{at the craft table} gobble, gobble

November 6, 20133 Comments

I always love a good craft.

Even better if it is quick and easy.

Our craft table always has something going on…either for me, the kids, or both of us.

I’m not even sure how it happened, but Lorelai and I were sitting at the craft table. I was working on cutting vests out of paper bags for her class Thanksgiving feast, and she said that she wanted to do a craft.

I looked over to our craft cart, which I regularly change out with craft supplies for the kids or myself.

I grabbed…

crayons
pad of scrapbook paper (I buy them on sale or with a Michael’s coupon)
glue stick
paper cutter and/or scissors

I had Lorelai choose a few different patterns of paper that I cut into strips.

I then cut some of the strips into little pieces.

Now, neither the strips or the little pieces need to be perfect…this is supposed to be quick and easy.

Then, I told Lorelai to hold tight while I made an example for her to follow.

Here is what I came up with…

I traced my hand, closed up the bottom, and added legs.

Then, I drew the beak and waddle.

You know the drill.

Then I just put a little glue on the strips and pieces of paper and started to glue them to the tail and body of the turkey.

I was done in less than two minutes.

Lorelai LOVED it!

This was something she could easily do BY HERSELF.

Reece even made a few, but had more fun drawing pictures of him shooting the turkey, or taking pictures of the turkey, etc.

Either way, the kids were being CREATIVE!

I put the scraps in a bowl on the table with some glue sticks nearby.

This way, if they want a craft to do they can make another turkey, or two.

home is…creating with my kids.

until then…

November 27, 20121 Comment

Hey y’all!

I’m here, but it’s just gonna be a day or two before I get back to regular posts.

Until then, go check out colton+ cadence and use “untilthen15” to save 15% on your order!

Also, if you are new to shopping with Etsy or have never heard about it, just go check it out!

Click on the link to colton+cadence and it will get you there….

From there, EXPLORE!

Do a search…

for world globes
for christmas ornaments…vintage or handmade
for vintage thermos’
for vintage fisher price
for vintage pyrex

These are a few of my favorite things…

If it is vintage or handmade search for it on Etsy and support small business this holiday season!

And, you can easily sell on Etsy, too!

Mom and Dad, you can do it! What a fun way to retire…

home is…handmade.

dr. suess inspired vintage school map

September 27, 20124 Comments

I recently found a vintage school map of Asia.

I love the look of the map, but have no particular attachment to Asia, so I thought I would get crafty.

I found this font online and downloaded it to my computer.

I typed out the phrase I wanted to use and enlarged it to 650, so there was one letter for each page.

I chose some pretty paper from a new scrapbooking pad I got at Michaels and printed the letters.

What do you think?

home is…inspirational words.

scrooge

December 7, 20111 Comment

Sorry I’ve been away for almost a week. I have sat down and wanted to write a post, but for many reasons I only get a few sentences in and then I stop.

I’m still sick.

Yes.

I was sick before we left to go to Colorado for Thanksgiving.

Sick the entire week of Thanksgiving.

Sick when we got back.

And, I’m still sick.

Every time I feel like I’m feeling better I push a little bit too much and then I feel worse the next day (and the next and the next).

We got a new camera. A little point and shoot Nikon. I have used it to take most of my photos lately and I can’t figure out how to load them on to my computer. There is no USB cord in the box and my laptop doesn’t have a place to put a memory card. UGH!

I have photos of all our christmas decorating…lots of projects from Pinterest.

I have photos of a new breakfast hit at our house…and I want to share the recipe with you all!

Anyway, although I am still sick I am trying to deck our halls and make it fun for the kids this time of year.

I will admit they have watched a lot of this…

and, this…

and this…

Baby girl just asked me if she can watch a “Narnie Bown” show. I need to get her on video saying that…it’s adorable!

Well, gonna try to rest today.

The little guy is staying home from school, we’re gonna watch some “Narnie Bown”, maybe some Polar Express, and keep decking the halls.

I’m not gonna let being sick turn me into Scrooge!

home is…the most wonderful time of the year!

decking the halls

November 8, 201111 Comments

I’m not listening to Christmas music, yet.

That will come the day after Thanksgiving.

However, I am beginning to deck our halls.

I know. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.

We’re going to visit family the week of Thanksgiving this year.

That is the week that I normally drag the bins down from the attic and get our Christmas on.

We usually go to cut our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and decorate it over the weekend.

It will be a little different this year.

We’ll be cutting a tree a week later, and recovering from a week of travel and family activity.

So, I want to have the house decorated so we can fully enjoy the Christmas spirit for as long as possible.

Anyway, I started working on a few of the decorations today.

I got this idea from Pinterest.

Source: rachelsimonsen.typepad.com via Stephany on Pinterest

And, I made lots and lots of paper garland to put on our tree.

I’ve got presents to make, family ornaments to make, and some other fun projects.

See why I could use a craft room?!

Remember that today is the last day to enter {my first} november blog giveaway!

And, stay tuned…you might find some of the above mentioned projects in the December giveaway.

home is…getting my craft on and decking the halls.

*today I am linking up with Today’s Creative Blog and Tatertots and Jello

green with envy

November 7, 20113 Comments

I dream of a place for all of my stuff where I could also have a place to work.

And, leave my mess behind a closed door.

I was able to transform the closet under our stairs into a place to store my craft stuff, but it also houses a bunch of craft stuff for the kids, and various other things.

I peruse Pinterest and countless blogs and am so jealous of the craft spaces that some of those women have.

Do you know what I would be able to accomplish with this?!

Source: theivycottageblog.blogspot.com via Stephany on Pinterest

I would absolutely LOVE this!

Source: sewmanyways.blogspot.com via Stephany on Pinterest

And, I would love do this with our dining room, but then we would’t have anyplace to eat as we do not have a breakfast nook in our kitchen!

Source: tatertotsandjello.com via Stephany on Pinterest

There’s nothing wrong with eating in front of the TV on fold out tray tables every night, right?!

I really still love the idea of a creative cottage out back…replacing the dog runs with a big old shed for all my stuff.

There is one more day to enter to win {my first} november blog giveaway!

And, I am already putting together {my second} giveaway for December…stay tuned!

home is…there’s nothing wrong with dreaming, right?

batman vs. joker

September 19, 20114 Comments

The little guy LOVES Batman.

It all started when he got a huge tub of Matchbox cars from the boys next door. His favorite car, out of hundreds, was a Batmobile. I told him all about who drove the Batmobile and we slowly grew the obsession.

{I have to admit that Batman is my favorite superhero, too. I used to watch “Batman: The Animated Series” after high school in the 1990’s.}

One day this summer the little guy and I did a fun project while the baby girl was napping.

He bought a black and white checkerboard gameboard at a garage sale and kept wanting to play his “new game”. I kept telling him that it didn’t have game pieces and that we would need to make some.

So we did.

Here are the supplies we used:

I had all of these supplies on hand to make glass bead magnets for Christmas gifts when the little guy was a baby.

circle craft punch
flat glass marbles
magnetic sheeting
modge podge
scissors

I found images for Batman and the Joker online and resized them to fit the glass marble (about 1″ x 1″). I printed about 16 per 8-1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper and cut them out using the circle craft punch.

I also cut circles out of the magnetic sheeting.

I slathered one side of the magnetic sheeting with modge podge…

…placed the Joker or Batman logo on the magnetic sheeting…

…slathered the flat side of the flat marbles with more modge podge…

…and made a magnetic sheeting, logo, flat marble sandwich. I did this 14 times for Batman and 14 times for the Joker.

I placed all of them under a BIG, HEAVY book until the modge podge dried (the next morning).

After the arch enemies had a good nights rest under “The New Hunter’s Encyclopedia” I trimmed the magnetic sheeting that stuck out around the flattened marbles.

I also found a Batman vs. Joker image and modge podged it to the middle of the game board.

And, we play it like Checkers!

Of course, I am always the Joker.

And, the little guy is Batman.

home is…game time.

*today I am linking up with Today’s Creative Blog…

drills, crib parts, and chalk…oh my!

August 6, 20117 Comments

We finally have summer here in the Pacific Northwest and some of the projects that we have had planned for our backyard are finally getting done.

I went out last week to add some features to the playhouse and found out that our drill had bitten the dust, so I had to wait for Ryan to decide which drill he wanted to replace it with and the kids and I worked on a “drill-less” water wall project instead.

Ryan came home with a drill the other night and due to the fact that I was working on another project (someone is getting a room redesign that I will blog about soon) I did not get to use the drill until this morning.

The sidewalk and driveway at our house are an aggregate and do not get along well with sidewalk chalk, so I have had to come up with other ideas for using the chalk…one of which was our deck that was in desperate need of refinishing (that is now done) and our fence. While both were fine alternatives for the short term, I needed a long term solution to our dilemma.

I used more recalled crib parts to make an outdoor sandwich board style chalkboard!

Here is a crude tutorial on how I did it…really, the photos are very fuzzy, sorry!

First, I bought pre-cut pieces of plywood at Home Depot, primed them, and painted them with chalkboard paint. Of course, I don’t have any photos of that process, but it’s pretty simple.

Here are the crib parts that I used…they are the small ends of the crib (the large ends were given away as a headboard and footboard for a full size bed as they were still safe to be used that way).

Next, I lined the sides up next to each other and added hinges that I found in the door hardware aisle at Home Depot.

After that I added chain to the side to keep them from opening up all the way while the kids are drawing on the boards.

Then, I screwed the painted plywood to the crib panels.

See, you can see the texture of our driveway…not chalk friendly at all.

Also, do you notice my husband filling water balloons?! He was preparing for a water balloon battle with the boys next door that should happen later today.

So, pretty easy and I feel good about my reuse of the recalled crib parts!

I also added “s” hooks to the chain to hang some cute buckets I had sitting around to hold the chalk!

I have another chalkboard project that I will blog about in the next little while…stay tuned!

home is…mommies who can use power tools!

*linking up with Today’s Creative Blog…

water wall

August 2, 20114 Comments

I’m finally getting around to reusing some items that have been sitting around our house for one reason or another now that we can play outside in the beautiful weather!

For instance, we have parts from the little guys crib, which was recalled, that I have been saving for some kind of project and I have come up with two. Here is the first…

We made a “water wall”…much like the one below that I found on Pinterest.

created at: 06/21/2011

I decided to use what we had lying around and instead of a piece of fence, I used the mattress support!

We also had to replace a hose this past weekend (have you ever heard of the peanut in the hose prank?!), so I had plenty of extra hose lying around.

I was able to attach our bottles and tubing with zip ties instead of wing nuts…and we can change our water path on a whim!

We were limited on bottle choices as our recycling was picked up this morning, but I will be saving plastic containers to change our wall up in the next few weeks.

Ours was pretty simple, but I am only dealing with a four year old and almost two year old so it was entertaining for them!

We will be adding some toys to their playhouse in the next week or so, and doing some landscaping in the next month or so.

I am hoping that the water wall will help to water some of the plants we have planned near the playhouse!

home is…fun summer projects!