Felt Board

So it's nothing fancy but I made my girl her felt board for the air plane ride tomorrow. I ended up making it like a crayon roll, which my girl LOVES her brothers crayon roll. I took a dish towel from the dollar store that I have been wanting to do "something with" and cut it down the middle. Then I took the seem ripper to the sides and cut a piece of felt the same size. I then placed the felt down on top of the wrong side of the dish towel and folded the sides back down and sewed the felt down.





Then I took the ribbon and figured out where I wanted it sewed down.

I cut out all the felt letters and since I was pressed for time I just threw them in a zip lock baggie, put them on the mat, folded it in half and rolled it up! I think it will be a success on the plane. I will let y'all know. Now hopefully Tyler doesn't fit her for it like I bet he will!!!

Embarrassing Moment

I thought I would add my blog to the NEW FRIEND FRIDAY over at the Girl Creative. Their topic today was most embarrassing moments. Mine is a BIG one!

So a few years back before I was married, they were doing a blood drive at my church. I had never given blood before. I decided it would be a good thing to do. I wasn't terrified of needles or anything so really there was no excuse not to. Well, on the way to the church building my sis and I realized we hadn't eaten lunch yet. That was a BIG mistake. So we went through a drive through. Mistake number two was I ordered a tiny salad. Mistake number THREE, my sister is TINY. She only weights 115 pounds which is basically the minimum amount you HAVE to weigh in order to give blood. When we were in high school the seniors were doing a blood drive and she didn't weigh enough to donate. We made fun of her ALL day. "Kim, you sure you weigh enough?" "Kim, you better not pass out." "Kim...." Well, you get the point. ALLLLLLL day long. Karma is a bitch, let me tell ya.

We get there and sign in. They test our iron and apparently my levels are enough to donate. By this time I had to pee. If you know me or my family we have to pee ALL the time. We never went on road trips as a child and I assume it was a combination of never having a reliable car and our SMALL bladders.

Any ways. I sit there for ever it seems like with the needle in my arm waiting for them to tell me I am done so I can pee. I mean really, HOW LONG CAN IT TAKE TO GIVE BLOOD. It took at least 20 or so minutes of torture. They tell me I am good to go sit in the snack area and have some juice and cookies. Really, I just wanted to pee. I sit at the table and my sister starts to say something to me. I remember her saying, "These cookies are actually really good..." and by the time the sentence was done I was GONE! I had blacked out. ME. All 150 pounds of ME ( HA I only WISH I still weighted only 150! ). There was a man walking by right when I fell out of my chair and he caught me luckily. My pants were not so lucky. I PEED! Seriously? At church, with people all around that I knew and would see on a regular basis after this. When I came too and realized what had happened and that I had peed I was mortified! I felt like someone was on a loud speaker yelling, "Clean up on isle 13!" While someone grabbed a mop and mopped up my pee. YIKES. Seriously worst moment ever!

So remember that Karma thing and PEE BEFORE YOU GIVE BLOOD!

More

I did some more maternity pictures for my friend today. We got a couple of good ones. It was SUCH a beautiful day that it was hard to not stay out side. I had TONS of stuff to do though and little time to do it in. I feel like I got a lot done though. My living room is picked up and has been vaccumed twice. Once while Kayla was napping and again an hour later after she dumped pop corn every where. She is my little stinker but I love her! Check out my maternity pics here if you get a chance. I also put a couple of my girl on there.

My boy had a couple of one liners today that cracked me up. I know I already wrote about the plane ride comment. Then while we were in the kitchen after dinner he pointed to Kayla and said, "Mom Kayla looks beautiful in her outfit!" haha She was wearing overalls but she had a new flower clip in her hair. I think he was referring to that but who knows with that kid. He makes me laugh. It is always good to have a nice day with him in between the crazy. I love him to death but some times it feels as though he WANTS to get beat. Which reminds me of a joke no one would really know except my sisters who read this. "Beat him Don....oh Lord, don't kill him!"

IF ANYONE ELSE READS THAT QUOTE AND KNOWS IT YOU ARE AWESOME AND WE WERE MEANT TO BE FRIENDS. HAHA That of course does not apply to my friends who I made watch it. Good night y'all. I should have gone to bed hours ago...Hopefully some crafting post tomorrow

HELP Update

I had a thought yesterday while trying to think of things to keep Kayla busy on the air plane. She has been incredibly into the alphabet lately. She will spend 30 minutes in Tyler's room by herself playing with his letters on the isle. SOOOOOOOOOOO I am making her a little felt board to take on the air plane with letters. I already got all the letters cut out and now I just have to make the board. Hopefully sometime tonight I can get that finished. If not tonight then for sure tomorrow. My house is a MESS and I NEED to get that all cleaned as well so I am not coming home to a disaster when it's time.

I was putting Tyler down for naps just now and I told him, "Two more days and we will be in Utah!" He got all excited and then said something about the air plane. I said, "Yup and we are going to be SO good on the air plane." Tyler, with his hand on my face said, "I will be perfect on the air plane momma, but Kayla won't!" haha Good times. He cracks me up



Now off to clean....BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

HELP!!

I am going on an air plane with my two kids by MYSELF on Saturday. One is 4 and a little more easily entertained. The other way however, is exactly 15 months old. She is a lot harder. especially when sitting down because she normally wants to get down and run which is obviously can't do on a plane. She LOVES doing tedious things taking all of the crayons out of the box and then putting them back in. Any suggestions on something I can buy or make for her in the next two days? I have a quiet book my mom made my son which I am gonna bring but I am slowly panicking. We went to the doctor today and she played with my wallet for 20 minutes pulling all the cards out. I think I might make her a wallet of her own...

ANY other suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!!!! THANK YOU IN ADVANCE. Hope everyone is having a fabulous hump day!

Momma's Got a New Bag!

I FINALLY finished my bag after starting it on Sunday! WOO HOO I am so happy because I LOVE how it turned out. I wish however, that I used a lighter fabric for the black because I think my purse weights about 3 or 4 pounds without anything in it.






I made the buttons for the bottle pockets on the sides and the bows they are attached to is actually made out of a stretchy head band. It is way to small for me and Kayla doesn't wear them any more so I figured, why waste it right?! But I needed something in that color of pink and I didn't have any fabric. I will try and post a picture tomorrow of it actually on my shoulder so you can see how big it actually is. I am loving all the pockets I put in the inside and the narrow top so things won't spill out hopefully. YEAH! Also, I am not super girly. But THIS bag for me was just the right amount of girly with the pink and the bows but the black and the skulls and cross bones made it so ME.

On a side note, the peanut butter cookies I made yesterday that I posted about were so good that I ate like 8! AHHHHHHH Hello two pounds I lost last week. You weren't gone for long, but apparently I missed you! haha I accidently left them out uncovered ALLLLLL day yesterday and then ALLLLLLL night last night. I was sad so when I noticed them in the morning. I picked one up and guess what?!?! They were still amazingly wonderful and not stale at ALL! WOO HOO








SugarandSpice

Serious Business

When we make peanut butter cookies in this house, we mean serious business. My husband is not much of a junk food eater. In fact, soda is his choice of junk food and even that is diet. He does however LOVE Reeses peanut butter cups. He also loves my peanut butter cookies so he asked me to combine the two because let's face it. Peanut butter cookies themselves are just TOO healthy haha

I found this recipe on line one time and tried it. It is WONDERFUL. You may think I am crazy but I SWEAR organic peanut butter makes it even better. It makes the cookies crumbly but in a melt in your mouth, totally orgasmic kind of way.

Peanut Butter cookies

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream together butter, peanut butter and sugar. Beat in the egg. Then combine all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Stir together and then add to the wet ingredients. THIS is where we go CRAZY. We take Reese's mini cups and crush them up and add them to the dough. THEN after I put it out on the cookie sheet I take another Reese's mini cup and smash it down in the middle of the cookie. They are HEAVEN!

Preheat oven to 375 and bake 8 to 10 mins. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Sneak Peek

I have been working on my diaper bag. It isn't done but I have the outside done. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I woke up with a horrible sore throat so there was no church for us! I used some of my "free time" to start sewing my bag. It's been a pain in the butt! I keep having problems. My cheap thread keeps breaking so I guess that should teach me to buy cheap thread again. We'll see how the inside comes along. I hope to have it done by Wednesday. Here's hoping.

Bandana's

Did you ever think to buy bandanna's to use as fabric?! If you hadn't yet you should. they have really cool patterns sometimes and it is the perfect amount of fabric to make things for little girls. For instance, a skirt




For this skirt I just took a bandanna, cut it in half and added a white border to the bottom. Then I sewed the elastic on the top and you have a very cute and cheap skirt.

Another option is to make a dress




There are tutorials ALL over the internet for these types of dresses. If you want to see one, try treyandlucy. She has LOTS of fun tutorials on here side bar. I use her tie patterns every time I make a tie onesie. She is really adorable too!

And lastly, you can be slightly more complicated a use it as fabric. I made my girl a dress with two different bandanna's. It came out pretty cute. It was my first dress and so it is kind of rough. If I ever do one again, I could make it MUCH better.





Any ways....just wanted you to know there are options out there besides just going to the fabric store and buying fabric. And for summer, the light weight of the bandanna is perfect! I have found several boys shorts made out of bandanna's which would be really comfy except my boy is HUGE. I'd have to buy three bandanna's to make him shorts. haha So think out side of the box. I try and do that always. Look at EVERYTHING as fabric. Even plain white t-shirts can make really wonderful things. And if anything....you can use them to "try" things in stead of wasting "good fabric" on experiments. :) s

Oldies

I started putting all of my crafting stuff on this blog because our family blog was turning into a daily, "Look what I made this week" post. I decided I should probably stick the crafting ans sewing stuff here so that people didn't get sick of reading craft and sewing stuff on our FAMILY blog. Since I did post stuff there for a while there are some sewing/crafting things I haven't posted here yet. Today I started working on a purse but since it isn't done and I really just felt like posting today I thought I would post some stuff from a couple of months ago.

First off I did a photo shoot for a girl at church. She has the cutest little baby girl and I wanted to take pictures of her. Well, before she was born I made her this set of clothes





I really like how most of it came out. The bibs I made out of micro fiber towels and regular material for the back. If you ever need baby gift ideas just go to etsy.com and look around. You will find something to be inspired by!

No Time

I haven't had time to post really but here is a good picture I got the other day in the flowers. My friend ended up canceling because her back was bothering her so I venture into the flowers with my kids all by myself....it was interesting. I just set up my tripod, plugged in my remote trigger and went from there. I have learned a couple of things. Make sure I know WHERE to stand to be IN the picture before taking it, Tyler REALLY likes my remote trigger and Kayla does NOT like walking in the flowers. :) Here is my proof of the last one



heehee Is it sad that I kept taking pictures of her crying because I just KNEW they would be cute?!

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day Y'all! What are you doing to celebrate? I got an email from reusageablebags.com ( which is a wonderful site for anything green ) with a top ten things we could do to help Mother Earth. I wanted to share the list with you as a suggestion for everyone to work on. I already do at least half of the things on the list but that means I still have some work to do. Every one can improve something right? SO here we go...

1. Carry a reusable shopping bag with you.

2. Pack a waste free lunch with things like fabric napkins, washable utensils and plates!

3. Bring a bottle of mug and of course make it something you are not going to throw away after one use like aluminum or stainless steel.

4. Use paper towel replacements. I recently decided to stop buying them. It's been about 6 months or so and I don't really miss them yet. My husband does, but I don't.

5. Wrap gifts in reusable bags. I do not do this yet but I should. I have tons of fabric and could easy make bags that can be used afterwards and can be cute! This is something I need to work on

6. Use other resources instead of buying energy drinks and juice boxes. I will link back to this in a minute...

7. Get rid of sandwich bags. I am having a hard time with this one. Please forgive me...

8. Use a reusable utensil

9. Replace aluminum foil and plastic wrap......Yup, need to work on this one too!

10. Ditch the dryer sheets! I tried this one and didn't like the results. Any one use one of the dryer balls and like it? If so, let me know which brand it is. I think I just bought a cheap one.

Any ways if you want to check out the list itself which has products and links for you to check out go
here

Go check it out if you are interested in ANYTHING on the list. Every little bit helps people. My husband always makes fun of me and calls me a hippy but I would rather him call me a hippy then feel guilty for throwing away all the trash I know we produce all the time.

In fact I have a challenge for you guys. I would like for you to save ALL your cardboard for one week. JUST SEVEN DAYS PEOPLE and if you are not AMAZED but how much cardboard you use in a week I will be shocked. I was SO SHOCKED the first week I started recycling cardboard. I had no idea how much we used. Try it if you do not recycle and I promise you that it will at least get you thinking and that is all it takes some times.

Rise and Shine

I started the day off great waking up early and showering with my husband before he went to work. That was fun. Normally I don't get up until 7:30 or so and he gets up about 6ish. It was nice having the extra time and getting to see him before he left. While using some of my free time this morning I was looking through my dashboard and found this cute post for mothers day HERE Go check it out because it gives TONS on tutorials for MOMS! Including some cute purses which is my obsession. I still have to make mine for my trip coming up and now I have another option. WOO HOO

I hope everyone has a fabulous day! I am off to finish getting ready and then going to take pictures in the blue bonnets with my bestie and our kids. Can I just tell you how happy I get to take pictures. It is so much fun. I LOVE IT!

I LOVE Sales

Today I got a deal! We have a fabric store in town and it is going out of business. Sucks that it is going out of business BUT that means everything is 50% off! YIPEE!! I spent 30 bucks and I got two bags full of stuff.

Check out my stash I walked away with



I got some sweet deals.



Those packs are 10X10 squares and one has 14 squares and the other has 16. I paid 5.50 for one and 6 bucks for the other. IN SANE I TELL YOU!




Aren't the colors gorgeous?! Then I got all these remnants for 6 bucks!




I can't wait to have time to sew.

Before I go I wanted to post a funny picture of my girl. She kept sneaking into our bedroom and coming out with the same thing in her hand each time. One guess what it was.....



Yeah...it's our LUB! haha I can't keep it out of her hands. If she sneaks into our room that is what she gets EVERY TIME! I guess I should start hiding it. It was funny too because when she saw me putting my camera up she made that face for me on purpose. Not sure what it was supposed to be but it was deliberate. HAHA I took two of them and she made the same face both times. I heart her. Don't worry about those long bangs too because I cut them today. I totally cut them too short again but still not nearly as bad as the last time. We are gonna try to do pictures in the blue bonnets with my kids and Sarah tomorrow so let's hope everything goes well.

Almost

I almost had a heart attack! I opened up my blog, signed in and went to the dashboard to see all the updates on the blogs I follow and NONE were there. It said I wasn't following any blogs and to get started click blah blah blah. I freaked out for a minute there. I got it back and running though. Thank goodness because I honestly wouldn't remember all the blogs I follow by heart.

So here is the Monkey costume



The brown was making his eyes pop! he actually looked pretty darn cute in it. He was so excited to wear it all day ( except to church of course, although I am sure he would of if I would have let him! )

Today my husband and I have dentist appointments which sadly for me means no sewing. Boooooooooooo. I REALLY want to sew me a new purse for our trip coming up. I have the cutest material too. I just need a cute pattern. Since I have at LEAST 100 purse patterns copy and pasted in a word document I guess I should be good there too. I just need to pick one and go for it. Wish me luck. I am so indecisive it's gonna take me forever to decide which one. Does anyone else do that? I have over 100 purses to choose from and I will end up looking at ALL of them and then end up searching for more and invest 3 hours of my time with nothing to show for it but a longer list of purses! I love you craft blogs! :)

Quickie

I just wanted to post a quickie...It is late, I am TIRED since I didn't sleep much last night and I was already IN bed again and had to get up. Not the same reason this time although I am gonna be SUPER annoyed if when I get back into bed I hear snoring again. I was getting into bed, my husband already half asleep and I remembered I PROMISED my son I would make him a monkey costume. DOH! I told him it would be ready when he got up in the morning. Lucky for me I told him it would just be ears and a tail. He then argued with me for five minutes on what the shape of a monkey ear looks like. Man he is stubborn. Any ways. I thought I would post a picture of my newest necklace! I think this might end up being an obsession! They are too easy and there are so many variation to them like hair clips for girls. My friend Katrina and her husband Johnny came over for a little while today and a couple of weeks ago she took some pictures for me. I thought I would make her a necklace to say thank you.



I LOVE my new stamp kit! I don't know if it just works better then the first one I bought or if the washers I got are softer but this necklace worked so much better then the first. I can't wait to make more. I still need to make myself one with a skull on it. :)

Oh and I hope you are not sick of the bluebonnet pictures because it has RAINED and been gloomy for like 3 days straight! Just before sunset the clouds opened up to let a little of the sun peek through and made a gorgeous sunset. My husband was in the bathroom when I peeked out side and saw the pink in the sky. I thought, "I'd better get my camera and get ready so the second he is done I can fly out the door and get some pictures." Well, he took too long so finally I knocked on the door and said, "I'll be right back." He didn't know what to think and I heard a confused, "Um okay, I am almost done." haha I flew out the door and down the street to the SAME patch of flowers. I didn't fix my camera settings so quite a few of them came out blurry but I got some good ones. I will post a couple here and then all the ones I edited on my photography blog tomorrow.






Have a very happy Sunday everyone!