Celebrating the Grand Opening of #AsYouWishPottery at Westgate

Last weekend I was excited to help host an event celebrating the grand opening of As You Wish Pottery Painting Studio in Westgate at Glendale, Arizona. I've told you before of my love for pottery painting and we recently visited their Deer Valley studio for some painting. I was happy when I heard the news they were opening a Westgate location closer to my home!

We gathered for a night of painting with our families. It was a fun family friendly atmosphere with pizza served by Papa Murphy's and yummy cupcakes provided by Gigi's Cupcakes! 

My family and I love to paint, we each got to pick out our own pieces to paint that evening. The new Westgate location is so spacious, perfect for hosting large parties and special events. I love that it's such a family friendly place to take your kiddos. The staff was so helpful and explained everything we needed to know and even took my girl to pick out her own paints for her special pottery. I loved that they were so hands on. 

We had so much fun being the first to paint in this brand new space. BIG Thanks to As You Wish for hosting such a fun event. Papa Murphy's and Gigi's Cupcakes for the yummy food & cupcakes!

Now, it's your turn to get in on the fun with #AsYouWishPottery ! Enter to win a $50 gift card to use at any of their seven locations across the Valley at your convenience. Please use the Rafflecopter below for your entries, contest will run until 9/30. Winner will be announced via email. Good luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: My family and I were invited to an event hosted by As You Wish Pottery. All opinions and thoughts are my own. As always I try to partner with companies that are a good fit for myself and my family. And ones I think my readers will enjoy as well. 

My First Experience with Chalk Paint {A Cabinet Makeover}

My Grandmother gave me this china cabinet when they moved here last year. It's been sitting in my garage since November, just waiting for me to decide what I wanted to do with it. It's an oak cabinet, I knew that I didn't want to take a bunch of time sanding and priming it. I decided to try out chalk paint for the very first time. I've never used it before but it gets glowing raves + reviews from everyone I know that's ever used it. 

When I attended an anniversary sale at a local gift shop they were selling Annie Sloan chalk paint for 10% off that day, I decided to cross my fingers and hope it'd turn out well. I bought some that day and was excited to start working on my cabinet. 

Here's some before pics of the cabinet, it has nasty brass hardware on the doors that I'm going to replace with some fun new knobs. 

With chalk paint there's no sanding or priming required. I kinda loved this because really who wants to spend a lot of time doing that if there's a different way? For my cabinet all I did was wipe it down with a dry cloth, making sure there wasn't any dust or dirt on it since it'd been sitting in my garage for a while.

Next I taped newspaper over the glass in the doors so I didn't get paint on it. I didn't remove the doors to paint either, I just used a smaller paint brush to go around the hinges. I also used painters tape to tape around them making sure I didn't get paint on the hardware. 

I did take off the brass knobs, since I wasn't going to be putting those back on. 

I used a regular paint brush, I didn't buy the Annie Sloan brushes. Just used one I got at Lowes. 

I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Paris Grey and the soft wax. 

Here's the after:

knobs: Hobby Lobby

Print: Lindsay Letters via Hobby Lobby

Topiaries: Target 

I love how it turned out, and I love filling it with my vintage dishes and some serving pieces. Using chalk paint was so easy, it covers so well. I did two coats on everything. I can't wait to try this again on other furniture, and even contemplating using it on my kitchen island. 

Have you used Annie Sloan chalk paint before? Any tips or thoughts to share? 

Family Movie Night Fun

Every Friday night we have "family night." We let the kids stay up later, we pick out a movie from Netflix kids, currently Barbie Life in the Dream House is on repeat! There's yummy popcorn & snacks involved. Ava really enjoys family night, she loves to help me make popcorn! 

I love adding little special touches for family night to make it a little more extra special. Lifestyle Crafts has an adorable popcorn box die. I used the die cut to make a few popcorn boxes, one for each member of the family. 

I also used the Shape N Tape kit to cut small hearts and placed them onto the outside of the cups. I added a fun stripe paper straw! These fun and easy details are going to help making family movie night tomorrow a little more special. 

Here's the products I used for this project;

Popcorn Box Die

Shape N Tape Teal Sheet (currently 30% off)

Shape N Tape Kit.

Use code: WORLEYHOUSE for 20% off your next order at the shopwer.com site. 

What are some of your go tos to make movie nights extra special? I'd love to hear them in the comments below! 

An Afternoon of Painting

This past weekend I invited my Grandma to go painting with Ava and I. Have you ever been to one of those DIY pottery painting places before? They are one of my absolute favorite activities. For some reason I find the whole process very calming and relaxing. I've been a few times with friends, and Orion and I actually celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary by going on a date to a pottery painting place.

I'd never taken Ava before, and since she's really into creative things like her mama I knew she'd had a lot of fun with this. We headed to As You Wish to paint pottery for the afternoon. Ava picked out a little pegasus horse, I took her over to pick out her paint colors which included orange, pink and speckled pink! She sure loves her some pink! 

I decided I wanted to paint a plate that said "Happy Birthday" on it that we could use each time a birthday rolls around and that special birthday person could eat their birthday meal or dessert on the plate. A new tradition for our family.

My Grandma who loves to paint as well choose to paint something for me that I could keep, she did a coffee mug for me. No surprise there she knows my love for a good coffee mug! 

I loved picking out our own colors. There's a wide variety, the staff is super friendly and helpful. They even had bottles of glitter and were going around to the tables asking the kiddos if they wanted a sprinkle of "mermaid magic!" So cute and of coarse Ava loved the idea of mermaid magic. 

While we were there a birthday party came in and they had everything set up for them to paint and party. I thought it was such a cute idea to do that for an older child's birthday! What a great memory. 

If you're looking for a fun activity to do with your children this summer and have never been to a painting place like this, it's an awesome choice for keep little ones busy this summer. As You Wish offers fun and interactive classes you can do as well. And coming in August they are having painting with Ariel, and a Father Daughter Date night event. See more details by visiting their site here. 

If you live locally in the Phoenix metro I have a fun giveaway for you. As You Wish is offering one lucky reader 1 FREE summer class ($30 value)! Classes run now through July 24th. Use the Rafflecopter below for your entries, for a full list of Phoenix locations please visit the link here. Contest ends July 16th! Winner will be chosen and emailed that evening. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure; I was invited by As You Wish to a painting experience, all opinions and thoughts are my own. As always I only write about experiences that we truly love and ones that I feel my readers will love and take advantage of as well. 

Coffee and Friends.

A couple weekends ago I had the pleasure of hosting some of my girlfriends over to try out the new Keurig Rivo System. There's nothing I love more than Jesus, friends & coffee (in that order.) I love throwing simple parties that take little effort and spoiling my friends when they come over. 

I love to entertain and add special details, I try not to stress over throwing parties. One of the ways I don't stress out is that I buy easy store bought stuff and dress it up and make it fancy schmancy with out a lot of effort. 

Fun paper bags holding party favors and store bought flowers are my thing! They make parties special. 

I used the drink sleeve die from Lifestyle Crafts and made these cute personalized sleeves for each of my guests. The paper is all from the basics paper pack. 

Store bought mini cupcakes get dressed up with some fun homemade cupcake toppers. Using one of the flag dies I cut them out using my Evolution Machine and inserted them onto white sticks. These are so easy to make and really dress up some store bought cupcakes. Use code WORLEYHOUSE for 20% off your purchase from www.shopwer.com

The new Keurig RIVO is awesome. If you love espresso drinks this is a must have at home. I used to work in a coffee shop and it took me a while to learn to make that "perfect" foam. But this machine does it all, and has seriously perfect foam each time! If you'd like to purchase one of your own you can use this code for 40% off from keurig.com (code: 7BJR5kJ) Good till 5/24.