a winner and a fiesta pool party

We have a winner!  Through a random drawing, our 2nd commenter (Jamie!) has won two pairs of sweet em earrings of her choice – Congrats Jamie! – please head over to etsy to pick out two and let me know which you choose – shopsweetem @ gmail (dot) com

On to the fiesta!  MJ turned 8 :)  We celebrated pool side with a Mexican fiesta. 

 

MJ found a picture of a cake online and I tried my best to copy it, with a little guidance from a friend I think we pulled it off pretty closely (and I think Mills had an early taste by the looks of that finger swipe)

 

I saw these streamers here and they didn’t take long to make at all and were so festive, I highly recommend them!

 

the cake again:  There are 4 (9” round) layers underneath all that (6 cans of!) icing.  I used two boxes of chocolate cake mix (and of course, froze those a week ahead of time!)

 

slip n’ slide was a huge hit (rental from Rental Depot, the owner is a good friend of Jim’s and one of the nicest people I know)

We served tacos (per MJ’s request) With the help of my mom (which by the way, all my parties are with the help of my mom), we made the taco meat (ground beef plus this mix) 2 weeks ahead of time and froze it.  We put it in the crock pot the day of.  Easy, easy party and just what Mary James wanted.

 

Just for fun:

• MJ turns 5
• MJ turns 6
• MJ turns 7

Have a lovely weekend!  We are headed to the beach with the family so all Sweet Em orders will be on hold until 7.22.13, thank you for your patience!

catching up with molly

Because she’s the middle child and we middle children are always being left out :) 

I completely forgot to show you what I did with all those paper crafts i mentioned a while ago.  Well they were for Molly’s end of the year swim party at my parents house and here is how it turned out!

 

 

 

The triangles (below) were the remains of the bunting (above) and they were threaded onto fishing string, and weighted with seashells and hung over the food table.

and you know good ole’ martha and her tissue paper pom poms never fail us

 

a day later Molly had her dance recital.  Sometimes I can catch the girls in such a good mood they will put on a fashion shoot for me and really get into it

 

 

but usually it goes like this:

 

you do know i only show you the pictures when everyone is smiling and happy for a split second.  we have lots and lots of fights around my house and going out in public we have taken a turn for the worse.  just letting you know :)

 

with uncle matt & aunt arre

 

Enjoy your weekend Molly style – taking it easy

text all of your friends and call it a birthday party

I know you love posts about elaborate parties that Kristen plans way in advance and executes with panache. This is not one of those.

My husband's birthday was last week. It wasn't a particularly significant one but birthdays are a big deal in his family. All of them. So even though he wasn't actually turning 8, we celebrated like he was.

At the very last minute, he texted about 15 friends and invited them over to watch football on Sunday "for his birthday party". I even planned to be there (this is a rarity. i don't do football season. it was in the spirit of celebrating).

This turned out to be a pretty good idea for me because without any time to accomplish the countless house goals we still have on our list(s), I really couldn't stress. that much. I just ... did this:

picked up the most decent looking flowers from the florist

called in all of his football food favorites

busted out some crayola water color paints (these come in handly on a regular basis at my house. anyone readers who have ever gotten a birthday card from me are probably a little disappointed right about now) and a piece of poster board (note: if you can possibly have this idea at least one day in advance, it works a lot better.)

cleaned up a (very) little

made a few drinks

made a few (boxed) cupcakes

and called it a party.

(a few more notes, don't worry if the only table cloth you can find is pink. your husband probably won't even notice. actually, he may even be color blind. and if you don't have any art on your walls yet, don't worry about that either. hopefully the mother of a childhood friend of your husband's has blown up a newspaper article from 25 years when your husband actually did have his eighth birthday party and given to you for Christmas - that works just fine in a pinch. and in case you haven't noticed, this was a pinch.)

Happy Birthday, sweet boy! Thanks for thinking even parties like this are super fun!

Pieces {Inc.}!

In case I wasn't sad enough about having to miss this



these {fabulous} photos are making me even bluer. It appears to have been an absolute ball!

Oh, how I hope Lee will do it again *fingers crossed*

and I can't believe I missed the chance to this in real life (I've been swooning over lucite {more. than. ever.} lately)

Lee is on fire this summer (you've seen this already, right?)

and have they always had a blog?!

my baby is one

mills

she’s one.  she is loveable, funny, happy, and healthy and we had a sweet & simple family party for her to celebrate her first year of life. 

 

View Full Album

 
 

love her.

baby jennings

Okay, I know what you’re thinking.  “SO i thought this blog was about reclaimed wood frames.  that you are selling.” 
Well you thought right…but stewart & james is just one part of our lives and when our lives get busy, our frames are just one part of that busy-ness (word? i think not).   You know what takes up the rest of my time: these three kiddos.  Arre has a busy life, many times pulled in a thousand different directions (I’ll let her explain one day).  And to our lists of jobs (if you can call it that) is baby shower hosts :)  and my or Arre’s or both of our usual assignment: decorating. And so the baby boom continues with the latest shower for Allison’s baby girl (Jennings-adorable right?!).  Our friend Shanna was there, camera in hand, and graciously shared her photos with us…enjoy!




And do you remember Ernie’s shower?  Well here’s the baby himself!  Just having a little taste of toes as he enjoys Allison’s shower 
 
lovely hostesses (and adorable mama of honor in the middle in green) Allison we can't wait to meet sweet Jennings!
photos by s.scott

hedge apples & vine letters

hedge apples & vine letters are the 2 things arre and i centered our decorating around for the baby shower we helped host (with 8 others!)for our good friend, mandy. If you haven't noticed..there appears to be quite a baby boom going on and we've had a fun year of showers, but very few of them have been for boys! So when we were assigned the task for decorating for the shower, we were excited to try to come up with something different for this one. Mandy's little boy is going to be named ernie (hence the e's)
ernie's initials....

they were hung over the table

one large e hung over the gift table

one of the things i fell in love with about this house is the hedge apple tree out back (also called osage oranges - you can read about them here) the tree is so large it's hard to get a good picture of it...this picture is from underneath the tree.
you do not want to be standing under one of these in the late summer, early fall when they start to fall out of the trees! They are heavy and put a hole through one of our tables (it was a plastic table, but still)


they had just started to become the perfect size when the time for the shower came so we wanted to figure out some way to incorporate them into our decor





in typical arre form - she realized(?!) the day before the shower that she was in charge of the punch... and in even more typical arre form - she noted that she had no idea how to make punch. so after a quick search on the internet we came across this coffee ice cream punch, we were terrified it wouldn't be good (since we had never made it before), but it was YUMMY

mimosas & coffee punch





arre & mills




we had a blast and can't wait for this sweet baby to enter our lives!!

post by kristen