Valentine’s Day this year was fun! I didn’t have my usual LOVE type crafts (yup, packed!) but you can sure gets lots of fun things at the dollar store – like my guys tie!!! He assured me he will only wear it on Valentine’s Day and never to church, but I think he looks very handsome in it!!!
And this year’s special menu is . . .
. . . heart shaped pepperoni on the pizza!!! I was planning to cut out the pepperoni using scissors, but my brilliant Facebook friends suggested a cookie cutter. But that presented a problem – yup, mine are packed!!! I did know where my heart shaped paper punch was, but that may be a little tricky to slide the pepperoni in!!! Luckily the kitchen still has gramma’s stuff in it, and I found the perfect size heart cookie cutter, and it worked like a charm. Thanks brilliant FB friends!!!
And this year we had . . .
. . . a Valentine Tree!!! We re-purposed our Christmas tree (because I hadn’t taken it down yet – that’s gotta be some sort of records!!!). But my guy had said he liked having it up – made a pretty night light. Gotta keep my guy happy!!! Besides, it was small and up high, not in the way at all. So my Kat and I had fun putting hearts all over it.
Celebrating holidays with fun little traditions – kids sure love it and remember it (especially if there are photos. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of the green milk for St.Patrick’s Day that greats them every year for breakfast!)
I love to decorate the front porch into the house!!! I don’t have much room here at our rental home, but my new home will have a nice big covered front porch just waiting to be decorated for the seasons – clap, clap, clap!!!
Obviously this was our winter decorating. I’ve always loved lit trees and finally got some for a great price (I was watching the flyers forever!). I love the lights in this picture but the next one is more clear.
This looked even better after I added a long piece of evergreen greenery (from the dollar store). It was all intertwined around the bases of everything and hid the ugly bottoms and cords. And it looked even better when it had a light dusting of real snow on it!!! The little red snowman scarf tied around my watchdog added a little colour to our bleary winter days. The snowman was made by me and my Lee at my friend’s craft classes. On the back side of it is a scarecrow for autumn decorating. Another piece has the Easter bunny on one side and a Valentine lady. Keep reading to see what the third piece looks like . . .
Last Saturday it was definitely time for winter to leave and spring to arrive. But, again, most of my stuff is packed, so what could I decorate with? My friend Shirley brought me this adorable orange sign a few weeks ago – it really speaks my language – she knows me well!!!
And I love the Simple Life board because Simplify is my theme word! On the back side of this board is our nation’s flag so I switch to that for all the holidays. Don’t fret – I’ll put the Easter Bunny board up soon! My animals came out of hibernation and my baby is enthralled with the cocker spaniel – she squeals and points at it every time we go in or out! It needed some greenery but it’s too soon for real plants, so, I went into the garage to survey the mound of boxes. I spotted one on the top at the back of the garage that looked promising. So I climbed onto the freezer, over the treadmill, onto the piano and was able to reach this box that was indeed filled with fake flowers!!! Bingo!!! Pulled out the tulips and whatever the blue things are, and voila – it’ll do for now!!! But then my problem was, how do I make them stand there. So I scrounged around and found a waterbottle that had a destroyed lid by the end of basketball season – but I didn’t need a lid now, did I? So I stuffed in the flowers, filled it with water so they wouldn’t die (haha – for weight so it wouldn’t blow over!) and wedged it between the wall and my watchdogs hinder. And so far the wind has not blown it over!!!
So spring has arrived in two places now – the calendar and my front porch!!!
“If you’re not selling chocolate . . . get the heck off my porch!”
Went on a trip a few weeks ago and stayed at my sister’s house. While there, I was noticing that there were quite a few crafts in her house that I had made. So I got out my camera and here’s what I found:
So true eh? Laundry is as much a part of life as living. laughing and loving! My sis had asked me to make her something to add a little life to her laundry room, because it’s her guest bathroom too. So this is what I came up with for her. It fits perfectly above the washer and dryer and below the cupboards. Gotta make one for myself one day (my new house will have it’s very own laundry room – clap, clap clap!!!). The sign is actually navy blue with sage green hearts and beige lettering. Sorry about the photo, but I have been working lately on learning to use my camera better – actually figuring out what different settings will do!!! The other saying that I think is cute in a laundry room is: Laundry – loads of fun!
She also requested that I make this saying into a craft for her. I just typed it up and printed it off and mod podged it onto a scrap piece of 2 x 6. And that’s just one of those clamp paper-clip thingy’s glued upside down on top to hold the picture/recipe card/or whatever else you want it to hold.
And on the back side . . .
. . . I added one of my favourite sayings in a more wintery version so she can display it year round.
My sis is a cat lover so I made this for her once, many years ago. I saw it in a Country Sampler magazine decades ago and made up my own version of it. I always thought it was cute – that clever little kitty trying to lure the unsuspecting bird by hanging the bird house from its tail.
I didn’t actually make this one – but I did design it and provide all the materials. We (all the moms in the family) made them at our family reunion in colours to complement our homes. So everyone was able to leave the reunion with a nice message on a craft that looks great hanging over the family pictures that we also took at the reunion. And everyone at the reunion signed the back.
I made a bunch of these for Christmas one year – lots of fun and ya gotta love Heat N Bond. I made them for the ladies I Visit Teach too – fortunately for me, six letters was the longest last name!!! The message in the square on the right is Love At Home in case you couldn’t see the little “at” there!
And another request from sis: please make me a Family Home Evening board. I’d had this board kicking around for years – I’d gotten it at a garage sale for $2. So it worked great for the job. Sis was satisfied once again!!!
Now that looks like a wedding bouquet!!! Yup, I made it for sis for her wedding ten years ago. It was so pretty for her December wedding. My favourite part is the pine cones that came from our old homestead. We gently painted the tips with silver glitter glue and they looked so great in her bouquet.
Makes me excited at the thought of making bouquets for my own seven girls some day!!! (If they want me to, of course!)
And finally, sis has a menu board too!!! In fact, all my sisters do, and many others!!! Obviously we were having trouble spelling the word “Lasagna”!
It gives me a thrill to go places and see things that I have created. I used to have a little craft booth in a mall and it was so exciting to see things sell – people were actually buying things I had made – like, paying real money for them!!! Wow!!! So thanks sis, for keeping my creations up in your home!
I know frames like these have been around for awhile, but I really love them and wanted to share the idea again.
My sister-in-law made one for me and I copied and made some for others. The Living Christ and The Family Proclamation pages can be picked up or ordered for free from any LDS Distribution Center. I suggest you get that first so you can get the right size frame to fit it all (two of my Apostles names are not showing). Then I used mini Greg Olsen prints of the Savior for around my frame – just glue them on to the matt. Simple, classy and beautiful!
For The Family Proclamation, I used more family typed pictures from Greg Olsen, a few pictures of the Savior, and . . .
. . . our own family picture at the very bottom!
Just imagine the other possibilities too – black and white photos, or sepia around the outside would make a gorgeous frame for anything, like, for instance, your family name or monogram, or family motto. My mind is racing here!!!
Oh, I love this Temple Tile!!! When another ward was doing it for their Super Saturday, I signed up for one myself. You can’t ever have too many pictures of the temple in your home!!!
It’s just a regular photo enlarged to 12″x 12″ size and mod podged onto a tile (it could be done for any size of tile though). You could put the words onto the actual photo, but we used vinyl lettering. I mod podged over top of the whole thing to protect it. I did kind of a cross hatch pattern with the mod podge and it made the tile look like canvas. Add a stand from the Dollar Store and voila – what a treasure!!!
(A few months later we ended up making them in our own ward!)
A few Christmases ago I made these 2 x 4 Believe signs for the ladies that I Visit Teach – yup, I’d rather make something with wood than make something in the kitchen! I saw something like them in a Country Sampler magazine and filed it away in my brain for a future project.
One of the ladies was lucky enough to have an “L” in her last name. So with a little shuffling around of the letters . . .
. . . a new ribbon on the candle, and some new painting on the backside, she has an item she can keep out year round!!!
Pretty cute eh?
And now that time has past and I’ve had more time to think, I wonder why I didn’t paint words like “Family” or “Simplify (my theme word!) or any other words with an “L” in them, on the backs of the others. Silly me! Good thing Christmas comes around every year!!!
We always need a good way to keep track of Family Home Evening assignments! We made these 12 x 12 tiles at our RS Super Saturday a few years back. The scrapbook paper is mod podged over a piece of sheet metal – so it’s magnetic. We didn’t mod podge over the paper though because we weren’t sure how magnetic it would be through the mod podge.
The magnets are made by cutting your faces out of a photo (circle punch works great!). They are then glued on the back of those clear little buttons (like half a marble) with a clear silicone glue. And then the magnet is glued on the back as well. You could also print names instead of pictures. Works great and is so easy for changing assignments. And when a child leaves home, they can take their magnet with them!!!
It’s no secret that I really don’t like to cook or spend time in the kitchen. However, I do love to eat!!! If it weren’t for that love of eating, and the fact that my family needs to eat to survive, I’d probably never enter the kitchen! So when my daughter Elle gave me this plaque for Christmas, I was thrilled!!! Now I had an excuse if there was no supper prepared!!! “Oh, sorry, the kitchen was closed today!”
Isn’t that perfect for me? And I especially love the words she wrote on the back: The rest of the box was filled with chocolate covered almonds – yup, she knows me well!!!
So I love the words, but the colours were not going to match the kitchen in the new house we’re building. And I needed to make it a little more “me”. My problem was, all my craft paints were packed in a box somewhere and I didn’t want to buy new paints when I already have a million colours. So finally, I bought a little palette of about 12 colours – you know, the kind you would get if you bought a paint-by-number kit. And I set to work painting. Some things took a couple coats, like covering the red tomatoes.
Ready to see the after picture?
And a little bit of distressing and antiquing the edges and – I love it!!! Much more “me” now!!!
And it matches my future kitchen so much better now! I can’t stop looking at it!!!
My daughter wanted a photo display area at her wedding reception. After checking out Pinterest, we thought this wooden frame was super cute (check out our inspiration here).
My guy whipped it up out of 2 x 4’s and then drilled four holes in each side. I took care of staining it and threading the jute through the holes. I just used a knot at each end to keep the jute from slipping back through the holes.
The most time consuming part of this project was choosing the pictures! But we got lucky . . . we had pictures of them the same ages doing the same sorts of things – like Baptism at age 8, sports pictures at age 10 and in high school, each devouring cake on their first birthdays, and my favourite, the super happy two-year-old photo!We attached the photos to the string with mid size clothespins. We painted the top side of the clothespin in a wedding colour, and added a little punched out tag that briefly described the pictures. (Age 2) for example. We chose to put all the pictures in chronological order.
The lamp was the perfect addition to make the photos visible. We also had Christmas lights around the branches in the old crate. It worked out perfectly!!!
And now I have a cute display stand to hold, oh . . . my three-year olds artwork . . . or Christmas cards . . . or messages to family members . . .
I found a treasure – big old ugly brown frame at our band garage sale for about $0.25. I just knew I’d be able to get a lot off use out of this frame once it was prettied up!
It looked so cute after a few coats of spray paint. I believe the colour was Ocean Breeze by Krylon.
The first time we used it was part of a photo wall at Grad . . .
. . . it’s the big one with the blue couple inside it.
Then we used it during engagement photo’s for my daughter.
I love the sky, the wheat, the frame, the couple!!!
And finally, we turned it into a chalkboard for their wedding!
My guy cut me a piece of 1/8″ melamine in whatever measurement the back of my frame was. Then I gave it two coats of chalkboard paint. Now this was the hard part – attaching the chalkboard to the back of the frame. I used duct tape and taped it on!!! That way I can easily take it out when I just want a frame again.
We simply wrote their Love Story on the chalkboard and propped it up in a corner.
It’s sooo romantic!!!
I think this frame is having so much more fun now than whatever it did in it’s former life!
Oh, and if you read the Love Story, don’t worry, he works at the jail!
And this year’s special menu is . . .
. . . heart shaped pepperoni on the pizza!!! I was planning to cut out the pepperoni using scissors, but my brilliant Facebook friends suggested a cookie cutter. But that presented a problem – yup, mine are packed!!! I did know where my heart shaped paper punch was, but that may be a little tricky to slide the pepperoni in!!! Luckily the kitchen still has gramma’s stuff in it, and I found the perfect size heart cookie cutter, and it worked like a charm. Thanks brilliant FB friends!!!
. . . a Valentine Tree!!! We re-purposed our Christmas tree (because I hadn’t taken it down yet – that’s gotta be some sort of records!!!). But my guy had said he liked having it up – made a pretty night light. Gotta keep my guy happy!!! Besides, it was small and up high, not in the way at all. So my Kat and I had fun putting hearts all over it.
