enJOY it

an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.

  • she + he in november.

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    November is better. For both of them.

    He's doing another medicine rotation this month.

    And while he can't see a difference, she totally can.

    A much more confident and relaxed doctor stands where a newbie was five months ago.

    She has settled into a happy work routine.

    And has an awesome office space to match.

    They worked out a plan for the future of their little family.

    Of course the plan will go awry,

    but it worked wonders to mentally put things on the table and talk them out.

    And speaking of tables, she has their Thanksgiving table set already.

    Because organization conquers all.

  • my december daily plan.

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    A huge plus of this office revamp is I am finding so much stuff. Sorting and purging and piling and boxing and going through every piece of paper I have is never-ending, but super satisfying.

    Part of my sorting process has been pulling aside anything label-like in red, green or neutral. (I can't source everything shown above, but if there is something specific, just ask in the comments and I'll try to tell you.) I am using one of my own holiday books to document December and am not planning on adding any extra papers, just photos and small embellishments.  I'm storing these pieces in a small box with my album and plan on just pulling from that once I get started.

    My holiday book is not actually a December daily book. I'll just add anything that we do or I collect that feels "holiday-like" starting with the day after Thanksgiving and ending on New Year's Day. So a week from today it all begins!

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    I have also listed limited quanities of the holiday book covers for purchase on their own. If you are interested in having a holiday book or cover by December 1st, I recommend purchasing by next Wednesday, November 23rd.

  • super simple fabric flower DIY.

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    The best part about re-arranging my office space is I am actually gaining a lot of new SPACE. Functional AND decorated? What a new concept for this little room.

    I brought in a vase and a little plant so far. Some weeks I'll keep real flowers, but for now, I made up a few simple ones with fabric scraps. This project was inspired by the yarn pom-poms I saw here last fall.

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    To make one flower, you'll need three strips of fabric, scissors, wire (any kind – mine's floral wire) and a piece of string.

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    Wrap all three pieces of fabric around four fingers (at the same time).

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    Remove the wrapped fabric and tie it tight in the middle of the fold with string.

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    Use scissors to cut the loops in the fabric.

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    Keep cutting until the loops are gone and the flower is round in shape.

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    Wrap a piece of wire around the middle of the flower and twist it on itself to create a little stem. (You could take it a step further and wrap the wire in floral or washi tape.)

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    Stick in a vase with a few others and bang – colorful and sweet decor.

    I also think these would look awesome strung on a garland…

  • our thanksgiving menu.

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    As mentioned, we are hosting Thanksgiving this year.

    It's going to be eight people in our little apartment. We are using our table as a serving area & bar and doing a "eat on the couch and on these scattered chairs" situation. Because people will be eating on their laps or off the coffee table, we're sticking with foods that you don't have to cut. Just fork.

    And we're going a bit un-traditional. The main flavors, turkey, potatoes, greens, bread, will be there – just prepared a bit differently.  

    Here's what our menu looks like :

    Appetizers

    Main

    Dessert

    • apple pie
    • mini sweet potato cupcakes

    *Most of our recipes came from our favorite cook books, but where I could find legit sources from the authors, I linked.

    I am so excited.

    I picked out serving dishes for everything last weekend and drew up the largest shopping list ever. We also have a time-line made up for how we can get this all prepared with one oven, one stove and a slow cooker. Paul has today off (first day in weeks!) so we're hitting the grocery store and on Saturday we will be at the farmer's market before it opens to stock up on good food.

    I am going to get our table decorated and flowers arranged this weekend. Did I already say I was excited?

    Thanksgiving, you're my favorite.

  • office redo : phase one.

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    The first room I set up when we moved in was the office. I set it up as mostly a personal craft space, not so much as a business craft space. And as the business stuff has acculated over the past few months, I have found myself dreaming up cool ideas and storage I could do once we moved to our next place.

    Seriously, I thought about my office in our next apartment everyday.

    Then yesterday, I snapped out of it. We're going to be in San Diego for the next seven to eight months, so I might as well pull it together and make this home office work better for me. My main work table is going to stay the same, but I have a plan for the other side of the room to better organize wholesale paper, shipping materials and projects in process.

    Very exciting.

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    Phase one happened quickly. After some online searching for ribbon storage ideas (it seems like most of the good ideas are super DIY, not store bought), I headed to Home Depot. Twenty minutes and twenty dollars later, I had a peg board, hooks for hanging tools and dowels to hang ribbon, washi tape & sticker rolls.

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    I'm kind of obsessed with it.

    Phase two will involve buying a new bookcase and reorganizing. Hopefully I can tackle that this weekend.

    I'll share complete before and after photos of the new space as soon as it's complete!

  • glitter, red & white.

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    glittery white dishes : love that these (and these) are festive, yet subtle. Now we just need a larger kitchen so I would have somewhere to store them.

    red baker's twine : after going through about 20 small rolls of the stuff, I finally bit the bullet and ordered over 3000 yards. That should keep me (and my grandchildren) in baker's twine for the rest of my life.

    mini bus roll art : Kal continues to make rad art. We bought #3. I not-so-secretly want #6 for our future little one.

    marquee : a free (awesome) font.

    silver morocco toms : I haven't taken these off in about a week. p.s : save $5 on Tom's shoes with coupon code AFFTM5.

    glitter nail polish : currently wearing a mixture of OPI happy aniversary & essie carnival.

    a super simple wreath : from ikea, of course.

  • these muffins are amazing.

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    Seriously, my favorite ever. Recipe here.

  • stir crazy.

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    Whew.

    Paul had the car all week and I kept myself inside wrapping up a big custom project, finishing off the BIG mini workshop, and punching paper and more paper. I'm so glad you like the goodness books.

    I dropped P off at work today so I could have the car. Post office first then my favorite kind of errands : Container Store, Ikea and Michael's.

    So excited to get out and about. So happy it's Friday.

    p.s. just saw that all printed products at moo.com are 30% off this weekend. Thought you might be happy to hear that like I was. Happy weekend!

  • currently…

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    fun documentation excercise via : Amy Tan (you can click to enlarge.)

  • introducing the goodness book.

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    Personalize Photo
    Quote
    Pagesout
    Pagesin
    Scraps
    Stamp
    Goodness7 Shipping

    Click here for more details and to purchase.

    My favorite part of these little books? Ten pages of yellow on one side/white on the other grid. I had these sheets custom printed and they turned out even better than I hoped. My second favorite part is if you chop a 5×7 photo in half it will fit perfectly within the 3.5×5 inch pages.

    As always, thanks for your support!