diy | kimberly ah

Jan 08 2014

Operation NH40: Surprise Party

Naoto turned forty on Sunday and on Saturday night, we threw him a surprise party. I say we because it really did take a village to pull this off. I could have never done it without the help of our neighbor friends, who sat through many planning and plotting meetings, lied their collective pants off to keep the secret and helped gather, prepare and–most importantly–hide tons of food, beer and wine. Since Naoto works a million hours a week, I thought it would be easy to plot and scheme the party details, but with all the text messages, emails, tweets and invitation responses flying around, I was on edge for a month…every time my phone would ding, ping or light up, I had a small heart attack, especially when Naoto was around.

Naoto thought a few of us were going to go out to dinner and then coming back to our place for cake and drinks. This cover story made it easy because I had an excuse to be cleaning house and decorating for the “after party”. But instead of a tiny party, I invited a lot more people–office friends, Trader Joe’s friends, old friends and new friends. And, instead of going out, we kept the party at our place and served Freddy’s meatballs, SPAM musubis and other tasty snacks.

Because we were trying hard to be sly, we decided that Brett and I should take Naoto out for a snack and some errands–some ridiculous errands, especially since it was snowing like crazy Saturday afternoon. You can see in the picture above how quickly the snow was falling and accumulating as we walked from the Vietnamese restaurant to the bar for a drink.

Stacy and Karen stayed back and set up the food and welcome the guests. Then, we brought Naoto back for the surprise. Does he look surprised? I think he was. It was incredibly hard to keep a straight face as we walked down the hall to our apartment. And the group was so quiet that Naoto got almost all the way into the dining room before he realized anything was happening. It was awesome. I was so thrilled that so many people were able to make it in spite of the weather. Our good friends from Iowa made an attempt to drive to Chicago, but sadly, they got snowed out. That was the only bummer of the night though…otherwise the party was perfect and Naoto was joyful. (Even more joyful than normal.)I ordered the cake from Kay’s Bakery in Forest Park and it was delicious. Chocolate cake with fudge filling and white buttercream…yum! I had them keep it simple and then I made an easy cake “topper” with some scrapbooking numbers I had in my stash. Karen and I made the “pouf installation” last week using our handmade tissue poufs, my gold glitter New Year’s Eve garland and some gold glitter rosettes (made by Jackie and me) . It added fun color to the corner of the dining room. It’s going to hang up there for the rest of the month (at least). I made my usual stamped kraft paper table cloth (it featured Happy Birthday, coffee and random Japanese stamps) and because I am foil-printed coaster happy lately, I ordered some special coasters for the occasion. The only other decorations at the party were adorable pictures of young Naoto scattered around the apartment. (I shared one yesterday.)

Thanks to everyone who made the night possible and so much fun. It meant a lot to Naoto that you braved the snow and the cold weather to celebrate this milestone with him. And a huge thanks to Naoto’s colleague Kristen for taking most of the wonderful pictures in this blog post. (If it weren’t for Kristen, there would be no pictures!)

Tagged celebrations, decorating, diy, forest park

Nov 15 2013

3 Comments

celebrations, crafty adventures, holidays, snail mail, Thanksgiving, vintage

Vintage Ephemera Thanksgiving Invitations

I am happy to report that my Thanksgiving invitations are done and in the mail! Seriously, where is this month going? At one point I felt crazy for starting to think about these invites so early, then they barely made it into the mail in time.They aren’t super complicated, but I had a lot of fun putting the mini collages together. Everything on the invite is vintage except the little strip of washi. I needed another metallic element to complement the gold seal. Once I saw the old BINGO cards in my stash, I knew I wanted them to be the base. I love the yellowed paper and the graphic numbers as a background. And of course I had to use my typewriter since tags don’t feed into my (non-existent) printer. I typed out my message and played around with the placement of the vintage postage stamps and gold seals (from a Saturday Morning Vintage Thanksgiving paper pack and fall ephemera bundle) . I pasted everything on with my favorite glue stick because, as I learned at the Halloween Mail Art Workshop, glue sticks work best with delicate vintage papers. The invitation above is the one I sent my parents. The maroon stamp on the bottom (with the gold star) is in honor of railroad workers. My maternal grandpa worked on the railroads, so I think my mom will appreciate that little detail. I had the fig-colored envelopes in A2, which was 1/8 inch too small…so I had to go out and buy some roomy A6 fig envelopes. I made another collage on the front of the envelope with papers from from my ephemera packs (the leaf is a playing card!), some MT washi tape, an old gold border label and a new sticker (Paper Source). I lined my envelopes with marbled paper from Blick. I love this paper. It had a gorgeous mix of maroons, greens, golds and silvers…so dreamy. (And it was in my paper stash ready to be spent out!)

So there they are…done for another year. Now it’s time to work on ideas for the table and…clean!! For more Thanksgiving shenanigans, go here.

Have a good weekend! I’ll be busy today and tonight cramming for book group! The Sea-Wolf here I come!

Tagged crafts, diy, holidays, mail art, snail mail, Thanksgiving, washi tape

Nov 13 2013

Easy Thanksgiving Invitations

I’m still finishing the real Thanksgiving invitations. I had to go out and buy a bigger envelope size (defeating the purpose of using up my stash, but I’m really excited about how the invitations turned out so I needed the just right envelope color!)

When I was playing around with ideas for Thanksgiving invitations (before rediscovering my stash of vintage ephemera) I came up with these as an option. We don’t have a home printer. (Ours broke over a year ago, and I after sifting through thousands of online reviews, I couldn’t make a decision. At this point, I question whether we really need one.) So I decided that my typewriter would be my printing method. I found these leftover paper leaves in my fall decorations bin. The leaves come in a variety of colors, but the ones I chose are shimmery gold. It’s not a perfect paper for the typewriter, especially since my new ribbon is pretty inky, but they worked out okay as long as I didn’t smear the ink with my fingers. The oval-shaped leaf was easy to work with but the “oak” leaf gave me problems because all of its little bumpy edges kept getting stuck as I typed each line…it’s fine though…the little tears just look like texture.

Once I was done typing, I pasted the leaves onto some shimmery antique gold cards and topped them off with a little piece of washi tape. I’m going to put them in some leftover fig envelopes (from Thanksgivings past) and send them to my brother and sister and their families. They don’t join us for Thanksgiving, but it’s always nice to be invited, right?

Tagged celebrations, crafts, diy, holidays, mail art, snail mail, Thanksgiving, washi tape

Sep 28 2013

6 Comments

adventures, crafty adventures, handmade=happiness, Japan 2013, My Love Affair with Tokyo

Hello Sandwich Workshop

Do you know of Hello Sandwich? I’ve been reading her blog for quite awhile now and I’m a big fan. Ebony Bizys (THE Sandwich) is an Australian artist and designer living in Tokyo. She’s had all sorts of creative jobs, and now she is working for Martha Stewart crafts in Japan. I love how colorful and quirky her crafts are. No one can mix patterns and color the way Hello Sandwich can!

For my birthday, Naoto gave me the Hello Sandwich Tokyo Guide, a zine all about Ebony’s favorite spots in Tokyo. We used it quite a bit while we were on vacation, mainly for hitting up some great craft and stationery stores. And, I have the Hello Sandwich Craft Book. It is packed full of fun things to do in an afternoon. It’s written in Japanese, but the pictures are enough to follow along. (Though I do make Naoto read some of it to me just so I can hear the stories behind the crafts. He loves doing this for me…)

When we planned our trip to Japan, I kept an eagle eye on Hello Sandwich’s blog and twitter feed with the far-fetched idea that she would be giving a workshop around Tokyo during our stay. Imagine my surprise when she announced that she was hosting a Martha Stewart Crafts workshop at Isetan (a large department store) on the weekend of our visit!! I made Naoto call Isetan and reserve my spot right away. (Ah, the perks of living with a Japanese speaker!) The workshop was all set up in the crafts and stationery section of the store. Naoto and Hisae came with me, and we were thinking that Naoto would have to stay and translate. But, lucky for him, Ebony delivered the workshop mostly in English and had a Japanese translator interpreting. There were four of us in the workshop and the other ladies and I had a wonderful time creating and playing with the lovely Martha papers and punches. We used the Martha Stewart Circle Edge Punches to create and ornament and added layers of pictures and other punched papers. We finished off our ornaments with lovely ribbons. (My creation is below…I have to admit that mine was the worst looking one in the class! I have a hard time making things not all matchy-matchy, and I’m definitely out of my comfort zone when black and grey is not involved!) While I was in the workshop, Naoto and Hisae (freed from their interpreting duties) went to lunch. They weren’t back by the time the workshop was over so I wandered around the stationery department at Isetan. Isetan had some really gorgeous stuff. I’d highly recommend a stop there to any stationery lover! I was starting to get a little nervous that Naoto and Hisae abandoned me when this sweet, tiny, older woman (who worked at Isetan) dashed up to me, breathed a huge sigh of relief, grabbed my arm and escorted me back to the crafts department. Naoto and Hisae were there waiting and chatting with Ebony. All was well.

Thanks for a fun afternoon, Hello Sandwich!

Tagged adventures, books, crafts, diy, I *heart* Japan, Japan

Aug 29 2013

1 Comment

crafty adventures, home is a 1970s apartment, homemaking, summer manifesto

Paper Weaving Party

I mentioned here that I had some ladies over on Sunday night for a casual evening of paper crafting. We all worked on paper weaving projects, both big and small. I’ve been wanting to do some paper weaving for awhile now, and the stars finally aligned for all of us to get together and try it out. We each tried something different… Linda did a weaving with a vacation picture and a journal page, Jackie worked on a fabulous sushi weaving and a huge weaving of British-themed papers, Karen practiced with some old craft papers and I was aiming to finish a small piece of art for the bathroom. My creation is one of the three DIY art pieces that I mentioned during my Summer Manifesto. (“Summer” is going to extend into September around here!) The weaving is made from four different 12×12 scrapbooking papers, all shades of grey of course. I am going to put in into one of these frames (I have an extra) and hang it in the master bath. I added the shiny silver at the end and I quite like the little shine it adds to the otherwise monochromatic (aka DULL) weaving. (For the record, I like monochromatic…and dull.)I’m waiting until after our vacation to frame it and hang it. I’ll share that with you when it’s all ready. Perhaps when that is done, I can actually show you the bathroom?

For today, I am dealing with a broken air conditioner (nothing like shelling out money for that right before vacation!), cleaning our apartment and trying to get our ducks in a row with cat/house/garden sitters and packing. I can’t believe Japan is just a few days away!!

Tagged crafts, decorating, diy, home, home improvement, homemaking, summer

Aug 22 2013

2 Comments

celebrations, crafty adventures, handmade=happiness

(Belated)

Today I’m making the drive down to shop and have lunch with my parents. I haven’t seen them since they came up to visit with my grandma (and I didn’t have the Mother’s Day gift ready then) so I’m finally delivering the gifts for both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

I worked on this embroidery project over the 30 Days of Creativity in June. The pattern is from Mollie’s blog, Wild Olive, and can be found here. I really loved stitching it–it was a nice mix of back stitching and French knots (I love stitching those knots!) and I finished it in an evening. Yesterday, I typed up a little message on blush paper and pasted it on the back of the embroidery hoop. I know there’s a nicer way to do this (where the fabric tucks around the larger hoop and the paper backing goes back into the smaller hoop), but sadly, I cut my fabric just a bit too short to make it all happen. So, I glued the fabric down to the back of the hoops and glued the paper backing on top. It looks fine, but the perfectionist in me is annoyed at the fact that it could be better. But, the important thing is, the front is lovely, the back is fine and the gift is (finally) going to be delivered this afternoon!

Here it is all wrapped up in a flat paper bag with some twine, a Martha Stewart flower sticker (from my huge sticker stash, collected over the years) and with a tiny piece of tape from Oh Hello Friend. Simple.

And, in case you’re curious, for Father’s Day we got my dad a Blackhawks cap and these fancy County Fair Field Notes (the Illinois ones, of course!)

Off to central Illinois for some thrifting and dining!

Tagged adventures, celebrations, crafts, diy, holidays, parents

Aug 12 2013

6 Comments

adventures, crafty adventures, homemaking

Shark Week Cake…& Party

As I mentioned Saturday, we went to a Shark Week Party this weekend. So much fun! Shark-fan Stacy decked out the apartment with hundreds of paper fish, shark decorations, shark-themed food and drinks, Sharknado! on the ceiling (if you haven’t watched it…you should!) and a shark-themed Brett, who sported these fabulous shark footie pajamas. Pictured above is a blurry Naoto at the Bloody Mary bar…he was studying the shark poster for the quiz later that evening.

Ever since the Shark Week party of 2011, I’ve been filling up a Pinterest board of all my favorite Shark Week ideas in preparation for another party. I fell in love with the idea of this cake*. So I spent Saturday baking a cake and making frosting. I never bake, so it always makes me nervous that the cake won’t rise or it will taste terrible…and cakes are especially stressful because you don’t really know how bad or how good things are until you cut it open at the party…

Thankfully everything worked out and the cake was quite tasty. I made this cake. I’ve made the cake a few times (but never the Cloudburst Frosting). I always use Hershey’s Extra Dark Cocoa Powder. It makes a nice, deep, dark chocolate cake that works well with all sorts of frostings. I decided to be daring and try to make the Cloudburst Frosting for the first time. It was surprisingly easy, though it did take all day because of waiting for the milk/flour mixture to cool down. But most of that time was waiting, not hands-on. The frosting was good–not too sweet or too buttery–like a slightly elevated buttercream. And it really was easy enough to become my new go-to recipe. (You know, for when I bake again next year…)For the toppings, I used Teddy Grahams, gummy sharks, vanilla wafer cookies, peach gummy rings, cocktail umbrellas and a toothpick with a typed BEWARE OF SHARKS sign. I giggled the whole time I was creating the little shark scene…Sigh…every week really should be Shark Week…

*Sadly, I cannot find the source for the original cake…both inspiration pins (here and here) only go to a picture. If you know the source, please contact me and I will include it!

Tagged adventures, celebrations, diy, food, homemaking, Shark Week

Jul 01 2013

2 Comments

crafty adventures, summer manifesto

#30DOC Week 4

Thirty Days of Creativity is all wrapped up and I’m happy to say I finished, thanks to a little bit of help from July 1st. Even though I was behind pretty often throughout the month, I am convinced that I would have finished on time if we hadn’t been traveling (And if I hadn’t been so unorganized about getting ready to travel. My original intention was to bring some embroidery supplies to work on during the flight and during down time. I didn’t get my supplies together in time, and as it turns out, there was no down time and flying makes me feel too gross to craft on the plane.) I didn’t achieve my original goals of finishing more art projects for our home and stretching myself artistically. I mainly stuck in my comfort zone (mail art, cocktails…) But, I had fun creating…creating for no reason other than the mere enjoyment of it. Here’s a look at my last projects (including a bonus one!)

6/23 Vesper martinis, 6/24 letter set made with resist embossing & a tie-dye technique, 6/25 galaxy (for a future project), 6/26 artwork celebrating the end of DOMA (a joint project with Naoto who did the calligraphy), 6/27 patriotic mail art (completed on 7/1), 6/28 a perfectly packed bag (my packing skills deserve their own blog post) & a mini summer celebration in an envelope (completed on 7/1), 6/29 another patriotic mail art (completed on 7/1) and 6/30 a stack of Boston postcards!!

That’s everything, and one big thing crossed off of my Summer Manifesto. I’ll be back tomorrow to share more of a manifesto update before I talk about Boston. It’s such a beautiful day out today and I’m anxious to see how our garden is growing!!

Tagged cocktails, crafts, diy, mail art, rubber stamp, snail mail, summer, washi tape

Jun 25 2013

3 Comments

crafty adventures, snail mail, summer manifesto

#30DOC Week 3

This week was another “catch-up” week. It’s like I lost all steam. But the end is near, and it would be silly to quit now! I was tempted to count my new tomato as a “creation” but let’s be honest…it did that without much help from me. Besides, it’s bad enough that I’m counting cocktails!

From the top: 6/16 Letherbee gin & tonics (recommended by Kathy & Chicago-made), 6/17 popsicle themed mail (I stayed up super-late writing letters & had so much fun making these!), 6/18 more mail art, 6/19 birthday card (made at work), 6/20 pun card (made at work…I love a good pun), 6/21 another pun card (I’m not proud of these), 6/22 notecard

If I create something tonight (which I will), I will be all caught up. And, even though we are traveling over the weekend, I’m hoping to remain on track and finish strong.

Tagged cocktails, crafts, diy, mail art, snail mail, summer, washi tape

Jun 08 2013

3 Comments

crafty adventures, summer manifesto

#30DOC Week 1

I’ve been working through my 30 Days of Creativity Challenge all week. Like a champ. Of course, it’s only the first week–the real challenge will be keeping up the momentum all month. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

From the top: 6/1 plant markers, 6/2 handcrafted cocktails, 6/3 two handmade thank yous, 6/4 one handmade envelope and three more pieces of mail art, 6/5 this (free) pattern from Wild Olive (I loved making this! Thanks, Mollie!), 6/6 water colored stationery & envelope (I’m really enjoying playing around with water coloring things lately!) and 6/7 a kitty donut in honor of National Donut Day (from this Wild Olive Donut Shop pattern) I’m a little disappointed in my execution of the kitty pattern…I think I might need to re-do some of the stitches…I don’t feel like my interpretation is fulfilling kitty’s cuteness potential!

I’ve just been winging it each day, but the next two weeks are looking much busier, so I might have to plan out my creative projects to ensure I’m carving out the right amount of time for them. Also, I’m finding myself sticking in my comfort zone and not stretching myself…the whole purpose of this project (for me) is to get a jump start on a few artsy things on my Summer Manifesto…I must try harder!

Tagged crafts, diy, garden, gardening, rubber stamp, summer