Posted in: creativity on Monday, June 18, 2012 at at 9:35 AM 0 comments    

Remember? I'm trying to catch up? Here's Valentines...
We went to a Valentines party for some kids in our Sunday School class.

Posted in: creativity, Jake, valentine's day on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at at 2:13 PM 1 comments    

I've been busy this week!

I helped host a baby shower this week for a girl in our
Sunday School class. I had been wanting to make some
bunting for a while, and this was a good excuse.
Her colors are (obviously) green and brown.

I also used my fabulous Cricut to make
out the baby's name for decoration.
(Oh, and I made that brown dip in front and the white dip in back!)

I had been wanting to make Jake an I Spy bottle
for a while, and now I had some time to do it!

I made him this pretty unattractive rice shaker a long time ago.
I wanted to use the same idea, but make it way prettier.

So I gathered my materials: rice, honey bear bottle, food coloring, baggies, and rubbing alcohol. (Nope it's not in the picture.)

I put about three tablespoons of rice in each bag, then added a whole bunch of food coloring (like 10-20 drops depending on which color it was) and a little less than a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol. Shake shake shake it! Then put it back in the bowls to dry out for a few hours.

Aren't those colors just beautiful?
Way better than the old shaker!

Then I got my things together to put in the bottle.
I bought a couple of sets of buttons at Hobby Lobby
(the crayons, bugs, and sports balls) and then scavenged
my old box of buttons for the other stuff.

A few hours later...

Shook it up!
And then put all of the things inside.

The close-up of the stuff inside.

Then I (was going to) attach the picture of the things to the back, like this. But I had realized after putting the stuff in the bottle that this was WAY too hard for Jake at this point. The stuff is really hard to see. So I regrouped and started over.

I dumped all of that stuff into a ziploc bag for later
and collected some more things. I got a bag of
colored blocks at Hobby Lobby and wrote his
name out, then got another package of crayons, plus
all the vehicles. Then grabbed some more
things out of my button box.

This time I just used plain white rice. I was
going to use white sand, but that stuff's expensive!
I like this way better, and Jake can find things
in it. I will take the picture of what's in
it and put it on the back again.

Finally, today during nap I made this bag! Jake had a big-soft-legos train building set he got for his birthday that had still been in the box because I had nothing else to put it in. So bought some cute fabric and some "rope" and sewed it up!

Posted in: creativity on Friday, June 24, 2011 at at 6:15 PM 4 comments    

For a while I've wanted to have a message center for by the front door. You know... one of those cork board/dry erase/chalk board things. I had some cork and was just going to wrap them and buy a square dry erase to go with it. But then this happened...

Our ceiling fan broke.
(See the light fixture dangling in the middle?)
So it got taken down and I saved the blades. It only took me a few seconds to decide that I wanted to make a message center out of them.

This is what I was doing at midnight on New Year's Eve. Exciting.

This was pretty much all I needed.
Blades, material, cork, and chalkboard paint.

I traced out the shape of the fan blades on the cork and cut them out.

And glue them on.

I had to put two layers of cork so it would be
thick enough for the thumbtacks to stick.

Then I wrapped the cork/blade with the materials
and used spray adhesive and hot glue to attach it.

The three wrapped blades.

Then I sprayed the other two blades with chalkboard paint.

It didn't cover the sides, but that was
ok, because they're hidden.

Then I laid out all five, alternating cork and chalkboard. I attached them with hanging brackets, but they weren't very sturdy, so I attached some dowel rods to make it more sturdy. Yes, the back side is very unattractive.

Then I needed to do something with the non-covered up holes from the old hardware. So I added S-hooks for keys.

Then I sewed little pockets from the leftover scraps
and tied them into the other two holes with some cute ribbon.

One is for the chalk.

And other one is for paper or tacks or whatever.

The finished product. I'm proud of it.

And in case you were wondering...

I bought this fan in 2003 when I moved into my own place after college. There was no fan in my upstairs bedroom, and it was HOT. I never got it installed, though. So it has now lived in 2 closets, 1 storage facility, 1 garage, and 1 backyard shed. You can tell by looking at the box that it's been moved a few times. I was very excited to finally get it put in.

I like it!

Posted in: creativity, house on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at at 12:03 AM 5 comments    

Here are the Halloween-related things that I've been up to this week.

The awesome spider web at the boss family's house.

The not-so-awesome huge spider living on the
awesome spider web at the boss family's house.

Tuesday we started celebrating with orange grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Pregnant Halloween '08: I'm a pea pod! The baby's a pea!

Tuesday Night - Halloween Bunko: Pea pod, Sarah Palin, Asian girl,
pregnant nun, police woman, doctor, laundry basket, cat,
black eyed pea, cowgirl, and Strawberry Shortcake.

Sarah Palin's Foreign Relations

More foreign relations

Sarah Palin loves PEAce.

With the leaf plate/candle holder I won for being voted Most Creative Costume!

Wednesday I made D a Spider Sandwich for lunch.

Here he is discovering it.

After eating off the legs and eyes, he used the extra
pretzels to make it into a birthday cake.

Posted in: creativity, D Man, friends, Halloween on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at at 9:34 PM 2 comments