Wouldn't it be grand if we got some snow this year? The boys think so. I do too. Too bad we don't have any snow yet, but that doesn't mean we can't bust out
some sleds right? Sled ornaments that is.

I pinned {THIS} little sled ornament a little while ago, and knew that the boys and I needed to tackle this project. I originally thought that our sleds would then be put on the tree that goes in the family room, but they never made it there. I decided after painting the sleds white, that these little guys would look ever so much better on Rae's tree! So after painting them white and then having fun with my black and silver sharpies, I added some hot pink crocheted handles and they ended up on Rae's tree!


The boys really like that Reagan's tree has something they made on it. I like that they actually made the sleds. Unfortunately, Harrison is now a popsicle stick creation monster. Thank goodness these sticks aren't terribly expensive! I don't want to stunt his creativity.

Yesterday I shared my pretty new dress, and we all know that pretty new dresses need pretty shoes to go with them. Except I had no pretty white shoes to go with my pretty new dress. How many times can I say pretty?  Enter Pinterest...

A while back I pinned this great redo from AGAAGG.

Aren't those adorably cute shoes? That houndstooth pattern is vinyl. Yep, you heard it right. Its vinyl. Do you see my light bulb starting to get brighter? I don't have any vinyl (well none that I'd put on shoes) but I do live near a Target that sells all sorts of fun duct tape!

So after fetching some white duct tape, I gathered my supplies (shoes, duct tape, craft knife, brown paint pen) and got to work.  I forgot to take before pictures of both shoes undone, but you get the idea. :)


The original shoes weren't bad, but like I said - I needed white shoes to go with the outfit.


After applying all of my duct tape the shoes needed something more. So here's where the paint pen comes  in. The shoes had decorative stitching on them originally, so I just drew some brown stitches on the duct tape. Worked like a charm.
 Aren't they adorable? I love that I was able to reuse some old shoes. Although during the wedding I did remember why I stopped wearing said shoes (about 4 years ago) and that's because as my feet swell, the shoes don't and it makes for some painful feet. Oh well, at least I looked good while my feet weren't swollen. :)



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It's been awhile since I've shown up here hasn't it? I apologize for my absence, but he reality is still that I haven't crafted anything. At least until last night/this morning and the night before.

Yesterday kicked off teacher appreciation week at Dev's school and today was bring in flowers for your teacher.

Since I'm trying to save money at every turn, I decided to see what I had around the house that would work.

Enter coffee filters.

I actually tried this project a couple of months back, but never completed it so when we started this project Sunday night (nothing like teaching your kids about time management) I figured it would be quite simple to get it done. The instructions can be found {HERE} on Ms. Martha's site.


I'm so silly. I should know that nothing ever goes as planned, but despite my mishap the flowers got done and look lovely.

I would say a few things about them though.
1) Make sure that your floral wire is secured tightly with the tape and maybe even add a drop of with glue to the first set of petals so that the stem doesn't pull out while you're working with the flower.
2) This is probably a no-brainier, but don't use pen to trace your petals on the coffee filter. I couldn't find a pencil so I used a pen and that's why I have nice blue tinged petals in the purple rose.
3) Martha uses nice water colors. I used crayola watercolors. They're not as intense as what Ms. Martha got but I like them nonetheless.
4) If your stem does come out of the flower after you've painted it, like mine did, I just folded the tip of the tape back towards the flower and taped that up like a boutonniere. Worked just fine.

I'll be sharing another teacher appreciation gift later this week!

For a very long time I have wanted to add some animal print to my home decor, but the hubs was not on board. So I did what any good crafter would do, I pulled out a blank lampshade and some puffy paint.

I drew some faint zebra lines on my lampshade and the spent a couple of days filling in my design.

I used white metallic puffy paint and I just say that I really like the effect of the metallic white against the white of the shade.

So here's the beauty right now. I love her!

Oh and when I explained my plan and then showed the hubs my creation he asked where it was going and if I thought it was too fancy. I guess if he thinks it's fancy then I did a good job.

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted anything up.

I feel a little bad because I do have stuff to share. It's just been hard to motivate myself. Well motivate myself crafty wise. I've been trying to focus on me and the other journeys we're on.

So anyways I wanted to share the yarn orbs I made along with where my dining room stands right now.

There are tons of yarn orb tutorials out there so I'm not going to share the how-I-did-it's. My problem is now what to do with them. I've wanted them hit I did not give much thought to what to do with them after I made them. Oh well. Not a bad problem to have.

I've also added some new color to the walls but I do t think it's the color in going to go with. I think I'd like to go a hair darker. The color up there is "Weekend in the Country" it's a color by valspar. I think I'd like to try "City Chic". Its a smudge darker but also with some purple in it, which I think will play well off of the browns, reds, and yellows that will be going in the room.

I'd also like to update the ceiling of the dining room. I want to go with a darker color up there. I really like the color "Shoe Polish" by valspar. It's exactly what you think it is. A nice ruddy brown and since my dining room has 10 foot ceilings the dark color will have no problem being above our heads. I also want to beef up the moulding on the ceiling.

Well that's all I have for right now. Tomorrow I'll share a lampshade redo that I'm really loving.

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Hey guys!

Boy, this week week between Christmas and New Year's really wreaks havoc with stuff. I haven't been doing things I know I should, and instead sitting on my tuckus enjoying all the trimmings of Christmas.

I did get a ton of stuff done before the holidays, but I only took pictures of  one of the gifts, because I'm a dodo.

Dana will have to supply some photos of her gift for you guys, but I'm sure she will. I'm an excellent nag. Ask the hubs. :)

So anyways, back to the conversation at hand - handmade gifts. I should really say altered gift in this case, but whatever the case - I want some for myself.

My sister, Nicole moved into her own place with her fiance' this year and as such she's been setting up her house.

She's decided that the colors in her kitchen will be black and white. That's a palette I can work with. :)

So I headed to Target and got some of their flour sack dish towels. These are great. They're large and they're only $5 for 4 of them.

Then I found these Sharpie fabric markers.

Click the picture to go to Sharpie's page.

Now, I bought them before I really thought about the implications.

I would have to draw on these towels with these. Draw. Ergh. I'm not an artist. Not the pencil and creating and image out of it kind of artist, but my head down and ram it attitude provided me with the determination (note that I did not say confidence) to tackle this project.

I went to The Graphics Fairy and downloaded a couple of black and white steampunk images. Love her site! So then I printed out said images in a 5 x7 format, but I made sure that the images weren't cropped or anything.

I laid the pictures beneath the towel and outlined the picture, then I moved the image out from underneath the towel and went to town on them. I think I did alright. here are some close-ups.



The fan is my favorite one, and the utensils were the first ones I did. I think I improved between them and all the rest. The marker was very smooth and didn't catch on the fabric at all.

I want some for myself now, and I have some good ideas with the rest of the colors.

See you guys later!

Well I'm sharing some ornaments with you guys again today.

I just can't seem to get enough of wood grain, so I decided that I would freehand some on some ornaments.

I painted the inside of these ornaments and let that dry completely.

Then I grabbed a Sharpie oil-based marker in white and to town.


I just went around and around making knots every so often in my woody texture.

I'm pretty pleased with myself over how these came out. I ended up making a set of four. Glitter on these guys would look pretty amazing too.

What do you guys think?

I was so excited to show off some ornaments for Harrison's tree today, but fate poked her annoying head into my plans, so now I'm going to show you a humongous fail and some wins.

So here are the ornaments that I've been working on.
Do you see my pile of craft stuff? Yep, that's all stuff I've been using to alter these plain Jane ornaments. I had 12 ornaments. I've made 3 beaded covers, which I showed off yesterday, and then I tried painting 6 of them. 4 of those 6 ornaments were a fail, the 2 green ones above were not fails. The other 2 ornaments up there were my redo's. I have one ornament that I'm currently beading, and I can't find the other one. I don't know where it went. I had it on the table with me this afternoon as  I was painting these ornaments, then we had dinner and now I can't find it. Grumble. Oh well - moving on.

So I painted 6 ornaments and only 2 came out right. I don't get it either. They were all enamel paints. I followed the directions. Why did those green ones come out right? I wish I knew, because there was a lot of time  waiting for these things to dry was painfully slow. Here's what the other 4 ornaments looked like after trying to bake them.
Why did the paint peel? Well there are 4 trashed ornaments.

But I'm not going to be deterred so easily. I pulled out my oil-paint sharpie markers in black and brown and started making my animal print ornaments. I free-handed these two ornaments and just filled in with the marker. I had planned on adding glitter to these guys, but after getting everything colored in I decided that they didn't need it.

After I got the zebra one painted, I started on the giraffe one. I happened to have a metallic gold acrylic paint downstairs so I painted the inside of the giraffe ornament after the paint on the outside dried, which didn't take long - thankfully. :) I still need to paint the inside of the zebra ornament, but at least the giraffe ornament is done.
So those are the ornaments that I've gotten done lately.

Hopefully my missing ornament shows up so I can finish my plans. :) I still have more ornaments to make, and I do want to show off all the new trees, so that will be coming up next week!

See you guys later,