Relaxing in the Summer Sun, Just Letting off Steam!

Good afternoon! We hope you are having a wonderful week so far. It's been quite hot here- feeling like a snowman in the summer (hence the title!) So, how do we let of our steam? We craft, of course! No surprise there. But, we have a few new banners to share with you today. They go along with our new "Frozen"-inspired party decorations. The biggest one is our 'Happy Birthday' banner:

The banner is bookended with Queen Elsa and Princess Anna, with Arendelle Castle in the middle. (For those of you who haven't seen the movie and have no idea what we're talking about, the movie is great, and should definitely be watched! It also makes winter seem a little closer on those hot days.)

 

We also made two other banners. We don't usually make all of these banners, but we wanted to add some listings to our Etsy shop. So, the first one we wanted to share was a high chair/"I am 1" banner and a personalized name banner: 

 

Everyone's favorite snowman makes an appearance in the "I am 1" banner:

Each snowflake piece features a popped up image, either a character or letter. And of course, we added glitter with the writing and tulle, which is a little hard to see. We also added matching ribbons to hold the pieces together.
Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully we'll be able to post the rest of our complete "Frozen" projects tomorrow. And then we can go on with a new set! Have a fantastic day!


View our Listings Here: "Frozen"-Inspired Banners on Etsy

New "Frozen" Projects Are Here!

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a fantastic day! It's been quite hot here, which makes wanting to do anything kind of rough. However, we've been fighting the urge to be lazy and have completed some "Frozen"-inspired projects, as promised!
These newly-listed Etsy items are just the first few pieces in this new collection.

The first two projects are an invitation and a printed thank you note. When you remove the invitation from its folder, everyone's favorite snowman comes out:

Of course we added some glitter (what princess doesn't love glitter?!) and pop-dotted some of the accents, including the snowflake on the thank you note:

How adorable is this set?! We have a few more projects coming in the next few days, including some banners and decorations. (The banners will be up once they're put together- apparently our missing hole punch is actually at home, and yes, Mom, it will be easier to get a new one instead of cleaning!)
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

New Etsy Listings:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TwoEarlyBirds/search?search_query=Frozen&order=date_desc&view_type=gallery&ref=shop_search

A 'Frozen"- Inspired Preview

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a great weekend! I hate to brag (most of the time!) but we are having a fantastic weekend! It has been warm (hot, according to the people here) and sunny and just absolutely beautiful. Not quite like the weather in the East. Hope everyone stays safe in these storms (especially those two awesome bike riders in Kentucky!)
Since it has been unseasonably warm here, it has put us in the mood for some cooler weather, and projects! We have been busy working on a new set of party decorations. It's not quite done, but here is a hint of what's to come:

We're quite excited for this set! The first project to be done will be a banner, as long as we can find the hole punch! It always seems to disappear when it's needed...We will post the pictures when it's done!
Thanks for stopping by!

Another Happy Birthday!

Good afternoon! We hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend so far. We've been busy with some school projects and some other things, but wanted to take some time to share another quick birthday card we made.

This is a card for our brother's girlfriend. She is probably the most "mature" one of us, we wanted to go a little more "grown-up". (That, and the background design was perfect for part of her gift, which will hopefully be done this week!) We went with the ever-popular monogrammed look and added some pearls, for an extra special touch. Once we complete her gift, we'll share a few pictures of it!
Thanks for stopping by! We hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!

A (Very Late) Birthday Gift

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far. We have finally caught up, or are at least catching up, with the list of projects we've needed to complete. Here is one that is quite a bit late, but I'm sure it'll be OK! 

Last month was our niece's birthday and we knew exactly what we wanted to make her.  After looking around at the craft stores and not being able to find what we were looking for, we had to order it on-line. (I'll admit, we did run a bit late piecing it all together, but...) After ordering it, it finally arrived, only to come the day before we left for vacation and we didn't have enough time to get it out. However, we're pretty sure it was worth the wait:

The completed project is a personalized glass block light. The pictures aren't the best, but the first is when it's unplugged and the second is it on. (My back-lighting skills are terrible) We decided to go with purple, teal, and lime green (because who doesn't like that color combination?!) The hardest part of this gift was (safely) sticking all of the lights in the block and cutting a whole in the bottom (or maybe cracking it) to keep the lights in. The craftiest part of this project (the bow) was a little troublesome, but it works and it made me wonder where to add more of the super easy loopy bows. I was thinking Christmas...  *<|:0)
 Now we just have to get it out in the mail. At least she'll have an extended birthday, and she'll have it before her next birthday!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

Summer Vacation, Part 2!

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend so far! It has finally cooled down here, back to 'normal' summer temperatures (75 degrees and sun!), and it makes everything so much more pleasant, although it has been a while since it rained. Oh well, it's quite nice, especially with the welcomed breeze! Anyway, enough of the weather-bragging! As we said yesterday, we are going to continue our story about our vacation back east. I know, not very exciting for our crafting friends, but we'll get back to our fun posts tomorrow! (And we've found that writing it all down here makes it quite a bit easier to scrap later on.)
So, after some time recouping from our travels, we had a family get-together on the 4th of July. We took the opportunity to throw our parents a 'surprise', belated, joint, milestone birthday. After some arguing and getting on each others nerves, it was a success and everyone seemed to have a good time. We made some decorations for the party, but I'm pretty sure all of our pictures were on our dad's camera. However, I know we have a picture of the invitations we sent out:

Hopefully I'll be able to put up some of the pictures of the decorations (because that IS one of the reasons we decided to have the get together!) We were also able to meet our littlest cousin, who is absolutely the cutest! (Not the best picture of any of us, but you could just eat him up! Even though he was about to cry!) He has the biggest eyes and you can't help but smile!

We spent one afternoon with our aunt and mom. We started the outing with a delicious lunch and spent quite a bit of time taking pictures (a handful of which were approved). After lunch, we went for a stroll along the beach:

I must say, it looks surprisingly nice in the picture. We'll leave it at that! After walking and gossiping about boys, we went on a little sight-seeing "tour" as Mom and Aunt drove around their hometown. It was an extremely nice day (except for the stagnant beach smell).

We were also able to spend some time catching up with our friends, which is always fun. We also went up to Vermont to visit the Twin, and spent the morning blueberry picking with two of her little ones (so adorable!) The little boy kept eating his berries, and those that he didn't eat, he kept sharing with everyone. It was so much fun. Seeing our family and friends were the highlights of the trip. We did get some nice color, which is always appreciated! It's all gone now, but it was nice when it lasted! All in all, it was a nice, relaxing week or so!

The hardest part was the time change. It was kind of hard to wait until a reasonable time to messages to our West-Coasters, but it was a nice surprise the morning of our flight back to have an early morning/late night conversation with Boy! The only thing we were hoping for was that the flight back to Seattle was nothing like the one home. We kept checking the weather, to make sure everything looked good to go. It did!

We left for the airport at 4:00ish, and had no trouble in Connecticut, except for a little construction traffic. Once we got to New York, the story was a little different. At one point, we got stuck in traffic, but couldn't figure out why. Turns out, all of the signs that show the height of bridges are there for a reason. Some idiot (sorry...) decided to take his box truck and try to fit it under the bridge. It didn't work for him. Although, now it might fit. There was also one wrong turn, but that was because the road construction was not marked very well. After some choice words, we were back on the road and the only other problem we faced was all the traffic at the airport. Everyone impatiently trying to merge into one lane. 

After our quick goodbyes, we got into the airport and into the (much longer, but quickly-moving) security line. I got stopped after the metal detector/body scanner and the lady goes, "Ma'am, I need to check your head". Well, I don't know how much you can really hide in a head of braided hair, but I'm pretty sure it was my glasses that set it off. Or, at least I hope so. While we were waiting for our flight to board, we were sitting near a group of three ladies and a boy who were clearly Lawng-EYElanders. Not the quiet ones, but those that talk at a loud volume constantly. We looked over to one another and both pretty much said, "As long as we're not near them". We finally board and we have the two aisle seats. Robyn's seat is next to an older lady who kept to herself. I find myself next to a little boy, maybe four years old. Pretty sure you can tell where this story is going. And who should come ten minutes later? The group of ladies who were near us. Great. Before the plane took off, he tried to fall asleep and kept kicking me. Once he decided he wasn't going to be comfortable, he started watching a tv show on the screen. But his sound wasn't working. And he didn't like the headphones. And he couldn't hear it. Once the show was playing, he was quiet and no problems. Once each episode ended, he spent five minutes yelling at his dad because it wasn't automatically going to where he wanted. But then he'd be quiet again. This went on for the entire trip. Oh, except for the 5 minutes they were in line for the bathroom. That was so quiet time, as well. Until they came back and the kid's tooth was loose and there was blood and tears everywhere. I kept scooting over towards the aisle so I'd be away from him. I did feel bad for his dad, though. He wasn't very happy with him and it was a long flight for both of them.

We finally landed on time without any problems! It was nice to be back on the West Coast (I'd say 'home', but I know how much Mom and Dad don't like it when we call Washington 'home'...) We made it back to our apartment at like 11:00am with no problems and fell asleep for the rest of the day!

The next few days were spent catching up on some things we started before we left. There has been quite a bit of classroom decorating, some favor making, some cleaning, and a lot of relaxing! Hopefully we'll have another project to share with you tomorrow! There's one that is just about done (only two months late) that is so cute and I wish I could keep it for myself!

Have a great night!

Oh, It's Been Awhile!

Happy Friday! I know, it's been quite a while since we last posted. We've been rather busy the last month or so. Who said summer was a vacation?! The last month or so saw the end of a successful, yet sometimes trying, school year, a bump in on-line orders, and a trip back home to see the family. Now that we're back on the West Coast and just about all caught up on everything, we figured now is as good a time as ever to get back on here and maybe share a few of the projects we've been working on since!
Our mom wanted us to update our blog when we were home, but it was so hot that we didn't really do much of anything, so that's where we'll start as we play catch-up. After spending weeks on the road for the last three summers, we decided to take 'easy' and take a non-stop flight home. After waking up at 4, leaving at 5, we got to the airport at 6 and got through all of the chekpoints without any issues. We were able to find the bathroom (you know, just in case, because who would really want to use the airplane bathroom unless it was a real emergency?!) and by the time we got back, they were already boarding the plane. We waited in like for all of like 5 minutes and it was pretty great. After spending $400+ on tickets, they treated us quite well. Like, surprisingly well. We got some breakfast wraps (meh, but something was better than nothing), snacks, and a frozen yogurt pop. At this time, you know, about 4 hours into the flight, it's just about time to need the bathroom again. But you think, "Oh, I can wait another hour until we land to use the bathroom". And then the pilot comes on the loudspeaker and tells you that you are in a "holding pattern because of a wall of severe storms in New York and Pennsylvania, but it should only be an hour or so". Ok, maybe you can hold it, but the bathroom on-board is looking like a necessity, but you push on. So then after an hour, the pilot comes back on and says, "Well, we need to make a pit stop in Buffalo to get some gas". Now all you want to do is run off the plane and find the bathroom. Oh, but wait, we have to turn back around to go to Buffalo, and then sit on the plane for 45 minutes to an hour waiting for the air traffic controller to tell the pilot what the plan is. Finally, the pilot feels bad and lets you all out (politely, of course) and you run to the bathroom. And wait. We walked around the Buffalo Airport for a little bit, longing for that first cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (and only the second one of a long day) that we've been waiting for for the last year, but unfortunately we didn't find any. It was another hour until the pilot came back and told us to get back on board. It was rather impressive how quickly that went. One would think that it would be a pretty straight line from Buffalo to NYC, but oh no, they had us swing over towards Cleveland and Virginia, and then back up north. That was an additional two hours. At this point, all we wanted to do was land, but then we noticed that the "time to destination" on the screen didn't change too much. We were stuck in another holding pattern over New York. After like 12 hours (the whole flight was supposed to be 6ish), we finally land amid a torrential rain storm with thunder and lightning (oh, how we missed that summer sound!) The lady next to us made some comments about the weather, and we were like, "Oh, no, this is natural". She was rather friendly, so it was good. We sat on the plane for another 30 minutes or so because there weren't any gates free to drop us off. Once they found one for us to disembark, the pilot told us that we were the last flight to get in for the night because of the storm. That would have been terrible, to be stuck at some airport so close to home. Fortunately, we didn't have to get on any additional flights, like the couple going to Milan or the family with a 6-hour delay to Maryland. When we got into the airport, there was an international flight waiting to leave, but they weren't going anywhere. It was hard not to feel bad for them.
We decided to rush through the airport to find the kiosk for the shuttle to Grand Central. As we're sitting there, waiting for someone to show up at their post, trying to charge phones, not get on each others' nerves, and burst into tears (that'll come later), we figured we just missed the last shuttle to leave. 45 minutes later and there's still no one at the kiosk. There were two or three shuttles from Connecticut, and I was totally tempted to lose the money spent on the two tickets and hop in their vans.  We decided to wait it out and went outside, and after finding the small sandwich board, stood with a group of people who were apparently going to LaGuardia. After three unmarked shuttles, and one bus go by (you know, since the bus was "only dropping people off") we started to get really frustrated and with tears on the verge of falling, we asked a driver what we were looking for. He was quite helpful, but it was still like another hour that we had to wait. In the meantime, Robyn ran inside to charge a little and not two minutes later, the bus pulls up. He was in an apparent rush and I told him to wait so I could get Robyn. He gave me an attitude and said "No, catch the next one". I'm not proud of how I reacted, but I ran inside to grab Robyn and we made it. We ended up waiting for like five minutes anyway. Pretty sure the driver almost got into a few accidents on the LIE, but we finally made it to Grand Central at about 11:00.
At this point, we were just happy to know that we only had one more leg of the trip to go and that this was going to be the easiest part. We were able to get our tickets, found the track it was supposed to be, and waited. We went back and checked the board, just to be safe, and they had changed it. We walked over to the other track and spent the time determining where people were from (you know, the guys wearing pastel shorts, button down shirts, and boat shoes were most definitely Southern Connecticut). With three minutes to go, they alerted us to a change in tracks, (oh, back to where it was supposed to be originally) so everyone rushed over to that track. And of course, it's like 11:20 and no one wants to share a seat. (Or, should I say, it's New York to Connecticut, so no one wants to share a seat?) So we were scrunched in with a fella going to Southport. After not eating anything since the first part of the flight, we were beyond uber excited to find a granola bar in my bag from the day before we left. Thankfully we got to BPT without any more issues and our awesome daddy was waiting for us. At 1:00 in the morning. What a trooper! Once we were finally home, we spent another hour talking to the 'rents (Mom was also a trooper for staying up so late, and only got on our nerves once, as she called while we were at the airport). After such a long day, it was finally bedtime, and I'm pretty sure we slept in until 10:00ish, but then again, it was only 7:00am on the West Coast.
Phew! I'd say that this post was way too long, but it was a looong day of travel. I will continue the rest of the trip round-up tomorrow. I need a nap after writing this!
Thanks for stopping by! For those looking for our crafting projects, come back Sunday (or maybe Monday) and we'll start posting our crafts again! Have a great day!