Crayon Art

I recently saw a Pinterest project involving crayons, a canvas, and a hair dryer; all items I happened to have in my own already! I immediately got to work creating my own. It's weird art, but I had a lot of fun making it.


My hands were a little messy after I finished with my "painting", and lots of splatters had overshot the plastic mat I'd set up, but they were so small they wiped right up off the hard floor without any problems. The crayons melted under the hair dryer in a surprisingly fast amount of time, and once you have the melted wax on your canvas, you can use the force of the air to move it around, blend it with nearby colors, make swirly effects, etc. I would do this again!

3D handprint

I saw this idea on Pinterest and had to try it out! Turned out pretty good for a first attempt.


Jared saw me working on it and really wanted to do one for himself, but we ran out of time last night. I'm hoping to finish it up with him today. I don't know if Connor could manage one or not, but I'd like to have him try! I'm sure Emily will attempt one as well. I think it's pretty neat (coming from someone who can barely draw a decent stick figure, being able to draw a 3D hand is pretty awesome! LOL)

Bleach T-shirts

Yet another Pinterest project!!! I made this shirt for Emily Grace as part of her Valentine's Day gift from Dan and I. She absolutely loves it, and got TONS of comments on it.


The best part? It cost me $5 for the shirt from Target, and probably about five minutes (or less!) to cut the template (using my Cricut machine), lay it on the shirt, and spray the bleach on. The turquoise shirt bleached to a light greenish color, which are very "beachy" colors and perfectly suited to the seashell images I used!

There's room for improvement, having a better idea now what I'm doing (being a little less heavy-handed with the bleach, letting the bleach dry before rinsing/washing, etc), but I'm overall really pleased! I can't wait to hit up Target for more plain t-shirts, so I can make some more. Hurray for Pinterest!

knitting, knitting, and a little crochet

My friend Kaci is due with baby #2 in February, so as soon as I got through the Christmas rush, I finally tackled some of the projects I'd planned to make her for the baby-to-be:

this little hat has a removeable bow, which is actually a hair clip for when baby is older!


I've been seeing a lot of squared off hats lately and I think they're so cute! I made this one big so she'll have it for next year


I've also been seeing these snuggle snacks all over Pinterest and had to give one a try!


I dug out Em's old doll, "Boy Baby", to show off how it looks. He's a little bigger than a newborn baby, so there should be some growing room in real life.


The same weekend I finished up Kaci's gifts, I found out my friend Kristina and her husband had been chosen to adopt a baby, so I scrambled to whip up a few hats to send to her. I stupidly assumed the birth mom (or birth parents, in this case), would choose them a month or so before the birth and we'd all have a little warning, but as it turns out, they got THE CALL and TA-DA, they're immediately new parents! I'd have done a little snuggle sack for baby Mikey as well if I'd had a bit more notice, but since he's already HERE, I didn't want to waste any time getting him his gifts!


And then with a little encouragement from a friend (thanks Kelli!), I got online, figured out how to crochet (at least how to crochet the stitches needed for this particular project), and crocheted Connor this monster hat from Pinterest


The eye is a little messed up, but I'm overall quite pleased for a first attempt at crocheting!! Emily and Jared have already put in requests for their own monster hats. *grin*

Pinterest.com Projects

After viewing this idea, I ended up making these two photo holders:

(ps, the wrinkles flattened out overnight... I took the picture too soon!)




After viewing this idea, I knew I had to make one for my snowman-loving mother (I have since added a light splatter of paint to resemble snow falling, and I wrote each of the kids' names/ages next to their footprint, as well as the date in one corner):

(crummy lighting for this picture makes the colors look a little off; the green is actually more like the photo of the "love" project pictured above)


My friend Jami helped me paint the faces and arms, but everything else was my handiwork! I LOVE LOVE LOVE how it turned out, and had to make another one for myself! *grin*

And after viewing this idea, I made something similar for Connor's coffee-loving teacher (to go along with the gift we were giving her):



I have yet to even make a DENT in the lists of "pins" I have saved on Pinterest, but I'm carving out time as I can! If only there were more hours in the day!!!! *grin*

Thankful Tree

The kids and I made a Thankful Tree last Tuesday, in preparations for Thanksgiving. We wanted to have some sort of table decoration at our table. It's not the prettiest end result (intsead of seeking out really nice looking branches, we were dashing through the yard in the POURING POURING rain grabbing up the first branches we could find!!), but the kids had a BLAST making it! Even Connor, who all but refuses to do any sort of writing at home, was happily writing words on leaves to add to the tree.



One home-grown pumpkin + branches from the yard + paper leaves cut out on the Cricut + a hole puncher + strips of yarn + a permanent marker = super fun Thanksgiving project, and a nice visual reminder of all we have to be thankful for!

And for the record, the idea stemmed from this pin, which I found on Pinterest.com