2015 Year in Review

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Georgina

2015 Year in Review

Brownies (1) Yowza! It’s the last day of 2015. I swear we just went through this new year thing….already a new one?!? Time flies when you’re having fun.

2015 was an amazing year for me, personally and on the blog with my ever evolving journey with Eat Laugh Craft. Grab a cup of coffee and feast your eyes on way too many photos of my year 🙂

Take a look!

I got married to the most wonderful guy in the world! Surrounded by our absolute favorite people in our lives.

{All Photos by: Dani Stephenson} Screenshot_2015-07-29-21-47-19 Screenshot_2015-07-29-21-51-04 Screenshot_2015-07-29-21-52-24 storyboarded-5 (1) storyboarded-27 storyboarded-28 storyboarded-30 (1) storyboarded-31 (1) storyboarded-32 (2) storyboarded-33 storyboarded-41 storyboarded-46 storyboarded-9

And then we went to Italy! First stop: TUSCANY ❤ ❤ ❤

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Then we made our way to the Amalfi Coast ❤

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That last picture is RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR BEDROOM WINDOW PEOPLE!!! I’ve been wanting to travel to Italy since before I can even remember. And we finally did it and it was SO MUCH BETTER THAN I COULD HAVE EVER DREAMED. Sorry for yelling. It’s just really that amazing. We are already planning our next trip back!

Now for blog awesomeness!

We were on TV! Check out the crafting special we did for our local ABC affiliate station here in Madison, HERE. This was such a cool experience that we got to do. Only little mishap was that the station thought I was from JoAnn Craft and Fabric stores, but in reality they only sponsored us. Good thing I have my sign there (that’s so small no one can read 🙂 )!

We had another busy year on the blog we published 31 posts (got a little derailed with all the DIY stuff for the wedding so we didn’t hit our one post a week goal but 2016 is a new year).

We also had over 100,000 views in 2015!! Here is a breakdown of our top 5 posts:

2015 top 5 Thank you all for helping make our 2015 such a wonderful year! It is such an awesome experience to be able to share my ideas and tips and tricks and actually have people listen! You are all the best, whether this is your first time stopping by or you’ve been reading since the beginning (hi mom and dad).

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe (find yourself a DD or call a cab!) New Years Eve! I have an exciting night of a delicious cheese board and Chianti Classico wine (a special bottle from our honeymoon) planned and to be honest, ~~I might~~ I’ll probably be passed out by 10 pm….. and I’m 26, thanks for asking 🙂

xoxo

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{Bachelorette Weekend}

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Georgina

{Bachelorette Weekend}

OMG I swear I’m still hungover from last weekend. ~~kidding.~~

It was my bachelorette party weekend. Me and my bestest friends went to Door County for the weekend. We stayed in this adorable cabin near Egg Harbor. Our itinerary went something like this:
Friday Night
– all arrived around 7 pm
– went out for dinner in Egg Harbor at Mojo Rosa’s (Kim who owns the place is also catering our wedding she is an absolute blast to be around and so fun. Not to mention she cooks some killer food!)
– Drinks and games at Mojo’s and then Casey’s. Which was great fun. Go to Casey’s and try to guess the number of pennies on the bar! I know the answer and I’ll tell you if you’re right 🙂
– Hot tub shenanigans back at the cabin. Seriously when you let 6 girls who don’t let loose often out on the “town” shit’s getting cray
– sleeping in THE MOST comfortable bed in the world. I was snuggled in a HUGE king bed with my sissy and bff. Heavenly.
Saturday
– had a good ole’ fashion reminisce session about the night before. Seriously we did this all the time in college where we’d all snuggle and laugh and talk about shit that went down the night before. It was so fun to do it again.
– bloody’s and brunch (aka i was too excited for the day and had like 10 grapes)
– all panicked that we had to leave soon and rushed to get ready
– arrived at Stone’s Throw Winery for our personal tasting course. At this point my soon to be sister’s in laws met up with us!
– tasted 7 awesome wines with Deb who made the day so great! We also met Russell who by some small crazy chance knew my godfather Mike who is a well known wine aficionado if you will, in Napa.
– Sat outside and drank great wine by the fire and talked and laughed for ours. While we were outside two very nice gentleman (Dan & Scott) came over and bought us some wine and chatted with us. We got to talking and they have a blog that they run together as well! They live in the Fox Valley area and run Platter Talk a fun and friendly blog filled with reallllllyyy delicious looking recipes and ideas! They are so fun! You need to go and check them out!
– Went back to the house and played some games and hung out
– We went out to dinner at the Cookery and I would like to publicly apologize to them for how loud and crazy our table got. Thank you Annie for being an amazing server to us! And big shout out to our other server and I don’t remember his name which primarily why I want to apologize!
– 7-10 pm, no clue
– kidding but really just back to the house and playing games being crazy girls and probably hot tubbing it up!
Sunday
– woke up wanting to die and had my bff drive me home which was a slow trip as we stopped approximately 10 times for various reasons most of which were me, and needing to vom.
– arrived home, napped on the couch and went to bed at 8pm.

Even though it went by WAY too fast, I had the best weekend ever and I’m so lucky and thankful to have such great friends and family in my life. Here are a few pictures to share!

Friday Night Crazies. Lord knows why there was a bronze pig on the street, but we liked it!

Soon to be sisters!

Bridesmaids ❤

gangs all here!

love them all!

These were just some little hangover bags that i made the girls as a thank for you making the trek and hanging out with me. They just included like a little granola bar, advil, engery shot, gum, and other cute knick-knacks.

I just used a paper cutter to cut the paper bags on the ends, and I bought the cute bag topper things at Michaels and used a little hemp to tie them up, tada!!!! Adorbs.

So there you have it. A high level glimpse into the weekend! If you’re ever in DOCO (Door County, WI) which I HIGHLY suggest you make time for in your life, then make sure to hit up the places in mentioned in this post!

Hope you all have a good memorial day weekend! I’ll be relaxing, catching up on sleep and NOT drinking alcohol! 🙂

xoxo

New Spray Paint Obsession

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Georgina

Spray Paint Obsession

Happy Sunday! A few weekends ago I went a little spray paint crazy and was basically painted anything in my house that wasn’t tied down.

It’s because I found the magic that is………. GOLD SPRAY PAINT.

It’s for lack of a better term, liquid gold, literally.

It started because I had a few things that I was test spray painting for my wedding and it was sooooooo amazing that I started painting other things too. Like lots of random things.

Which I’m going to share with you bit by bit here on the blog but first as this was my first time using and crafting with pray paint, I thought I would go over a couple basics.

First things first- which spray paint should I use?

First of all I was primarily interested in GOLD spray paint. So I did some research on this and relied heavily on other bloggers testing out of spray paints brands to get the best “true gold” look.

Here, Here, and Here are my trusty sources- see for yourself!

So I purchased the Rustoleum Metallic Gold paint as well as the little sprayer nozzle thing. It’s worked great (HIGHLY RECOMMEND) it just was easier to handle and I felt made things go on smoother.

I also made this highly complex and state of the art spraying “station” out of old shoe boxes (I have a small shoe obsession) as seen here:

*Sarcasm*

I was so desperate to paint I literally THREW this together. It worked great though!

Yes that is snow on the ground and no it’s not recommended to spray paint in very cold temperatures but believe it or not this day got up to like 40 degrees and lets face it I might not see those temps for a few more months so I had to jump at the opportunity!

Everything worked out just how I wanted. But I did learn a few things.

– With all the fumes that are just a part of spray paint, make sure you do it outside or in a HIGHLY ventilated area (like garage with the door open at a minimum) and also make sure to ware a mask or pant ventilator. For your own health, you don’t want to inhale that stufff.
– Make sure it’s not windy! Paint particles all over everything in your painting area is not probably how you want it to go and that WILL happen if it’s windy. Also you really shouldn’t spray paint below 50 (I did 4o) degree weather apparently this is because it makes it hard for the paint to properly bond and dry on the item(s)
– You don’t need a primer, most likely. Unless you are doing a super high glossy item or furniture with lots of nooks and crannies. I didn’t use primer for any of my items and they turned out great.
– A few thinner coats of paint are better than 1 or 2 THICK ones. Trust me.
– Prep your area that you’ll be painting in (see pic above 🙂 ) and also make sure to test the paint before you start too. Just a test spray on your prep surface or piece of “junk” will do. You just want to make sure everything is working properly.
– SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE (it off- sorry couldn’t resist) that can. SHAKE the hell out of it before you start (I’m talking 2-3 minutes of good shake time) and then shake frequently throughout your project particularly if you take some breaks to rotate or move your item. It will make a world of difference

So now you have all the info you need to be able to do your own fun and gorgeous spray painting crafts and projects! I did soooo many cute things with this paint….. but I’m going to make you wait a little longer to see what they all were 🙂

Check back soon to see how we painted some vases, some string lights, and some napkin rings!

Do YOU have any other tips or tricks to share? I’d love to hear them!

xoxoxo

Friday Favs 1-30-15

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Georgina

Friday Favs

Hiii! Happy Friday! The weekend is finally here! We have a busy one on the books. We are going to Minneapolis to visit a best friend of mine and then we are coming back to Madison on Sunday morning and having a few friends over for the superbowl game later. I prepped as much food as I could last night so that it wouldn’t be impossible on Sunday as we’d be a little pressed for time. I made/will make some really fun and cute stuff! I promise to share soon! I’m sorry to report that today is another non-food post- I have a couple of awesome recipes I want to share with you but need to take the time to edit and make little improvements first. So today I’ll share my Friday Favs #2! Any and every thing I’m loving lately. Check it out.

1) These boots:

As many of you know I live in Wisconsin. The past month has been, in a word, freezing. Seriously so cold. Like -40 windchill cold. Children don’t go to school because it’s so cold. Earlier in the winter (like November) I decided to invest in a good pair of winter boots. I had been wearing my uggs for literally 6 years and they had ZERO tred/traction left, and were falling apart. I looked around for a while but then found THE boot of all winter boots! Behold the Sorel Joan of the Arctic! Not cheap but totally worth it. These babies are so warm and comfortable, not to mention a.dor.able and I am sooo obsessed with them. My heart will break a little when I need to put them away for the season. I would recommend these to ANYONE (particularly if you live where it’s cold). The best part is the liner is removeable so if it gets bad (like fur starts looking questionable or they just start smelling 😉 ) you can remove them and either wash them or replace them! (you can buy replacement liners). There are SOOO many other cute styles too!

2) This water:

First of all- I am obsessed with this stuff. I drink it by itself all the time, but I was researching some fun recipes to use the water in and came across the LaCroix website. These are are fabulous! Plus there are flavors on here I didn’t know existed…um hello passionfruit! The ideas on here are so fun. But this looks like something I could definitely get into 🙂

3) This magic:

COCONUT OIL is my latest (actually been in love with it for about 3 years now) obsession. It is good for any thing you can think of. Cooking- I LOVE it for making popcorn, oil pulling (seriously look into this if you don’t do it already- my teeth are like 5 shades whiter because of it I swear! Although that’s not why I do it) it’s great for your skin (think chapstick, dry elbows, legs, face etc…) it does wonders as a conditioning treatment for your hair, I even read a blog post last week about how it is a natural (and effective!) personal lubricant (if you catch my drift 😉 ) butttt my all time favorite use for it is as eye make up remover. I take a cotton swab or ball and scoop some up and my makeup is gone and my eye lashes are conditioned in like 10 seconds flat. I buy mine from Costco and it comes in TWO giant containers which is great for me but if you are skeptical just look for organic, unrefined, cold pressed coconut oil and you’ll be golden. This will change your life I swear!!

4) Wedding Planning e-cards

Wedding planning is in full swing and I’m going crazy! To give you an idea of how it’s going………. Jake and I argued about what freaking plastic cup sizes to get for the wedding for almost TWO HOURS!!!! Yeah, sadly I’m not kidding. And measuring cups may or may not have been brought out to determine just how much 8,9,10,12,14, and 16 oz is and what it looks like. And what beer, cocktails, and wine should be served out of. We’re still not even decided- is it too late to elope? I don’t mean to complain but this is the first major event I’ve planned. My family thinks I’m a crazy planner lady with way too many lists but I couldn’t ~~afford~~ justify spending that kind of money, on a wedding planner or day of coordinator so it’s just me(that’s a little dramatic I have family and friends who are helping). I feel like I’m forgetting things! oh and how the laksdfj;alejr;lksdfjsdfj am I going to get everything there to our location?!?! Ok- I’m done I know you feel like this: