My love of Instagram is not letting up, and the new A Beautiful Mess app is only increasing my fun. Have you tried it yet? It lets you add text, drawings and borders to your pics – so many possibilities. Here are a few other favorites from my week:

• A round-up of 25 DIY garlands
• Planning to make homemade ice cream for the first time, so these definitely caught my eye
• This would be a great party theme for the upcoming holiday weekend
• Love these tips for photographing children
• An awesome cheat sheet for nature activities for kids

Happy Holiday Weekend!

It’s that time of year in Texas when dining outdoors moves to the top of my list of things to do. It only lasts for a couple of weeks in the spring and again in the fall, so I have to take advantage while I can. This year, I have the added excitement of attending an amazing outdoor dining event with Outstanding in the Field, an organization that travels the country hosting farm-side dinners featuring foods grown on-site. I’m heading out to Santa Cruz next month for their dinner at Everett Family Farm, but in the meantime, I’m trying to create a nice dining space in our own backyard. Here are a few things on my wish list right now:

Sources:  01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07

Outdoor Dining Inspiration Images:  01 / 02 / 03

Recipes  01 / 02 / 03 / 04

Statement Ring:  Statement Ring  /  Statement Ring DIY

Tassles:  Coach Purse  /  Leather Tassle DIY  /

Bow Belt: Kate Spade Belt  /  Leather Bow Belt DIY 

We celebrated Jenna’s 5th birthday this weekend. She requested a Hello Kitty Rainbow Flower party, a theme I found a bit difficult to tie together in a cohesive way. The chosen location – a local children’s art studio - added an ‘art’ theme to an already heavily themed party. But in the end, it all came together just fine. Lesson learned: don’t settle for one theme when you can have four. Happy Birthday, Jenna!

Here are a few scenes from the festivities:

A few weeks ago, Buzzfeed invited me to submit a craft idea for recycling light bulbs. As part of the project, I bought a vintage wooden sugar mold. I loved the mold and knew that eventually I would repurpose it as a planter. I finally got around to planting a few succulents into the mold this weekend, and I’m pretty happy with the results.

I upgraded my phone and case on Friday, which prompted my daughter to carry her own pink “mobile” phone around much of the weekend.

The weather was nice so we headed out to the Dallas Arboretum on Sunday, where Jason and Jenna played in the Great Explorers houses. My favorite was definitely the arctic dome.

And we caught the last weekend of Dallas Blooms, easily my favorite spring-time event in DFW.

Hope you had a happy weekend too!

The sickness in our house continued into our weekend, so there wasn’t a lot of photo snapping the past few days. We did, however, manage to dye Easter eggs and conduct our annual Easter egg hunt. Jason and Jenna love hunting for eggs and are especially competitive about finding the golden egg. This year, there were two, so each could claim victory. Jason was especially pleased when he discovered that the golden egg contained “the Abraham Lincoln dollar bill,” apparently his favorite of all the dollar bills. I asked Jenna later what her favorite part of Easter weekend was and, not surprisingly, she cited the Easter egg hunt and finding the golden egg as the best.

And speaking of Easter egg hunts, can you spot the egg in the last photo? Even after I pointed this one out, it took a bit for anyone to recognize the egg nested near the bottom of this tree. That Easter bunny is a sneaky one …

We had a house full of sickness this weekend, which makes for the perfect time for simple crafts like this one. I bought a batch of paper eggs at the craft store and let Jason and Jenna go to town painting them in pink, gold and silver. I thought we would use them as decorations, but Jenna has already hidden them in her room. Guess I’ll have to find them first.