Star Wars light saber Valentine's cards

These Star Wars Light Saber Valentine's cards are so cute and super simple to do!

Salt dough glitter heart necklace Valentine's Day cards

Cam and I made these salt dough glitter hearts for all the girls in his preschool class. We originally intended to make these for his entire class but then realized that his little guy friends probably wouldn't be very excited to get one of these. So that's when I came up with the Star Wars light saber Valentine's cards. Not that boys and girls can't like either a heart necklace or Star Wars and vice versa but Cam and I just wanted everyone to be happy and we love to come up with ideas and craft anyway!

80's TV Cabinet to Cute Kiddie Kitchen

You know you're a junker when your neighbors randomly drop things off at your door or in this case, roll a beat up, ugly, old 80's cabinet up your driveway and into your garage.

That's the story behind this thing.

Play Doh Valentine's Day cards

After a super long three year hiatus I'm back!

I never anticipated taking a break from my blog but as most people can attest to, going from one to two kids makes quite a difference and does not leave for a lot of spare time. Honestly too, I was pretty blogged out. I always felt like I had to post something at least every week which after awhile became like chemistry homework instead just being a fun outlet. So now that I'm refreshed and the kids are actually at a point where they can sit still for a half hour and watch a show, I thought I'd fire up the ole blog again.

Somewhere over the rainbow

St. Patrick's Day is this weekend so I came up with this cute yet super simple treat to give to Cam's little playgroup friends.

As with most things in crafting, my idea worked out perfectly in my head but when I put it all together in the treat bag it just didn't have the effect I was looking for.

Damn you Punxsutawney!

I just started taking a photography class and this week we are supposed to bring in a few photos that didn't quite work out how we intended to critique and discuss. I've got a ton of those to choose from so as I was sifting through them I came across this photo. It was taken at Stan Hywet Hall  last summer. I like it or dare I say, I love it! It's just so Springy and happy, full of color and life that I thought I'd share it (again) since March here in Ohio has definitely come in like a Lion!

Valentine's Day lollipop cards

Saturday I was finally able to finish up Cameron's Valentine's Day cards and get them in the mail!
Here's the final product!

I know this Valentine's card idea is not very original (it's all over Pinterest right now) but when I saw it I knew that's what I wanted to do. I guess the original/challenging part of the whole thing was attempting to get a 15 month old to 1. stand still for one second, 2. hold his arm out to the side, 3. look somewhat pleasant. Most of the cards I've seen have older kids on them. But I'm a sucker for a challenge and I want what I want so of course I set about torturing myself to get it done.

Hi. My name is Jany.

Just thought I'd re-introduce myself since it's been a very, very long time since I last posted. Life is super busy for me nowadays. Cameron turned one two months ago so that has a lot to do with it. He's not walking yet but he sure is busy. He's all over the place exploring, opening, gnawing, slobbering, pointing and pounding on everything. He loves to point at things and say "What's this?" That's basically what we do all day, he points and I tell him what it is. I love to see him learning and understanding and love that he is so inquisitive.

Just as I had expected this blog has morphed into a full on Mommy blog. I tried to avoid it but it's just not possible when all I do all day everyday is baby related!  Oh well, such is life. I AM a mom, that's me... now.

Current Crush

Today I'm linking up with Framed Frosting for my Current Crush, a post where I showcase what I'm currently "crushing" on.

Right now I'm so into... BURLAP!  It's really inexpensive material that can be used in so many different ways plus it fits into that whole industrial/rustic look that I love and is really popular right now!

Here's my DIY version of the burlap pillow which I silkscreened and sewed myself. Read the post for that here.

Homegirl

Such a super cute logo/sign and love the big colorful SALE sign

We have a bit of a local celebrity in our little town. Her name is Gina Bishop and she's known for re-purposing salvaged items into decorative pieces. She first garnered attention through her blog Homegirl, as well as her extremely popular barn sales where she sells her re-purposed and salvaged items. It has been her appearances on the Nate Berkus Show though that have really skyrocketed her into local celebrity and decorator guru status. In October she appeared on the show with her sister where she competed in a room makeover challenge. Since the show she  has also made a series of how-to videos for MSN and appeared with HGTV star Eric Stromer as the winner in GMC's Let's Trade Secrets Challenge.

I first learned about Gina through our local town newspaper where she was featured in an article. After Googling her I learned about an upcoming barn sale and then realized that she lived right around the corner from me! Last weekend she had another one of her famous sales. This one had to be the biggest and busiest one yet. The very first night the line of shoppers spilled down a good portion of her driveway. We went to check it out on Saturday after the fervor had subsided and were pleased to find that there were a lot of great things left. 

I really love her style which is similar to mine but just a touch more country. Like Gina, I love to find old, run down, out of date items and repaint or re-purpose them for my house. Most of the time when I see something at one of her barn sales I usually think "I can make that!" There's just something about having a piece of furniture or a decorative item that not everyone else has, a piece that you found in an out of the way random thrift shop or industrial yard. And of course there's the satisfaction of having given it a new look and new found life.  It's such a compliment when someone asks where you purchased a piece or when they say that it looks just like something they saw at one of the major home stores.

Anyways, back to Gina.... all I have left to say is You Go Homegirl! Love your style, love to shop your barn sales and I LOVE that you live in the same little town that I do.

DIY Party Hat & Cameron's 6 Month Celebration

Cameron turned 6 months old on Monday (April 16). It really is like everyone always says- time just flies by and before you know it they are all grown up. The last 6 months has just flown by and it just keeps on going by faster and faster the older he gets. It's moving so quickly that I missed his 5 month celebration. He was 5 1/2 months before I realized that I missed it! (Since he was 3 months old I've "celebrated" by sticking candles (unlit ones) into a cupcake and taken a picture.)

6 months is a milestone so this month I stepped it up a bit. All ramping up of course for that very exciting first birthday! So this month I got him a frozen ice cream cupcake (YUMMY!), made a 6 month topper for it and a fun little birthday hat!

I got the idea for the hat from Painted Preppy and tweaked it to make it work for me. The tutorial on Painted Preppy says to print out the hat template but I couldn't find it or a link anywhere on the page so I Googled party hat templates and found Oh Happy Day which has a downloadable template. Of course when I tried to print it out our printer stopped working for some reason and after fidgeting with it for a few minutes I gave up and just drew a template myself, basing it on the general shape of the Oh Happy Day template. I needed a smaller hat anyway, one that would fit Cameron so it ended up working out well.

Boo Kitty is a total photo bomber! Especially when it comes to pictures of Cameron. 

(Someone's a little jealous!)

Since I don't have a stash of fabric ribbon I ended up using scrapbook paper for the fringe instead. I simply cut strips, folded them in half and then cut them into fringe. Instead of stapling the fringe I taped it to the edge of the hat. To make the fringe topper I just cut fringe into a longer/larger piece of paper, rolled it up, stuck it through the top hole and taped it to the inside. I didn't put a chin strap on the hat because I thought that it would irritate Cameron and cause him to swipe at it so I adhered it to his head with double sided tape. It worked well and wasn't so sticky that it pulled his hair when I pulled it off.

Happy 6 Month Birthday Cameron!

Toothfairy pillow

Put together this super simple tooth fairy pillow for your little one. It's also an easy craft project for the kids.

All you need are:

2 pieces of white felt,
1 piece of black felt
Black embroidery floss
Pillow stuffing
A glue gun or white glue if you're doing this as a craft with kids.

First make a template for your tooth on a piece of paper. You can see that it took me a few tries to get the right size and shape.

 Trace it onto the felt and cut both sides of the tooth out.



Cut a small square from the white felt to make the pocket on the back for your little one to leave their tooth and for the fairy to place the money.



Next cut out the eyes. You can shape them any way you like! I chose to do a more cartoon-y face but a cute, peaceful face would be sweet too! Don't forget to cut out the eyebrows- if you want them.



Then cut the mouth out of the black felt and each individual tooth for it. Of course, just like the eyes you can make the mouth any shape. You don't need to do the teeth either, although I do love the missing teeth look! A pair of red lips would look cute too. Make your pillow as silly or sweet looking as you like.



It took me a few secs to figure out how to cut the teeth to fit my mouth perfectly. I started with the black mouth outline, then I used the black mouth as a template cutting out a white one of the same size.

Cut 1/8" off the sides making it smaller so that it fits inside the black. Draw in the teeth and cut on the inside of each side of the lines. This makes each tooth smaller, allowing for black to show around each. Then pick which tooth or teeth you want to be missing, take them out and glue the teeth down.

 *Notice the small scraps of felt left over from cutting on the inside of each of the lines.*

Now it's time to assemble!

Attach the white square to the back of the tooth by either sewing it on (like I did) or hot gluing it.

Next glue on the eyes, eyebrows and mouth.

Then stitch the two sides of the tooth together using a blanket stitch. If you like, for a sturdier design you can sew the pieces together or hot glue them and then do the blanket stitch for decoration. Before you completely stitch (or glue) the pillow closed stuff it with filling.

Voila! You're done. Now you can accessorize it. You could add a cute little bow and some red lips would be fun!



If you don't know how to do a blanket stitch don't stress! Here's a super succinct and simple tutorial I found on Youtube!

Baby footprints heart card- perfect for Valentine's Day!

January 2016
Hi everyone! Every year around this time this post gets the most views of any of my posts. So glad you guys like it! I just posted the Play Doh flower Valentine's Day cards I made last year and this year I made Salt Dough Glitter Heart Necklaces and Star Wars Light Saber Valentine's Day cards. Lots of unique, cute and easy card ideas so be sure to check them out!

For Christmas I had planned on making footprint ornaments of Cameron's feet to give to family. The kind where you smush your baby's foot into plaster and bake it. Unfortunately I waited too long and when I went to purchase the kits at the craft store they were all sold out. In fact every craft store in the area had long been sold out of them. Guess footprint ornaments are a popular gift during the holidays. Anyhoo.. I ended up coming across all kinds of inked footprint ideas. One in particular I loved- footprints overlapped at the heel to form a heart shape. Super cute!

For Valentine's Day I decided to make cards incorporating this idea. I knew I wanted them to have an old fashioned look so I went to Joann's Fabric and picked up a pack of red and white paper doilies found in the candy/cake making section. All the other materials needed I had at home.

First I needed to make the footprint hearts so I had to wait until Dave came home from work so he could help hold Cameron while I inked his foot and pressed the paper to it. (Turned out that Dave ended up holding Cameron, inking his foot AND pressing it to the paper while I just stood there. Oops.) You obviously need to work at fast as you can since baby's don't take kindly to their feet being held still for very long. After the first few Cameron figured out what was going on and started scrunching his toes or wiggling them when they were pressed to the paper so a few of them have smeared toes. One even has a tiny extra toe print! It really wasn't bad though and only took a few minutes. Cameron was more curious about the whole thing than annoyed with it.

Next I cut a template for the card making sure that it was large enough to cover all the holes in the lace detail of the doily but that it didn't stick out from behind it.

Then I chose the paper I wanted to use, cut it in half and then score the middle so that it would fold cleanly and easily.

Using the template cut the heart out of the paper making sure to leave a tab on the left hand side to keep the two heart sides connected so that it makes a card. Then use a glue stick to glue both doilies to the front and back taking care to perfectly align the hearts.

On the inside I used double stick tape to attach the footprint heart. I used tape because I feared using a glue stick would end up wrinkling or warping the paper. There were both red and white heart doilies in the pack. I ended up lining the inside of the white ones with pink paper because I wanted there to be contrast between the white paper footprint.

On the right hand side I wrote:
From the tips of my toes
to the bottom of my heart...
Happy Valentine's Day

Voila! Super easy, simple but personalized Valentine's Day card.

The Nursery!

We are finally almost finished with the nursery for our impending little one! I say finally because I'm 9 months pregnant so talk about waiting to the last minute! And I say almost because we're still hunting down a few items like a fun area rug and some sort of diaper pail.

But even without those things we're still pretty much ready to rock! I just love how it turned out! Here it is!

I know it's not the most original idea since birch tree themed nurseries are all over the internet right now but I just love how we decided to use a very dark, charcoal gray for the two walls with the birch trees on them and then a light gray for the other two walls so that the whole room wouldn't be so dark and feel too heavy.

Thanks to my mom and dad for purchasing the crib, changing table and shelves for us! I decided on using the Ikea Expedit bookcase on it's side with 4 inch legs added to the bottom for the changing table because it was more versatile and to me more interesting than a plain old changing table. Dave was unsure about it for awhile, especially since he loathes cheap Ikea stuff (I LOVE cheap Ikea stuff!) and especially because that meant we'd actually have to go to an Ikea, go inside and be surrounded by all the cheap crap he hates. But bless his heart he went along with my vision and we made the trip there (all the way to Pittsburgh, a two hour drive).

Once we picked the color scheme I searched the internet for matching sheets and a crib skirt but couldn't find anything that wasn't pastel blue, green or jungle lion/tiger theme. So after a little research I found this blog that shows you how to make crib sheets. I must say that it's actually pretty easy! The crib skirt I just winged it without a pattern. I measured the dimensions of the crib platform, the length of the drop to the floor and then cut the pieces to those sizes, adding a 1/4" for the seams. Using the mattress as a template I traced around it onto my base fabric for the skirt and then sewed the side pieces to those.

I decided to make a pennant to hang over the crib from the left over crib sheets and skirt fabric. Again, this is a super simple project. Just cut out whatever size triangles you want to use, leaving a 1/4" to 1/2" seam on the sides to allow for seams. After I ironed the seams over to make it easier to sew down I realized that I didn't even need to sew them at all so I just left them like that! Then I took a coordinating 1" wide ribbon, folded it in half and sewed each triangle between the ribbon, making it one long pennant.

The light fixture was originally an ugly 80's floral, frosted etched half dome globe that I just thought we'd replace with a plain, clear frosted one. Lucky me though, my husband is just as creative and innovative as I am and one day came home with this!

A frame that he made out of wood to look like a drum shell. Yes, he made the frame himself out of wood. I don't know how but he did. And yes, he plays the drums and actually makes custom drums from fiber glass. Yep, our little guy is destined to be a drummer. Not looking forward to all the noise but the thought does excite me since I've always wanted to play the drums!

We wove thick charcoal and turquoise ribbons through the drum, securing it with hot glue as we went along and then added a frosted circle to the bottom to diffuse the light from below. Voila! Instant light fixture!

The two shelves above the changing table I thought would be big/long enough to hold more photos of our immediate family than it did. They were filled up right away with books, stuffed animals and a only a few of the pictures/photos I wanted to use so I decided to do a photo collage of frames to the right of the the baby's crib, each featuring an immediate family member. I figure when he's older we can do the point and ask game there, you know the- "who's that" and "who's that" game.

 (These frames are driving me nuts! Most of them are hung on a single nail so even though I obsessively level them every time I walk in the room they all seem to move a little over time. I need to get those non-slip corner thingys for them to keep them in place!)

The mobile was a random last minute craft that I threw together one afternoon after I organized all my fabric and craft supplies in the office. I had everything I needed and didn't spend one cent on anything. First I cut out the pattern for the bird body, beak and wings, traced them onto felt, cut them out and then hot glued the beaks and wings to the bird bodies. Then using embroidery floss I blanket stitched around each of the birds to secure the two sides together, stuffed them with some left over batting I had and closed them up. The black wooden oval they're hanging from is a bag handle that didn't get used from a different project. I used one strand of embroidery floss to attach each of the birds to the oval and used the rest of the remaining floss to hang the mobile up.

Painting the graphic on the walls by far took the longest time to do. Here are step by step photos of the progression of the walls:

Once we decided on what we were going to do we had to figure out how to get it on the walls. No small task since I don't consider myself an artist at all. Sure I'm crafty but that's so different from being able to draw and paint. I was going to free hand the trees at first, just wing it ya know but Dave said "No Way!" and suggested that I tape in the outline of the trees. I really didn't think this was going to work because I thought the trees would end up looking too straight and un-natural, like obvious blue masking tape trees.

I gave it a go though, just to get a visual. The first tree I taped in ended up being too short and too thick, a tendency that I would do to all the trees until I stepped back and realized they were too thick and "thinned" them out. After the first two trees I pretty much got the hang of it and the rest went fairly quickly.

Dave painted them in and an hour or two later we pulled the tape to reveal our cool little trees!

 
Next I hand painted the leaves onto the trees. Again, I was super nervous, not wanting to mess up our so far perfect mural but after taking forever to paint a few of them I just snapped back into my old self and just "winged it", just painting different leaf shapes and re-shaping them if they were a little off.

 

Feeling confident after my successful leaf painting stint I tried my hand at drawing templates for the birds. Here is where my streak ended. After an hour of trying to free hand draw the birds and coming up with some pretty funky, disproportionate birds I gave up and asked Dave to give it a shot. Thirty minutes later he walks into the room with 5 different birds, all perfectly to scale! Who knew he could draw! :)

We taped the templates to the wall, traced around them and then filled them in with our turquoise accent color. The trees, leaves and birds all required three to four coats of paint to cover over the dark charcoal paint.

So that's it! Little baby Martin's nursery in a not so little nutshell. It was fun putting it together and feels good that we took the time and put in the effort to hand make everything we did- all for our beloved little one! :)