Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Internet! This post will be short since I'm stuffed and lazy tonight. No DIY's this week again. BUT, I should have something for next week. We shall see. I made some awesome cupcakes yesterday that were a hit at dinner today. They're Apple Beer Cupcakes that are made with Angry Orchard beer which is my favorite. I got the recipe from Brown Sugar. It's fairly simple and the cupcakes turned out great...

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of taking pictures for one of my good friends and his little family...

Love them (:

and earlier this week I bought a little heatable owl! So cute!...

Oh and I already have my black friday shopping done. Did it online and got the same prices. No shipping cost. And I didn't even have to wait in line. HA!

Well internet, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Until next time...
-Jaimee (:

My Trip

I'm back! I had a great time on my trip. We had a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with Joseph and his family. We went to the Renaissance Festival which was awesome as always and we went to The Lazy 5 Ranch which is like a zoo but you drive around in your car and feed the all the animals which is something I've never done before. Flying there and back was interesting as usual. And of course I always have to take the normal "out the window airplane picture"....

 

Which I am always always by the wing. Every flight I have been on this is where I sit. 

Now on to all the pictures from the Renn Fest...

First we watched the London Broil which is a juggling and comedy act that's really good...

 There are tons of people that go in costume, like this guy, and everyone that works there is in costume and stays in character the whole time which is awesome. I always say that if I had someone who would dress up with me I would totally do it. I already have several costumes I could wear. haha...

 more of the London Broil...

 The jousting tourney...

 and then we watched a new act called Barely Balanced which was pretty amazing...

 And then here's a few pictures from Lazy 5...

 Joey fed most of the animals. I kept my window rolled up most of the time because the llamas were a little crazy and would just stick their heads in the car which I'm not cool with having a llama in my face. haha. but I did feed some of the other animals...

 and they had giraffes :D

 and we got to feed and pet the buffalo which was cool...

So all in all my trip was good and we enjoyed our anniversary. Oh yeah and here's my gift from him...

a huge reeses peanut butter cup which I sadly could not take back with me on the plane.
So that's it for today. I have a bunch of DIY's that I am planning for Christmas presents that I am really excited for so be ready for that coming up. Have a great weekend!
-Jaimee (:

Just an Update

Hello world. So nothing special about this post, just a little update. I'm packed and ready to fly to NC tomorrow and I'm super excited. I'm planning on taking lots of pictures so when I come back I'll definitely be posting those. I don't have any DIY's for this week. I was mainly focused on work all week and getting ready for this trip. It did snow a good bit on Tuesday which I was not ready for AT ALL...

 

and also my brother shot a bear! Which for no one that knows, is a pretty big thing for a hunter. Bears are very hard to hunt and there are a lot of rules to it. So that was a very exciting thing for our family, and for me because I got to see it up close which was really cool...

and I made a flyer for a Christmas Special for my photography business, which was really fun to do.

For more info about this go to Shaffer Photography.
So that's it for today. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!
-Jaimee (:

Little Photo Books

So this week has been a little boring. Just a normal week of work. I am excited for next week though because I get to go to North Carolina to see my boyfriend, Joey, and his family for our second anniversary! Yay! Last year for our anniversary we went to the Carolina Renaissance Festival which is really awesome, and we are planning on doing the same thing this year which I'm really excited about.

I have a really hard time buying gifts for Joey. I don't know what it is, but all the men in my life are extremely hard to buy for except for my nephew who likes pretty much anything you would get for him. I've learned that buying clothes is a bad idea because no matter what it is they won't wear it. I've bought multiple shirts for my dad, my brother, and my boyfriend and have yet to see any of them wear them. Haha. So when it comes to getting stuff for my boyfriend I usually try to make something because I know that he will like it a lot more and will want to keep it. Last year for our anniversary I made him a little photo book with all of the pictures we had taken together that year. For me pictures are important because we are in a long distance relationship and when I'm away from him, pictures are really the only way I can see him. Fortunately last year I took pictures of the little photo book that I made him last year. I used a tutorial from another blog on this project also. It's from  PaperVine. It's very simple and only uses one sheet of paper! I also included cute little sayings in with the pictures for something extra.

So this year I decided I wanted to do the same thing, make something with all of the pictures we've taken together this past year. I decided on this little DIY from Little Bird Crafts featured on A Beautiful Mess. It's super simple. I didn't take pictures of the process so if you would like to know how to do it just click the link above...

That's all for today! Have a great weekend (:
-Jaimee

Happy Halloween!

So today I've been reminiscing about past Halloweens of my childhood and found an old picture of my brother and I. I think I was about two years old....

I was Tinkerbell and my brother if you can't tell was a spider. Haha.

So I didn't have any grand plans for Halloween. I went to my bff's house and we watched Rose Red and ate pizza and brownies. Just like we used to do in college (:

I did however complete another DIY off of my list this week. Found this idea on Pinterest of course from another blog Onedaywhenihavetime, where they took a little tin and turned it into a jewelry box. It has some basic directions, but I just loosely based mine off of their idea using an Altoid tin instead. I thought this would be a great thing to make to use for when I travel. So here's the tutorial, hope you enjoy:

So I started out with a regular old Altoid tin...

 I decided I wanted to strip the paint off of it which ended up being harder than it sounds. You could totally save yourself a lot of time and just leave the paint on because later you will cover most of it up anyway, but of course I had to be stubborn and it took a lot longer than I expected. Anyway if you do decide to strip the paint off I recommend good old Citristrip Stripping Gel. It's safe to use indoors, but just be careful of getting it on your skin. If you do wash it off because it could burn your skin. And as always use your common sense and take any other necessary precautions (:

 I found scratching some of the paint off first with a penny helped get the bulk of the paint off and helped the Citristrip work faster.

 

I started with the Citristrip by just sort of globbing it on with a paint brush and letting it sit for a little while....

 

and then rubbed the paint off with my paintbrush.

 and this is the result!

Then I just took different scrapbook paper and glued it to the metal with rubber cement...

for the back hinges I just cut out little notches of my paper to make it fit.

Then I covered the bottom and inside by just tracing around the tin onto the paper and did a little bit of cutting to fit it to size.

For the inside I took some flimsy paper cardboard that I had and just cut it to fit how I wanted inside my tin....

then I traced it onto the paper that I wanted and glued and covered it with my paper...

and then I took the rubber cement and dabbed a little of it on the bottom my spacer so it wouldn't move around.

And here's the finished product! I took some little charms that I had and hot glued them onto the tin for some extra detail. I'm super excited about how it turned out and can't wait to use it!

 

Have a wonderful Halloween!

-Jaimee (: