My 3 year old is an artisit

Today I found this on my laundry room wall!

If you follow my blog you know we built our house a little over a year ago so I have to cringe when the kids mark up the walls. I called my 3 year-old into the laundry room and asked him why he did this. His response was, "I wanted you to be happy." What was I supposed to say to that?! I guess I can't be too mad. I was actually kind of impressed with his art skills. :) Thank goodness for magic eraser.

Strawberries

We finished putting our yard in last month and I got a ton of strawberry starts from a friend.  I can't believe we already have some strawberries! I was so excited.

Yum.
The type of strawberry plants I got are called ever bearing and I would recommend getting these. My friend said they are supposed to produce strawberries all summer long. I can't wait.

Girls are so much fun!

 I got to take some pictures of my friend's baby today. My sweet friend has 4 older boys and just had her first girl! I am so happy for our friend and had a lot of fun changing the baby's outfits and bows. She is a doll!
Here are just a few of my favorites. It was hard to pick just a few to share.

 

Angel Food Cupcakes

We went to a friend's birthday party and she wanted me to bring a dessert. I had some strawberries I wanted to use and thought angel food cake sounded great. I wasn't sure what they would have as far as plates, forks etc. So I decided I would try and make angel food cupcakes. I had to get a picture of them in the oven, they already look delicious.

I found a strawberry jam frosting recipe to use and then sliced strawberries for the top. I love how they looked!

These were so good. I loved how light and fluff the cupcakes were. I plan on making these again.

Quiet Books

I came across these really neat Quiet Books from a site called Simply Fresh Designs. Heather created these quiet books and was offering the completed files to download for free until she found out it was considered against copyright. She had to take the images out of the book. She still offered the book files for free you just had to go through and insert all of the pictures she took out. Because I wanted to make a set for myself and if I was going to do all of that work anyways, I figured I might as well offer it to some of my friends.

I hosted a craft open house where friends could pay for the supplies and I would get everything together to make the quiet books. I had 18 friends that wanted to make the quiet books. All together we made 84 Books. For the pages in the book, each page is a 4x6 picture. So all together there were 1,946 4x6 pictures/pages I got printed.

Here are the 6 books I offered: (to see each book click on the name below and it will take you to Heather's site)

The Life of Christ Teachings of Christ We Believe  Old Testament Book of Mormon Stories Apostles and Prophets This was a fun, successful craft day. Thank you Heather for these wonderful Quiet books. I can't wait for my kids to use them.

Piccolina Designs Limerick Kit

Here is the latest kit that Teri, at Piccolina Designs, came out with. The name of the kit is Limerick. I love the bright colors, fun frames, ribbons and elements. Everything Teri does is adorable. Here are two pages I did using the new kit. You can buy it here. 
 

St. Patrick's Day 2012

This year we were ready for those pesky leprechauns. Here are the traps my kids made this year. For some reason they thought potatoes would be good bait for the leprechauns. lol
R's trap he made.

K's trap.

The fun tricks the leprechauns pulled on us.
They got the flour out of the pantry and left track, turned the milk green, turned the toilet water green, but the best thing is the traps worked and they left treats.

For breakfast we had green pancakes.

Scripture Bags

My kids needed something to put their scriptures in for church. I made these tonight with fabric I already had. I sewed their names onto the front so we would know who's was who's.

I blurred their whole name out for safety reasons and the picture is pretty poor quality because it was taken with my itouch, but you get the idea. :)

Heart Door Hanger

I keep seeing really cute fabric flowers, but having 3 boys, I don't get to make a ton of flower bows and barrettes.
I had a wreath I made last year,

 

but I took it apart to make a St. Patrick's Day wreath, so I was in need of a new Valentine's wreath. I figured this would be the perfect chance to make some fabric flowers and add them to a project I did with Becky, Ruth, Elizabeth and Emily that I never finished because I just couldn't figure out how I wanted to finish it.
To make the base of the door hanger, it is an old frame we got at the DI. We then painted the frame black. Got bead board at home depot and cut it to fit on the inside of the frame, painted it white and antiqued it.
I decided hot big I wanted the Welcome and then cut it out in black vinyl and applied it. I decided how big of a heart I wanted to fill in with fabric flowers and cut it out with my cricut. Then I traced the heart with a pencil onto the base for a guide.

If you look closely you can see the pencil line.

I then made 21 fabric flowers. I laid them out and spaced them before gluing it to the base. I used hot glue to attach the flowers. here is the finished door hanger.

 

I was happy with how it turned out.

Dehydrated Pineapple

 My friend Teri used to make dehydrated pineapple when we lived in Colorado. It was so good. I was really wanting some today, but pineapple isn't in season. I decided I would try and substitute fresh pineapple with canned pineapple. I bought the can of pineapple chunks. The chunks were a little thick so I sliced the pineapple in thickness. (see the picture below)

I then put the pineapple in my dehydrator and let it run for 3-4 hours. It was delicious. I was surprised how I couldn't really notice a difference between fresh vs. canned pineapple once it was dried. I am definitely doing this again in the future.

Cupcake Liner Puff Balls

I threw a baby shower for a friend tonight. Here is the treat table, I can't take all of the credit for the yummy treats, many friends helped.

 I did however make the Cupcake liner puff balls. I have been seeing cute balls on pinterest lately made out of cupcake liners and styrofoam balls. I ran to the dollar store to get some other things and to see if I could get some cheap styrofoam balls, but they didn't have any. Suddenly I saw these and had a great idea. I could use wiffle balls instead of styrofoam balls. They already have holes to put the cupcake liners in. I got a pack of 100 white cupcake liners. I colored the edges red for one of the puff balls with marker to add color. I then took a pencil and put the eraser in the middle of the cupcake liners and put 1 liner into each of the holes. Here are the final puffballs.

For the sticks I had gotten some bamboo shoots and stuck it in 1 of the ball holes. I liked the look of these, but the cupcake liners fell out much too easily. Next time I would add some glue around the edge of each hole and then put the cupcake liner in so they wouldn't fall out so easy. So if you make these I highly recommend you follow that advice. :)

A Baby Gift

One of my sisters had a baby December  29, 2011. So we teased her that the baby was her husband's tax deduction. So I made her baby a onesie.

 I have some iron on vinyl that I cut the words out of it and ironed it on to a onesie.

An Ear Flap Hat

I made this hat for our little one last month and am finally getting around to posting it. I crocheted it using this pattern: http://neannersshop.blogspot.com/2010/10/ez-earflaps-pattern.html Thanks Neanner for the cute pattern.
Here is my 4 month old modeling his new hat.

These Never Look as Good as the Box

My kids talked me into getting this kit after Christmas. This is what the box looked like.

This is what ours looked like.

The kids "helped" me, (R actually did do a lot of the decorating on his snowman in the middle) but there is no way we could have made these look as good as the box with the tools they give you...Let me rephrase that, I don't have the patience to spend hours on these to make them look as good as the box. :) Plus, I hate to say it, but they tasted disgusting. I don't think we will ever be buying them again. It was cute to see the kids and how happy they were to make these, that would be the only reason I would buy them again.

Borax Crystal Snowflakes

I am doing a co-op preschool with some ladies in our neighborhood for my 3 year old. It was my turn to teach this week and the theme was Winter Weather. I saw this idea on pinterest it and thought it went along great with our theme and was a great science project. We made some Borax crystal snowflakes.

The idea was from the blog Mom in Madison. Here is the link to the instructions: http://mominmadison.blogspot.com/2008/12/snowflakes.html

All you need is 3 TBSP of Borax per 2 cups of boiling water. We made our snowflakes out of pipe cleaners like she suggested, but used clothes pins to hold the snowflake in water and used pipe cleaners to suspend it.

I left our snowflakes in the water a day and a half.

We also talked about how we dress in winter weather and then dressed up lollipop snowmen.

It was a kit from Wilton's that included the lollipops and the stickers. My only complaint was how hard it was for the 3 and 4 year olds to get the stickers off the paper. Other than that they had a great time dressing up the snowmen.

Norbert The Elf

I'm sure most of you have heard about The Elf on the Shelf. If not it is an Elf that comes and visits during the Holiday Season. When you first adopt your Elf you must name him right away. After a discussion of what to name our Elf we settled on Norbert. He watches the kids all day and then goes to report to Santa every night and hides in a new place each morning. You just have to be careful not to touch the elf or he will lose his magic.

Here are the fun places Norbert hid this season.

When you adopt an elf, they return back to the North Pole with Santa on Christmas Eve. My boys were so sad to see Norbert leave.

It was so much fun having Norbert here this season and the kids can't wait to see if he comes back next year.

Our Gingerbread House

We have made it a tradition to decorate a gingerbread house every year. This is our 4th year. We always buy the pre-made kits, they are much easier. We usually use the box as a pattern and try and make our house pretty close to the box. In years past they have been pretty far from the box, but this year I would have to say has to be our best.
The top picture is of the house on the box, the bottom picture is our house.

My 6 year old putting some icing on.

My boys with the finished house.

Ho Ho Ho Blocks

My friend Becky wanted to do a craft with her family over Thanksgiving so she came over and we designed these Ho, Ho, Ho blocks with Ruth. I digital scrapbooked each letter using the Digtial Scrapbook Memories, Santa Clause Lane.
They were so cute, I had my friend Kristal over to make a set with me. We had some 2x4s left over from finishing off our upstairs I cut and then routered. I can't tell you how much I love my new miter saw, it is amazing! Sorry the lighting isn't the best.

You can never have too many Christmas decorations...right?!

Elf Donuts

This is the first year we have had an elf visit our house. This morning our elf brought us donuts and had some donuts for himself.

I saw the idea of making elf donuts from the blog Cupcakes for Clara. Click here to see how she made her elf donuts. I made my elf donuts a little different and decided I would have our elf bring the donuts for himself, not for the kids to eat. But I'm sure the kids would love to make and eat elf donuts.
For my elf donuts I used cheerios, melting chocolate (the other website used icing) and sprinkles. I just melted the chocolate in the microwave dipped one side of the cheerio in it and sprinkled, sprinkles on top while the chocolate was still wet. Let them dry and you have your elf donuts.

For the Elf donuts box I used a match box. I emptied out the matches and covered the box with Christmas paper, a sticker and an Elf Donut label. My kids were so excited this morning when they found our elf.

Live in Thanksgiving

Teri from Piccolina Designs has done it again. She has released another adorable kit. I have no idea how she can do as much as she does, she is amazing! This one is called Live in Thanksgiving, you can buy it here. I loved the color pallet on this kit. As you can see I had a really hard time picking my favorite papers and had to use as many as I could on the layout. On the page I wrote about my family and how thankful I am to have messes to clean up. I'm just sad the only family picture we had was taken 2 months after having a baby. Not the most flattering, but worth documenting. :)

I recommend getting this kit!

Refinishing Mirrors

Since both of my mom's parents have passed away, her and her siblings decided it was time to sell my grandparents house. I was lucky enough to get two great mirrors. This first mirror hung by my grandparents' master bedroom closet, ever since my mom was a little girl. I had been wanting to get a big mirror for our living room and my aunt offered this mirror to us. It was perfect except for the fact that our house has all brushed nickle fixtures, stainless steel appliances and most of the furniture in our family room is black. I hung the mirror up anyway, even though it was gold. As I started decorating the house more the mirror just didn't really fit anymore. So I decided I would paint it. I got some Rust-Oleum Spray paint at Home Depot. It was silver/gray with a textured look. I think the name was hammered nails, I threw the paint away before getting the name.
Here is the mirror taped and ready to be painted.

A close up what the mirror looked like before. I love the detailed carved wood frame around the mirror.

After the mirror was painted and dried we hung it back up. The spray paint was neat because when you got close you could see the texture to the paint, but once you stepped away from the mirror it had a roly poly bug, gray color and didn't have much depth to it. We let it sit for a few days and decided that we needed to add more. My mom suggested we sponge some paint on top of the spray paint. I got some gray and white paint and we mixed it only a few times so we would have the textured look we wanted. My mom and I then sponged on the paint on. Right away I could tell that was exactly what was missing.

The finished mirror.

This mirror was at my grandparents house the day before my aunt moved out. There was a plaster type frame around it that was chipping and breaking At tried sanding down the rough spots at first, but that was only making things worse. I decided to go ahead and paint it, cracks and all and see how it turned out.
The before picture, taped and ready to be painted.

It worked well to paint it as it was. Here is the finished picture. Sorry the lighting is bad. It is hard to tell, but I finished it the same way I did the other mirror and hung it in our kitchen.

I am so excited to have these two mirrors. Not only do they look great, but they are from my grandparents and have meaning behind them.

We Did It!

When we bought our house the builder wanted a lot more to finish off our Bonus area upstairs than we could have someone else do it for. Our Bonus area includes a bedroom, a bathroom and a playroom/small family room. My father-in-law was a nuclear engineer and built his own house. Because of his experience he gracious offered to finish the bathroom for us. My husband and I decided we could try and be handy and thought it wouldn't be that hard to drywall. We got up part of one wall and decided it was much harder than it looked. Our wall didn't look horrible, but it looked nowhere near professional. After that we decided to hire someone to hang the drywall, mud, tape and texture. Jose did a great job. If you ever need someone to hang drywall let me know, I have his number. Once the mud and texture dried it was time to paint.
My husband and I rented a paint sprayer from Home Depot. We rented it for 4 hours, but the time went so fast we were rushing the whole time. Plus I underestimated how long it would take us to clean out the paint sprayer. We got it back right in time, but we were going crazy to get everything done and cleaned.
The last thing that needed to be done before we got carpet was the baseboards. I was excited to get to finally use my miter saw I got last year for Christmas. Being pregnant and sick this year I haven't really gotten a chance to use it. We were a little bit nervous about putting in baseboard, but we borrowed our neighbor's nail gun and another neighbor's air compressor to make it easier to put in. It took us a few nights to get it all installed but it looked pretty good. Here is a corner of the family room.

The carpet was installed yesterday and we are so excited to have it done.

A Lazy Sunday Morning

When I was unloading my memory card I found this picture. Gerrit must have taken it.

Gotta love a lazy Sunday morning.