Category: Everything Else

This Valentine’s Day, we plan to celebrate by having dinner at home and having a family movie night. I rented Despicable Me and I hope the girls enjoy it. Jon always brings the girls an me home flowers and I will normally bake something for dessert. So in addition to the usual hugs and kisses, this is what we have planned to show the girls how much we love them.

In return, the girls show us their love in many ways too. This weekend, they decided that it painting the laundry room was a great idea. After grabbing a can of black spray paint (I left it in the kitchen after a recent project), they went to work on the washer, the walls, Emily’s coat and backpack, the floor, a pair of my flip flops, a step stool and my favorite boots. I forgot about the cabinet in the kitchen too. It was all over. I just kept finding more spots.

Emily wasn’t around when this was happening, so I’m guessing that’s why her stuff got hit and the other two spared their own stuff.

I hope one day our girls have children of their own that express their love in a similar manner.

I made it through another week on SYTYC! Thank you all for your votes! It was Red Week for the theme and went along with the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign to raise awareness about the risk of heart disease and stroke in women.

So my craft for Red Week was a relaxing hammock. Below is how my entry appeared for the contest. This week I will post the tutorial so you can make your own hammock.

An important part of preventing heart disease is controlling stress. When coming up with a project for this week’s Go Red for Women theme, I wanted to create a project that helps women relax.

Is there a better way to unwind than stretching out on a hammock? A fun part of this hammock is how easily it is to personalize it. You can even claim it as yours and yours alone by putting your name across it. Kids would get a kick out of seeing their name too.

Make a coordinating pillow to complete the relaxation process and add a splash of color to your backyard.

This project is easy enough for a beginning sewer, so it won’t stress you out to make one!

This week on So You Think You’re Crafty, it was red week. Red week goes along with the American Heart Associations Go Red for Women campaign. There’s still a few hours left to go vote for this week. So if you haven’t checked out the entries yet this week, head over cast your vote.

Have a great weekend!

For Game Week, I made a stadium seat cushion. Here’s the entry for the contest, in case you missed it.

For game week, I decided to make a stadium seat. Nothing worse than sitting on some cold (or hot!), hard bleachers to watch your child’s game. Going to a college or professional game can be just as bad with the hard plastic stadium seats. Taking along your own cushion can help you focus on the game and off your sore bum.

The handy pocket on the back can hold whatever you need, well probably not everything, but you can put a player roster, your keys and various items like that. If you are in a giving mood, you can lay the cushion out flat and share the seat with someone else.

One the way to and from the game, the seat slips over your shoulder to keep your hands free. You can customize this to suit your style and needs.

Each week, I have such lofty goals for getting my tutorials up and as this week comes to an end, they are still not here. My goal for this weekend is to have several tutorials completed. The second half of the picnic blanket will be here, the cloche hat tutorial is getting it’s finishing touches and I will also show you how I made my candle holder lamp.

Below is my entry from last week on SYTYC. It was up-cycled week and I’m loving my new lamp. It has a home on the table next to my side of the bed.

If you haven’t checked out this week yet, head over to SYTYC now and see the Game Day projects. The polls close tonight, so you have some time to get your vote in.

I wanted a new lamp and my budget didn’t correspond with what I wanted. So I took this week’s challenge to get my creative juices flowing to upcycle something to make a new lamp. After a bit of brainstorming, I came up with the idea of using candle holders to make a lamp.

I love the look of the of the glass now. It looks so much like milk glass. It was great to get a hand-me-down lamp to use for parts. That made the project so much more affordable.

For the finishing touch, I recovered a lamp shade to coordinate with the base and to get just the look I wanted.

Today my grandfather went in for a biopsy that confirmed cancer.

Tonight I saw this:

Tonight I wish I could give Pawpaw a hug.

I wish I could take away his pain.

All I can do tonight is send my love and say my prayers. It just doesn’t feel like enough.

Click on the link above to vote for your favorite project this week. The theme is upcycled and maybe you will get some inspiration about how to reuse some items you have around the house.

I’m almost finished with the cloche hat tutorial. Sorry it’s taking me so long to get it finished. I would have taken pictures for the first one I made, but I stitched it in the car and made it up as I went along. So for this tutorial, I had to start from scratch.

So this past week was Kids Can Do on SYTYC and I got the most votes for my picnic blanket. I’m so honored and excited that other people liked my idea. I’m getting my cloche hat tutorial and now the blanket tutorial ready to share. I hope to have them both done by the end of the week.

Don’t forget to check in on Monday to see the next week’s contest and vote for your favorite again. This is so much fun!

Here’s my post from the contest in case you missed it:

Our family loves to picnic and we go often during warmer weather, but sometimes the kids begin to get a bit bored during the time we are not eating. We also enjoy playing games together, so I thought it would be fun to have a picnic blanket that has games built right in. I’m looking forward to using this picnic blanket to help entertain the kids during camping trips and while waiting for it to get dark before fireworks.

I decided to make a checkers board for the center of the blanket and surround it with a Bingo game and tic tac toe grids. The pieces easily rotate between the different games and then store in the built-in corner pockets.

The bottom of the blanket helps prevent a wet ground from ruining the picnic fun.

In addition to playing games during a picnic, kids can help make the blanket by painting the game pieces, selecting the games and writing the bingo numbers on the blanket. Older children may even want to help with the sewing.

It’s week #2 for So You Think You’re Crafty. The theme for this week is Kids Can Do. There are some awesome crafts on there and Katelyn already went through and ranked them in the order that she liked them. Click on the logo at the top of the post and head over there to check out the crafts this week and cast your vote. The polls are open until Friday evening.

The first week of So You Think You’re Crafty is over and I made it through to the next round! I was thrilled with the amount of votes I got for my hat. I was quite tickled with how it turned out and I’ll have a tutorial available soon for anyone else wanting to make one.

Any interest in a tutorial on how to make the flower too? Just let me know and I’ll get that one done as well.

Shopping at a thrift store can be hit or miss for sure. As I wandered through several stores, I came up with nothing. I put on my thinking cap and came up this idea to make a hat. I headed back to the store with this project in mind. I found the perfect blazer for a cloche hat. I’ve always thought a cloche hat was cute and this one speaks to my inner flapper.

After felting the coat, I stitched the hat using my own sewing pattern. It still needed something though. I decided to add the ribbon and made a fabric flower.

I think this hat is the bee’s knees. Now I’m all ready to put on my hat-ski, go grab a bell bottom and head down to the local speakeasy for some giggle water.