looking through books and pictures/etc). She gave us some awesome books on JFK, a book revised in 1960-something that's completely in french and several other bobbles and trinkets. Everything has a story at her house, and anyone that's been around me for five seconds knows how much I love something old plus the story behind it! She's lead a very interesting life!

Grocery shopping followed that, and we got home late enough to warrant me not wanting to cook - so we ordered a pizza, put our mini muffin to bed and watched some WWF "Attitude Era" wrestling, before crashing out for the night.

At some point in the day we realized that if we were still counting it, it would have been our 4 year dating anniversary! (We count by Christmases, though - since Christmas is kind of a huge deal in our family. So this year is 5 Christmases together!) We stopped counting our dating anniversary once we got married last year, but it's insane to me to think we've been together for four years now! Especially since I've known him since I was 13! It's been a fun and hectic few years, and I'm very excited to see where life leads us. I'm also very happy we spent the last few hours of the day in our pajamas, eating philly cheesesteak pizza and watching ridiculous storylines from our childhood while playing our favorite game of "you can't do that anymore!" (Bleeding on tv for real without having to stop the match? Smacking people in the head with a chair for real? "Can't do that anymore!")

It was a very, very busy - but very good weekend for the three of us!
I hope you all had a good weekend as well. 

Did you do anything interesting? Comment below! I'd love to hear it!

Love,

Fawn.

(P.S.: I took this quick shot of the shelf where I keep my fob/jewellery supplies as of late after snapping all of the other photos for this post. Just a small selection of my organized chaos! Our living room is half living room/half my studio. It's not very glamorous- but it's mine!)

Oh my goodness, my lovelies.

I am so, SO far behind with updating. 

I hope you'll all forgive my absence! (Please??)

I posted my very first post, we did so many fun things - and then I had an unfortunate death in my family as well as several other personal (and crazy) things that went down, so I took a break to recenter and gather my thoughts and bearings. But I'm back now - to stay. I pinky swear! 

Enough about that- lets get to the fun stuff!

At the beginning of the month, my kiddo & I went with several of our friends (basically our second family) to a local farm to get some pumpkins for carving! It's the first time I've been to pick pumpkins since I was about 5 years old, and my sons first time ever! All of us piling into one car for a long ride to an event has become one of my favorite things over the years, and it's even better when my little bug can come along. We got there at the tail end of the day as the sun was setting and it was perfect weather for exploring the farm. (Especially since shortly after that day, the weather here tanked and it's been freezing cold basically every day since!)

One of my favorite things was watching my little guy feel all the different textures and run in between the rows and rows of pumpkins in the greenhouse. He's at this really cool age that I've looked forward to for a long time where he's super into making up his own stories and exploring EVERYTHING. I heard his retelling of this trip for days and days to follow and I hope it's something he remembers for a long time! My earliest memory is from when I was his age, so I wonder if this will be one that sticks!

 (After this photo was taken, he grabbed one of those mini pumpkins out of that bin and threw it across the aisle. Oops!)

--

After we got back from the farm, we got messy with several of us around the table carving our pumpkins. One bowl, about 7 or 8 pumpkins worth of pumpkin guts. Yuck!
I had picked a pumpkin the color of a butternut squash, and decided to carve it using my Dremel tool. It's something I'll definitely be doing again in the future. It's the first time I've attempted to do any type of rind removal on a pumpkin in general, I was pretty proud of myself for trying it! I'd love to do a tutorial on it someday - but it sure does make a huge mess! I had little flecks of pumpkin in my hair, down my shirt, all over me! It was worth it when I saw it all lit up afterward though.

Everyone did such an amazing job, and we definitely left for home exhausted afterward. I think our little guy slept in for close to an extra two hours the next day!

--

The weeks that followed left festiveness to be desired, however. With all the happenings around I didn't really decorate the house too much this year. Just a few glittery pumpkins scattered around the house, some Halloween themed hand towels in the kitchen and bathroom, and some window clings. Much more subdued than I usually do. Kiddo debated for WEEKS as to what he wanted to be for halloween, and only came to a firm answer literally days before the holiday. He had initially wanted to be a pumpkin, then Wally from Wallykazam, then Jack Skellington from Nightmare (which is his favorite movie - "Halloween Halloween!" as he calls it), then...he decided somewhere along the way that he didn't want to dress up at all. No costume. No face paint. No nothing. Any time we would mention it we were met with firm protest, so we didn't push the issue with him. We figured either he would come around to it or he wouldn't. He was firm in the "wouldn't", UNTIL he saw a dinosaur costume that made it sort of look as though he was riding on the dinosaur itself at Target and then it was game on from that point forward! The only thing that broke my heart about it was that I didn't get to make his costume this year. I've made the last 3 from scratch, and vowed to make every one until he was old enough to be "over it" and that's when I would throw in the spool, so to speak. But the look on his face and how excited he was to wear the dinosaur (he even named it!), made it totally and completely worth it. We decided to go with a Jurassic World theme, as we always do a family thematic costume. I dressed as Claire Dearing and my husband as Owen Grady with our little darling dinosaur in tow. He did SO good the night of, running from house to house and using all of his manners to get a big basket full to gills with candy, as well as barging his way into someones house because they had a fishtank. (With red faced sheepish mommy right behind him, of course.)
The boy loves fish.

 --

Overall the month of October was a good one! I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what November has to offer, especially with us potentially hosting a "Friendsgiving" for the first time this year.
I hope everyone had a great and safe Halloween, I would love to know what you all dressed up as! 

Feel free to leave a comment telling me what you did with your families - spooky, silly or otherwise!

Love,

Fawn.