2013 - Year In Review

2013 was filled with Pinterest projects for me!  I tried everything from recipes to making home decor. Some came out great, some not so much!  Here's a look back at some of my favorites!

Turning my Biggest "PASS" into One of My Favorite Projects

One of my very first projects was a DIY Wall Art using wood, spray paint and a rubber welcome mat.  It was an epic fail.  You can read about it here.  Well after spending so much on it, I didn't want the materials to go to waste so I did some recycling and created one of my favorite projects from my greatest fail.  This was the end result.  You can read the entire post here.  

Read the post:  Easy DIY Wall Art - Recycled Wood and Some Fabric

My Biggest Pin Project of the Year 

My biggest pin project of the year was my fireplace makeover inspired by Pinterest.  You'll see in the full post that I did not really do much of anything on this project LOL, other than pick out the materials and surf Pinterest.  It was really the hard work of my husband and Dad that made this one come together, but none the less, it came it awesome!

Read the post:  A Fireplace Makeover Inspired by Pinterest

The Pin that Has Benefited My House the Most

As you know there are a ton of things on Pinterest to help you clean and organize your home.  Well not all of them come out the way the original pinner says but one that blew me away was How to Clean a Microfiber Couch.  I have two small kids and my couch is always horrifying so this pin has really helped us keep our couch clean and we've used it regularly.

Read the post: How to Clean a Microfiber Couch

My Favorite Pinterest Inspired Event

My little sister got married this year and as her Maid of Honor I had to pull out all the stops on her shower.  We of course had a budget so I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  My favorite part was the favors.  I used pashmina scarves as chair cover sashes and gave them to guests as their thank you.  It looked great and everyone really liked that they were different than the usual box of chocolates.  There were a ton of Pinterest inspired things at the shower so read the full post for more!    

Read the post: Unique Bridal Shower Favors and More Inspired by Pinterest

If you are not already, follow me on Facebook.  Throughout the month of January I'll be going back through the archives and pulling out some of my other favorite pin projects to share for inspiration.  In 2014, I have a lot I want to get accomplished so stay tuned for more exciting stuff and as always, I love guest posters so feel free to send me your PIN or PASS reviews!

Unique Bridal Shower Favors and More Inspired by Pinterest

So true!  Luckily for me, I have a younger sister who is engaged and getting married in October so while I can't have the Pinterest inspired wedding of MY dreams, I can sneak some of my stuff into her upcoming event!

As the Maid of Honor, I was in charge of the bridal shower so of course I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  I found a TON of stuff!  With my budget in hand I got to work on figuring out what I could implement.  Here is my inspiration, (get ready there is a lot):

Invitations:

Originally found at Zazzle.com

Centerpieces:

No original website was found just random picture in cyber space!

Originally found at bollea.com

Originally found at efavormart.com

Originally found on Flickr

There was a million more, so if you'd like to check out the whole board, visit my Pinterest page and visit the board I set up for her.

First things, first, invitations!  They set the tone for the whole event and the ones above were perfect!  I went to Zazzle and ordered them.  Zazzle is very easy to use and reasonably priced.  The only problem was the increments they came in, I had to buy more than I needed but that was ok.  I don't have a picture of our finished product but they look exactly as the inspiration above and came out great, PIN!

Onto the centerpieces!  These were not as easy.  I originally wanted to do wine glasses upside down with candles on top (see my board for pins) as a means of doing an inexpensive DIY centerpiece that looked really cute, plus the Bride loves wine!  However, the venue wouldn't let us use their glasses in case wax dripped so we had to move to plan B.  

I saw those beautiful cupcake flowers and considered doing a cupcake bouquet as a centerpiece for each table.  I thought it would be great because I could take care of the centerpieces and cake in one shot.  No such luck!  After two bakers and several attempts at putting the cupcake vases together (more pins on my site for this one too), I gave up.  They just weren't coming together like they were on Pinterest, cupcake centerpieces get a PASS!  

Plan C, flowers!  I used a combination of two of the inspiration photos above and came out with this:

They looked really nice, but they were by no means a DIY job.  We had to enlist the help of our local florist.  We supplied the vases and the bling band and she put together the flowers.  Overall this gets a PIN but if I had to do over I would have tried to find something a bit more unique.  

Onto the cake...the best part of the whole event!  Our colors were black, shades of purple and silver.  I saw the cake I listed in my inspiration and wanted it!  The bakery we used advised against it.  She said if she used fondant the cake wouldn't look as nice when people went to eat it and if she used black icing it could turn everyone's teeth black...so we skipped the black cake and got this!

So our cake was still Pinterest inspired, it looked great and tasted even better.  Using Pinterest for cake decorating inspiration....PIN!  Following it to a tee and turning your guest's teeth black...PASS!

Last but certainly not least my favorite, the favors.  I saw the idea to tie a scarf around a chair and use it as a favor when she first got engaged.  When we decided to do the shower in August I was hell bent I was doing scarves since Fall was just around the corner.  I found a distributor online that sold them in bulk so I got a GREAT deal on them.  I spent no more than I would have doing a nice box of chocolates or a wine stopper or something like that AND the Bride always wears scarves.  The venue we used supplied chair covers so they basically acted as sashes.  Here's how they looked:

LOVED THEM!  They looked really cute across the whole room and it seemed like everyone liked them alot.  This Pinterest idea is a definite PIN!  

Finally...the Bride and her cake!

Thanks everyone, I hope you enjoyed this one.  It was a long time in the making and I finally pulled it all together.  If you would like more information about anything you seen here, please don't hesitate to contact me via email.