Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter with family and friends! I know we did!

I had planned a bunch of crafty Easter posts, but that didn’t happen. At all. My poor crafty kid missed out on Easter crafts this year. Recovering from this surgery has taken much longer than I was expecting. I’m doing well and moving around, but my moving around is pretty slow going.

One of the Easter crafts I had planned was decorating super hero Easter eggs. But the planning fizzled and we ended up with the regular ‘ole dying technique. Then one day I came home and looky who I found in the Easter basket! Spider Man!

A couple of funnies from our day…

I don’t know what possessed me to buy Peeps this year. I don’t know if I ever have, actually. I think I was curious to see if my son would like them. He found them in his Easter basket and his first response was, ‘Hey! We can make a garland out of these!’ I love the craftiness in this kid!

The sun has been shining in Seattle. When the sun starts to shine and temps rise, the city breaks out into thinking it’s summer. Most of us forget that it won’t last for long and the rain will be back, but we enjoy it just the same. So needless to say that since we don’t see it so much, we forget what it does. As in keeping things warm. The chocolate bunny got put away ’til later… in the sun…. Oops!

OK, obviously you know that super hero’s are a big thing at our house… Well, Look what the Easter bunny brought to Momma! We needed a little girl super power going on here and especially one that has her own invisible jet! I’ve ALWAYS wants an invisible jet. And now I have one! YES!!!! And so what if the box says it’s only for 1 to 4 year olds. hmph!

We had a lot of good times this weekend. And it ended with an another Easter egg hunt with our good friends (and their crafty mom.. check out the bunny bags she had them make), good food, sun and just enjoying our families! Hope you had the same kind of weekend!

A Christmas Quilt Design for Dad

Yep, you read it right! Dad also got a quilt design, not an actual quilt,  and a bag of fabric for Christmas!

He was a bit confused when he opened his gift bag and it was just a bag of fabric. Little did he know there was a design in there too!

I’m really excited about getting this quilt made. The design, to me, is a take on the traditional log cabins. But it’s more like one huge quilt block instead of a bunch of smaller ones.

My husband also likes white sheets and white comforters. even though we don’t live a real ‘white’ lifestyle, with a 4-year-old son and big dog that loves to get on the bed when he knows he’s not supposed to!

So now I just have to get to cutting and sewing and quilting!

 

 

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Christmas in a Jar!

Alright. Alright… I said I wasn’t going to make new Christmas decoration this year, but I can’t seem to stop….

Last year, I got these jars for Christmas. Or was it two years ago??? At first I was like, what am I going to do with them?? I put away a few pictures from the shelf, added some sand and sea shells and called it cute! Then this Halloween, I realized that they were just sitting there waiting to become a part of our holiday decorating.

I had the glitter paper, the deer and my collection of cone trees. My first idea was to do each jar totally different, but then decided to go with the two deer jars. And then a little something different for the middle one.

The middle one was originally going to be a papercut of the Abominable Snow Monster.  Remember my Christmas paper cut art piece last year? Well, I realized I hadn’t done one in a year. And wanted to do another, but not a whole piece so I thought it would be perfect to do a little one for the jars. But then we came across these little candy figures of Santa and the elves at the Dollar store and the Snow Monster was out and Santa’s village was in!

And the papercut is miniature! But I love it. My husband just shook his head and smiled when he saw me cutting out each little window….

I used this pretty thick glitter paper, so it was kinda hard to get the perfect cone shape for the trees. Oh, well…. of course, it doesn’t help that it’s kinda like a Carnival Hall of Mirrors trying to photograph these trees in the jars! And the Epsom salt makes for a perfect snow theme.

I had a great time coming up with the little designs for the jars!

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The Glitter is Out for an Ornament Tutorial

If you’ve been reading since last Christmas, you know that I rarely break out the glitter unless it’s Christmas. It’s out again! And I’ve been making glitter tree ornaments.

I’m doing another swap…. Yes, another one. This one is an ornament exchange! The 5th Annual Handmade Holiday Ornament Exchange hosted by Blu Penny. I’m excited! So originally I joined thinking I’d exchange the tree ornament I made from my son’s designs, but then this idea hit me… You might already know this, but I have a growing collection of brightly colored pointy, cone trees that I decorate with. So then this seemed perfect!

The Idea started with this tree as the final product, but the making of went through a few ideas… The idea came from a bag of wooden spools I picked up at Goodwill and have proceeded to lose. I’m 99% sure I have these spools, but I can’t find them anywhere. Then I found some ‘fake’ spools and this is how I finally decided to make the ornaments.

The materials you’ll need are:

Little Foam cones

Little Wooden Spools

Mod Podge or glue

White Paint

Paint Brush

Glitter, I prefer the super fine glitter

Barbeque Skewers

Ribbon

And not pictured (I forgot) is a Loop Turner

Step 1:  First, I painted the little spools.

Step 2: Push the skewer in through the cone. This is kinda tricky, because it wants to come out through the side. So you have to work it up and straight through the middle.

Step 3: Coat the cone in the Mod Podge.

Step 4: Coat in glitter!!!

Step 5: Glue the spools onto the bottom of the cone. I kept my skewer sticking out of the tree to help locate the right position for the spool. (You can also use a hot glue gun for this part!)

Then you have this great little forest of glittery trees!

Step 6: Pull the ribbon through the spool and the cone.

Step 7: And tie a knot at the bottom of the spool and another one at the top of tree. This covers up that flat top part of the cone.

And Voila! It’s ready to hang on the tree!

I’m totally in love with these trees, but now I have to decide which of my swap partners gets which tree….

Do you decorate with these bright colors? Or are you more or a red and green traditionalist??

Be sure to check out all the ornaments in the ornament exchange flickr group for more inspiration!!

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Dear Santa, I Have a Printable Letter for You!

Have you been to see Santa yet? Have you written your letter to Santa? We did both today!

This year I made a fill in the blank letter to Santa. My son was able to fill out some parts, but others, like the gift list, I filled out for him. He was quick to mark the Nice and not the Naughty box!

If you haven’t already written your letters, click Here to download the PDF of this one!

I’ve been on the fence about fill in the blank thank you letters lately. So I’m not sure why I decided to make one for his Christmas letter, but I did and it worked out perfectly! He’s loving learning to write his letters so it was not only a cute looking letter, but a learning experience as well!

And then he got to read it to Santa. they really had a good chat about everything on his list. One thing he’s obsessed about is Spider-man and most of his list is Spider-man related toys. Santa had a good question… If he gets the web thrower, is he ready to pick up the webs it throws? He told Santa yes, but he told me that Spider-man doesn’t pick up his own webs… hmmmm… I’ll have to talk a little further with Santa on this one!

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A Sweet Holiday Hostess Candle Gift

I hope you had a chance to make it out to the Greens and Gifts Galore this weekend! As guests to the sneak preview there was another craft that we got to make that I want to share with you…

Kristin Price from KristinPotPie had this great project set up for us all to make. It could be a great gift to take as a hostess gift to your next party or just to keep (like I’m doing). A bunch of them grouped together would be a beautiful centerpiece as well. (I just thought about that as I was writing this or I would have set it up and taken pictures…)

It’s super simple!

First let’s decorate the top. I cut a circle, but my first one was too small… So I cut again. This time I made the circle larger than I needed, then set it up on the jar and trimmed it down. Cut some greens, grab some floating candles and add water. (If you are giving this as a hostess gift, you might want to wait to add the water. Just in case… You don’t want it to spill on the way to the party!) Then add some ribbon embellishments to the top and Voila!

I don’t remember exactly what the clippings we used were, but I’ll let you know when I find out!

What would you do? Keep it or give it away? Or make more than one and do both???

 

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Follow me on Seattle Blogger’s Recommend!

Ever wonder what we think about up here in the dark and rainy Pacific NW winters?? (I swear it’s darker this year than usual…) We Blog! We Pin!

This week I was asked by Mandi from Living For Pretty to be the guest ‘Pin-er’ on the Seattle Bloggers Recommend Pin Board! I’ll be pinning Christmas Crafts all week. So be sure to follow this board for all sorts of great pins.

Last week the topic was food. I soooo want to try the Goat Cheese Bacon Balls! Of course, I would! Bacon!!! Yum!

Ok, back to finding great Christmas Crafts to share!

Family Affair Christmas Ornaments

See? I told you I’d be getting into that Christmas swing here soon!

I don’t know about you, but every year growing up I made Christmas ornaments. And it seems like over the last couple  of years, I’ve revised that tradition. This year they are fabric and made from images from my husband and son.

We’ve got your typical scary alien Christmas ornaments… I mean, who doesn’t love scary ornaments? Ok, I’ve never actually had a scary ornament on my tree, but my husband and I love this image our son made, so it’s going on the tree!!  This one really was a true family affair. My son drew it, my husband silk screened it and I made the patchwork back and put it all together!

Robots? What about robots  for your tree? This is probably a bit more common than, oh, I don’t know, maybe, a scary alien… This one is actually part of a t-shirt design my husband made. But I liked it and flashes of Christmas trees were zooming through my head when he was printing them, so I had him make me some extras to turn into more ornaments!

And lastly, my favorite! My son’s rendition of a Christmas tree. wanna know a secret? According to my son, it’s actually a foot and toes, but, shhhhh… don’t tell anyone! As soon as I saw it, I thought Christmas tree, so I made it into a Christmas tree. For this one, I made two stamps. One for the trunk and one for the green pieces. Then stamped them onto the fabric, patchworked the back and put them all together!

I made a huge mess in my sewing area pulling out all the green and red and Christmas scraps I could find!

I meant to take a picture of the big patchwork piece I made to then cut out for the backs. I was actually really loving it. It would have been fun to keep going with it. Since I forgot to take a picture, you’ll just kinda have to imagine… It looked kinda like this…

Another way, an easier way, to do this project would be to print you’re child’s art, or yours or your husbands, onto a printable fabric and then cut them out from there. I did do that and then realized I’d messed up my son’s design, so I didn’t continue with that! (I need to fix it and make those.) But printable fabric is a much easier way to do this project if you don’t want to make your own stamp or start silk screening!

My son LOVES them! I’m pretty excited about them.

But we’ll see how much other people like them! I’m selling them at Twilight Artist Collective in West Seattle if you’re around West Seattle, stop by and check them out! (and buy one or two!) What do you think? Would you buy one? I’m curious if anyone else would hang a scary alien on their tree!

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you’re here in America, enjoy the holiday!

beautiful sketch by Wit and Whistle

And if you’re not in America, you can play along!

It’s so funny, I went a little overboard on the Thanksgiving themed books from the library this year and my son is so BORED with all the Thanksgiving books. But I keep reading them, because I am convinced that I am going to find one that talks about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and not just about the food we eat. I mean it is about giving thanks for our food, but there is a little bit more to the story! We found a few, but most of them just talk about eating…

And we will eat! While we think about everything we have to be thankful for.

And my son will be thankful that all these Thanksgiving books can go back to the library!

Sorry, I missed posting earlier this week! The family was sick this weekend, all of us, and this week I feel like I’ve been playing catch up. So I’m thankful that we’re feeling better! More next week!!

Modernista HomeMade Swap, Received!

And I love it! Look at all my goodies!

The first item I got totally shocked me! I so wasn’t expecting it! Honestly, I don’t exactly remember what I asked for in this swap, except for pot holders. I know I didn’t ask for anything holiday related and I don’t think I asked for a table runner. But during the swap Lee from May Chappell posted this picture of the table runner and I fell in love with it!

I ‘favorited’ it. But since I didn’t ask for holiday, I wrote it off as she wasn’t my partner. I also kinda regretted not asking for something holiday! Ha! Lucky Me! I got it anyway! Be sure to check out her tutorial!

Then it came in the mail!!! It’s awesome!

I love the quilting! And I love how the quilting shows on the back. Very cool!

The other part of my package was the pot holders I’d asked for. Our kitchen is bright green and I told her that I love bright colors.

Funny story… Our kitchen was bright green, then we remodeled and changed the green to a little darker color green, slightly toward the oliveish side, but not olive… It got dark feeling to me so we re-painted it… Ends up we repainted almost the exact same color that it originally was! Anyway….

So check out these colors! FANTASTIC!

ok, so what do you think? My old pot holder? Or the new ones??? hehehe… I think it’s time my old one moved on to the place in the skies that old pot holders retire to….