Gentle Reminders.....For the Bathroom!

Have I mentioned that I am Mom to three boys? They are 17, 8, and 18 months. Their bathroom is a busy place. I am constantly reminding them to wash their hands and then reminding them to go do it again using soap! I thought maybe a little visual reminder in the bathroom could cut down on my nagging a little. Thus the soap disperser chalkboard was born! I had a hard time wanting to cut up one of these vinyl chalkboards from the dollar store (after all I only had 2!) and while I was debating I flipped it over and WOW couldn't believe my eyes, there was one on the back too! So really I had 4! Hooray! Making them were so simple, I took the label off of my soap dispenser, probably bought at the dollar store, and laid it on my chalkboard vinyl. Then I peeled it off cut my vinyl out and placed it where the label used to be. I did this for the front and back.

Using chalk I wrote some little reminders for the little (and big) ones to read!

On a side note, the chalk does get wet and wiped off in the bathroom, if you want your notes permanent, you would want to write on them and seal them with a couple of coats of sealer before you place them, I however love that I can change them up whenever I want!

Easter Egg Topiary Tree Inspired by PB

I was laying on the couch DYING  recuperating from strep throat a couple of weeks ago when my Pottery Barn Catalogs came in the mail. My sweet hubby brought them over to me on my deathbed  couch and as I turned through the pages, drooling over all the pretties, these caught my eye BIG TIME!

But even though I was delirious with fever I knew I  would never pay $89.00 for an Easter decoration. I don't pay $89.00 for anything. Cuz I am cheap frugal! However all that couch laying paid off for me because the wheels starting turning on how I could make my own! And if you love it as much as I do I have made up a little tutorial. But first  just for a little comparison - The total cost for this project was around $15.00 and my topiary is 40" tall, Pottery Barn's is only 30" tall for $89.00.

Supply List:

Tomato Cage

Hanging Basket

Newspaper

Glue

Green Paint

Plastic Easter Eggs (the kind that split in half long-wise) I used about 40 whole eggs so 80 halves

Moss (I got mine from the dollar store)

Glue Gun - with lots of hot glue sticks

Craft Paint in Pastel Colors (optional)

Ribbon or Twine

Step 1: Using hotglue, glue your tomato cage upside down on top of your hanging basket pot. The reason to use a hanging basket pot is that it has slits in it for the hangers to go in and they come in very handy to tie your tomato basket to. After the glue has set up. Tie the tomato basket to the planter pot for added stability.

Step 2: Tie the pointy ends of the tomato basket together very tightly and securely.

Step 3: Mix some white glue with water until the thickness is just a little thinner than milk. I use a big dishpan to mix mine in. You only need 1/2" or so in the bottom of your dishpan.

Step 4: Cut your newspaper into strips about 4" wide works well.

Step 5: Get your newspaper strips wet, just one at a time, and then drain the extra water/ glue mixture off. Wrap the wet newspaper around your tomato cage starting from the bottom and working your way up. You will want to make sure you overlap the edge of your planter pot just a little bit because the  newspaper shrinks up as it dries. I used clothespins to help hold the wet newspaper onto the tomato cage. 

Step 6: Let this dry and repeat until you have a nice hard shape. I let mine dry overnight between layers and I put on about 4 layers.

Step 7: After all the layers are dry you will need to paint the entire newspaper form green. This will help you when you are glueing the moss on so that you can't see any newspaper through it.

Step 8: If you are painting your plastic eggs you will want to do that now. I couldn't find any that opened the right way except for these lovely camo ones from the dollar store so I used acrylic craft paint to paint them. I did three coats to make sure they were covered really well.

Step 9: Using hotglue attatch your eggs to your topiary form covering as closely as you want. I didn't space mine as closely as the PB picture.

Step 10: Now it is time to fill all those spaces in with moss. This step takes a while and it takes alot of hotglue! I worked on mine in spurts.

I  am so pleased with how it turned out. It is not a carbon copy but it is so awesome to find something you love and use it as inspiration for a project of your very own. The Pottery Barn picture was just a jumping off point. Something to get me thinking, and I LOVE the results.

A teenage guy present!

Making a present for a teenage boy is HARD! But finally I discovered one that was really liked and coveted by my husband and teenage son, guess what they are getting for Easter? We live here in rural Idaho and my family is into hunting big time, these "Game Bag's" work super after a successful hunt. Enclosed in a cool camo pouch to keep them from getting dirty in a hunting pack. They work up in a jiffy and are practical and cool all at the same time. What more could I ask for? Here are some pictures, I don't do sewing tutorials, the reason is simple, I am just a beginner myself. It would be like my 8 year old giving driving lessons. Yeah, we let him drive the other day and it wasn't pretty. (Just in a huge, completely empty, gravel parking lot, by the way!) But I will show some pictures and do a little explaining as I go.

Here they are, 4 bags and the case

To Make the Bags you just make a pillowcase out of fabric only larger. About twice the width of a pillow case and 1 1/2 times the length. To make the case I used 1 yard of camo fabric, folded it in half and sewed up the sides, right sides together. I turned it inside out and topstiched the remaining side. Then I folded it up onto itself and topstiched down the sides. So easy! Added a piece of velcro and  I was done!

 I used one half of a king sized topsheet for these. The fabric is the perfect weight. Trust me these are way better than the ones you see at most sporting good stores, I know because my husband and I used to own an Archery Shop and I saw what is available. I double sewed each and every seam in the bags themselves, to make them tougher.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH! May this next fall bring you lots of hunting sucesss!

2 Cute 2 Pinch!

Nobody had better be pinching my baby boy this Wednesday! He is all ready for the festive time and will be sporting his new shirt which has 2 CUTE 2 PINCH appliqued on it. I started out with this $1.00 shirt from Wal-mart it is a size 3T so hopefully will fit next year as well. As you can see from the photos it is a little big but he wears it well.

This is the shirt beforehand, I ironed green fabric onto fusible webbing and cut out the letters with my cricut. A couple of tips for cutting fabric with your Cricut, use a deep blade depth and a medium speed. Make sure that your Mat is brand new or almost new so the fabric and the fusible webbing stick really well. It also helps to have a sharp blade.

I stitched around the letters with my sewing machine in white thread to secure them to the shirt and to give the letters some contrast. It was pretty hard to see where the fabric was at on the shirt which made the appliquing a bit challenging. Next time I will use fabrics that contrast more. Please ignore the spots on the shirt in the below photo, Mikey wore this to church and to Chinese Food afterwards. He is NOT the tidiest eater!

Oh and he thinks the stitching itches his tummy so I put a onesie on him underneath the shirt for today but I plan to line the shirt with some scrap t-shirt material. These aren't the bestest pictures but we were already running late for Sunny School (Sunday School) with daylight savings time and all. And as you can see we still had socks and shoes to put on and to comb that wild, wild hair! So I just snapped a couple and called it good!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

My Sweeter than Chocolate Bunny!

While thrifting a few days back I found this very ordinary looking glass bunny for 99cents. I am a little low on Easter decorations so I put him in my cart. After a little paint I think he turned out pretty cute!

I spray painted him Espresso, applied a Crackle Medium and some white paint. So quick and so easy. A couple of points if you have not worked with a Crackle Medium before. You can use spray paint for the base but not for the overcoat. So I was fine in using brown spray paint underneath but it wouldn't have worked if I used white spray paint after the Crackle Medium. Another thing, sometimes people tend to rush the top step (just to see if the stuff works) well don't! It says to let dry so let it dry! And don't overbrush it, just brush your topcoat on and leave it alone. I have learned this the hard way! I let it set about 45 minutes with good results.

The whitish paint I used was Light Ivory by Americana, I use it all the time and buy tons of it. It is so close to white but it's not! LOVE IT!

I am still having a hard time believing it is spring even though the weather here is exceptionally gorgeous! Oh and here is the bunny before his transformation.

Kid friendly to-do list! (Only not a list)

In my home a traditional chore chart just does not work. My kids ages are too spread out for most versions of the chore chart to work for us. The oldest is 17 and therefore I do not remind him to Brush his teeth, or Comb his hair very often. And there hasn't been a day in years when I have had to remind him to get dressed, LOL! Of course there is a small amount of reminding going on, on the set chores that he has, garbage and feed the horse. But for the most part he is pretty self sufficient. The little guy is 17 months old and while soon I will needing to star chart of something for his "potty training progress" he doesn't really have much of a to-do list yet. The eight year old however, well he needs lots of reminders, over and over and over and well you get the idea! He is the sweetest little boy in the world, however, he would happily stay in his pajamas all day with nary a thought as to whether or not the cat has been fed. or if the hampster is dying of thirst, or even if he, himself has eaten breakfast. He has the attention span of a gnat and while I dearly love him I do not love telling him over and over and over again the things he needs to do every morning and every evening. Traditional charts are fine and I know they work well for most kids, plus they would have been simpler to  make. (Even though my version wasn't very hard.) But I like mine better for the following reasons:

1. It is just plain ol' more fun to drop the sticks into the "Done" can versus checking them off a chart!

2. The pictures reenforce what he is supposed to be doing, and he knows what to do even if his 'blossoming but not quite great' reading skills can't make out the words.

3. Yellow circles means morning to-do's and blue means nighttime to-do's. Easy to remember what to do when!

4. Every morning he gets a fresh start, so if the previous day wasn't perfect than he doesn't get reminded of those oops the rest of the week.

5. It is a pretty accent for the bookcase, versus a chart I would want to keep somewhere out of sight and therefore out of mind!

6. I can edit this at any time, either by adding or removing tasks - jobs that need to be done. I really love this feature. I also cut out extra cardstock circles so I won't have to go digging around for the right color when I need them.  And I just store them in one of the cans!

6. So simple to make!

 Step 1 is gathering your supplies of course! Let's see, I used a paper trimmer, hot glue gun, black spray paint, brown spray paint,  Large Wooden Craft Sticks, a black Sharpie, 2 empty aluminum cans, 10 of the aluminum can tops, cardstock for the colored circles and to print my chore circles on, Fancy Pantz Patterned Paper, Fancy Pantz Rub-Ons,  Matching Fancy Pantz Ribbon.

First I spray painted the top and bottom rim of the cans black, and I spray painted the large wooden craft sticks brown.

Then I cut my paper just wide enought to fit between the rims, applied some rub-ons and added the words, To-Do to one and All Done to the other.

Using my computer and free graphics I made up 6 morning reminders, Brush Teeth, Eat Breakfast, Get Dressed, Read for 15 minutes, Handwriting for 10 minutes, and Feed Cats. I snuck a couple of school related tasks that he does daily in there as well. That way he gets started schooling even if Mom is busy with the baby or something else in the morning.

I also made up 5 Nighttime Reminders, Brush Teeth, Read for 15 minutes, Pajamas, Feed Cats, and Feed Jack Jack (his hampster). He now knows that he has to start all this by 9:00 pm and then he goes to bed. So nice to not be the one doing the nagging anymore, I let the cans do that!

I just cut those out in a circle, glued them to either yellow or blue paper and then glued two corresponding circles together with the large craft stick sandwiched in between.

Glued the ribbon around the can using hotglue.

Oh yeah and you might be wondering what I used the aluminum can tops for, well I found out my sticks didn't stand up tall enough to look right so I glued 5 of them together and dropped them into the inside of each can. Makes my sticks stand up taller and look nicer!

And I was "All Done"

Making a Full Recovery!

And no, I am not talking about recovering a piece of furniture! LOL!

This Sunday morning landed me straight into the ER with uncontrollable pain in my throat. I truly thought I might die if I had to eat, drink, or breathe. That breathing thing, well, turns out it is kind of important. The doctor looked me over and said well nothing looks too bad but your blood pressure is pretty elevated so something must be wrong. It is then that my husband looked at him and with a straight face said "Find something wrong with her and fix it", "before it kills me!" Thanks honey! So the doctor did a strep test and yep it was positive! Now here is the thing, he gave me two pain pills, and as I laid there waiting for the test to come back, they did NOTHING, nothing to ease the pain at all. So then he gave me a anti-flamatory shot and still it did very little to ease the pain. But eventually it started to ease and I got to go home, I spent all day laying on the couch and taking my pills, sleeping, eating popsicles, taking some more pills, the pain was unbearable. This morning when my hubby woke up I was in the fetal position on the couch and crying. He called the doctor back and told him that while noone knows why this is hurting me so badly I was not going to make it through the day without some more pain medicine. (He only gave me enough for one day.) So to make a long story a little shorter this time, the kind Doctor told me to take Motrin with the new pain meds and wahlah I feel like I just might live!

Of course, the pain medicine makes me nauseated and sleepy and itchy,:

Friday: Getting sick, had too much other TEENAGER stress to deal with to care much
Saturday: Knew I had something wrong with my throat but thought I would deal
Sunday: Headed to the ER at 7:00 am, slept most of the day
Monday: Better, and will be crafting again soon! I have not crafted anything in days and the only thing in this house that I have fluffed happens to be my pillows!

So I hope that eventually soon I will be back to my normal self again soon. I have missed bloggy land so very much!

Is it normal to have strep hurt this badly? I am not a fan of pain but I usually handle it pretty well.