SoCal Girl DIY Crafts: To-Do Board

I'm completely OCD about To-Do Lists. On any given day, I have at least two written To-Do Lists and one mental To-Do List going. If only I could stop at that. But no, I like my To-Do Lists color coordinated, with matching ink and matching post-it notes, preferable organized in order of importance or alphabetically. When I found this DIY To-Do List Post-It Board on Pinterest, I fell in love. Not only can I organize all my thoughts and to-do items, but the flexibility of post-its means I can constantly replace, move about, and re-order everything whenever and however I want, without having to start from scratch. I absolutely had to create one for myself, and of course put my own little spin on it. I had a bunch of recycled posterboards at my desk at work, and so I trimmed one into a square-ish shape and set about creating my masterpiece.

What you will need:
-Posterboard (size depends on your needs)
-A variety of post-it notes
-3x3 square heading printouts (or you could use post its here too)
-Glue
-Ribbon
-Tape

1.) I made 3x3 printouts of all my headings because I wanted them to look clean-cut and neat, and so I could do my pink ombre-style headings (you can easily do this with actual post it notes as well). I glued them on at the very top, leaving about 1/2 inch space between each heading.

2.) Once I decided which categories I wanted to break down (into weekly/monthly or monthly/yearly) I cut 1 inch post-it note strips (the light pink ones), and glued them on. Then I filled the remaining spaces with empty post-its.

3.) Last but not least, I wanted to hang my board up, so I found some ribbon and taped it onto the back, allowing me to hang the posterboard on a thumbtack. 

And then I had fun consolidating all my To-Do Lists and filling in as much as possible on my new To-Do Board!

And voilà, it's as easy as that!

SoCal Girl Throws a Birthday Tea Party

So Saturday finally arrived, and it was time for A's birthday tea party. We decided to hold it at a nearby park instead of doing it in someone's backyard just to have a more spacious area and a nice green backdrop. Plus this park had a duck pond, so it was a given.

We set up everything before the birthday girl arrived, and had to tape everything down because the wind kept kicking up unexpectedly.

Birthday Girl

Our tea table spread

Everything was soooo yummy and the tea party was a lot of fun!

SoCal Girl's DIY Crafts: Decorative Paper Flower Pomanders

DIY Paper Flower Pomanders by Project Nursery

While scouring Pinterest and other DIY craft websites for ideas, I found these absolutely stunning decorative paper flower pomander centerpieces that could easily be altered to fit any color theme. Furthermore they seemed rather simple to make, and yet looked so elegant and unique. I was intrigued. After a quick trip to JoAnn's, I gathered all the required material and set about trying to recreate this. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be extremely easy and looked rather stunning, if I do say so myself.

Materials:
-Paper flower lever punch (I used the Fiskars Burst one)
-Lots of light pink paper
-Pale pink pearlized corsage pins (I used 60)
-Styrofoam ball (I used a 5 inch one)

First, I used the puncher to cut out about 150-200 flowers

Next, I curled the petals of each flower to give them some volume, layered them on top of one another, and stuck a corsage pin through the center

Once I had about 50 or so "flowers" assembled I began pushing them into the Styrofoam ball in a random pattern until every surface was covered

And voilà