Simple Spring (& Summer) Mantle

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Jennifer

We recently had company coming over and an empty mantle so I looked around the house for some materials to make something.

I had recently ordered several $5, 8 x 10 canvases for our house from an online company. The pictures were from my brother’s wedding last summer so I thought they would work on the mantle for now until I put them up on the wall at some point.

I had an old sewing hoop which I covered in green fabric. I then glued on some yellow ric- rac around the edge. Finally I made some fabric flowers using some leftover fabric.

Searching through my crafting supplies I found some felt and decided to make some small banners with it. I created 3 separate banners but hung them up together.

I like the bright colors for spring / summer.

*On a side note, Sherwin Williams is having a 40% off paint sale this weekend*

**My husband is absolutely delighted with this fact**

***OK, that last thing was a lie. He’s worried, oh so worried.***

LEGO Birthday Banner

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Jennifer

My daughter turned 6 awhile ago and for the first time ever we were able to have a family party. My siblings and parents as well as my husband’s sister and parents all live in different parts of the US and Canada so we rarely have family at parties.

When my sister gifted our family a sking trip to Canada over spring break I knew it was my opportunity to have family members at Caroline’s party. We were lucky to have my sister, her boyfriend, my husband’s sister, her husband, and their two sons at the party. What? COUSINS at a party? Yippee!

Caroline wanted a LEGO party so that’s what we had in the hotel room.

Caroline and I worked to make this banner a few weeks before the party.

We used felt we already had and cut out squares and circles that we then glued into LEGO pieces.

I then made the girl lego head out of more felt.

We glued the whole thing together and had a banner for the party – our only decorations.

For the party we had LEGo bingo, a LEGO scavenger hunt, an awesome LEGO cake (made by her aunt and uncle), a race to build LEGO sets, and we took a dip in the pool. It was about 25 degrees outside when we jumped into the heated pool – it was great….until we had to get out and run for the door absolutely freezing our tails off.

Happy 6th Sweet Girl!

A Little Girl Bathroom – Under the Sea

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Jennifer

This is the bathroom that took 3 years to complete – did we do any major repairs? did we take out the tub and sink? Did we redo the floor?

No. No. And no.

We painted, hung a shelf, and made some art.

3 years people. 3 years.

It’s totally my fault, I hit a wall on the project so it just stopped.

Let me explain.

When we started this project my daughter was three and wanted a Little Mermaid themed bathroom. I knew she would quickly grow out of that so I decided on a whimsy ocean theme.

The plan was to make stripes on the back wall alternating between white and light blue.

My sweet husband worked on this for a couple of days.

When it was finished I liked it but the pencil lines going across the wall really bothered me as did the raised paint lines. I’m normally not so picky but this for some reason really irked me.

As the painting was wrapping up I was laying out random frames we had – soon after I spray painted them bright yellow.

I used light weight denim material and covered pieces of cardboard which were the sizes of the frames.

I found some walls decals on etsy and just printed out the pictures from the listing to create an outline of the sea creature I wanted to use.

I completed almost all of the art when I came across a problem with the turtle art above – this was the only piece where I used the actual back of the frame to glue the denim to and now the art would not fit back into the frame. I did not have any left over denim fabric since it was left over from another project.

So the project stalled.

For two years.

The stripes stayed and the wall art sat on my bedroom floor.

And there it sat until Christmas time this year and I wanted to get this project -DONE. I ended up tossing the turtle art and not using him and my husband sanded down the wall and we just put a coat of white paint on the wall. The art wall is white while all the other walls are light blue.

Here’s the final product. I love it.

Some of the pieces received a little yellow bow.

I glued on some yellow rick rack to create jellyfish tentacles and some stripes on the fish.

Next time, I’ll show you how we (read: my husband) made this mermaid shelving unit.

And to my husband – Thank you for everything you did to make this bathroom so special for our daughter!

2015 Family Words

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Jennifer

Last week I shared our 2014 family words and today I’m going to share with you our 2015 words.

For the canvases last year we used colorful magazine clippings but I decided to try and make it a little different (and easier) this year by just using paint for the undercoating.

I gathered all of the blue and green paints we had and explained that each person was going to choose several colors from this palette and cover their canvas with it.

All five of us sat at the table on a cold and rainy morning in our pajamas and painted for an hour.

It was my version of heaven.

It was so interesting to just sit and listen to the kids talk about why they chose their word for the year.

After letting the paint dry, we picked through the stickers we had to create our words and names. I then spray painted the canvases with white paint. Once dry I peeled off the stickers.

A few days after making our word canvases I said to Caroline would you like to try some cinnamon toast? She gave me this pitiful look and said, “Mooooooommmmmm, when I said try for my word I didn’t mean to try new foods I meant to try new activities.”

Now keep in mind this kid has eaten cinnamon bread before and loved it.

“You don’t have to eat the whole thing, you could just try it.”

“Maybe later but I just can’t right now.”

She later ate 2 pieces of cinnamon bread and loved every bite. On her own time. When she was ready.

I’m thinking maybe her word for the year should have been “go with the flow,” or “don’t make trouble just for troubles sake, ” or even, “every once in awhile just agree with your mother.”

But for now she’s sticking with “try” for 2015.

Do you have a word or a family motto for the year? I’d love to know.

2014 Family Words of the Year & Our Wall of Pictures

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Jennifer

Last year was the first year each member of our family came up with a “word” for the year.

The word each person chose was entirely up to them, although I did provide the 4 yr old with some choices.

The idea is that the word is supposed to be one of the things they want to focus on for the year. Kind of along the lines of a resolution.

Our words are hanging on a large corkboard which I found at the Habitat store for $4. I then glued on some left over fabric (burlap with gold circles) and placed our word canvases on there with push pins. I then took pictures we had printed out already and let the kids pin those up.

It’s literally my favorite thing in my house.

Here’s a close up look at the canvases and how we made them. The idea is based off the same project I saw on Shannan’s blog. We’re not really friends. I just like to pretend we are so I call her by her first name 🙂

The project starts off with scraps of magazines – the best in my opinion are the Boden catalogs because of the vibrant colors – I spent a couple of nights watching tv and cutting out different patterns and colors.

Then we hodged podged the heck out of those scraps onto a 9 x 12 canvas.

Once Caroline was done, I went back over hers with the hodge podge several times since she was rocking about 4 layers in some parts.

Once the whole front was covered, we used old science fair sticky letters we already had and placed our words onto the canvas. I then spray painted the canvases (I initially painted my with white acrylic paint but liked the look of the spray paint better) and then peeled off the stickers.

Can I just stop for one minute and say that this kid “DID” 2014.

Signed up for the Geography Bee all on his own, finished the school year with awesome grades, made the school band he wanted to, became a leader on his soccer team, made the state meet in summer swimming, made the region band, joined the school pentathlon team all on his own, ran for the cross country school team, and so much more!

Middle school really agrees with him. So proud.

It’s funny how you start out the year thinking your word will mean one thing and it really ends up meaning something else. I thought my word would mean to find the courage to travel to Ethiopia but what it really meant was to find the courage to be around those who could add to their families. With each person who told me they were pregnant the pain of our loss really struck home again. While happy for them I found it just brought out sadness for me.

Courage for me this year was finally visiting my sister who had a new baby and experiencing that joy with her. I went back and forth and back and forth about making plane reservations but what I kept coming back to was my word for the year: courage.

I could do it. I needed to do it. So I did it. And it was wonderful.

Next week I will share with you our 2015 words.

It should be interesting to see what path those words take us on.

2015 Free Dowloadable Calendar

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Jennifer

Well, it’s been awhile.

Between the kids activities, working, and my vow to get off the electronics to spend time with my husband at night, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for this space.

But I am going to try to post more often.

Over the holidays I searched for a 2015 calendar but couldn’t find anything I liked – simple, but with color – so I made my own.

I think it’s kind of fun.

I’ve hung ours on a clip board in the kitchen and have already started filling it up.

In the bottom section (the part that says 2015) we are going to write down something special that someone in the family wants to do. For example, my 9 year old wanted everyone to participate in a darts tournament (at our house) so that will be our special event for the month. Next month, someone else gets to choose something fun. Now I need to go write that on the calendar so I don’t forget.

You can click here to download the calendar for your personal use.

I’ll be back soon to share with you our family words for 2015.

Hopefully it will be before 2016.

Halloween Pillows Made by Kids

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Jennifer

I was walking through the store the other day when I found orange polka dot napkins on clearance. I decided to pick up a few since I thought they would make some fun Halloween pillows.

My 5 yr old and 9 yr old decided on Halloween silhouettes they wanted to paint onto the fabric. We then used the tracer to transfer the image onto the pillow. My son used a Sharpie which promptly bled through the think material onto the wall – yay!

My 9 yr old then painted his image with fabric paint staying inside the lines as best he could. For the 5 yr old, I decided to place blue painter’s tape around the image to help her.

I was planning on keeping the pillows in their original square shape but then realized they would have been huge. So we decided to cut around the shape, leaving room to sew the edges.

They chose to use a Halloween fabric we already had for the back of the pillow.

After they sewed around the edges, stuffed the pillows, and closed the last opening we were done!

Now here’s the thing. These will never make the cover of House Beautiful or any decorating site but my kids loved making them and love seeing them on the sofa. Every time they walk by the pillows they try and fluff them or stand them upright. and you can just see their sense of pride.

But here’s actually my favorite part of this whole project…

…their names written in permanent marker. Nothing sweeter than little kid handwriting.

Happy Halloween!

She is Fierce: Bedroom Art

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Jennifer

Anyone who knows my four year old knows that she has a mind of her own.

I present to you one of her latest self chosen preschool outfits as a small piece of evidence.

So when I came across the Shakespeare quote, “And though she be but little, she is fierce,” I knew it described Caroline and it would be perfect somewhere in her room.

One day while the boys were at school Caroline and I made this sign:

Here’s how we made it:

We found a board in the garage that was roughly 1 1/2 ft by 3 1/2 feet and gathered some paints. Since this is going in her “rainbow room” we grabbed an assortment of colors.

We then slapped on some color with the foam brushes, pausing after each color to dry the paint with the hair dryer.

“Please don’t touch the hair dryer it’s hot.”

Aaaaaand we touch it anyway.

I’m thinking maybe I should make another sign that says, “And though she has good hearing, she chooses to ignore most of what her momma says.”

After we had covered the entire board with bright colors I took some gold paint and randomly placed it on the board and completely around the edges.

I then found some leftover vinyl letters that we used on science fair boards several years ago and fashioned them into the letters we needed. I cut the letters and number below to create “she.”

Once all of the letters are arranged the way you would like them, peel the stickers off and place them onto your board.

For the last step, I spray painted the entire sign white. Once the sign is dry, peel off the letters to discover the fun design underneath.

The sign is now sitting on Caroline’s bed frame waiting to be hung up

Describes her perfectly.

Man I love that kid.

Independent. Spirited. FIERCE.

A Colorful Bedroom Wreath

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Jennifer

My name is Jennifer and I am a craft materials hoarder.

When you are a craft materials hoarder it’s easy to say, “This project didn’t cost me anything.”

At least that’s what I tell my husband.

He is well aware that at some point in the past five years we’ve paid for these materials but he chooses to go along with my “free projects.”

I’m pretty sure we’ve found the key to a successful marriage.

Not sure where I accumulated all of these materials from but I’m thankful I did.

Wrap a wreath in fabric strips and secure with glue gun.

Make rosette flowers with fabric scraps.

Make felt flowers with felt leftovers.

Have a few extra buttons lying around?

Go crazy and glue them on.

Arrange and rearrange until you get it just right.

Then use that glue gun very liberally.

Free decorative wreath for my daughter’s bedroom.

Score one for craft material hoarders everywhere!

Caroline’s Room Plan

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Jennifer

Whenever we paint around here my 4 year old gets super excited and asks if we are going to paint her room next.

Since nothing in her room has really changed since she was born (minus the crib change out for a big girl bed) and she’s getting ready to turn five (sniff sniff), I decided now was a good time to redo her room.

She settled on a rainbow theme.

Less than thrilled I went with it but really like what we’ve pulled together.

And by pull together I mean found around the house and made.

Besides the paint color (75% Repose Gray), ceiling paint (white), and the main fabric the big project in her room, I used what we already had. (Gramma will be throwing in a new comforter set once we get to that point – thanks Mom!)

And guess what?

I’m really excited with everything and so is she.

So here’s the basic plan which I put together after I had completed about half of the projects.