Mommy and Me skirts

I've been working on these for about a year.  At first they were going to be mommy and me dresses.  I made the bodice for my dress and it didn't fit right, so I altered it and altered it and so on.  In the end it was beyond being fixed.  It took me a while to be okay with throwing it out, but eventually I did. Then I decided to start over and just make skirts.  They are a basic circle skirt - one layer of maroon fabric and one layer of black lace over it and a thick elastic waistband.  We both really enjoyed matching and got sweet compliments at church.  I love my little mini me.

Jammies

I really wanted to make jammies for Christmas Eve this year. It's a good thing they are quick and easy because I don't think I would've gotten to it otherwise.  The kids were thrilled and so was I.  Who doesn't love a new pair of jammies?!

Hot Chocolate

After seeing all the cute pins on pinterest of hot chocolate bars I really wanted to do one, but I didn't have time to do an all out fancy, intense one so I threw this one together for a little get together with a few friends.  Maybe someday I will do a big one.  The hot chocolate was to die for.  And of course I got the recipe off pinterest, Best Hot Chocolate Ever - seriously so good.  I also made this super good, super fast, super easy fudge Five Minute Fudge. Yum yum.  Good times with good friends.  I meant to get a picture of all of us but forgot- next time!

Ornaments

At church I teach and do activities with the MiaMaids (14-15 year old girls).  For our Christmas activity we learned to make fudge.  And of course, ate fudge and cookies.  Then we started planning activities for the upcoming year.  I also made a super simple ornament for each of them.  I put a picture of Mary, Joseph and Jesus in clear glass ornaments.  I thought they were really pretty.  However, one of the girls had already destroyed hers before she even left - what can you do?  Oh well, I guess that's just teenagers.  Gotta love 'em.  haha

If you want to make a super simple, inexpensive Christmas gift I would recommend them. You can find clear glass ornaments a variety of places, I got mine at Michaels.  Then just print out the pictures the size of your ornaments and cut them out.  Roll them to put them into the ornament and then use tweezers to unroll them one they are inside.

Baby Shower

My mom, my sister and I recently threw a shower for my other sister.  It was so much fun!  I made a paper bag book for the guest book and I put together a motorcycle diaper cake.  We had brunch and decorated bibs and visited and had a great time.   I can't wait to see her little bundle of joy.  

There is a tutorial for the motorcycle diaper cake at sweetaprils.com.

Tangled movie night

For Mutual the girls wanted to have a Tangled movie night and I figured, why not?  And while we're at it, let's make it a party!

Here are links to the printables I used:

sign
banner

confetti/cupcake toppers

doll & crown

The water bottle labels and popcorn bag labels are ones that I made on my own.

I think everyone had a great time, I know I did.

Wonder Woman costume

For Halloween this year I didn't want to make all of our costumes, so we used a couple we already had and bought a couple others.  We decided to all be Justice League superheroes but I didn't have a costume and it is impossible to find an adult women's costume that doesn't look more like a swimsuit than clothing.  So I ended up making my wonder woman costume.  I used freezer paper to make a stencil and painted the logo on a shirt.  Then I used felt for the tiara, cuffs and belt.  The cape is no sew, just a piece of red fabric cut like a cape.  And the skirt is a simple circle skirt with white stars attached.  I thought it would be a pretty simple costume to make and it was, but it took quite a bit of time.

Halloween Oreo Truffle Pops

For a Halloween Party we were asked to bring a Halloween dessert so we made these ghost, pumpkin and monster oreo truffle pops.  They were a quite a bit of work, but so cute and so tasty.  You mix one package of cookies with one package of cream cheese and make them into balls and put a stick in them.  Then put them in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes. Then dip them.  For the pumpkins we dipped them in melted butterscotch chips, for the ghosts it was melted white chocolate chips and the monsters were double dipped, once in the milk chocolate and then once in melted mint chips.  Then put them in the fridge for 20-30 minutes and then use remaining melted chips to make faces, leaves, whatever.  We doubled the amount (so we did two packages of oreos worth) and got about 50 yield.

baby gifts

I've recently had occasion to do a few baby gifts (it seems like everyone is having babies right now).  This one is for our new nephew, Ford.  He was born yesterday and I still need to get the gift sent off, oops.  It was fun to use the Ford trucks and cars fabrics mixed with others.  I recently did a bib and burp cloth for a baby named Anchor and used nautical fabric with anchors on it.  It is so fun when they have a name you can go off of.  I really enjoy making baby gifts.  They are cute and quick and babies are so fun.

Preschool Board

Lena is 3 which means 2 years until Kindergarten. I was hoping to do a co-op pre-preschool with some friends this year, but it didn't end up working out.  But when I was planning it I put together this preschool board using scrapbook paper, copy paper, and printed words.  Then I got it laminated so I can use wet-wash markers on it.  Hopefully it will still get some use, even if it is just for Lena.

Keep Calm Sign

This is a project I've been wanting to do for a while.  There are "Keep Calm..." signs all over the place, but when I saw a version with these words I really wanted one. The version I saw was with a silhouette of the Salt Lake temple but I wanted one with the Sacramento temple.  I sawed off a piece of wood from an old board we had laying around and sanded it a bit. Then I painted it dark red and painted the words and silhouette in tan.  To finish it I lightly sanded it to give it a worn look.  I am really happy with it and excited to put it up.  And as an added bonus, it didn't cost me a penny. :)

Candyland Birthday Party

 We threw a Candyland birthday party for our oldest son, Landon, who just turned 5 and our daughter, Lena who just turned 3.  We invited a few families that have kids they play with over on Saturday. 

We had a big sign on the garage welcoming everyone to Landon and Lena's Candyland.

 We used foam squares for the rainbow path throughout the party.  They started at the gingerbread tree. It is hard to see in the picture, but we hung cardstock gingerbread men from the tree. In the shade of the tree they decorated their goody bags with sticker gingerbread men and received a cookie.

 These were the cookies.

Then  they headed over to the peppermint forest.  We used crepe paper to make the tree trunk look like a candycane.  We hung red and white balls and candycanes from the tree.  I thought it was so cute. In the shade of the tree they used bakers twine (peppermint string) to create fruit loop necklaces (I was going to do candy necklaces but figured they were getting enough candy.)  And they received mini candycanes.

Then along the side of the house was gumdrop pass.  I colored a big picture of Jolly and put it on the fence and we hung some balloons over the sidewalk.  Through the pass we hid easter eggs with gumdrops (dots) and they got to collect 3 eggs as they went through the pass. 

Landon loved helping set up the party. Here he is helping hide the eggs.

 Then there was the licorice forest.  I cut pool noodles in half and twisted them around each other to make "licorice poles" that they could throw hula hoops around like a ring toss.  Then they got some licorice sticks.  I also had a large Lord Licorice drawing there.  

 Then in the backyard on the fence I drew Gramma Nut's house with chalk and the kids got to throw wet sponges (that looked like peanuts) at it.  And they got nutter butters.

 Then came lollipop woods.  I made lollipops out of ping pong balls that Landon and I colored and golf tees.  Then the kids got to shoot the water guns at the ping pong balls to make them fall off.  And they got lollipops.

I even thought shooting the ping pong ball lollipops was fun.

Then came snowflake lake.  We had a wading pool and some stacking toys that were supposed to be like ice cream scoops, but I'm not sure anyone really played with them because by the time they got that far they just wanted to play in the pools and sprinklers.  (It was 100 degrees, we all wanted to play in the water) But the prize for that was the ice cream cones.

And I forgot to take a picture of it so this is part of another picture, but we had a chocolate swamp game too.  There were candy kisses with pictures of fishes and pencil and string fishing poles with clothespins on the end and it was a fishing game. And they got a few candy kisses, but I'm not sure anyone really did that one either.  But they had a great time playing.

 The last stop along the rainbow path was the kandy castle with King Kandy on our back porch. We had lots of candy, cake, ice cream, etc.

 

 The kids had a blast playing and eating.  Overall, a success!

"Sushi"

My husband loves sushi.  However, it is about the last thing I would ever want to eat.  So for Father's Day my kids and I made him this dessert sushi. I found the idea on Pinterest, gotta love Pinterest!  It is made from rice krispy treats, swedish fish, and fruit by the foot.  Super easy, clever and yummy.

Young Women's Baby Blanket

The second counselor in our ward Young Women's Presidency is about to have a baby, so for an activity we all decorated squares for a baby blanket for her.  I prepared it and put it all together, but it has a little bit of love from all the Young Women.

Family Shirts

We are going on a family trip in the near future and on that trip we are going to an amusement park.  It should be a lot of fun.  But I'll tell you what's not fun, last time we went to an amusement park we lost one of our kids.  It was one of the absolutely most terrifying experiences of my life.  Luckily we found him and all was well in the end, but I would do just about anything to prevent that from happening again.  You can bet I will be keeping a close eye on my kids.  And to help with that I made us all matching shirts.  Each one is a different bright color all with matching family silhouettes on the back.  Bright color = easier to spot, same image = people know they belong to us.  I made the family silhouette here.  And for more about the method I used to paint the shirts see this post.

Graduation Cap Cupcakes

 Do you love my graduation cap cupcakes as much as I do?  I got to bring a dessert to my sons Preschool Graduation Party and this is what I came up with.

 Bake regular cupcakes and then cut off the tops.

 Flip them all over.

 You'll have a bunch of cupcake tops you can save for trifle later. :)

 Frost the side facing up.

 Place chocolate graham cracker squares on the frosting.

 Dab a dot of frosting on the center top of the graham crackers.

 Cut some small strings of pull apart licorice.

 Put M&Ms on the top of the dab of frosting and make a small line of frosting from the M&M to the side of the cracker.

 Put the licorice on the small line of frosting.

 Ta Da!

 Graduation hat cupcakes!

party hat

I wanted to make a party hat for my little man's first birthday, so I googled "party hat tutorials" and got this great link. I think it turned out pretty cute, but not nearly as cute as my birthday boy!

Old West Date

So, Aaron (my hubby) had a birthday last month. I gave him a gift of 25 or so dates. I made outlines and attached them to bags containing envelopes and packages with everything needed for the date. Some of them are "go out" dates and some are "stay in" dates. And since I think all married couples can benefit from date nights I think I will be posting one every once in a while.

This past weekend we had an Old West date night. Here is an image of the outline:

The outline on the bag.

Inside was an envelope with the invite (#1):

Also a package labeled #2 with bandannas in it and a package of cookies labeled #3.

So we opened the invite earlier in the day. Then after the kids were in bed we opened the bandannas and then we looked up some line dance instructions on youtube, learned a couple dances and then made a line dance playlist on itunes and danced around our living room. It sounds cheesy, but it was a lot of fun. Then we watched American Outlaws.

It was inexpensive, we didn't need to get a babysitter and it was all planned out already- sweet! We had a fun time doing something special. So go get your honey and have a date!

Cookie Party Printables

A shirt for Thayney

(the shirt's not blurry, just the picture is)

My baby is about to turn one. Crazy! They just keep growing! I am hoping to do a little cookies and milk party for his first birthday just with family. But I thought it would be fun to make him a special shirt. So I painted one with baby cookie monster on it. This might be the most complicated fabric painting I've done so far. It was really fun though.

Easter Dress

This is Lena's Easter dress. It seems like lately everything I make doesn't turn out the way it is supposed to, including this dress. I did the neck all wrong, oops. That is what happens when you get distracted 200 million times while trying to do it. At first I was very disappointed, but it is growing on me. And with it being made out of some of my all time, very favorite fabrics, how could I not like it. Plus it is big on her so she can (hopefully) wear it for a while!