The activities list for my nieces two week visit was vast. I had everything you could do inside with children in this hot Arizona heat on my list. The list ranged from activities we could do in the house to visiting museums. We tried to think of a variety of activities so they wouldn’t be bored during their visit. Remarkably, the one place that proved to be one our most fun activities didn’t make the list because I had never heard of it. That place was the PixyPros Selfie Museum in Arrowhead Mall.
So How Did We Find This Place?
We actually came across PixyPros by accident. We were originally heading to the Build A Bear store in the same mall, but due to our late start that morning, we didn’t make it in time. They had a limited capacity and were full the rest of the day. We were a little disappointed, but made the best of the situation. So, we just roamed the mall instead buying treats and doing some light shopping.
Arabian Nights
Our Luck Changed For the Better
As we were making our way to the food court, we walked pass the PixyPros location. Something about the vibrant colors and music captured my attention, so I decided to walk in and take a look. The young man working the counter gave me a brief introduction about the establishment and how it worked. He also explained the pricing (which was very affordable).
Super Models
Me and the girls walked around and really liked what we saw. There were a variety of sets to choose from. Each set was colorful and unique. There was something there for everybody. Plus, every set was equipped with a ring light and cell phone attachment which made taking photos easier.
On Lockdown
After our little tour of the venue was over, I immediately thought it was a cool idea, but decided to wait before I made a decision.
What Happened Next?
An hour later, after we had finished our lunch and shopping, I felt a strong urge to go back to PixyPros. I really didn’t want to head home without doing something fun since Build A Bear was a bust that day. So, I convinced GiGi and the girls that we should take some fun photos at PixyPros.
Playing on the Swings
While Gigi sat in the food court watching our bags, I took Ayla and Noelle back to PixyPros. I paid the $20 fee and got started. Originally, we were only going to take photos on the swing set, but we were having so much fun that we decided to do more.
All Hail the Queen
As we hopped from one vignette to the next, the more fun we had. The music and the fun backgrounds made it such an exciting place to be. Plus, Noelle and Ayla looked so cute in each setting. The clothes they wore that day just seemed perfect against each background. By the time we were finished, we had at least 60 or more shots to choose from.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a 10 minute activity turned into 35. GiGi was shocked that we were gone so long, but when she saw the pictures, she understood. She was so thrilled to have such nice photos of her adorable granddaughters that she forgave us for taking forever.
Tropical Vacay
Final Thoughts
PixyPros is a fun place for adults and children alike. The combination of colorful settings and music make it a great experience for everyone to enjoy. Additionally, the pricing makes it an affordable activity for both individuals and groups as well. Therefore, I highly recommend PixyPros for your next entertaining activity.
Since my budget was tight (actually nonexistent) during the holiday season, I decided to give my nieces creative homemade gifts as presents. As usual, I was able to look in my arts and crafts boxes for inspiration. Fortunately, I had already made a bunch of one page mini albums a few years before and they were just collecting dust in a box. As soon as I saw them, I knew they would make the perfect Christmas gifts for my nieces.
The original inspiration for these quick and easy one page mini albums was a video I discovered on YouTube by Maymay Made It Crafts called the “One Sheet Mini Flip Album Brag Book.” The video tutorial was easy to follow and required only a few scrapbooks supplies. A link to the pdf instructions was listed below the video as well. I made a bunch of them that year and stored them for later use.
My previous experience making scrapbooks made designing these gifts a breeze. Plus, I had created one of these one page mini albums as a gift for a good friend three years before. Therefore, I was familiar with the supplies I needed to complete this project.
Take a look at how I created these gifts below.
Supplies
HP Sprocket and printer paper
(2) One page mini albums
Stickers and embellishments
Cell phone for pictures
My Process
First, I chose the albums I wanted to use to make each niece her own unique album. I chose the bright neon pink and blue album for Noelle because it fits her feisty and bold personality. I chose the soft floral pink and blue album for Ayla because she is such a girly girl.
Next, I picked the pictures I wanted to include in each album. This took some time because I had a lot of pictures to weed through on my phone. For each girl’s album, I chose to use pictures that represented each child’s individual personality and spirit.
Then, I used my HP Sprocket to print out all of the pictures. This took a bit of time because it’s not the fastest printer in the world. Plus, it gets overheated if I print too many pictures at once.
Once the pictures were printed, I peeled the backing off each one and placed them on each girl’s album.
For the final phase of this mini project, I went to town decorating each album with all of the cool stickers and embellishments that I found in my stash. I worked very hard to make each album look unique.
The Big Reveal
I think the final results are quite lovely. Noelle’s album is cute, colorful, and bright just like her personality. Ayla’s album is soft and girly similar to her spirit.
Noelle’s One Page Mini Album
Ayla’s One Page Mini Album
I think both albums turned out great. The girls and their parents loved them.
If you are looking for simple, yet creative homemade gifts to make for friends or family members, these are a great to make for any occasion.
Tell me your thoughts about these one page mini albums in the comments below.
April was a busy month. We saw some pretty cool exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and on the Harriet Tubman tour in Maryland. We also visited make-up stores, the Arboretum, and ate some great food at a few new dining spots.
For the month of April, my themes were flowers, bees, and pastel colors. My themes can be clearly seen each week throughout the month of April in my Happy Planner. I used washi tape, stickers, scrapbook paper, and pictures from my HP Sprocket to create each layout.
View the gallery below to see my weekly April designs in my Happy Planner.
For Christmas, my sister-in-law gave me a Happy Planner as a gift. In the gift box, she placed the planner, some additional stickers, inserts, a pretty pen, and a card. She wrote a sweet note in the card explaining the meaning behind the gift. She also suggested that I look it up online to get a better idea of how the planner is used.
During my research about the planner, I found out that there is an entire community of people that use these planners in a variety of ways. Of course, some people simply use the Happy Planner in the traditional manner that it was intended to be used. Other people use it as a planner with a creative twist. Designing elaborate weekly layouts to plan their lives.
As I continued to watch video after video on Youtube, I became obsessed with watching each person design their weekly spreads. Many of them came up with weekly or monthly themes in their planners. Sometimes it made me wonder if they even used it for planning at all because they mainly concentrated on making them pretty. Needless to say, I was very impressed with how the Happy Planner was both useful and versatile. It made planning your life both practical and fun at the same time. Not to mention, the planner itself is very customizable. It easily allows you to add or remove the cover and pages to suit your needs.
I had an incredibly hard time deciding how to use this planner because I already had two bullet journals that served the same purpose. I really didn’t need a third planner to do the same thing. Luckily, I came across a video that showed a vlogger using the planner as a memory keeper for the year. She decorated it with stickers and washi tape, then added pictures and captions to the layout. I thought to myself that this would be the perfect way to document my life this year and use up my scrapbook materials in the process.
I instantly became excited about setting up my Happy Planner as a memory keeper. I purchased an HP Sprocket printer and paper to print pictures from my phone, I gathered materials from my scrapbook supplies, and watched an array of videos for ideas on how to get started.
So far, it has been a lot of fun designing the weekly spreads. Sometimes I worry that I won’t have anything to add to each week because my life isn’t really that exciting. Since I have been home sick, I don’t get out as much, but I try to document my life as much as I can. I use pictures from my creative projects as well as my rare outings out of the house when I’m feeling well enough to leave for a few hours. I think each spread has its own unique look. It makes me smile to look back at them each week. I’m hoping I can keep up with this for the entire year and have a lovely album to look back on for 2018.
Below are some pictures of my layouts for January. I plan to update my blog with monthly layouts for the remainder of the year. So be sure to come back periodically for more Happy Planner updates.
After making the personalized mini albums for Liam and Noelle, I was motivated to try out some new designs that I came across on YouTube. My friend Andaiye was the inspiration for both albums. I made them as gifts for her birthday in January. I thought she would like the personalized albums to place some of her family photos inside and display for visitors to see.
The first album is made from one sheet of scrap paper. I chose the mint green paper as the base for the entire album. I used scrap paper and stickers from my stash to coordinate with the design. Once I finished, I added pictures of her life from the past two years to the album. It turned out to be a great gift and she loved looking at the pictures from her past.
The second album was a waterfall folio album. I designed this album with her mother in mind. I thought it would be a very chic place to display photos of her mother from back in the day. I used the paper that I used in my niece’s baby girl album and purchased a few new stickers to finish my vision. The album turned out to be an elegant masterpiece. She was very impressed by the gift and gave it a special place of honor in her home to display it.
I first heard about Galentine’s Day back in February 2015. Actually, it was a meme that came across my Facebook news feed on Valentine’s Day. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a joke or if it was a real thing. So I decided to do a bit of investigating to see what it was all about. To my surprise, it was an actual thing. A Valentine’s Day spinoff that was celebrated on February 13th. Apparently, Galentine’s Day is a day to leave the men folk and children at home and hang out with your girlfriends. Essentially, it’s a day to celebrate your favorite lady friends (Ladies celebrating ladies).
Learning about this day was really invigorating. I really loved the idea of a day to celebrate my best girlfriends. It actually made total sense to do so because they are the ones that are a mainstay in my life. My friends are wonderful women from all walks of life that have had nothing but a positive impact on me. Not to mention, it took a lot of anxiety and dread out of Valentine’s Day for me. As a woman that has always been unattached around Valentine’s Day, It gave me something else to focus on other than my single status.
After doing my research, I shared the meme and information with my cousin Kola. She too thought it was a great concept. Of course, since the day had already passed, we were unable to celebrate the occasion. So I decided to file the idea away to use as another great party idea for 2016.
So as soon as January 2016 was ushered in, the wheels started turning in my head about Galentine’s Day. Part of me was excited about having the party, but part of me was nervous about pitching it to my friends. Since Galentine’s Day isn’t really a well known celebration, I didn’t know how the idea would be received by my gal pals. Fortunately, all of them were game and intrigued by the concept. So, I proceeded to come up with plans for the day.
As I began to brainstorm, I wanted to come up with a unique idea. Something that was out of the norm. I didn’t want to do our usual stuff like dinner, lunch, brunch, movies, etc… So one evening during dinner, I tossed around several ideas for Galentine’s Day activities with my friend Andaiye. We actually came up with quite a few novel ideas. We thought about visiting an escape room, having a Moroccan dinner with belly dancers, or having a make-up party. Each idea was fun and different, but we also had to think of budget constraints for myself as well as my guests. Ultimately, I settled for a paint party. Since I ran a paint party company, I was already familiar with the concept. Plus, many of my friends had not participated in a paint party, so it was a great idea all around.
Once the party concept was in place, I immediately started designing the invitations. I decided to use an app called Hobnob for my invitations. Hobnob allows you to design an invite to send via text message. I thought this was a wonderful idea because people always check their phones, even before they check regular mail or email. The app is good to use because it allows guests to RSVP, send messages, chat, and post pictures. Using the Hobnob app was a win/win situation for me and the crew.
After the invites were sent, I hired Melannie B. Designs to conduct the paint party. She specializes in painting on wine glasses. The price range was between $30-40 per person, which I considered to be reasonable. In order to foot the bill for the night’s activity, I charged my guests $20 to help pay for the party host and supplies. I figured $20 was a feasible price for the evening because most people can’t even go out for dinner to a nice restaurant for twenty bucks. So my guests were more than willing to donate the money for a night of fun.
Since I’ve learned many lessons from throwing parties in the past, I decided to order food from our local Wegmans for the event. Ordering food saved a lot of time and energy, especially since I work a full-time job. It freed my time and energy up to focus on decorating and logistics. Plus, it actually turned out to be cheaper than buying a bunch of food and ingredients to feed my guests. All in all, I spent around $150 for all of the party trays created by Wegmans. Most of them were pretty tasty.
For decorations, I purchased supplies from Party City. They are great for providing party supplies for different occasions for a reasonable price. I bought decor to place on the walls and ceilings, table cloths, utensils, and gift boxes. I spent approximately $160 for the party supplies.
By the time February 13th had arrived, I had everything I needed to have a great party. I had planned and prepped everything meticulously in advance so that the set up would go smoothly. Fortunately, my mother graciously allowed me to have the party at her house because she had plenty of space. She had cleaned the house throughout the week so it would be ready the day of the party. All I had to do was bring the food and supplies over to set things up. My wonderful family assisted with the set up of decorations and food. My sister-in-law really did a lot during the last hour of prep in order for me to get dressed and chill before the party started. Thank God for helpful relatives.
The party started at 6pm. Most of my guests had arrived by 6:30. The paint instructor had set everything up thirty minutes before the party was scheduled to start, so we were ready to have some fun. Our instructor and her assistant were lively. They did a great job of demonstrating how to paint on wine glasses and skillfully kept the party moving.
By the end of the evening, everybody had two completed wine glasses to take home and put on display. All of my guests had a wonderful time. We talked, laughed, ate, and drank the night away. Before everyone left, we took plenty of pictures to commemorate the evening. Luckily, I told everyone to wear red or pink in advance in honor of the event. The pictures came out color coordinated and lovely.
All in all, my Galentine’s Day party was a smashing success. Everyone was thrilled to get away from their daily lives to hang out with their gal pals and do something different for a change. In the end, all of the hours put into planning the event were definitely worth it. I was happy to spend time with my friends and provide them with an evening of fun. I definitely look forward to celebrating Galentine’s Day next year with my favorite girlfriends.
Check out the links below to help plan your next Galentine’s Day party.
