happy birthday to my niece and nephews!

Part of our summer vacation took us for to my SIL for her kids birthday! Hard to believe they are already two, hand to believe Carson is already two! She threw a cute little ice cream sundae party with pools for the little kids to splash around in. The weather was amazing! My SIL is planning on home schooling (God grant her the patients and strength for that one!) so I jumped at the chance to make them something educational. For their birthday last year I made them a cloth book about colors and one about shapes. The down fall is there are three of them and sharing at that age.... well you all have kids and you can all relate! I really liked the idea of a busy book, partly because I never finished Coltons and partly because I always have so many ideas running though my brain that its hard to nail down one design for anything. I came up with a basic idea of an ABC book  but I really didn't want to make 3. So I came up with this :

The thought it that they can either read it like a book on mom and dads lap or they can lay it down open on the floor and all 3 of them can play at one time! The pages were a combination of fabric printing and and fun interactive thing. Here are a few of my favorite pages.

The connect the dots is fabulous! It makes a bone for the dog! (I imagen sometimes I will do a whole book like this!)

The rocket slides up and down and Im pretty sure Carson did this page a few dozen times before I wrapped it up.

This one the rain moved up and down like an abacus, but my favorite part is the traffic light because it is a pocket that holds a bunch of felt vehicles that drive around the S page.

Im hoping to make a few and put them on Etsy. We will see I always make things as gift but never seem to find the motivation to put them on Etsy. I think I have a hidden fear of failing. Here are the kids enjoying time with their cousins.

We had a really good time up there. Hope we dont have to wait another year to get the kids together... now how am I going to top this cool book for Christmas :)

Im back and Coraline

So for the last few weeks it has been party after party and for some reason I have an aversion to posting all the projects that I make... I will work on that! Yesterday we went to the coolest Candy Land birthday party ever! (Isnt that an amazing theme) They had a balloon lady there who was incredible and she did neat face painting too! I didnt take a pictures of the Coraline Dress Up outfit I made miss Maddy but I will have here mom send me a picture. But I did make my first doll! I dont Do patterns, So I made if up as I went along. Minus the face painting (I think I might YouTube how to stitch faces)

I think she turned out pretty darn cute. Here is a picture of my first one I made. I totally think I might put them in my Etsy shop (Which I finally made a logo for) My goal this week is to get all my mounting piles of stuff on there.

AND look who finally decided to participate in swim lessons! Yup third times the charm!
He spent the first 15 minutes then I said "Colton, you get in there and try and we can go get the Captain America movie" He hopped right off the wall and has been fine since... Grr kids lol... and Brooklyn takes swim so serious they are trying to switch her to a more advanced class (She feels pretty proud about that!)

And I got my nephew for 5 days and that was amazing.
It breaks my heart when he talks about my brother though, but he seems to really be doing ok with it. He didnt want to leave which makes me happier still. It was alot of funny having the 5 of them together. And promptly after words Danger decided he would start having seizures again... a moms life is never in break mode for long :(

Pac man

Ok so I have been sitting around all day trying hard to KILL time... why you ask? Umm cause tonight Breaking Dawn comes out on DVD and me and my group of nerds will be there to catch the first preview... which I know will only make November seem that much further away.


But back to my post. Today while killing time I made this cute little pack of magnets for one of the kids I baby sits dad for his Valentines Day birthday.


I took an old picture box I had sitting around and put black peal and stick paper on it (Kinda looks like an old video game cartridge wink wink) Then I cut out a cute little pac man and ghost and made a little sign.


But then you open the box...
TTAAA--DDDAAAAA


Cute arnt they? They are magnets for the fridge. Two things this guy really likes, Pac Man and fridgerators... although the second like might fall in the categories of requirements but im sure he wouldnt be happy without one! Anyways, I will go continue to go sit by the clock willing it to tick faster, in the mean time you can leave me a comment about how you too are going to be sitting at target till midnight for a movie you have already seen :)


I like to brag about myself on these awesome blogs.

In the Mail on Monday

Mail makes me happy, like really really happy. I don't even care if its a bill (ok i try not to cry over spilled milk bills are inevitable so I enjoy the surprise of how much energy we wasted... errr ... enjoyed while leaving lights on:) ) But I looovvveee letters. There is something magical about opening a letter and not knowing what is inside. Earlier this year I was blessed... ok my kids were blessed with getting pen pals. Each of the 3 older kids has two pen pals. Some of our pen pals are amazing, they often write and send fun things, but a couple well... i think they enjoyed the novelty of it and the light has since faded. But that is neither here nor there. This post is to share the fun thing we Mailed On Monday! We mailed our favorite pen pals a snow ball fight!! Yup you read me right, we mailed them a snow ball fight.. because frankly the lack of snow this year has just been depressing. Here is our awesome snowball fight ready to make its voyage across this great country of our:

To make out snowballs we found a pom pom tutorial online and made a larger version of it. (Disclaimer...white yarn is INCREDIBLY hard to photograph so please accept these pictures..)
We used some white yarn and a foot. (laterally see the picture below)


First make sure your foot is clean, the wrap said yard around about 100 times (No feet were harmed in the making of these snow balls but please realize if you wrap the yarn tightly you may loose a toe)

Next remove yard ball from foot. (I do recommend using this opportunity to tickle them until the pee their pants.. because who just hands a mom a free foot and expecting tickling not to ensue?)

Moving on. Cut another piece of string about 6 inches long. Lay foot wrapped yard ball on top to the string.


Tie as tightly as you can creating a mushroom cap effect.

Fallowed by cutting loops around the tie.


Finish it up to trimming up the pom poms... errr.. snowballs.You will see a few pieces that are longer.. and if you are like me they will drive you mad.



Tada!! A pile of snowballs.


Now here you are thinking that was so amazing how in this world could we top that?! Well we can put it in an awesome package and mail it to our pen pals!!
For the container you will need


Pile of snowballs (yarn ones would be best as the real ones would surely melt)
2 plastic water bottles
sharp scissors
and packing tape

Cut the tops off the two water bottles.


Stuff the bottles with snowballs.


Slide the two pieces together and packing tape the middle. Add label and stamps (sometimes we get cranky mail people who don't like us to send fun thing, so we either ask for the manager or just go to another one.)

Tada !!

(Disclaimer 2 and 3... the snowballs will leave little stings around the house, after we sent these ones I realized it might be a big flaw if your baby eats everything off the floor, mine doesn't but to be on the safe side use a jean needle and sew a few times over the mushroom cap part. AND yes I realize my daughter is dressed like a complete creep show.. but to be fair we were on our way to taekwondo and she dressed herself. )

Sewed it on Sunday! Easy dino mittens

It doesn't snow here like it use to when I was little... this year not even a trace, hardly even a frost BOOOOO!! Yup im one of those annoying people who L-O-V-E-S snow!! It makes the world so quite and it smells so so so yummy. To this day if they think it might snow I can not sleep I get that excited (Although im the same way with carnival rides and good sales:) ) But just because there isn't any snow doesn't mean we all cant rock out with some cool mittens! I think I saw a pair like this on Pinterest... but then again what isn't on Pinterest? Either way I remembered when I was reading Danger the 3 little kittens that lost there mittens.. and I thought fat boy needs some mittens and since he spends most this time stalking around the house growling at people I figured dino mittens for sure!


Here is what you need..
Scrap fleece... enough for 4 hands
more scraps for embellishments
tiny elastic


Make dad hold baby and force him to let you trace his hand... he will give you this look but keep going despite his feelings :) (yes that is blue sharpie on his face..)



cut out your print 4 times (for this I only did one time tracing cut out on a fold then flipped it and cut out the other way on the fold)


Next make some embellishments to fit whatever kinda critter your making (note: im having Brooklyn make kitten mittens and Colton make shark ones in the morning)


Place inside with right sides facing together.

Pin and sew around.


Next measure baby's wrist... again despite his feelings go ahead and do it.. baby's can be so judge mental sometimes. I used the same amount of elastic as his wrist.


Pin end of elastic and PULL as you sew... not to much but enough to go all the way around your glove (Note: im a self taught sewing which means this might not be technically right but its what I did and it worked:) )


Fold inside right and try to get baby to put them on... after refusing convince your 7 year old to put them on and make them eat said baby... he will be making his size dinos tomorrow after school.



Make fun of baby for hating every thing you try to put on him then give him some egg nog for being a good sport.


Ta Da dino mittens, made from scraps so no real loss if you kittens loose their mittens!

11th day before Christmas break

Ok so I kept justin up making these because it was guitar night and then day care kid was here way to late (ps keep your eyes out for a im a door mat post that may be coming soon ...) So anyways I got so lost on the time I forgot to take a picture and then we were out the door, so just close your eyes, yup just like that, oh wait then how well you read this? ok take two :) try to Imogen if you will two red felt stockings made by a 7 year old (they were actually cut and glued really well) we used glue and glitter to make the teachers initials and fluff on the top. Then we filled it with 4 red pen, 2 red sharpies, 2 red dry erase and a really cute snowman pen that poped off when you pushed a button! And here was out tag.




He has been so excited to do this and the report back from him after school has been priceless. His favorite teacher it just a ham and fake crys with happiness everytime :)


And if you are keeping up with my last 27 days of being 27 Im up to #14. Reflecting back this last week my favorite random acts have been the post office trip, leaving boxes of nerd candys on my nerdy neighbors porch, handing candy canes out randomly (the best one was to a guy on his bike at a red light. He was waving through the window at Carson so I handed him and candy cane and he handed it to the guy... it was so sweet!! I picked up some umbrellas at the dollar tree because when it rains you always see those people and think man I bet they wish they had an umbrella... but so far its been crazy cold and no rain (not complaining about no rain but I am about to complain about the lack of snow and abundance of 32' weather.)

Pokemon Cube

I saw the cutest thing in the world on Etsy while looking for party stuff for Colton. He is way into super heros, mostly captain America and I thought this was awesome. But then Justin came home from school talking about how good he was at the Rubik's cube at school. So I decided to see if I could recreate The one I saw on Etsy but with pokemon (since that and harry potter are all he talks about any more) And this is what I got!





And here is how I did it:

$1 tree cube
Mod Podge
Index cards
Computer images of pokemon




First peel the stickers off the cube the shiny parts on mine came right off and I didnt worry about the white part underneath, but feel free to pick it off if you so choose but remember you will probably need goo off.
Then I got online and made some 2.5 inch squares and added favorite pokemon to them and printed them out.


Note: I printed them out on index cards because I ran out of card stock but they worked so much better then card stock because they were heavier so it worked out perfect!


Next I sat the block on the pictures and marked all the cuts

Then I cut them out (not after the first two I realized I needed to trim each piece down so it would spin, so make your image about 1/4 and inch smaller on your cube.

Mod Podge on the cube and add pictures.


I Mod Podged the top of it too, (however I think Im going to get the glass kind next because the mat wasnt as pretty but I also think if your making it for older kids you could probably just leave it paper)


Ta-Da


This was so fast and so easy and only $1 that its going to become one of my staple gifts for sure. I have seen them done with pictures... maybe if the real cubes go on sale soon I will give that a try!