Swimming

Cody and Whitney just finished swimming lessons.  We'd always stay a little longer once class was finished to let the kids play.  Hailee and Jaxon love the water, playing on the slide and diving for their jelly fish and of course, everyone needed a pair of eye goggles :)

Crazy Hair Day

Friday was crazy hair day at school.  Cody had been growing his hair out since December just for this.  We ended up cutting the top of his short and leaving the back long to look like old man hair then we colored it blue.  Whitney had braids sticking out all over the place that we sprayed pink.  They both loved their crazy hair.

3rd Grade Basketball

Cody just finished playing basketball.  He's quite the little guard.  He loved passing the ball off to his team mates for the assist.  It was amazing to see how much the team improved over the season and how excited they got when they made a basket.  Great job team!!!

Hailee's Birthday

A few weeks ago Hailee turned 3!  She had a little party with her friends and then grandparents came over for cake and ice-cream.  She kept telling me she wanted a barbie cake.  I'm not much of a cake decorator, but she thought it turned out so cute.

Everyone seemed to love the cake and ice-cream.  Jaxon even licked his plate clean.

Flowers and More Flowers

I was another fun day spent with some of my sisters and sisters-in-law.  This time it was all about flowers. 

We made vintage looking flowers, rolled flowers, flowers for headbands and flowers on clips.  Actually they can all be put on headbands or used with an alligator clip because of the way we did the back.

On the back of each flower we glued a felt loop.  Two pieces of felt were sewn together down each side to create a loop in the middle.  Now we can slip a headband through the loop or put an alligator clip on it.  My girls were so excited about all their new flowers.

Knotted headband

I saw a super cute crocheted headband the other day that looked similar to this one.  I saw it on a sight called youseriouslymadethat.blogspot.com.  If you haven't seen Cami's blog, go check it out, she has some great tutorials.  Anyway, I don't crochet, so I thought I'd try braiding instead.  To figure out how long to make my braids I measured from my nose to my fingertip (I know, very scientific) 4 times for the long braid and 2 times for the short braid.  I cut three strands each length and braided them together.  Once the two braids were complete I followed Cami's tutorial on how to tie the knot and finish off the headband.

I was so easy to make that I decited to make one for myself as well :)

Mail Holders

I've got this area on my kitchen counter that collects bills, mail, coupons, and all kinds of other junk.  It was time for a solution.  I decided I needed some way to divide bills to pay from coupons or incoming mail, but I didn't want to go out and buy anything.  My solution:  Capri Sun boxes.

I used Capri Sun boxes just because they were the size I was looking for and I had three of them.  Next I chose some scrapbook paper, then used a little mod podge to attach it.  I love Mod Podge:) 

Now I have 3 boxes for filing mail, holding bills to pay, and keeping coupons organized and out of sight.

Faux Metal Wall Art Tutorial

Save those toilet paper rolls!  Yep, that's what these are made out of.

I started by building a frame.  I used 1/4" square dowels and cut them down into 12" pieces because I wanted my frames to be 12" x 12".  You could use balsa wood or anything else for the frames depending on how thick you want them.  I just glued the pieces together with tacky glue.  On this frame I also wanted some of the thicker wood inside the frame.

Once the frame is put together start  cutting your toiletpaper rolls.  There are two ways to cut them.  First just smash the toiletpaper roll flat and cut 1/4" pieces off the end.  This will make the leaf shapes.  The second way is to cut down the length, open it up, then cut 1/4" pieces off the end to make curls.  I cut mine 1/4" because that's how tall my frame was.  If you use taller wood simply cut the toilet paper rolls the same height as your frame.

Once you have a bunch cut start filling in your frame.  I used the end of a paint brush to curl the strips a little more and then just played around with the design and filled in the frame as I went.  Once I had the frame filled in how I wanted it I gently lifted the frame off, leaving the design in tact and then began gluing the pieces in using tacky glue.

Once it was completely dry I spray painted it with a metalic spray paint in an oil rubbed bronze finish.  These are easy to make and the greatest thing it they are so budget friendly ;)  I love thrifty decorating that looks great!  And here they all are hung up on the wall:

Valentine Pillow Cases

My two youngest absolutely love looking at pictures of themselves and their family, so for Valentine's Day I decided to make each of my kids their own pillowcase.  We had this family picture taken at Chistmas time and since it was on a white background it would work perfectly.  I got some iron-on photo paper, then made a color copy of the picture onto the photo paper.  I simply followed the instructions on the package to iron the photo onto the pillowcases.  Now my two youngest insist on bringing their pillows downstairs with them each morning when they wake up.

A Day at the Spa

No, not for me.  For the kids.  It all started after the kids had all had baths and Cody asked if he could soak his feet in some hot water.

Soon everyone wanted a foot soak and a hot towel for their faces.

We topped off the night with a nice foot massage for everyone.  The kids felt so pampered.  They loved it!

When you have little kids, things go missing

Last Friday I made the mistake of leaving my camera SD card in the computer.  By Saturday morning it had gone missing, so I haven't been able to post the things I was going to.  Hopefully it will turn up soon, but in the mean time this is what I've been working on this past week.

Cake Stand

I've been looking at cake stands, but they're all so plain, so when I saw this plate and matching cup at Target I decided I would make my own.  I turned the cup upside down, and with just a bit of glue, tah-dah!!  It can also double as a center piece filled with candy, lemons, twine balls, etc.

Faux Metal Wall Art

I first saw this idea on Susyssitcom.com and wanted to try out the idea. This is made entirely out of toiletpaper rolls.  You simply make a frame using balsa-wood, then fill it in with pieces cut from rolls of toiletpaper.  Once it was all done I sprayed it with a metalic spraypaint.  This was just my practice round so I didn't take any pictures as I went, but I was so thrilled with the results that I'm going to make a few more.  When I do I will post step-by-step instructions, or you can go check out susy's site.  She's got a great tutorial over there.

Girl's Night

All my sisters and sisters-in-law finally live within an hours drive of each other.  We decided we needed to get together every couple of months for a girl's only activity.  For our first, but not last, girl's night we decided on a craft.

There were 8 of us in all and with good food, good company and fumes from paint and glue who wouldn't want to craft :)  We had lots of fun and can't wait until our next get together.

Here are a few of our finished products:

Until next time, Happy Crafting :)

Happiness

The Oprah Show yesterday was all about being happy.  Did you know that joining a club or class that requires you to show up at least once a month has the same impact on your happiness as doubling your salary?  This is mainly due to the fact that you are increasing your social network.  Making connections with people and creating memories increases our happiness.  This is true for kids as well, so the next time you want to do something nice for your kids consider creating a memory instead of buying them something.  Have a happy day :)

Pillows, Pillow, Pillows

Right now I'm kind of on a pillow kick.  I wanted my front room to look more Valentinish (is that even a word).  So here are the pillows I've made over the past few days.

and here they are all together:

They were pretty easy to make, but a bit time consuming.  I started out by sewing a square pillow form and stuffing a pillow inside.  Then I cut 6-8 strips of fabric that were about 3" wide and 45" long.  The white pillow is cotton, so I surged both long edges.  The pink pillow is silk so I just surged one of the long edges and melted the edge that would show with a candle.  Then I gathered the strips.  I started by gathering one strip as tight as I could, then hot glued it as I rolled it to make a flower.  I hot glued the flower to the center of the pillow.  Using the remaining strips I just gathered them a bit and started hot gluing them onto the pillow starting at the flower and working outward in a spiral design.  I think it would look cute with a whole couch full of flower pillows in lots of different colors.

Re-Connected

This year I finally decided to reconnect with the world.  For the last ten years I have been a stay at home mom raising my children.  My husband and I have 4 wonderful children and I love being able to be home with them.  I also love to try out different crafty projects and am tinkering with refinishing furniture.  Brandon works for a bank and loves to golf.  Actully he loves sports altogether.  He's played, watched, refereed and coached for as long as I've known him.  A year ago we moved and one way I decided to reconnect with the world and stay up to date on some old friends was to start a blog.  I'm very new to this and not very computer savvy.  I have no clue what I'm doing so we'll see how this goes.