LOVING This Crochet Pattern

For the last week I have fallen in love with a sweater pattern from Joann's. Fast, easy, and cute. I finished my first one last week, almost finished with my second and can't wait to start a third. I have so many friends having babies, that I hoping to get a few crocheted up with matching hat and booties before then. Too much fun. I'm also wanting to implement a bit of applique and embroidery on it as well.

Great Idea!

           I  read an article at plumpudding.com where she shared this awesome embroidery idea. It's so funny too, because this weekend when I went to my mother in law's home she has all the plaster hand prints that her kids made for her in kindergarten, as well as her husband's when he was in kindergarten. I thought how cool it was to see all the different shapes and sizes of hands, wondering if every mom is destined to get one of these for mothers day. I'm not a lover of the plaster look, and so I loved the way these turned out. Plus I can definitely make some of my own from my children's hands before they grow up and in case I miss out on the plaster kind. :)

Crowned

           Like I've said... I've been having way too much fun crocheting. The girls were invited to a birthday party for one of their friends tomorrow and so we've been trying to come up with some handmade birthday presents to avoid spending any money. Using up what we already have on hand. I ran across this pattern on raverly. (Raverly is way too cool and way too addicting. There are too many cute things you can find on there.)
           So we thought we'd give it a spin and make one for a birthday present since Savannah informed me that her friend doesn't have very many crowns. I modified the pattern a bit and of course everyone had to try it once before we gave it away.
           There's something satisfying about picking very small projects to work on. You can do them fast and they actually get finished! Of course we're going to have to make a few more of these in endless colors. :) I thought they might be cute too with different felt shapes, or flowers sewn on the front, or even personalize them with some names embroidered on the front as well. We're hoping today we can finish up the other part of the present - play food.

Our weekend project

           Thanks to Mandy we couldn't hold out any longer and had to create our own animals. The girls had drawn these pictures up at the beginning of the week and kept asking me all weekend if I had sewn their "tiger" and "turtle" yet.
           I finally just bit the bullet and made them up this weekend. Bad idea. Now I'm addicted too. They were just too fun to put together and see the little drawings come alive. At first Beau kept looking at my cutting and sewing asking me what I was doing. Then a few minutes later asking me again "now what are you doing?" I'd reply I'm making some stuffed animals from the kid's drawings. He couldn't quite get the vision.
           Until the next morning when Mirian ran up to him after he got home for his early morning all excited to show him "her" tiger. Then his response has been "these are really cool" "you did a great job honey" "these are just too fun." Mirian then declared that mom was going to be making "him" into a pillow to give him. A few weeks ago she drew a picture of mom on one side of the paper and dad on the other side of the paper and gave it to us declaring that she had made a picture of us going on a date. It was just too cute and the pictures are too fun. So I saved it, and mentioned to her that we should make them up into some pillows. Beau asked me if it was going to be reversible. On one side his face and the other side my face just like she drew it. :)
           I have to admit I thought they would enjoy seeing it made up, but I wasn't really prepared to see how excited they were and how proud they were of it. Once Savannah saw Mirian's tiger done up, she could hardly contain herself and couldn't wait for me to do her turtle. She had to take things in her own hand and sew on a few of the spots herself so it could be made faster. She also wanted to take it to show and tell for school. Since the theme for the day was "something with words that you can read", we had to be creative. I had her write Lizzy the Turtle (what she named it) on her drawing so she had the words, and then took both of them. That way she met the criteria and she could show her drawing and her stuffed animal mom had made her. I'm sure we'll be making more. In fact it gave me some great ideas for cheap decorations in my kitchen and in their bedrooms.
           What I'm really wanting to do now is make some personalized dolls for everyone. Especially for Caitlyn. Isaac will hopefully get his monster made soon. (Savannah drew one up). I'm also wanting to embroidery a bunch of their drawings on some tea towels for some grandmothers. I think it's just too much fun and a great way to use these piles of drawings we have laying around.

Homemade Love

           It's that time of year again to share a little love with those around you. I have forgotten what a big deal it is in elementary. The time to get valentines for all your classmates and the huge party with the excitement of opening up all of yours...

           We decided to make ours this year. I thought these owls looked cute from Crafty Crow, and so we pulled out our construction paper and went to work. I cut out the basic shapes and the kids put their personal touches on it by gluing them together. Even Isaac made some cute ones!
           If you don't want to make your own.. here are some really cute free printable ones from secret agent Josephine.
Here's some cute ones for your teenagers from gauchogirl.
           Also one of my favorite crafts from ScrapGirls are these fortune cookies from Erica Hite. They are cutest things done up and work great for Valentines Day.
           There is just something fun about making your own valentines though. Savannah was so excited to make them for her classmates. In fact while she was making them I saw a part of her come out that I new partially existed.
           She is very creative, and can come up with all kids of things. It's amazing what she can construct from a roll of masking tape. She definitely inherited her creative side from her mom... but then I saw her dad pop out in her while she was making her owls.
           I was telling her she needed to get going because she had A LOT of owls to make for the kids in her class. Well that clicked inside her head, and suddenly her analytical, systematic, orderly, engineer part of her came out. She created her own assembly line. Bodies first, then eyes and all the parts... then she wrote a number on the top of each one. When I asked her why she was writing numbers on them, she gave me this "duh mom" look and replied, "So I know how many I've made and how many more I need to do." This girl is in kindergarten! She might end up being a genius just yet. Creative and artistic, as well as being analytical and an engineer.

Stop Me Now!

           I ran across this site called Spoonflower... and boy I should have never went there. It has my brain going and has me itching like crazy to try designing my own fabrics. Lately I've been getting back into sewing. My mom loves to sew all kinds of things and I think it would fun to work with her and come up with some cool fabrics she could use in her sewing projects and quilt making. The possibilities.
           So I wanted to check out really quickly how it worked, so I uploaded a fast .png I had on my computer of a cowboy from Mandy's Wild West Collection, and ended up with this.


           Which could be so cute! I have some little nephews that are all cowboys! This would be so fun to make something like this up, with some of her other cute little drawings like horseshoes, stick horses etc, and possibly change the background colors to something besides white. (Note: If using images from digital scrapbook collections you have purchased, you could only print the material out for your own personal use. You could not sell it in any way - in a project you made or the fabric itself. You also could not make it public in Spoonflowers design viewer and claim it as your own.) But the possibilities out there. Create your own drawings. Have your kids draw their own patterns.

           Here's another quick sample using a paper of Erica's from her Bouncing Baby Boy Collection. If you used a 12 x 12 paper, and uploaded it it will be big enough for a fat quarter when it's made 150 dpi.
           This excites me because I was trying to find fabric I loved for curtains that would match my green walls we just painted. 5 stores later - I could find nothing... so I had to result to solid cherry red, which I am excited about. (Bizarre color combo I know... but it's looking really good.) But now I could have designed my own!
           I have to admit that I am super cheap. So their price per yard holds me back. Which is probably a good thing so I don't go crazy with it. But I was thinking that I might be able to create a design that is the size of a yard of fabric which is divided into 4 coordinating fat quarter designs, that could be printed on one yard for $18, rather than $44 dollars for 4 seperate fat quarters. I'm not sure yet if that would work since it has to be under a size limit. But I'm going to try.
           The only other way I can justify that much is if I have my one yard of designed fabric, and color match it with just solid cotton fabric that I can get for $2-3 dollars a yard with a 40% on top of that - meaning $1 - $1.50 a yard. Then for 3 yards of fabric I could create a matching project for roughly an average of $5.50 a yard... plus I'd have the exact colors I want, the design I want... hmmm the girls bedroom which is soon to be redone is calling my name I think! :)
           Here's Kal's designs she had posted on her site which are think are so much fun!

Frozen Goodness

           Today was a good day. A really good day. Reading books, playing "Don't Eat Pete", dance class, wrestling, playing and enjoying being together. Our favorite part of the day was our Creative afternoon of "frozen goodness."
           I read about a fun idea of painting with ice cubes. You could either freeze liquid tempera paint and put a stick in it and then paint with it, or use the technique we tried out today.
           I used some cheap kids watercolor paper and had the kids color their paper with water solvable markers. We then used ice cubes to paint and turn it into watercolors. The kids just ate it up, they couldn't stop! We tried using watercolor pencils first, but they didn't work as good as the water soluble markers.
           Isaac was so in to it. He actually ended up creating some pretty fun pictures too when he was done. He would color, paint his picture and then exclaim loudly, pointing to his picture "look!" showing it off so proudly. It was a great time. Lots off fun. A little messy but worth it!
           After that we decided to take advantage of the tons of snow we've been getting lately and make some the snow ice cream I read about.
           It was our first attempt. I didn't know for sure what kind of consistency it was supposed to have when it was all done, but it turned out pretty good. Yummy and just a fun activity for those snowy days!
           I've been trying to slow down more and have more fun with my kids, and although it hasn't been perfect lately... it's been so much better and we've been having such a great time when we relax and hang out together!

Loving These

           I keep giving myself the excuse that I don't have time to post on the blog right now because I need to get something else done. Well I'm not listening to that little voice. I'm posting something. I need to post something so I can get back in the regular habit of doing it. Plus I've had so many things in my mind for posts that I have a list now. I need to get started.
           First off can I tell you Erica how much I LOVE THESE! I can't get enough of them. I've been having so much fun playing with her new planner templates as I slowly try to get control of my life and get things planned. It makes me smile everytime I open up my planner now and try and figure things out for the week. They are amazing and so much fun. You have to try them out. I used her ScrapSimple Digital Layout templates: Plan On It and her Nessa Collection which is just too much fun for these planner templates.

           I also got the Oriental Trading company's catalog for Scrapbooking Supplies. Yes did you know they now sell scrapbooking supplies? What next? But they have some pretty cool stuff in there, and although I am NOT a paper scrapper, there are some things that I do enjoy making. One of those being books, albums and crafts.
           I have avoided it forever actually because I hate MODPODGE (I don't even know how to spell it I hate it so bad.) I always get paint brush strokes in it, a glossy look on my beautiful paper and bubbles where I didn't lay it down smoothly. Well I finally gave in when my mom needed about 50 notebooks covered and decorated and went and bought me a Xyron machine for adhesive/stickers with my 40% coupon off. Can I tell you how amazing it is, and how in love I am with it. We did her 50 books in a couple of hours (with a family assembly line, but it would have taken us days with ModPodge. ) I can now whip it out when I want to cover things for home decorating, or for albums, all kinds of wonderful stuff. I now enjoy crafting and making things! It's fast, easy and not messy! Yeah!
           So when I opened oriental trading up today and saw these fun Chipboard Albums just waiting to be covered, I got all excited about the possibilities. This one is my favorite right now. I'm just dying to do something with it.

           A recipe card album. You could make some pretty cool things with this and Brandie's Recipe card templates.
           The reason I' m so excited is that I've been using her templates for the last couple for months to make cute scripture memorization cards. I've had a goal to memorize some scriptures, the Proclamation to the Family, and my patriarchal blessing. So I've been making these cards to put them on. I have then been taping them on the wall above the sink to memorize while I've been washing dishes. It has been going well, but I've wanted a more permanent place for them, so that I could have a collection of them. That way I could see my progress and flip through them while washing dishes and review the ones memorized. I finally found it today! I can't wait to get one ordered and made.