Finally got the Valentine’s décor down! Luckily, I designed my “LOVE” signs to just be flipped around for the next holiday – St. Patrick’s Day! If it’s not super easy, it may not get down around here, ya know.
I also wanted to replace the heart art that I made last month. So I put together this little sign. And I thought I’d share it here too. The quote beneath it reads “A best friend is like a four leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.” Who doesn’t feel that way about the people they love?
CLICK HERE to download a printable version of this for your home.
Category: craft
Mar
08
Project No. 9 – St. Patrick’s Day art
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Mar
03
Project No. 8 – Graham’s Fishing Party
For Graham’s 3rd birthday, we went with a fishing theme. He really wanted another train party, but I drew the line. (I can’t believe how much he still loves his trains!!!) I really had fun with the fish theme. Don’t you think that Pinterest and the web is totally changing the face of children’s birthday parties forever?!?
The invitations:
The fish on his cake were made with orange candy melts. They were sort of an ordeal and I was not happy with them at all. One of those things you start and wonder why. I put wax paper of the printout of the fish shape and spread the candy to match the shape. But since the cake is round, I needed the chocolate to dry curved. Serious challenge. I’ll spare you the details since it didn’t work out that well. I think it’s time for me to get over my fear of fondant.
I had some more sugar cookies made and I LOVED the bobber cookie and the fish bowl. Almost too cute to eat. Almost, I say.
We set up a fishing game over the stairway, which turned out to be a pretty big hit. The kids played and played and played. They got real creative about what they could “catch” on the drop side.
For favors, I made these really simple goldfish bags and fishbowls of gummy fish.
Another thing I tried, but didn’t get a picture of, was blue jello with gummy fish in it. Here is Martha Stewart’s photo. Ours turned out a little murky – but it tasted great! I also attempted to make some water bottle aquariums (made from water, baby oil, a foam fish and blue food coloring in a water bottle) – they were fun but the kids lost interest in them pretty quick.
For a gift, we took Graham to the pet shop and let him pick out a goldfish. Sadly, the party balloons lasted longer that “Three”, as Graham named him. We are NOT a family that should have pets!
We also had a fish fry with fish sticks for the kiddos. My husband jumped at the excuse to pull the fryer down from storage. I was on board cause I can never pass up an opportunity to have fried okra. One of my big weaknesses.
Overall, Graham had a great day and I had a lot of fun looking for and trying out all the fishy ideas. If you want to see any of the other ideas I collected, you can check out my Pinterest board.
Happy third birthday to my little man! He is getting more and more ornery every day! In this photo, he is giving his “Frank Martin Stare”. If you’re not from Kansas, you probably don’t know what that means. But around here, it always gets a giggle. To which he replies, “Frank Martin doesn’t smile!!” (Frank Martin is the head coach of the Kansas State Wildcats basketball team and has become well-known for his facial expressions, including a pretty mean stare.)
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Feb
14
Project No. 7 – Heart art
Happy Valentine’s Day!!!
Want a super quick, super easy Valentine’s project? This is for you!
I recently got together with some girlfriends and wanted to do some kind of craft together. Since I barely had time to plan anything, this idea popped in mind. I had been eyeing this work by Ali Edwards for years always hoping to replicate it somehow. This was the perfect opportunity, so I picked up a heart punch, pulled out my paper scraps and made plenty of snacks to get us through the night.
Everybody got into and made several. It was really cool to see how the style evolved through the night. We all started off with red and pink versions but by the end, there was every color scheme imaginable. A few girls even got out the circle punches and were making art for their kids’ rooms.
Brady got me the best Valentine present EVER – a clean house!!! He hired someone to come in and clean our house and it was FABULOUS! He was worried that it wouldn’t be “romantic” but I feel like that’s exactly what it was. It lightened my load and gave me that relaxed feeling. Especially because we were having Graham’s birthday party and lots of company.
This morning, I made the kids pink heart-shaped pancakes again. My favorite part was when Lilah asked if they were pink because I put lots of love into them. Why, of course!
Hope you are having a sweet day filled with lots of love!
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Jan
31
Glow stick Valentine’s
Kids’ valentines ideas are all over the web right now. I especially love all the ideas that aren’t sweets. Like the homemade heart-shaped crayons, felt bookmarks or bouncy balls.
For both of my preschoolers, I ended up putting together these little glow stick Valentines. I was inspired by this blog and found the glow sticks in the dollar bins at Target. (15 for $1) They are incredibly simple to make and I know my kids love glow sticks, so surely they’ll be a hit!
Download your own printable here.
PRINTABLE GLOW STICK VALENTINE PDF
Some of the other ideas that I thought were awesome are below. Click on the image to go to the source.
Happy Valentine making!!!
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Jan
10
Project No. 5 – Owen’s Snowman Party
Last month, my baby turned one. Sit and cry about the passing of the last year? Or smile and celebrate the triumph of it? Maybe some of both. We have had an awesome year with Owen with some really great parenting milestones worth celebrating. We got Graham out of diapers and are counting the days until we can train Owen. Really looking forward to the milestone of not having to take a diaper bag with us everywhere we go. I threw out my nursing bras and said good riddance to the pump. And we finally stopped storing all the baby clothes. Once Owen outgrows it, it’s out the door!
Don’t get me wrong. I am very sad that he is growing up. His independence is everywhere these days. He walks. He talks. He makes sure we know what he wants. But he still loves to cuddle. And he still enjoys a bottle. Still my sweet little baby.
On to the party:
With a December for his birthday month, I went with a snowman themed party. We baptized him the same day we celebrated his birthday and had one big party to commemorate. I made a triple-layer cake and frosted it white to make a snowman head. The nose is made from a sugar ice cream cone and covered in orange frosting. The eyes and mouth are just chocolate that I shaped out on wax paper and let cool before adding.
We ordered cookies from a lady from our church and she did an awesome job as usual. (If you want her contact info, just let me know.) I loved the sweet little mittens and stocking hats. Another treat we made were chocolate dipped marshmallows. They were fun and the kids loved them! My two older kids even did the dipping for me. They went perfect with the pot of hot chocolate we had at the party.
Owen got all dressed up for his party and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Not much cuter than a little boy in a suit. His outfit even had a pocket hankie that matched his neck tie. So handsome.
His baptism was beautiful. I am definitely a bit weepy that it will be our last baptism. The vows and song we sing to him are so true and precious to me.
Happy 1st birthday to my sweet baby.
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Dec
15
Project No. 2 – Teacher gifts
So with Christmas right around the corner, I have been busy, busy. With two kids in preschool, that gave me five teachers to come up with some sort of small gift for. I saw the idea for this adorable santa hat snow mix on Pinterest and decided to give it a go. I knew the little santa hats would be some work and boy was I right! If you decide to make these, you’ll need plenty of time, patience and maybe a favorite romantic comedy playing in the background to get you though it!
I jarred it up and used bakers twine to tie on some gift card envelopes I made. Each teacher got a gift card to Orange Leaf – can’t go wrong there, right? The kids help put it all together and were proud to give it away today. Although Graham was a little disappointed that he didn’t get to eat it himself.
Another gift I whipped up was for the four nursery workers at church. I just picked up some Ghiredelli’s chocolates and used wrapping paper and ribbon for a quick solution. That’s a staple at the top holding it all together.
The kids here are super excited about the upcoming holiday and we have no less than three countdowns going in the house. One of them also was inspired by Pinterest and has turned out to be a favorite. I collected all of our holiday books, wrapped them up and labeled them each with a number. We let them unwrap and read one each night until Christmas. I think this may be a new tradition, I like it so much! You don’t have to have 24 Christmas books, just start with however many you have. I picked up a few at the dollar store and we started with 20.
And here is a shot of us having a weenie roast in the fireplace this week. We had never done this before but it was lots of fun! One of my favorite things about winter is getting to burn our fireplace – just feels so cozy.
Hope you guys are all having a great holiday season!
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Nov
09
Project No. 1
Remember my pledge? Welp, project number one is complete and I’m here to report substantial progress on the quilt I started as well.
With I had to take down my Halloween mantel decorations, the mantel was looking sorta bare. So I put together this super simple, quick “Fall” banner.
See – easy, right? Just cut some squares of burlap, hand lettered the FALL letters and hot-glued on some rick rack. I would like to add some sort of garland or foliage to the mantel still, but this was a quick fix.
In other fall décor news, guess which 11-month old has been dining on my decorative balls? Seriously!! What the heck?? We are constantly taking these away from him. I am being really stubborn though and keeping them on the table, hoping he’ll eventually learn that they are not toys (or food!).
And I have completed the quilt top I started. Next, I need to find a backing fabric and get it all quilted together. This part of the process always overwhelms me, so starting is the biggest step.
Last night I had bunco with the girls and came home to find that the hubby had helped the kids make me a little turkey craft. How sweet was that?! They made it out of their hands and were SUPER proud of themselves. I love those kiddos!
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Mar
09
Special baby. Special gifts.
I never thought I’d say that I was happy to see my baby get bigger. But I am (just a little bit). Owen is finally fitting into this adorable personalized appliqué outfit that he was given at birth.
He was given some really sweet handmade gifts that I have to share with you. The first one was made my my sister-in-law, Micah. She is extraordinarily talented with both felt appliqué and chain stitching (among MANY other things). It’s amazing and beautiful and I absolutely ADORE the pieces she has created for my children. (See more here and here.)
Another sister-in-law, Casi, is super talented with needle and thread as well. She made Owen this stripe blanket that I think is extremely sweet. I love the raw edges – I am a sucker for the texture and dimension that they add to a handmade item.
My friend, Mandy, made him an “O is for octopus” onesie that is pretty darn cute as well. Get one (in the letter of your choice) here!
And lastly, below are the other two onesis that Micah made. See what I mean about the chain stitching?!?!? Crazy patience.
I just love all the crafty, inspiring people in my life!
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Feb
20
Choo choo, Graham is two.
Our son, Graham, turned two last week. Because he is in love with trains right now, we threw him a train-themed party.
I had this dream of buying a fabulous cake so I wouldn’t stress myself out about making/decorating a cake. But when I started price-checking cakes like I wanted, I quickly retreated. So I whipped out my trusty old cake mix boxes and got to baking. The cake didn’t turn out anything like what I wanted, but I was still happy with it. I used cookie crumbs and chocolate frosting to make a track around the perimeter for his toy trains to sit on.
I also threw together a larger train car for snacks. I used shoe boxes, covered them in brown paper grocery bags and made the wheels out of rolled up strips of black felt. One of the cars had wheels made out of some vintage coasters.
We also had some sugar cookies made by a friend of my mom – and I was so happy with them! Adorable! My favorite was the RR crossing sign and the stop light. We used these as party favors for the kids as well.
For low cost decorations, I made him a birthday sign out of cardboard and reused our 4th of July pennant banners. I made the sign to match the party invitation that we mailed out. He was really funny with his invitation – he carried them around the house and called them his “tards”.
Graham absolutely loved his day. He loved all the attention and all the snacking. He was super excited for presents and told each giver “than-too” after he unwrapped. We even had a difficult time pulling him away from his new toys to blow out his candles. But once he got to it, he was thrilled to hear his birthday song and huff, puff and blow his candles out. He was so darn cute doing it that we let him do it a couple more times.
Happy second birthday, Grahamser. It’s been two sweet years – here’s to many more!
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Feb
14
One sweet day.
Lilah had her very first Valentine’s party at preschool last week. So one evening, we sat down and made valentines for all her classmates. I had seen an idea for matchbox valentines recently, so we went with that. They turned out to be an easy project and she enjoyed the process. Especially filling the boxes with the candy.
For the last few years, we have made pink heart-shaped pancakes on Valentines Day morning. So, of course, I continued the tradition today. The kids LOVE pancakes, so at least I know they will have full bellies.
Owen is barely fitting into his valentines shirt today. This boy is getting so big! He is two months old now and is in the 85% for his weight. At his check-up, the doctor called him a “tank”.
I hope you are all having a sweet day!
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