Finally, I got some things done!

Well I started a lot of crafts and had big ideas at the beginning of the summer. But then I guess got excited and busy with our trips and wanted to focus on them instead of crafting.

Now I'm back and super excited about what I made this week........and a few things I did awhile ago but never shared.

My super duper cute (and kinda huge) memory board!

I knew if I wanted to make these, I would have to start finding some big, cool, chunky frames. I told my Grandma to start looking for some at her local "junk store" in the country and she found me this great one! It was brown and really dinged up which was perfect! I spray-painted it heirloom white to get going.

For the actual memory board, I had to find some super cute material so I went to Etsy and found Poppy Seed Fabrics. So many great things there!

I also grabbed some ivory ribbon then foam board at Hobby Lobby since the frame no longer had a back...... and some quilt batting from Grandma for that fluffy look! I used a staple gun to get it all attached in the back but I'm thinking a regular stapler would do. The ribbon has to be really, really tight.

I also learned a great trick for those button looking things you see on memory boards. In the scrapbooking section they have all those decorative brads that are perfect for this! They stuck right through the material, foam board and batting and they really gave it a cute look!

Here they are:

Here's the board before the cute little brads out of the frame:

Here's a close up after I stuck the brads in, they give it that cushiony look, aren't they cute!

And here it is on my new blue wall! I absolutely love it! I don't even want to put pictures on it because it will cover it up :)

Here's the one I started right after for the study because I was so excited. This was an old brown frame my mom had that I painted red (or Crimson since its for the OU room :). I found the material on sale for cheap at Hobby Lobby and voila!:

I just need to go back and get some black ribbon and more of the cute little brads and I can get it up on the newly painted walls in the study!

By the way, here's what I did on one of the other walls: (I didn't end up doing the picture collage in the living room so I went for one in here instead.)

The other thing I did this week for the first time was scrapbooking! I'm not sure I could do this all the time but it'll be kinda fun to throw together a page every now and then. I made one for my "babies" first:

Then I made one from some of our Mexico trip pics:

I guess there's no rules on this stuff so I just did whatever I wanted and made it busy and fun! Looking forward to doing a couple pages from our Chicago trip.

I've also been slowly working on my jewelry organizer frames all summer but they're still not finished because they didn't quite turn out like I planned. I found these on major sale at Target a while back and got them because I liked the shape of the frames and knew I could paint them and knock out the inside.

I used the heirloom white spraypaint again and tried my hardest to get the wire to stretch straight across but as you can see compared to the "inspiration pic", they look like crap :)

(

So I've decided I'm gonna take the other route and find some material to put in the frame and just use stick pins to organize the jewelry like this:

Yay, I feel accomplished!

Traveling with The Jensen's!!

Jay and I have had a really great summer of vacas! We decided that we better take as many trips as we can now before we decide to start a family and all vacas hault for awhile!

We are always going on fun crazy trips with our amazing circle of friends so this year we decided we should take a few trips with just us (but still one with them of course!), we haven't done that since our honeymoon. (which was 3 years ago, crazy!).

We went to Playa del Carmen, Mexico in May and had one of the best weeks of our lives!

We had been to Playa once before with a group of friends and had a blast. But this was a different kind of fun because it was just us, relaxing, drinking and doing whatever we wanted!

I absolutely love the cute little town of Playa and the hotel we stayed at (The Royal-Playa del Carmen) is right in the center of it! We lounged on the beach all day, ate, walked around town and ate some more!

We also went snorkeling which was my favorite snorkeling experience yet, I was so mad at myself for not buying an underwater camera......we saw so many great things!

Other than that, we shopped, drank about 1,000 mimosas and cervezas and got dressed up every night to go EAT!! (can you tell we love food?!?!)

I love you Mexico!

Next stop, Port Aransas, Texas for July 4th weekend!

This trip was oh so much fun and much needed since our whole group hadn't been together in forever! If you ever want a relaxing, do whatever you want and don't have to get dressed up vaca, this is the place for you!

We went last year with a big group for memorial day and after that, we knew we'd be going back for years to come. We rented a cute little beach house that fit all of us and proceeded to relax, drink, catch up, dance and eat the days away! I'd say the highlight of our trip was the little pub crawl we did on the last day. They have so many old, cute bars...... some we fit in well at and some where I thought the locals might kick us out!

And our last trip of the summer, CHICAGO! I really enjoyed this trip because it was different than any other one we've taken.....I'm always wanting the beach but I knew this would be fun!

We definitely had to work for the fun, meaning we walked the ENTIRE freakin' city! But it was worth it when we got to all the fun places, sites and food!

The first thing we did was go find the Navy Pier and then we found the pizza!! Gino's East is a famous deep dish place there and it was literally right next door to our hotel.

The next day was when we had to have set the record for number of miles walked by a Chicago tourist! We started with walking the mile and popping in all the great shops, then we went to Millenium and Grant Park, then we were off to the Sears Tower (Willis Tower now but i'll always call it Sears)........and then of course we had to walk all the way back to the hotel!

Every afternoon we would come back and collapse in the cold bed and not move for an hour or two, but then.....we had to get back out there! After this loooong day, we decided to take a sunset cruise on the river and out to Lake Michigan. I am so glad we did because it was a whole different way to see the city and I got some beautfiul pics!

Well, they don't look as beautiful now, I have the crappiest camera ever and I almost threw it into the lake! But you get the idea!

The next day was the day the hubby had been waiting for, for a looooong time! The Cubs game!

Wrigley was such a fun, old stadium to see and not to mention all of the fun bars surrounding it. We went on a mini pub crawl before the game, we got there super early!

The Cubbies lost but oh well, it was the experience of being there that mattered!

So that wraps of our summer travels! My goal for the rest of the summer is to start scrapbooking all this for the first time! I should also probably finish all the other crafts I started!!!!! So much to do and summer is almost over!!