Hairpin Tin

A spiffied-up Altoids mints case to hold my daughter's bobby pins and hairpins for ballet. This will make my life so much easier! This will go in her Christmas stocking, so shhhhhh!

I free-handed the embroidery on felt. Other tools: my good ol' pinking shears and trusty E-6000 glue.

Owl Ornament Frames

Hi blog, remember me?

I painted some little owl ornaments my boys got in their stockings once upon a Christmas Past. I followed the craft wood outlines only vaguely and looked at a photo of a great horned owl for coloring.

Hangin' on the tree

(This is the first time I've had an artificial tree since childhood.

I have mixed feelings, but boy, is cleanup easy!)

Before the paint job, hanging from the boys' stockings.  Santa originally thought the boys would want to paint them themselves, but in the end they asked me to do it... 5 years later!

Excellent bird!

http://fineartamerica.com/products/captive-great-horned-owl-bubo-raymond-gehman-greeting-card.html

They're almost camouflaged on my counter!

Mod Podged Halloween Frames

I'm not big on scary Halloween, but I love costumes! Most years we do a family theme (and they're often based on the year's current school theme). We love to look back at all the costumes we've had in the past. This is a great way to display them and decorate at the same time. Inspired by Carrie's Christmas frames here. 

These are made from inexpensive, unfinished craft store frames. I painted the edges of the frames, then Mod Podged them with scrapbook paper. I distressed some of them with stamp pads. There is a frame for every year so we can look back at all the fun Halloween costumes we've had. The year is printed on each photo.

This is how I have the frames set up for this year. I'm working on last year's Halloween photo right now.

 (There's bad lighting in my family room, even in the middle of the day)

I like how the white distressing turned out on this frame. The framed photo is a good example of what to do if you didn't get a great family picture where everyone was smiling and holding still at the same time, as I didn't that year. I just collaged individual photos into one.

Leonardo Tees

I made these Vitruvian Man t-shirts for the kids for Christmas since we studied Leonardo da Vinci in homeschool. He became somewhat of an icon for us.

I used freezer paper stencils (tutorial on MADE) cut out by my SIL & BIL's handy-dandy Silhouette machine (I think I need one of those... Oh, the possibilities!).

I used the same cut twice - once each for the image and reverse of the image. I like the way both of them turned out. This also helps the kids keep track of their shirts.

I made a few sets of these for cousins, too. I tried doing a few with spray paint instead of fabric medium paint, but it turned out so badly I had to start over. I tried fabric spray paint, too, but I was not pleased with the results. I guess I need more practice. For now I'll stick to the traditional method.

If only we had these shirts when we went to the Leonardo Museum a few months ago!

Scripture Brief Cases - Missionary Style

I finally made the boys some scripture/church cases. This is another one of those projects that has been a couple years in the making. I knew I wanted some manly briefcase-style scripture totes, but I didn't find the unfinished cases I wanted until just a couple weeks ago (Hobby Lobby for about $7, if I remember right. AND, by the way, Alexander's already needs a new latch!).

Once I had the right cases I still didn't know what I wanted them to look like. I knew I wanted their names on the outside and the missionary name tag popped into my mind. Then the whole shirt and tie just came together after that. I already knew I wanted some fun patterned paper, although I had considered vinyl for a leather look. My mom and I had fun making the name tags in Photoshop from an image of a real missionary tag. Then we put the kids' names on them in a font that turned out to be surprisingly authentic-looking (after a bit of stretching). FYI, I blurred out the last names for privacy on the www.



The white paper is textured so perfectly. It looks like a woven shirt. I had such a hard time with the Mod Podge, though! You can see I got wrinkles in all three papers, even though they were of various thicknesses. What's up with that?

 These scripture cases were the boys' Easter present from me. They found them under their Easter baskets.

I wish I could say I have some really cute pictures of my kids in their Sunday best holding their missionary scripture cases. And lovely photos of the interiors, all neat and organized with the perfect-sized 6x9" writing/drawing tablets, writing utensils, and scriptures all tucked inside. All those have really existed at one or two points in the last week and a half, I just don't have the pictures to prove it. I could wait and post this after (and if) the stars align and I get some awesome pictures later. But my blogging has been so sparse lately that I think I'll just post it as-is. So you have these photographic gems to look at:
:)

P.S. Did you spy what the Easter Bunny brought me? No, not Pat the Bunny and a wooden castle. Those are Ivory's. 

Feminine Flower Brooch/Hair Clip

Remember my feminine flower headband from last year? This morning I needed a pin for my sweater so I whipped this up in a minute or two. So easy! The silk flowers came from a craft store closeout I went to last year. (Zim's—it was the craziest place, like I stepped into a time machine and went back to a craft store of 25-30 years ago.)



All that's needed for this project (besides the flower, of course) is an alligator clip, a brooch pin, and a little hot glue. Most of the time spent on this project was waiting for my mini glue gun to heat up.



Here's my 34-week pregnant belly with the brooch/hair clip and headband set.



Maybe I should save some of these flowers for the baby girl!



I like the flower as a hair clip because I can place it lower in my hair than the headband. When I wear the headband to church I feel like I'm blocking the view of the person sitting behind me!



Speaking of flowers, I'm really enjoying Grograin's month of Shoe Sugar. I need to make some of these! I also want to make more homemade flowers like the one I made for Melanie's purse last year.

Feminine Flower Headband

There seem to be flowers popping out of little girls' hairdos everywhere these days. But there's no reason for the under-aged to have a monopoly on this trend!



One afternoon I found myself in need of something special to dress up my hair for an event I was attending that evening. I had this project in my stash so I pulled it out and whipped it together in less than five minutes. Seriously.


I love it. I can wear it on a casual date night, to book club, to church, or to a formal event. And, heck, why shouldn't I wear it to the grocery store, too?



You only need three items for this project:
1. Silk flowers
2. Headband - I got these simple, black metal headbands in a 3-pack for a couple bucks at Hobby Lobby
3. Floral tape. A ribbon would work as well.

Now place your flowers on the headband and secure the stems with the floral tape.

Move over, little girls: you WISH you were 30!

A Cowboy Needs A Costume

I made these costumes for the cowboy section of our "Wild Wild West" homeschool year theme. These costumes started with vests, and evolved from there over the course of a couple months. I decided to post all the parts of the costumes together in one big post instead of doing several small ones.


1. Monkey One's cowboy vest. Corduroy, lined with cute cowboy quilting fabric (which will also be making an appearance in the cowboy quilt we're making right now. More on that later)


2. Monkey Two's cowboy vest in denim, lined with a more cutesie cowboy fabric. I decided to add the pockets afterwards. And look! I never got around to putting the buttons on. Oops. He's been wearing it just the same.


3. Chaps


3a. Monkey One's "woolly" chaps made from faux fur. He helped make these:


Cutting


Sewing


3b. Monkey Two's chaps made from a cowprint velboa.


4. Did you notice the belt buckle on Monkey Two? Here are both of them together. We painted them onto wooden disks from the craft store, then pinned them onto their chaps belts.


4a. Monkey One paints the finish onto his belt buckle. He chose the design he wanted after we looked at some samples. Then he painted the gray background before I painted on the design.


5. Spurs
Made from vinyl, kids craft foam covered with some shiny silver fabric (though next time I would leave the shiny fabric out), paper crafting brads, hot glue, thread, and jingle bells to give it some "jingle jangle jingle."

This was before we got cowboy boots. I wish I could say the spurs are nice and sturdy, but they fall apart a lot and I just glue them back together. I never have much luck with hot glue!

Monkey One cuts out a spur


6. Cowboy boots for Monkey Two
I got the idea for these from some cute little furry lined infant slippers that Target used to carry. These are made from thin vinyl with a soft backing. They have fringe along the back, some fun stitching, and there is a jingle bell sewed on where spurs might go. They close with Velcro behind the fringe. I'm quite proud of these, except that they don't stay on very well. I think they need some sort of cinching around the ankle. But for an infant with limited mobility they work fine. And they're darn cute, if you ask me.

I actually made some similar ones for my first little monkey when he was two. I had the same problem with them coming off. I wish I could find them so I could post a picture.





There you have it! My cute boys with their cowboy costumes. The nice thing about these costumes is that they can wear them with whatever shirt and pants happen to be clean at the time. A hat and bandanna helps, too.

The following is a little embarrassing, but it's about the costumes and it's really fun. So I'll share. We made up an additional verse to the Disney 1950's A Cowboy Needs A Horse short. Our new verse lists a shirt, vest, belt, chaps, bandanna and adventure log (Monkey One's school journal). We made our own fun video of the whole song, which you can see here, if you like. But I warn you, I'm not much of a singer. Be sure to watch after the credits for a smashbang finish of an outtake.

A Cowboy Needs A Horse Movie