cookie party!

Tamara and I planned a cookie decorating party for the kids on the street.  Unfortunately I didn't make it to the party, I was attending a funeral of a VIP in my life.  However, the kids made it and they had a great time!  Here are some of the invites we put on our neighbors doors!!

Frappachino bottles--oh my!

My friend, Shelley, and her husband drink Starbucks frappichinos like it's water.  So, when she mentioned that a friend of hers wanted a "set" of them, so did I!!

She gave me about 20, she even took the labels off, washed them and painted the lids a cream color for me! 

Here are a few things I have done with them so far!

#1. Brought individual servings of my fall sangria to a Pinterest party (yes, a Pinterest party!!)  Half were non-alcoholic and half had a bit of champagne in them.  They were so pretty with their ribbons on them!  I actually won a prize for "best drink".  YAY!  And I got to bring the bottles home to re-use them!

Here they were at home, all pretty:

 And here they were at the party!  Ready for consuming!!

#2.  Random Happy Fall teacher gift.  Filled with candy corn!  Unfortunately the kids picked at them on the way to school and some of the pieces fell off by the time we got there...I'll blame that on the cheap glue for the glue gun again!  But they were super cute!!

#3, my favorite.  Fresh flowers for the teachers, just because, filled in the bottom with magnetic letters and numbers.  (not original idea, but made it my own) and I loved how they turned out!!

Before and after flowers!

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years!

Every new year, we tell ourselves, I'm going to make sure I _____ more!  I always say, I'm going to craft more, blog more, take more pictures, etc.  Then we say, I'm for real this time.  Well, this time, I'm for real.  Looking back at my pics, or lack of, from 2012, I did NOT do a good job taking pics and I didn't really craft/scrapbook nearly as much as I wanted to.  Our camera broke about half way thru the year, I took on big projects, like redoing our kitchen floor (which still isn't done) and have just over all been busy being a mom.  That's life, and I love my life.  But I need to put getting the camera fixed as #1 on my list!  Cells are nice for a quick pic but the quality is just not as good! Tonight, on the 1st of January, I am going to try to get some blog posts in of my most recent crafts (which isn't much) and then *try* to commit to blogging what i've been up to once a month.  Ready? Set? GO!

I ended up making a ton of felt flower clips, pins, barrettes and bobby pins for the craft show that I organized/participated in in Nov.  About 90% of these sold.  They were a big hit.  next year I'll make many more.  The ones in the middle are not felt, but they are from some beaded flowers I picked up somewhere, I turned them into pins.  The stand they are on, I made with items from the dollar store, spray painted and glued together.  Unfortunately the stand did not make it in it's entirety to the craft show...my glue gun apparently stinks and stuff hasn't been holding lately (probably the cheap brand of glue i bought to put in it!).  I grabbed it by the middle and the bottom half fell off and shattered all over my kitchen floor, at 11pm, the night before the craft show.  ahhh.  oh well.  They actually still looked cute displayed like this:

Some other stuff from the craft show...

my fun scrabble tiles.  not sure why, but nobody wanted these!  i think someone bought "forever friends" but that's it.  The rest are up at the antique store right now in hopes that someone might like them and buy.  otherwise, i'm keeping them!  i thnk they are super super cute!!  $5, can't beat that!

And how cute are these?!?!  they are small 4 X 4 canvasses, each a set of 3 (except the bottom one).  The designs are cut out on the cricut and embellished and mod podged over.  Yep, still have most of them!  (hint hint, anyone out there want a set?!?)

The above is some misc things Tamara (my craft partner in crime) and I made for the show.  Some chipboard letters, all decorated up and some frames, that we still have...hmm...

And above, you will find my typical assortment of hand made cards and notebooks made from gift cards, playing cards and scraps of this and that...sold a ton of the notebooks, they are always a big hit, especially for a dollar each!

That's it for the craft show. I'll put the rest of the stuff I need to catch up on, in the next post!

Flowers for Teachers

I was inspired by my friend Shelley, who makes felt flower clips to make a few of my own.  They ended up being teachers gifts for Brandon's two teachers!  They loved them and wore them all day!  And since then I've seen them wear them several times in their hair!!

 

The sticks were just for show and for Brandon to give to them, like a stem!  One teacher thought she was supposed to put it in her hair with the stem!  Luckily I was there to tell her to take it off!  It was so cute though!

 

Just a note on the back to tell them they could wear it in their hair, on their shirt, scarf, hat or bag!

Kid's Summer Smash Books

I have been going kind of "SMASH" book crazy lately...

Not sure what a Smash book is?  Check it out here...



I wanted the kids to have their own version to use over the summer to document the fun things we do over the next few months (from their perspective).

I got out some of my scrapbook paper (no matter how many projects we do with my scrapbook paper, there never seems to be a dent in my stash!!), got out some stickers, glue, scissors and my Bind-It-All.  I had them pick out the papers they wanted to use on the front, back and insides.  Just helped them by trimming them all the same size.  They decorated however they wanted and put some stickers in and I bound them and they are done!

This summer, I'll have them put whatever they want in them from our adventures.  Like, ticket stubs, post cards, zoo passes, pics, doodles, shells from the beach, whatever.  It is for them to do what they want with.

Here are a few pics, keep in mind, they picked everything out for themselves...

 

 

 

And here's a sneak peak at the one's my neighbors kids made with us!

toy story party

My son wanted a spider man birthday party this year...well, somehow I convinced him that a Toy Story party would be fun and he went with it!!  I had fun decorating and planning.  Here are a few of the things I made and did for the party...

Here is the centerpiece I made, using the Toy Story cricut cartridge.  I pieced together each character and glued them to a straw and arranged them in the mini bucket.  I think it was super cute and I kept the faces so that I could put them in his scrapbook!

 

Then I got the crazy idea to make 20 of the Toy Story Logo to put on the goodie bags, which I'm pretty sure they probably got thrown in the trash when the kids got home, but that's ok...I had fun making them!

 

With the help of my kids, we searched thru our toy room and came up with a bunch of Toy Story related toys...Mr & Mrs Potato Head, little green army men, blocks (which I used to spell out my son's name) and other fun stuff.  I really wanted to put out a pink piggy bank that looked like Hamm, without having the spend $20 to get the actual character at Target, so I found at the Dollar Tree a plastic bank, which happened to be red.  I painted it pink and painted the expression on it to look just like Hamm from the movie.  The little green aliens are from a game they have.  

The biggest dilemma for me was what I would do for a cake.  I didn't dare attempt anything that was to look like Woody or Buzz, and all the ideas I found online were using fondant, which I have no clue, time or talent to learn how.  My sister gave me the idea to make a Mr. Potato head cake, but without being completely satisfied with the potential outcome, I decided on Mr. Potato head cupcakes!  And the little green alien cupcakes too!  I got to take a fun trip to the candy store in the mall to shop for the pieces and here's some of the variety of candy I used!

I wasn't sure what I would use for his hat, but the candy store had just what i needed, then I was SO excited when I saw the gummy lips and flowers, perfect for Mrs. Potato Head!  Chocolate licorice for the mustache, jelly beans for the ears and nose, the blue and white candies are peppermint patty candies...I used the white for the eyes and the blue for the shoes.  The candy cigarettes were perfect for the arms!  And they are SO yummy!!!  Brings me back to my younger days when we thought we were so cool buying them and "smoking" them!!  I also had a thin piece of black licorice that I used for Mr's eyebrows.

 

And here are my little green alien cupcakes.  Same peppermit patty eyes and a cheerio for the mouth.  Jelly Bellys for the antennas. (I ran out of green towards the end, but improvised with green M&Ms).

 

 

new logo!!

My awesome friend, Lauren, from Ten23Designs, designed me this perfect logo for my "shop"!  I love it...right now it's on my facebook page and I will be printing up some business cards with the logo so when I go to craft shows, I can hand them to people when they buy something AND, eventually i'll figure out how to get the logo on my blog to make everything cohesive!  Anyways, I LOVE MY NEW LOGO!!!