About

I married my best friend in September of 2012 and that was the official start of pancakes & glueguns. I've always been into crafting, DIY projects and design ideas - wedding planning opened the door to start a blog with all of my ideas.

So, what's behind the name? 
Pancakes and glueguns are two things I love and couldn't live without. Let me clarify, I don't actually love pancakes - in fact I've grown to loathe them - but I do love my husband, who might as well be a pancake. For the last five years every birthday dinner has consisted of pancakes, most weekend mornings - pancakes, most mid-night snacks - pancakes. I'm not sure what it is that makes me tense up when I hear pancake, flapjack, slapjack, whatever. I think it was the build-up during our engagement that I would be expected to whip up some pancakes with powdered sugar and strawberries daily. We've come to compromise a bit, 50/50 - waffles/pancakes. But I still love the big pancake. Glueguns, now that is representative of my half of the team. For our wedding we constructed a huge paper flower wall and in so doing, I became quite well-versed in the use of a gluegun. Now, let me tell you - those things fascinate me and can pretty much fix anything (except for the permanent skin loss on my finger tips). So together, it's pancakes & glueguns.

What's on here? 
A lot of stuff. It all started with wedding planning and moving into our first apartment. This blog is full of DIY projects, and essentially traces my journey into the real world: learning how to cook, decorate, create and be inspired! There are categories that cover wedding planning and tips, DIY projects for the house, free printables and more.

Recently, we expanded the blog to include the story of our international adoption journey from Ethiopia. We began the process in September of 2013 and instead of submitting our Dossier to Ethiopia this journey led us to an organization "No Ordinary Love Ministries" to support in their efforts to reunite families in Ethiopia. You can read more about our journey and decisions along the way by checking out the "adoption journey" archive.

And now? We're expecting our first baby - a little girl in March. I'll be blogging about that journey as well :)

Etsy?
After our wedding, our paper flower wall received a lot of great feedback and as much as it surprised me, I kind of missed the endless nights cutting and swirling paper flowers, so a little Etsy shop appeared. My favorite piece so far is basically a miniature version of all of the flowers on the wall, you can see it here. I've started to do a few custom orders with different color palettes for other weddings and I really love it!

A portion of proceeds from the Etsy store goes to No Ordinary Love Ministries to sponsor a child or family through their reunification process or whatever they specifically may need. Check them out folks - they're awesome :)