Category: Ideas

10 Tips for Making Florist Style Bouquets from Grocery Store Flowers

I’ve been making things as part of Go Mighty’s I Made This Project. Tag your Go Mighty stories with #imadethis, and we’ll enter you for a chance to win an Epiphanie Camera bag and lots of other good stuff.

Flowers make me happy. As a kid, I used to pick gardenias, camellias, ferns from the backyard and leave arrangements around the house. I don’t have any formal training, but over the years I’ve made lots of wedding bouquets, and I try to keep fresh flowers in the apartment.

Of course, that can get expensive in the city — where there’s no backyard to pull from — so over the years I’ve learned how to put together pretty options by buying flowers from the supermarket and rearranging. Here are a few tips to keep you in fresh flowers using grocery store options, but leave you cash for the actual groceries:

CHOOSING YOUR FLOWERS

1. Use what you have.
For the love of all that is holy, if you have a backyard, pull greens from trees and plants to use as fresh, unusual filler — or even as the mainstay of a bouquet with a few flowers scattered throughout. Much of the impact of florist bouquets comes from the novelty of the greens they use. Unexpected greens make your arrangements less expensive and more artistic.
Continue reading “10 Tips for Making Florist Style Bouquets from Grocery Store Flowers” →

Bangarang! Pixie Dust Party Invitations

Thanks to Disney Junior for sponsoring this post. They planned a whole Jake and the Never Land Pirates party, so I did my take on the invitations. I also talked like a pirate the whole time I was putting them together. I think you can really tell in the finished product. Have a look in the video below for more ideas. Matey.

Ugh. You guys, I haven’t had nearly enough time with my glue gun lately. There’s so much stuff to encrust, and I’m just sitting here, not covering a single thing with sea glass.

Anyway, I made these mod pixie dust invitations for a grown-up party, but I think they’d be even sweeter for a kid’s birthday.

Fancy invitations make your party so much more difficult to pass up. And making them in front of the TV counts as multitasking.

Man. You could not be more efficient right now.

Here’s what I did:

– Hand-wrote “pixie dust” on some rectangular Avery labels and affixed to the glitter bottles, which come prepackaged like that in adorable corked bottles. Hooray for not having to search for tiny bottles into which you can decant glitter, which you will then find on the cat and between your toes for years to come!

– Folded tissue to fit the boxes and lid interiors of 8″x2 7/8″ matte white necklace boxes, and secured the tissue with double sided tape. (Fit the paper first, apply tape to the box and then secure the paper carefully. If you try to tape the paper, which anyone would, it will wrinkle and tear.)

– Secured the pixie dust in the box with a couple glue dots on the back.

– Punched the decorative hole in a plain bookmark, saved the confetti bitlet for later use.

– Wrote out the party info on the back of the bookmark, and then hot-glued a little ribbon tag at the bottom so the mark would lift out easily.

– Lightly secured just the top of the bookmark to the box with a glue dot.

– Secured the confetti bitlet on the opposite side. (Glue dots are magic!)

So pretty, right? Right.

As you can see, the glitter comes in lots of colors, so you can choose your palette. It think the colorful glitter is better for a kid shindig.

If you want, you can affix a label to the outside and tie with a little ribbon. You can hand-deliver, but the box is sturdy enough to mail in a regular manilla envelope, or you can do a padded one if you’re feeling cautious.

Boom! Best party invites ever.

Here’s where you can get everything:

Martha Stewart Glitter in colors and metallics (search around, you can get almost any color combo you want), Martha Stewart Craft punch (mine is old, but she has a whole line of stuff like what I linked to), Glue dots, plain bookmarks and bookmarks with holes so you don’t have to bust out the glue gun to affix the ribbon, Jewelry boxes. You know where to get ribbons and Avery labels right? I trust your judgement.

And if you just so happen to be planning a whole Jake and the Never Land Pirates theme party (I’m on to you search engine traffic), there are a ton more ideas in this video, so have a look:

You’ll find Jake and the Never Land Pirates every morning on Disney Junior, on the Disney Channel. Wear an eye patch while you watch. Maybe a kicky striped shirt.

15 Influential Design Blogs

Someone on Quora asked about the most influential design blogs, and many of the responses had to do with professional web and product design. I have a much more colloquial view of what it means to be a design blogger, so almost none of the blogs I consider influential were on the list. I added these with a notation that I wasn’t including fashion or wedding sites, which have some overlap in the community, especially because personal sites can be so tough to classify.

I’m defining “influential” as folks with large audiences (upwards of 10,000 visitors a day or so) with dedicated readers who really care about the information presented there.

Who am I forgetting?

DesignSponge founded by Grace Bonney
Home, DIY, entertaining, products

Design Milk founded by Jaime Derringer
Design magazine on art, architecture, home, fashion, tech

Swiss-Miss by Tina Roth Eisenberg
Professional designer and aesthete

Apartment Therapy founded by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan
Home design/products with sister sites for tech, green and kids as well

NOTCOT founded by Jean Aw
Products, fashion, tech lifestyle, with sister sites

Poppytalk by Jan and Earl (Husband/Wife)
DIY, Home, Handmade

Decor8 by Holly Becker
Home

Oh Joy founded by Joy Deangdeelert Cho
Products, fashion, interiors, inspiration

SF Girl by Bay by Victoria Smith
Photography, interior design, product

Design for Mankind by Erin Loechner
Art, fashion, home

Not Martha by Megan Reardon
A one-woman consumer reports on a range of products

Oh Happy Day by Jordan Ferney
Entertaining, diy, stationery

Making it Lovely by Nicole Balch
Home, DIY

Design Mom by Gabrielle Blair
Designer who focuses on good design for parents and kids

A Cup of Jo by Joanna Goddard
Style, products, fashionable parenting

What design sites do you love that don’t seem to have large readerships yet? There’s so much professional-level content out there right now, it’s tough to keep up.

DIY Nemo Fish Costume for Your Toddler


Since Halloween is looming, I thought I’d post a quick tutorial for Hank’s costume from last year. Here’s what you’ll need:

A sweatshirt (3T) and matching sweatpants
About 30 felt squares (15 of each color) for your scales and tail
1 white felt square
1 black felt square
Stiff, starched fabric for the crown
Clean 28 oz tin can
Scissors
Glue Gun
2 hours in front of the TV
Glass of wine

Sweatshirt costumes are great for toddlers because they feel familiar, so they’re easier to get on and off. This costume is great because you can use any color combos you want, which means that the stained sweatshirt you planned to throw away will work fine. We chose orange and yellow because Hank was into Finding Nemo at the time.

The tail is two pieces of felt hot glued in place. To make the bottom piece, I folded a felt square in half on the diagonal, cut away along the fold to make the tail shape, then glued the two sides together for extra stiffness. The top part of the tail is just a piece of scrap left over from cutting the scales.

I smooshed a large tin can until it was approximately scale shaped, and used it to trace the scales onto the felt. I folded felt squares in half so I could trace once and cut out two scales at a time.

The eye is felt too. I used drinking glasses as templates for the circles. The crown was a little trickier.

Mine is made from a reusable shopping bag, which was just the right stiffness. I cut a bunch of uniform rectangular strips, then bent them in L-shapes and glued the bottom parts of the Ls in a line along the top seam of the hood. I alternated which way the bottoms of the Ls were facing, and overlapped the strips slightly, so each strip kind of supported the one next to it.

I trimmed the top into a rough half circle, and trimmed away excess fabric from the bits I’d glued down. Then I took a leftover felt scale, cut it in half, and glued one piece on either side of the crown for added structure, and to hide the messiness.

You can see from this photo how I glued the scales — this sweatshirt is a 3T. I started at the bottom and worked my way up with the sweatshirt zipped closed. Take care not to glue over the zipper.

Same deal with the back, and voila!

You have yourself a little fishy. Happy Halloween!

Wedding Advice

Getting married is like having a child, suddenly everyone wants to tell you what to do. I’m no exception. In fact, if you’re newly engaged, you may want to sit next to someone else at dinner, because I will not shut up about your wedding. It’s insufferable, I know, but I’m powerless to stop myself.

Anyway, here’s a little dose of unsolicited advice for those of you fortunate enough to live out of earshot:

Take a group photo. Nearly all the people you love are here, in one place. This isn’t likely to happen again until your funeral.

Be prepared. I had a kit on hand for minor emergencies. Having all my little fixes in one place made it easy for anyone to grab me a pair of scissors, some clear nail polish, a flask of bourbon. Here’s a bridal emergency kit list, but you’ll find a zillion of them online. Bridesmaids, if you’re extra helpful, telling the bride you’ll assemble this kit is a thoughtful gesture.

Let go of traditions that bug you. I’m a tall girl with an unfair advantage in the bouquet catching game. It often felt like an obligation to catch the bride’s bouquet before it fell on the floor when everyone else stepped out of the way. Of course then, you must grapple with the look of mild terror on the face of Boyfriend du Jour. So at our wedding, we called everyone onto the floor and announced that catching the bouquet meant prosperity beyond your wildest dreams.

The 6’8 Dutch guy caught it, and he’s currently my husband’s business partner. Fingers crossed, but I have heard a glowing crotch is auspicious.

Do something fun with your guest book. We had a friend take polaroids of guests, and it was such instant gratification to flip through it the next morning. Plus, we still look at it every once in a while.

Plan with a sense of humor. Sure weddings are solemn and import laden, but receptions can be fun — whatever that means to you. Worry a little less about whether something is appropriate and consider whether it will add to the celebration. Crazy straws at the bar? Candy cigarettes as wedding favors? Yes.

Consider consumables as attendant gifts. I got cool necklaces for my bridesmaids and the female attendants on Bryan’s side, but the groomsmen and ushers got port. Looking back on the now-outdated necklaces, I think the guys did better.

Choose your financial battles. Decide what’s important to you, spend your money there, and aim for festive with everything else.

For us, the bar was key, so we did it up. But Bryan used to work in catering, and both of us agreed that once the crowd gets over 100, you really have to pay through the nose for wedding food to be memorable. We decided to make the food fun and celebratory instead. In lieu of passed appetizers, we had a popcorn machine and a cotton candy machine out front. We brought in a BBQ truck for dinner so folks would have some solid food to offset the cocktails.

We were among the first couples to order cupcakes from Citizen Cake — before they upped the prices to reflect the trend — which also meant we didn’t need to rent cake plates and forks. Later in the evening, we had passed Krispy Kreme donuts as a snack. The food was casual for sure, but there was plenty of it, and the bar was a masterpiece.

So those were my big lessons from our wedding, but what are yours? I’m curious to hear pet peeves you have as a wedding guest, what you’ve loved about weddings you’ve been to, what you took away from your own wedding? Spill. I have an anniversary party to plan.

Lifescoop: 4 Tips for Creating an Inspiring Office

I rent a little writing office, and as you probably know I recently acquired an office mate. She was all set to move in when I realized I was embarrassed to have anyone see my workspace, let alone share it. At the time, it was a barren closet packed with boxes and junk I’d dragged in from the car.

Together we’ve been revamping, and slowly the storage closet is turning into a jewel box. Here’s what I’ve learned about making an office into an inspiring space.

1. Take good care of yourself.

It’s tough for an office to be inspiring if it’s not physically comfortable. Read more of 4 Tips for Creating an Inspiring Office.

Alphabet Baby Shower

My dear friend Alli is having a baby, so a few of us threw her an ABC baby shower. It was, of course, based on a theme I saw in Martha Stewart, whose empire has made it such that creative types need never again have an original idea.

If you have a shower to plan, here’s how it went:

I hung glittered letters over the dining room table. These are from the sign I got at the flea market a while back. If I were buying them especially for the party, I would have just gotten a bunch of As, Bs, and Cs.

We used blocks and vintage ABC books to decorate. These blocks are Hank’s and the book is a damaged version from a thrift store. I use it to “monogram” gifts and cards and such.

Alphabet Baby Shower How To | Mighty Girl

The door sign was a vintage baby sweater on a hanger. This would have been even cuter if I’d been able to track down a vintage baby hanger, but no luck, so I just bent a wire hanger in at the sides.

This is a detail of the sweater sign. Bryan hot glued the wooden blocks together with a piece of string glued between them. (Bryan hot glues things because it makes me hot and bothered. Note to entrepreneurial types: Hunks and Hot Glue site.) The string is looped over the neck of the hanger and hangs down through the sweater.

I used glass baby bottles as bud vases for the peonies. Cutesy genius, I tell you.

We had two relatively mellow games. This is one I saw and loved at another friend’s shower. It’s a handmade ABC book with blank pages. Guests drew in pictures for the letters to make an ABC book for the new baby. Putting it together was a little more complex than I expected (I’ll post a quick how-to soon), but you could easily buy a pretty book from a stationery store and draw the letters in by hand.

For the second game, we had everyone guess how many magnet letters were in the jar, and the winner got a little prize.

The embellishment on the prize package is from the old dictionary book pictured above, which I also used on the gift for the new baby:

I think it turned out pretty cute. And no one had to rub Vaseline on their nose, or sneak into the bathroom to dry heave after being made to sample a jar of pureed prunes. Bonus.

Nesting: the Nursery

Me painting, originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

Bryan and I adore our spacious, reasonably priced, one-bedroom apartment, so instead of moving when I got pregnant we decided to convert the breakfast nook (my old office) into a nursery. I have a photo set going to record the process.

So far, we added doors to the arched entryway, Bryan tore down a wall of mirrors and painted the room (twice, as the first color looked like a Tiffanys explosion), and we enlisted some friends to help paint this bubble mural on one wall. We’re going for a nautical, 1950s Illustrated Encyclopedia look.

Here’s how we did the mural, easy peasy:

-The design is from a letterpress card that we love. I photographed it with my digital camera, discarded the color info in Photoshop, and turned the contrast way up.

– We borrowed a projector from Bryan’s office (Thanks, Adaptive Path!), and plugged it in to my computer. We opened the image in Photoshop and moved the projector around until the image fit the whole wall.

– I tried painting a single circle with a paintbrush, and it took forever. Our friend Rachel suggested using common household items (like glasses, bottles, tins) to stamp the bubbles. She is a genius.

– We filled paper plates with paint and got to stamping. Before marking the wall, we tested potential stampers on a piece of paper to be sure they’d work well. Glasses with wider lips seemed to work best. With Ryan and Rachel’s help the whole thing only took about 45 minutes.

-We ordered pizza.