Last Name Family Pictures

I have done several projects over the past few years involving family names and personalized projects similar to the last post, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to post about the others :)

This is a project I put together for Mother's Day 2010. I LOVE LOVE LOVE how it turned out!

It worked out perfectly with my family because there are 7 children and 7 letters in out last name :) Each sibling took a family picture, holding a letter of our last name. Then I printed them out and framed them. (This is the one for my mom. I did GREEN for my mother-in-law too, but I STILL haven't gotten a picture of it... UGH.)

We loved these so much, we made copies for our home too!

FYI, here's a little more about what we did: We edited the photos and made them all sepia tone because we liked the way it looked. You could leave them color if you prefer that :) I printed them out as 4x6 prints, then bought a frame from Hobby Lobby that they would fit in. Pick any frame that is large enough, because you're going to have to get a mat cut anyway. Of course, Ryan put it all together for me, and it was really a simple but AWESOME gift!

I know I really need to get better at taking pictures of things I make! I promise to try harder on that in the future!

Family Name Gifts

So, I see I'm starting to average about 1 post a month... pitiful! I'm a little ashamed, but hey! I'm here doing it again :) Christmas was WONDERFUL! We got to spend time with family, and Isaac was old enough to really enjoy it this year. We kept it very modest and low key this year (just like our budget.. hehe). There was a time when I gave presents to everyone in our family, and even other friends and acquaintances, but that time is far spent. Then, we started just giving gifts to our parents and the kids in our families. But now, our family has grown! We have 19 nieces and nephews! Yeah, definitely no way we could even get something small for each of them, so we decided it was better to just skip out on that too. I do have a goal of, one of these years, planning enough ahead to make gifts for all of the kids... We'll see how that goes ;)


Anyway, so this year we did a couple gifts for each our own children, and made gifts for our parents. We have the most amazing parents anyone could ever dream of, so we have to show our appreciation any time we have the chance :)


I wanted to do something personalized, and I had seen several cool ideas of printables floating around Pinterest and etsy so I decided to do my version of 2 of them using family names. Here's what I came up with:

I printed them each out and framed them, but of course I didn't think to take a picture of the finished project. I have definitely not been thinking about blogging much lately (obviously), so it didn't even occur to me that I might want a pic of the finished project. Use your imagination though :)


I think they turned out pretty cute! I also made photo books on Snapfish for each of them using pictures of them with the kids and quotes about grandparents. I might post more about that another time :)


That's all for tonight, and hopefully it won't be another month before you hear from me again!

I BELIEVE I've gotten a little behind!

Wow! It's been a LONG time since I've posted. Sickness, travel, holidays, you name it... Life has definitely put a damper on my holidays. Add that to a sweet baby girl that doesn't want to sleep more than about an hour without eating between 8pm and 1am... and there goes my productive window of time! 


Last year was different. I made things... created things... crafted things. So, I'm going to blog about some of those things tonight :)

Ok, so I've got to tell you that I'm pretty proud of this BELIEVE project. Not that it turned out so wonderful or anything, but for another very special reason. This was an original creative idea... straight from my brain! Woohoo! I didn't see it or copy it from anyone else! (This is a pretty huge accomplishment for me.) So, how did I do it?

I bought the wood plaques from the Wal-Mart craft department and painted them with acrylic paint. Then I cut the letters out of adhesive vinyl with my Silhouette. I discarded the actual vinyl letters and used the negative space as a stencil, and painted the letters in gold. Then I hot glued some cute wire ribbon to the backs, and there you have it!

Here it is hanging on my wall.
Sorry... this is probably just about the crappiest pic ever,
 but I'm afraid if I take the time to go take another,
my precious window of time might pass by :)

Another project I made last year, for a gift, was kind of a hybrid of my own creative genius (haha) and a few other ideas I had seen floating around blogland...

Simple wood block (scrap left over from another project), sand papered edges, Mod Podged scrapbook paper, drilled holes the size of sucker sticks, Merry Christmas cut out in vinyl, and attached a bow. The suckers are oreos dipped in white chocolate and decorated with sprinkles. The secret to making these Oreo pops is to dip the end of the sucker stick into the melted chocolate before putting it inside the cookie so it will all stick together before dipping! The amazing thing about this project is that I threw it together with only things I had lying around the house! Score!

I'm hoping to get a few more of my Christmas projects posted before Christmas passes, but time seems to be moving in hyper drive lately! I mean seriously? It's already mid-December? Phew... Where did my November go? :)

Headband/Hair Bow Holder

I had very little time or energy for crafting by the time I found out I was having a girl when I was pregnant with Ada. The little energy I had on the days I didn't feel like death was spent chasing Isaac around. Needless to say, I'm not one of those women who love being pregnant. In fact, I pretty much despise it. If the end products weren't so perfect and miraculous, I would never have done it a 2nd time or consider any more!


Sorry. I got a little sidetracked there. The point is that my poor little Ada hardly got anything made for her by her mommy... and I'm still waiting for the day that I can take the time to do some things for her. However, I did get just a couple things done and I want to share one of those today!


When I realized all the ruffles and frills and bows that having a baby girl entailed, I also realized I needed somewhere to put these cute, mostly pink, items :)  That's when I decided I needed some type of hair accessory holder. 


Of course I consulted with Etsy, and got a few ideas. This is what I came up with:

I got a wood plaque from the craft department at Wal-Mart and painted it with acrylic craft paint. Then I cut Ada and the dots out of vinyl with my Silhouette. I discarded the vinyl name and dots and used what was left as a stencil and painted. If I were to do it again, I wouldn't have used 2 shades of pink paint. I'm not sure what I was thinking making the name a different color... I'm going to blame the pregnancy hormones :)


Moving on... I just hot glued the ribbons and screwed in hooks (that I also got at Wal-Mart in the... ummm.. section where all the screws and hooks are). I also would have used bigger hooks if I were to do it again. Obviously, I had no idea just how many headbands my baby girl would need :)


And here it is doing the job it was meant for! Of course I didn't have any bows to attach to the ribbons at the time this picture was taken, and now my hooks are so overloaded with headbands, the bows won't really fit behind or beside them.

If nothing else, this post has told you what not to do if you want to make an effective hair accessory holder! I think sometimes showing our mistakes and trial and error process can be just as helpful as a flawless tutorial. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my little project and I love the personalized touch in Ada's room!

Candy Cakes

Yes, it's yet another post involving candy. I just can't help myself! I made my first candy cake for Halloween last year (2010).

These cakes are so easy to do! For this one, I made a plain yellow cake mix with chocolate frosting, then stuck Kit Kat bars to the frosting on the outside to form a sort of chocolate bowl or barrel, then covered the top with Reese's pieces:

The peanut butter and chocolate was super rich and so yummy! One of the best things about these cakes is that it doesn't matter what the cake looks like on the inside. I mean, I'm sure your cakes always turn out perfectly shaped with no cracks or anything... but I'm just saying... In case by some freak chance something did happen ;)


My husband liked this cake so much, he requested one for his birthday this year.

He wanted Twix and peanut butter M&M's. I decided to go with the mini Twix because I thought the full sized ones would be too big (not to mention cost a fortune to get enough to go around the whole cake!)

As you can see, they weren't quite tall enough, so I did a row of M&M's around the bottom to boost them up to the top of the cake.


Here's the finished cake with candles and all:

These cakes are so much fun and would be great for kid's (or kid at heart, right Ryan?) party!

Language Card Magnets

This is a project I started several months ago for Isaac. He had gotten to the point where he could understand about 90% of what I said to him, but he just didn't have the vocabulary to communicate with me the way he wanted to. That's when I decided to make these language cards to help him out. 

We started with food because I thought it would be something easy that I could expose him to multiple times each day so he could get the hang of it. Basically, the idea is that he can choose the card to tell me what he would like to eat. This cuts down on the process of him pointing in a general direction and me guessing until I pick what he's pointing at. I am also hoping this will help with word recognition as he gets older and starts learning to read.


This was another quick and easy project. I created the cards in Microsoft Word, using mostly Google images. I have taken a few pictures of the actual food that we have on hand a few times so they will be more realistic or authentic for him. 

This is what my Word document file looks like for my first set.

Then I printed, cut, laminated, and put a magnet on the back. This makes them durable and convenient for him to reach.

I tried to get him to show me the card he had, but he didn't want to cooperate and turn it around.

Recently he has really started using them regularly, and it has been great! He loves taking the cards to the high chair and matching them with his food. Now I just need to take the time and effort to make some more :)

Super Simple Halloween Decor: Candy Corn Candle

This year I decided that I wanted to do a better job of decorating for Halloween. It's such a fun holiday! Being so busy and all, I decided to start early... in late September to be exact. I thought if I could just gradually work on a few things each week, the house would look super fabulous in time for Halloween and trick-or-treating. 


Well, it turned out like many many things I attempt (sadly enough)... I started out GREAT... then... sort of... lost steam... I'm pretty sure I haven't done a single Halloween-related thing since before Isaac's birthday party. This makes me so sad because I had SO many great ideas! 


Ahhh... maybe next year. 


Enough of that though. I'm going to share a simple project I DID get accomplished.

Seriously, this has got to be the easiest thing ever. But I LOVE it! Aaaannd, the best part of all: Everything pictured above came from Dollar Tree, which makes it super CHEAP and EASY!! I couldn't ask for anything more! 

So, as you can see I put a candle in the glass jar, poured in some candy corn, and there you have it! It's also versatile. Change out the candy for other holidays, or just take out the candy corn and it's still a cute little candle to display. I liked this one so much, I made another to match and put them on each side of my entertainment center.


The only problem I've had is trying to keep my boys from eating all the candy corn ;)