Randomness

Are you ready for this randomness?  I thought for sure after the holidays things would slow down!  They definitely haven't!  

Over Christmas break  I was searching for something new and fun to entertain the kids.  We hadn't built a tent in a while so I brought out a few extra sheets and we built a fort/tent.  The kids had a lot of fun bring all the toys they could into the tent.  

 Peyton started putting on magic shows for me.  It was pretty darn cute!

I'm hooked on vinyl.  It is so much fun to create projects with!  I was given two Cricut Cartridges for my birthday and had so much fun playing with them. I came across a quilting quote and thought of my mom.  I texted it to her and wouldn't you know it...one of her good friends had a birthday next week and it was just perfect for her!  So to work I went....and this is what I came up with.

 I did some machine stitching to give it that 'quilting' feel.

My Mom's birthday is Monday. I came across this quote a while back and instantly thought of her.  I finally got around to making it for her.  I had made a card for her a while back with this same design and she commented a couple times how much she liked the design, so I figured she'd like the tile with the same design.  I used some really old My Minds Eye papers as well as a satin flower I had made.  

 I love these satin flowers.

I have been on the hunt for cupboard doors.  I clean them, paint them and then create this:

 The above was made for a big fundraising event Chris and I go to every year.  We have a blast at this event.  A few years ago I started making items to donate to their silent auction.  I decided to make the above for this years auction.

Another board with quote I made:

This one I have set up in my entryway on a beautiful quilted piece my mom made for me.

Today was Miss Maddy's 4th birthday!  How quickly the 4 years have gone!  Maddy can light up a room.  She can have me frustrated like no other and the very next minute be as sweet as can be giving me kisses and hugs. She is a true blessing.

Maddy shared her birthday with 1 of her cousins (turning 9) and one family friend (turning 2).

We had 3 cakes set up, as well as a table for each kiddo's present.

The family friend who had the 2 year old's birthday was amazing.  She created all 3 birthday cakes!  :-0  I can barely pull off my own, let alone 2 others.  And look how stinking cute Maddy's cake was:  

 My brother was able to make it to the party and bring his two kiddos.  All four kids just LOVE to get together!

 Maddy really liked her cupcakes.  She had two and wanted a third!  Haha!

 And she was definitely spoiled and made out like no other!

3 kids (ages 2, 4 and 9) sharing a birthday party.  The restaurant was packed and lots of fun was had.

That is it for now!  Thank you for stopping by!

Altered Clipboard {Basic Grey}

Wow...it has been a while since I have posted!  Thank you to all those of you that still stop by every once in awhile!  

Last week (or was it the week before) was Teachers Appreciation week.  I picked up clipboard and altered it for Peyton's teacher.  I just LOVE this paper from Basic Grey! 

Thank you for stopping by!  I hope y'all have a wonderful weekend!

The Paper Variety Challenge

Hello all!  Happy National Scrapbook Day!  I'm not getting much scrappy time this weekend, but I am having a great day today so far, so I can't complain!  I went out garage saling and got to go to the grocery store all by myself!  Chris took off with the kids and I have had some quiet time...or not so quiet as I had the music blaring while I cleaned and did laundry!  

On to some projects.  Next week is Teacher Appreciation week.  Peyton has such a fantastic teacher, I wanted to send something in to her every day.  Here are a couple things I have made so far.  I haven't been able to play along with the Paper Variety challenges for quite some time.  I am excited to be able to play along with this months challenge, which is to use a handmade flower on your project.  

These were cans of pears.  I emptied them out from the bottom, washed them, filled them with mini snickers and taped the bottom back on.  I am putting a fancy can opening on my wish list so that I can glue the cans back on.  

I pulled a fun piece of paper from my scrap pile and cut a flower from my Cricut Flower Shoppe cartridge to jazz it up.  

Next thing I made were these:

Super simple...the best kind of project.  The one with gumballs is for his PE teacher.  It says 'Thank you for CHEWsing to teach.  Peyton has a BALL with you'.  Cheezy but cute!  

And here is a couple of the things I found while out garage saling.

I've seen so many fun ideas with crates on Pinterest that at a buck, I snagged the one above quick.  I can't decide if I want to hang it on the wall and have it be where Peyton puts his homework folder and papers, or if I want to find a spot for it in my kitchen.  The metal things are trivets.  I plan on spray painting them shiny red and then prettying up the tiles for the inside.

Thank you for stopping by!  I hope you all are having (or had) a fab weekend!

Cosmo Cricket Challenge and Catch Up

Hello all! I've been busy busy! I can't believe a week has passed!

Last week was Classified Appreciation week. I had good intentions of making something for wonderful staff at Peyton's school. But with the kids recovering from the sickies and me fighting whatever they had, I just could not get it done. I thought I'd make some brownies for the staff. Better late than never, right? So I swung by the Dollar Tree and picked up some little containers for the brownies. I saw the Cosmo Cricket's challenge for this week and thought flowers would make the containers so much prettier. Here is what I came up with:

I apologize for the bad pictures. At some point, I will find time to play with my camera and figure out how to take better pictures. My life will slow down, right?
And a close up. I cut the flower pieces out with my Cricut using the Flower Shoppe cartridge.

I doodled a line around the edge of the flowers to help them stand out a bit and glued a button for the flower center.

Here is a picture of the yummy brownies I made. Want the recipe? I'll share it soon! It is SUPER easy! I mean...SUPER easy! :-)

I have very little Easter and Spring decor. I was hoping to making something fun and new this year. But so far haven't had time. I saw an idea on Pinterest and figured it would do for now. The container was leftover from my Christmas Bazaar. It was a candlestick spray painted black with a vase glued on top.

Easy peasy and fun!

I was going through Peyton's backpack the other day and was looking at the work he had done. This is what I found:

Notice in the upper middle of the page and down the right side he wrote: I like my sister and mom becus tha cum to my sckool'. How sweet is that? It just melted my heart. I want to frame it! I have been going into Peyton's kindergarten classroom quite a bit lately. After my first couple times in the room I asked him if he was okay with me volunteering in his classroom. He said he wished I could go in there every day. He also enjoys it when Maddy comes with me. Maddy loves it and has no fear walking right into the middle of all the kids and plopping herself down right next to the other kiddos.

I have been wanting to do more crafts and projects with Peyton. I saw this idea on Pinterest and Peyton wanted to try it. We made one for each of the Grandmas and Great Grandmas.

Peyton did good for a while but lost interest fast. I think it will be little while before we attempt another project.

Looking for a new recipe? How about this one. I found it on Pinterest and tried it for the first time tonight. It was yummy! A definite keeper! If you follow me on Pinterest, I have a folder for Recipes and a different ones for recipes I have tried and liked.

I hope y'all had a great week and that your weekend is even better! Anyone have fun St. Patricks Day plans?

Cosmo Cricket Gift Bag

Wow...two days of posting in a row! I'm on a roll! Haha!

Cosmo Cricket posted a challenge on their blog to create a gift. For every project linked up, they will be donating $5 to an organization called KIVA. To see the challenge or find out more about KIVA, go to the Cosmo Cricket blog post here.

I have been seeing lots of Teacher appreciation ideas on Pinterest in the recent weeks. I have decided to send a little something with Peyton to give to his teacher every day of Teacher Appreciation week. I figured now would be a great time to get started on that! So I made a fun little bag. I'm not sure what will go inside, but there are plenty of ideas out there.
A closer up view. I used the DeLovely line from Cosmo Cricket. I should have taken a closer up as I zig zag stitched on both the top and bottom of the green piece. I cut a lot of slits and used my paper quilling tool to curl the little pieces. Up above I cut a piece from the strip tease paper. I then punched a circle and a couple butterflies to cluster up at the top. The ribbon is from the Cosmo Cricket Jack's World line.

I was visiting Izzy's blog the other day (if you haven't check it out, you really should. She is super talented). She announced she had joined the Paper Issues DT. Congrats Izzy! She also posted their current challenge and it just so happens I was able to combine it with the Cosmo Cricket Challenge! I just love it when that happens, especially when I am short on time! So I'm linking this project up to both!

The sickies have somewhat left our house I think. 3 out of 4 of us still have a nasty nose and cough. But for the most part are better. We may even venture out of the house for a while tomorrow and I CANNOT wait! I hope y'all have a great weekend! Thank you for stopping by!

Homemade Kindle Cover

Hello! I posted this Kindle cover I made in the last post. I wanted to link it up to The Weekend Wrap Up Party over at Tatertots & Jello. Instead of editing the last post, I decided to repost.

Here it is:

I live in a small town. The shopping is very limited. I often have to get creative when working on projects. This is one of those projects. I saw a tutorial on making your own Kindle cover, but lacked access to the supplies it required. So I got creative and did my own thing! I found a hardback book at the thrift store as well as some felt like batting. I happened to have some beautiful Cosmo Cricket fabric already on hand.

First I cut the pages out of the book. I then hot glued the batting to the cover, followed by the yellow fabric. I cut a piece of chipboard to fit inside and covered it with fabric also.

Before hot gluing it to the book, I punched holes using my Big Bite and put eyelets in those holes. I strung some elastic through those holes to create the straps that hold the Kindle in place. I found the elastic at a garage sale over the summer.

I then hot glued the inside of the Kindle cover to the outside.

I wanted to make some sort of closure for it. So I grabbed one of my daughters hairbands and sewed it onto the back. I found a couple buttons and sewed them on the front to give the band something to wrap around.

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Quilts, Cosmo Cricket and Kindle Cover

Hello All! First off, I want to apologize for yet more bad pictures. I'm having a hard time finding good light in the house and figuring out my new camera.

Julie over at Cosmo Cricket recently posted about quilts. It got me to reminiscing about my quilting and quilts that I have. One summer while I was home from college working I got the itch to make a quilt. I spent time at work doodling on grid paper and came up with a design (Shh...don't tell my parents, who I worked for, haha!). This is what I ended up with:

I still have fun pulling it out and looking at the pictures I put on it.

Chris (before we got together) was working at a mail and copy center I used to get my photos onto fabric. I remember walking in and thinking he was kinda cute! Now, we had known of each other a long time, but I knew his brother better and he knew my cousin better! Anyhow, that was the start of Chris and me meeting, so the quilt has extra special meaning to me!

Next is this pretty quilt:
My senior year of high school, my mom was going to make me a quilt for my dorm room. My high school band was looking at doing a fundraiser to raise money for a trip we were going to take. My mom volunteered to donate the quilt for a raffle. :-( I was quite sad, but she promised to make me another quilt. Of course I hit up everyone I knew to buy tickets. One of our families good friends, who I love to pieces, ended up winning it! I was stoked that at least someone I knew and loved won it. Guess what? She gave it back to me! :-) How cool is that? So this quilt has special meaning too!

And a close up:

Now onto Cosmo Cricket. Julie has beem posting challenges the past three weeks. Every project created for and linked to her challenge counts as $5 to a good cause. How cool is that? I think that is such a generous and kind thing to do! I have played along the last two weeks and wanted to play along this week. Julie challenged us to create a project using the color yellow. You can use whatever Cosmo Cricket products you have (fabric, papers, etc). I started out trying to make a card. I wasn't so happy with it....
See...blah.....

So I decided now would be a good time to make the kindle cover I had been wanting to make. I just so happened to have some yummy Cosmo Cricket fabrics on hand. I originally got the idea to make this cover on Pinterest. But seeing as I living in a itsy bitsy little itty bitty town and not being able to find the products she used, I ended up doing my own thing with what I had on hand!
Here it is! I took an old hard back book and cut out the pages. I then took some thin batting I bought at the thrift store and hot glued it to the cover. I then hot glued the yellow fabric on top. I flipped it over and cut a piece of thin cardboard to fit inside and covered it with a coordinating fabric. Before gluing it onto the hardback book piece, I punched holes using my Big Bite and put eyelets in those holes. Thank goodness I hadn't purged all those darn eyelets that are 10 years old! haha! I then put some elastic through the eyelets and tied knots for the elastic to stay in place. The elastic I found at a garage sale over the summer in a bag of odds and ends I bought. I am pretty sure it is vintage looking at the card it came on. 6 yards for 15 cents! I then glued the inside in. The cover kept popping open. So I decided to make a closure for it. I grabbed one of Maddy's hairbands and a couple buttons and sewed them on. Here are some more photos of it:

I had a Kindle Cover, but the elastic pieces were a PAIN to get the Kindle in and out of. So I made mine quite a bit bigger and a bit looser to make it very easy to get the kindle in and out.

I love that the picture above reflects my all time favorite decor piece I have made using the Cosmo Cricket Wanted line. :-)


Now the cover is kinda boring. I do plan on adding something. I am just home with two very sick little kiddos and not sure I will get time before the challenge ends and wanted to share this project!

I love how it turned out. The hubby was quite impressed at first, then realized it was in green and yellow and decided after all he didn't like it! Haha! On that note, GO BEAVS! And in my defense, this yellow and green is TOTALLY diffferent!

Cosmo Cricket Layout and Altered Tin

Hello all! I hope your week went well and you have something to look forward to this weekend!

I can't remember if I shared this layout already or not. Since I broke my thumb drive my photo storage system is a mess!

I used the Cosmo Cricket Circa 1934 line. The colors in the photos threw me off and this line seemed to be a great fit. The pictures are from Thanksgiving 2010. My mom wanted a picture of her, my dad and all the grandkids. I am so very lucky that my parents are so involved in all the grandkids lives and make an effort to get us all together, even though it usually means total chaos.
I pleated a little crepe paper behind the chipboard piece. I also added a couple beads to the stick pins to make them pop out more.

Have you noticed my trend lately? I have so little crafty time these days and so many different projects I want to do as well as photos to scrap. So I am creating a lot more double pagers and multi photo layouts.

Speaking of Cosmo Cricket. Have you checked out their blog lately? They have been posting challenges and for every person that plays along they will donate to a good cause. The amount and cause have changed (two challenges so far). You can see the second, current challenge here. Julie challenge us to alter a tin. I just so happen to have a good size tub of alterable items (tins, boxes, etc). I went and grabbed a smaller container and went to work. Unfortunately I didn't much time and my mojo was low. This is what I ended up with:
I filled it with caramel kisses for Peyton's gymnastics teacher. The picture is horrible...I'm sorry. We have had such off weather I am struggling at getting good pictures! I can't take anything out side as we have had so much wind I think it would blow away!

I started volunteering in Peytons class room. I have been doing it for parties, but decided to start going in at least once a week. Last week I went in twice and I did so again this week. I absolutely LOVE Peyton's teacher. She is FABULOUS! She is totally okay with Maddy going in with me too which is a huge bonus for me. Both kids LOVE going into her classroom. Peyton and Maddy ask me to go in almost every day.
Maddy does fantastic. She sits right there at the table and cuts and cuts and cuts. I don't allow her to play with scissors at home so she thinks this is pretty cool!
She even got to go with the teacher to pick up the kids from PE. She thought that was pretty cool and Peyton was pretty excited to see his baby sister come get them and lead them back to class!

That is it for now! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! The hubs and I are headed out to a yearly event we try to make it out there every year! I am SUPER excited!