Teacher Appreciation - DIY Flower Vase

This week is teacher appreciation week, so each day we will be doing something special for David's teachers.  Today we made a vase of flowers for both of his teachers.  I picked up some tulips at Publix and some craft sticks at the Dollar Store.  I had everything else on hand already.

What you'll need:

Glue gun and glue sticks
An empty can (you see two below because I had two vases to make) - empty and washed
Craft sticks
Emblishments (buttons, fabric, ribbons, etc)

Hot glue the craft sticks to the outside of the can.  I used a tiny dot on both ends of each stick.  I placed the first stick on the can (so it would be straight up and down and not crooked) and David put the rest of them in place after I added the hot glue to each stick.

Next, pick out whatever embellishments you want to use.  David picked out the ribbons and told me where to place them.  I added the ribbons since it was more possible to burn little fingers using the ribbons.  I also added some buttons using hot glue.

The finished project.  

DIY - Football Poster

This Sunday is our pep rally for all of the Chelsea Football/Cheerleaders. I decided to make a big poster of David to hang on the fence at all of our home games (starting with the pep rally tomorrow).

I didn't find this idea on Pinterest, but it should be there. Slightly obsessed with Pinterest, by the way.

What you will need:

- 20x30 poster on photo paper (so it's stronger than a regular poster)

- 20x30 foam core board

- Rubber Cement (buy the no-wrinkle, acid free kind that is safe for pictures)

Who knew they still even made rubber cement? The last time I used it was in 5th grade. Seriously. That was, um, 21 years ago. Oh em gee.

You will spread the rubber cement on the foam core board and on the back of the picture - small amounts at at time because it dries pretty quick. Smooth it out as you go.

If you accidentally get rubber cement on the front of the picture - it's okay - as it will rub right off when it dries.

The picture below shows the depth of the foam core board. It's not super thick but enough to be sturdy when it's hanging on the fence. And I hope to salvage it after the season and hang it in the play room.

The finished product!

Next up - I'm making a football burlap door hangar for our front door. Will post pictures when I'm done.

A First and a Second

This sweet thing had her second birthday a few weeks ago. Emily (her mom) did an Art Party and it was a lot of fun for the kids.

Emily helped Ava finish her painting.

I gave her a dress for her birthday that I made. It was my first attempt at making a dress (or any clothing for that matter). I'm pretty proud of myself....I did the whole thing myself (except for the button holes which I had a friend do for me since I'm lame and can't figure out how to make my machine make a button hole). I asked Emily not to pay any attention to the construction as the underneath of the dress was a mess....but she understood. I'll have to work on that on my next one. :)

I have to say I'm proud of myself!

I've been creating - Part II

In addition to the scarf I made earlier - I also made these dish clothes for my mom for her birthday.

My great aunt made us a handful of crocheted dish clothes for our wedding and I still have 1 left (after using it for 12 years). These things are tons better than anything you can buy at the store. They scrub dishes really well and clearly they last forever. You can throw them in the washing machine and dryer and they are good as new. Plus they are so much cuter than boring dish clothes from the store. Right?

Happy Birthday mom.

I've been creating

I am really good at picking up one project and starting it, getting half way done, then getting tired of it and putting it down. Often times I don't finish it (well, most of the time I don't finish it). I don't even know how many quilts I've started over the years and never finished. Maybe it's a little bit of ADD. Not sure. But anyhow, I've always wanted to make a scarf. Easy enough, right? I consider myself fairly creative and can usually figure out something I want to learn on my own....with a little YouTube tutorial helps. I do wish I could knit, but that's too hard....I get frustrated when I drop a stitch and the only way I can figure out how to fix it is to pull it out and start all over. And THAT'S no fun. I never really liked the way crocheted scarfs look - until a friend made me one and I loved it.

So...I decided to make my mom a scarf for her birthday next week. (Don't worry, she never ever reads my blog). The best part of this project is that I FINISHED IT. For real. My first one ever. And it only took me 2.5 days of crocheting - I did it on my lunch break, in the orthodontists office and at home at night. I'm so proud of it - and I want to show y'all.

Ain't she pretty?

Let's make some soap

I had some girlfriends over a few weeks ago to teach them all how to make laundry detergent. This was one of my Goals for 2010 and I'm happy to report that we've used my homemade detergent almost exclusively since January 1st. I have a container of commercial detergent in the laundry room for the times that I run out of the homemade stuff and don't have time to make it, but still have laundry to do.

The recipe makes a large portion, so since January I've only had to make it three times.

I've posted to recipe before (click here), so this post will just document it in pictures.

Cast of characters - Fels Naptha, Borax and Washing Soda

Cut up the Fels Naptha

Once the Fels Naptha melts, then you stir in the washing soda and borax. Stir until it's melted (this part only takes about a minute). Then pour into a plastic storage container (it must have a lid). Then add additional water.

David helped stir.

My batch needed some more water. If you can't tell, the wooden spoon is sticking straight up in the soap. It gels pretty hard, but you can add however much water you want to make it to the consistency you like.

Overall, I'm very happy with this detergent. It saves a ton of money and cleans very well. I do use Oxy Clean in addition to the detergent but only when washing David's baseball uniforms and practice clothes. I just think it helps get the extra dirty stains out.

Art Project

Can I brag on David today??? Here are a couple of pictures of what we did this afternoon.

Kitty is sitting on the canvas that would soon become a masterpiece. I had to put him in the garage so he didn't walk all over the canvas during the construction of it.
The artist begins his work.
Check out that concentration.
Please excuse the scuffed up knee (a bicycle accident) and the dirty band aid residue left over.
The finished project. Isn't it awesome? I'm so proud of him. I outlined, lightly in pencil, the house and car (just the outline). David free-handed the windows in the car, decoration on the roof (not sure what it is!), the tree, grass, sun and cloud. My favorite part of all is how he made the lights shine from the head lights and tail lights of the car. Adorable.

He's such a good little artist.

Taggies

Lately I've been doing a bit of sewing. I saw a Taggie brand blanket about a year ago and the idea stuck with me to make one for David. A taggie blanket is basically a small blanket about 12 x 12 inches with tags of ribbon sticking out of the edges. I attempted to make one for David for Christmas because he has always loved playing with the tags on everything - blankets, quilts, shirts, even his underwear. It was a hit, he loves his blanket and sleeps with it every night. It's much more manageable than a larger blanket and easy to carry around (if needed).

Fast forward 5 months, it seems that a lot of my friends are pregnant. So I've started making these as gifts. I am that friend who loves to make things as gifts, rather than buy stuff. I've always been this way - I self taught myself to crochet and made my first blanket for Angie's baby girl when I was 19. I've since all but given up on crocheting and knitting - it takes SOOOO long. One big problem with making gifts is that I don't necessarily finish all of my projects on time....or even close to being on time. You'll see one prime example at the end of this post. I'm working on my timing!

Since I've made David's taggie blanket and these below I've begun seeing them all over the place, there are blankets and balls and books with tags on them. I am sure to explain to friends what they are, because I've had more than one friend look at me oddly - not understanding why I'm giving them a blanket that is one foot square! It's all about the tags, people.

Here are a few pictures of some of the ones I've made recently as gifts.


Here are two non-taggie blanket related pictures, but I thought I'd post them anyhow.

This isn't a taggie blanket, but Mykell if you are reading this - this is the quilt I made for Joey in September of 2008. You'll get it as soon as I can find it and mail it to you! :)
David helped me paint this old piano bench of Brad's moms. It was old and falling a part. We took off the top and cut a new piece of wood to fit it. Rather than a piano bench it's now just a table which holds his tv in his playroom. Of course I didn't think to take a picture of the finished product. I will. Later.

David is my budding artist (wearing a 4-wheeling shirt). He likes all things art (and dirty - like dirt biking and 4-wheeling and go kart riding). Just like his mama.

My Garden

So this spring Brad has been amazing in really helping me get things set up for our garden. He helped me build a raised vegetable bed in the backyard. It's broken into two sections...one for the veggies and one for the herbs that I no longer have room for in the other herb section of my yard. I'd like to build one more vegetable bed for root veggies, but I'm not sure we'll have time to do that before it's too late to get everything planted.

We went to our friends (Katrina and Randle) a couple weekends ago and planted all the seeds. The only thing I still need to buy plants for are the bell peppers and onions (if I end up doing those).

So this is what the area of our backyard looked like before we build the bed. Yuck. I had a couple butterfly bushes (which I have since transplanted) but mostly weeds growing here.
Here is the bed that Brad helped me build. We used Pioneer Woman's design....the herb part (on the very left hand side) I built with scrap wood, but hopefully it will hold up for a couple of years too.
Brad had a huge dump truck come dump 3 yards of dirt on our driveway. It took about 1/3 of it to fill up the beds! We either need to build those extra beds or find a place for another 2 yards of dirt in our yard. I'm sure we can do it....the only challenge will be to move it before the HOA sends us a nasty letter about dirt being on our driveway. In digging up some other areas in the yard I came across some earth worms. Each time we find a worm David dumps it in the garden area....so they can aerate the dirt. I've thought about buying some to dump in there, but so far I've found (and transplanted) about 15 worms from around the yard.
Worms in their new home. They were pretty ticked and flopping all over the place when I first moved them.
On a side note: I'm hoping to have a compost pile this year. I've tried once before unsuccessfully. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but this is what I have so far. Yuck. It's behind our fence, and to my knowledge has not attracted anything other than bugs. We'll see if I can make it work this year. Anyone have any ideas to share?
And, finally, these are the seedlings (only about 1/4 of what I have growing) that will need to be transplanted in the next few weeks. Wish us luck!

This ones for Pa

So it's been way too long since I've posted. Since we got our iphones I haven't really been online much at home, since I can surf the web from my phone, but updating my blog is impossible via the iphone so I've neglected to do so. Sorry, Pa. I think you are the only one that reads this....but I do need to keep it updated more often so you know what's going on up here in the 'ham.

So in the past few months David has learned to ride his bike without training wheels, finished up his basketball season and started t-ball, and we went to North Carolina to see our Bulldogs last b-ball game of the season. The weather has been really great so we've been able to spend time outside almost every day (even after work because it stays light enough until about 7:00). We play basketball, let David ride his bike, swing or jump on the trampoline. The trampoline part is my favorite...I feel like such a kid again when I'm jumping. I play basketball with the boys, but they are BOTH better than me. We've finally taken the training wheels off of his dirt bike! The first time he rode he did pretty good and only dropped it a couple of times with no real crashes. He hasn't wanted to practice much lately - I think he's still pretty nervous about it...so we are slowly encouraging him to ride again. Even just five minutes here and there will do him good without wearing him out.

Today was a really busy day - David had his first t-ball game. He was so stinking cute in his baseball outfit. I have pictures to share, but don't have access to them right now....will get those posted soon (promise!). He did really good and hit the ball hard all three times he was at bat.

After t-ball (and a nap) we went to hunt Easter Eggs with my very good friend Wylma. Her neighborhood does a really good egg hunt every year and she invites us (she's definitely like a grandma to David). The Easter bunny was there and we took a hay ride around the neighborhood too. David had a really fun time and with over 700 eggs hidden he had plenty to find. Again, pictures will follow.

Last weekend we went to the feed store and bought some seeds to start our garden. Our good friends, Randle and Katrina invited us over and she and I planted seeds together. That day we planted spinach, lettuce, okra, watermelon, tomato, squash, cauliflower, zucchini, black beans, green beans, cilantro, basil and italian parsley (many, many thanks to Katrina for the seeds and seed starters). In just a few days we already have sprouts on out lettuce and green beans!

To finish up our day, Brad helped me build a raised vegetable garden for these seeds to be transplanted to in a few weeks. I got the plan from the bed from http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ (my favorite website) and it was super easy to do. Now we just have to have some dirt delivered to fill it and the seeds to continue growing so we'll have something to plant in a few weeks.

This was a fantastic Saturday. We were busy all day, but it was a relaxing kind of busy.

We have finally finished painting the last coat of paint on out built in bookshelves. It has to cure for 7 days...so next weekend we'll hopefully finish up the office project by geting all the books on the bookshelves and get the office organized....finally. This is the never ending project...that has just gone on forever and ever it seems.

Our next spring project is to build a brick patio out back for the grill. When we built our house (over 3 years ago) we kept the loose left over bricks with the intent to use them somehow. We've finally decided to build a patio. We have about 250 bricks for the job and hope it's enough.

So this is what we've been up to.

We can't wait for our family vacation at the end of this month. We are going to a campground in Florida with Brad's family. It will be a great and relaxing trip together. Will post about that after it happens.

Well, I know this is a pretty boring post since I don't have any pictures to share. I'll get some loaded on the computer soon. More to come.....

Long overdue

So I haven't posted pictures in a while...so this post will be (mostly) wordless and just with a bunch of pictures.

David and his precious cousin, Olivia. Yes they were taking a bath together...this won't happen for too much longer. They are so cute together and such fun friends. They love each other.
Uncle Rich and Savannah watching David's basketball game. And Leslee making a new friend (that cute little girl standing in front of her mama).
Olivia...David's biggest cheerleader.
David is running (well maybe just walking) after the boy with the ball. David's team (The Lakers) won this game. 8 to 4! Yipee skipee!
David and Olivia helping me make pancakes. Clearly, David has morning face. Olivia had been up for like 4 hours by the time we woke up. Not really, that's a small exaggeration!
Aunt Leslee (the coolest sister-in-law in the world) and Uncle Rich (Brad's brother...and the coolest brother-in-law too):
Brad and a sparkler (New Year's Eve). David didn't want to do the sparklers...but we had a bunch of cool fireworks we shot off. That was good.
Trisha and David about to watch fireworks (that's the reason for the earmuffs).
David with NO TRAINING WHEELS!
Leslee and I stayed up late two nights while they were in town making hair bows. It was fun and I learned a new craft. Now I just need a little girl to make some bows for. January has been busy so far....so I'm sure I'll have many more pictures to post soon.