In December I decided to invest in Coastal Kelder, and bought a Cricut Explore Air with some of my Etsy profits.  Hunter’s friend thought I’d like it, and I asked my crafty friend Kathryn A LOT of questions before I pulled the trigger.  If you’re not sure what a cricut is, it’s basically the crafter’s best friend.  It can write, draw, and cut almost any material, so an assortment of projects are suddenly doable.

My Cricut arrived right before Christmas, so I waited until after the holiday craziness before really sitting down and playing with it.  Guys… it is SO cool.

After I learned the basics, I wanted to start playing with the writing capability (since the vinyl I ordered was still en route).  When you’re in the Design Space application, you can choose to use fonts with a writing style, and it will do all the work for you.  It’s so fun to watch when you click go and it starts writing (or cutting).  Needless to say, some of my Christmas thank you notes were addressed by the Cricut 🙂

The downside is that it can only “write” Cricut fonts with a writing style, so not all the fun fonts that I own.

Once my vinyl sampler pack came in, I set aside an afternoon one weekend to just explore the capabilities.  Look at all the fun vinyl colors!

For not being a monogram girl, it’s kinda surprising that my first undertaking was making monograms haha.  Start small, I guess?  Well I started playing with the idea of adding a monogram to the oyster shell jewelry dishes that I make and was happy with the results!

At this point, I saw the light and headed to Michael’s & Marshall’s to find more things to experiment with.  Slate coasters were my next project.  I used our name as the guinea pig as I perfected the process, then showed my family.  I knew I had a winner when my sister wanted some to mark their 5th anniversary coming up and my brother-in-law called them “classy.”

At Marshall’s I grabbed some wine glasses and drinking glasses, and finally sat down to play with applying vinyl to them too.  Honestly the hardest part is coming up with what you want to do because the possibilities are literally endless.  I came up with a quote for my trial run, then applied it to 4 glasses.  I had some trouble with the top of the i, but other than that they turned out well!

Let me know if you have any ideas of things to make!  I’m having a hard time narrowing down my next projects..

In other house news, we’re still working on getting the house exactly how we want it — especially before we host our families in May.  Lately our focus has been on our master bedroom and the living room.

The last old thing that remained from the previously dark purple and gray master bedroom was the fan.  It was even too small to actually cool the room, so it had to go.  We found a good looking white fan at our neighborhood Lowes and were sold.  It blended in better with the room and the light kit was just more our style.

In the living room, we finally got a rug!  It’s crazy to think about how long this took us, but ultimately we’re a team so it took a little more time to find a rug that we both loved and that would look great in the space.  We ended up finding it at West Elm, which has quickly become our new favorite home store.

It adds so much color and a little definition to the space, and we’re both so happy to finally have a rug!  I can’t wait to get a new couch to go with it and continue to work on the space.

Apologies for the lack of posts lately — I’ve been busy, and promise to share everything now that I’m back in town for more than 4 days! PS – The wedding is in less than 4 months, so you can bet some fun wedding crafts are happening 😉

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.