Halloween Preview!

Okay, I apologize for the poor quality of the picture (sent it to my email from my phone!) and the rushed manner of this post, but I just wanted to take a minute (literally) and post about the homemade Woody costume I made for my 2-year-old boy this year!

It was touch and go there for a bit, but I think it came together so cute! I can't wait for him to put it on this afternoon for our first of 3 Halloween parties we'll be going to today and tomorrow! What do you think?

The sheriff badge, belt buckle, holster and boots are all made from craft foam (either hot glued or stapled together...let's hope it all lasts till tomorrow!). For the boots I just made two cylinders and cut the V shape int he front. He'll wear his brown tennis shoes, and just slip the "boots" over his pants. I made the vest out of white fabric I painted cow spots onto. The shirt I made by painting the plaid and buttons on with some of that fabric paint with the skinny tip.

My husband and I are going to be Slinky Dog! Still throwing that one together though! I'll try and post a picture of that tomorrow.

I'm linking this post up to Fun on A Dime's October Fun Challenge!

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Frozen Fruit-sicles

A few months ago I bought a set of popsicle molds from the Target dollar spot thinking it would be a fun activity/treat for my little boy. Then of course I pretty much forgot about them, and never used them until I saw this challenge at Fun on a Dime.

So a couple of weeks ago we broke out the molds, our blender, and some fresh fruit and milk. I believe our concoction consisted of some milk, a banana and a half (you can see my little boy eating the other half, below!), a peach or two, and what little we managed to get out of a mango that we had a hard time cutting open. We are inexperienced in the mango department. Just look at the look on my husband's face... I'm pretty sure he was saying, "What am I supposed to do with this?"


We poured our smoothie mixture into the molds, and put them in the freezer to enjoy the next day.


We ran a little water on the outside of the molds to loosen the popsicles up enough to get them out, and enjoyed! I kind of like this next picture. Not so much the up-the-nose shot of me (I used to be notorious for that one), but the fact that my little boy seems to be lovingly looking at me and thinking, "My mom is so cool!".

I'll tell you what these popsicles are really useful for. The post-nap, pre-dinner snack. Works out great... He thinks he is getting a treat, while I know he's really having something healthy. And everyone's happy!

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This is my lucky shirt!

A couple of weeks ago I was shopping at Walmart and saw these green t-shirts for $2 each, and I thought that for $2 I could make a St. Patrick's day shirt! I'm usually too cheap to buy a holiday shirt that's only going to to get worn a couple of times, but even I could handle $2!

So I picked up 3 and had my sister and sister-in-law come over so we could make shirts for our little boys. I knew I wanted to do one of the bleach stencil shirts, so we used this tutorial as a guide.

Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Cut out your letters, shapes, whatever you want to put on your shirt. We printed them off the computer onto cardstock. Figure out how you want to arrange them. This is how I did mine:


Step 2: Use spray adhesive to stick the letters onto your shirt. Mix some water and bleach in a spray bottle. I think we used about a 3:1 ratio (water:bleach). Spray it over the the part of the shirt where your letters are. Anywhere that you want bleached.

Note: Don't forget to put something inside the shirt so the bleach doesn't soak through to the back. We just put a plastic grocery sack inside.


Step 3: Once you see the bleach starting to work, rinse it out in running water. We used some dish soap too, since it was handy, then threw all of the shirts in the washer when they were all finished. We also peeled the letters off as we rinsed it in the sink.


Steps 4, 5, & 6: Wash, dry, and wear!

Super cute, eh? I love it! And it was super easy too. That's the best kind of project in my opinion!

We were thinking of maybe doing Easter ones with brown T-shirts and using the shape of a chocolate bunny for the stencil. How cute would it be if you used a scallop punch on your stencil to make it look like the chocolate bunny had a bite out of it!?

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Hand-stamped goodness.

Thursday night Bitty and I spent the night at my sister's house while both of our husbands were out of town! That's always fun. We've done it a couple of times now, and it's fun to watch a totally girly movie and just hang out.

On Friday we decided to finally finish the necklace I made her for her birthday (and the one I made myself!) I got a set of metal alphabet stamps for Christmas, so we stamped some cute brass tags to go with the big turquoise beads and chunky chains.

Here we are sporting our cute necklaces. Pardon my unkempt appearance please!


Some close ups. On my sister's (the circle) I stamped the first initial of each of her children. We were careful, and marked with a pencil where we wanted each letter, etc.

With mine...um, I wasn't quite as careful...oops! Oh well, I guess it's just got more of a home-made "rustic" look to it :) It was the first time I've stamped a plus sign or equals sign, so it was kind a of trial and a lot of error. I like it anyway!


Friday night I ordered my fabric from Around the Block Quilters Shop, and it got here Monday morning! Talk about speedy! And look how great it looks in person!

I should order things online more often...it's so fun to get a package in the mail!

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Post-Valentines Post

I hope everyone had a great Valentine's day! I didn't make a fancy Valentine dinner, but I did make some awesome PINK heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast! Not really very original, but so festive and fun! It may just be a new Valentine tradition for our family!

And this is what happens when you leave a plate unattended at our house...
I made my hubby a little coupon book for Valentine's Day (remember, one of my goals this year is to give homemade gifts!).

I was a little worried he'd think it was really dorky. But I'd totally forgotten that he said his mom used to give him coupon books for his birthday and he loved them! Phew! Turns out he really did like it.


Above is the cover I made for the book. I used a kit from shabbyprincess.com for all of the papers, and put it together with Scrapbook Factory Deluxe. Below is the coupon that he liked the best:

My husband got me this great clock for my present! I love it!

Our old clock pretty much stopped working after we moved here at the end of last summer. It would kind of work off and on, so it hung on our wall for months with the wrong time on it. Pretty gangster, I know.

I didn't really expect him to get me a clock, because I didn't think he'd want to pick it out himself. As you can see he did great. What's funny is that it actually looks just like our old clock, except the old one wasn't painted black. I guess he knew I'd like it, since I loved the old one so much, and we've got lots of black accessories in our living room! Well done, Dear!

My husband told his high school students what he was getting me, and they thought it was pretty boring, but I LOVE it! I told him that I'll hold it on my lap in the car when we move this summer so it doesn't get broken. He thought that was a little extreme, but I just may do it!

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Birthday whatnots

We had a big weekend. Bitty's first birthday was on Saturday and we had a big little family party. Then my husband's birthday was Sunday.

Just look at this adorable kid. I think he had a great time!

We celebrated with lions...


tigers...


and monkeys...
Oh my! So, for Christmas last year my brother-in-law gave me the book Hello Cupcake! It's a good one. I had been planning on making cupcakes for Bitty's birthday for a while, and was just going back and forth on which ones to make...when, as my luck would have it, my book disappeared off of the face of the earth. Yeahhhh....

So luckily I was able to find a picture of the monkeys online. The lions I tried to remember as well as I could, and the tigers were something I just made up (hmmm...can ya tell?!). My mom was in town for the birthday party and she helped with the cupcakes, since I was running out of time to get everything done before the party started. Thanks mom!

The other big project I had been planning on before the birthday weekend (my husband's birthday was Sunday) was a homemade birthday banner.

I LOVE birthdays, and growing up we always had one of those paper Happy Birthday signs as well as some plastic pennant birthday banners that we would decorate the house with on everyone's birthdays. And at some point a few months ago I just got it in my mind that I was going to make a birthday banner out of fabric. I had see cute fabric banners all over the blogging world and thought this would be the perfect idea!

I finished it around 11pm on Friday, just in time for the big weekend! I LOVE how it turned out! I should have taken more pictures to post, but for now here's what it looked like:


Do you love it as much as I do??? I would really love to hear what you think about it... I've been toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop for a while, but I can't decide if it would be worth the trouble... But this ended up so dang cute that I thought maybe someone would want to buy one if I sold them, right? I'll take some close-ups later and post them so you can see just how cute it really is!

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Water Party!

So, I just got off the phone with my mom, and she was telling me all about the water party she's helping to throw for the kids at church. I told her I would love to go to that party with all the fun activities she has planned, so I thought I would share!

The kids range from ages 3 to 11, so they've got a range of activities planned.

Here are the activities geared toward the younger kiddies:

Sprinkler: A fun one to run through.

Sidewalk chalk: Who doesn't love this?

Duck pond: A wading pool filled with rubber ducks. Each duck has a number on the bottom that corresponds with a prize. The kids choose a duck and get a prize!

Bubble station: A bubble machine and a whole lot of bubble solution and about 15 wands.

Activities for older kids/everyone else:

Water baseball: Wiffle balls, plastic bats, and wading pools for bases! I remember doing this at church activities as a teenager and thought it was so fun!

Slip 'n slide: Isn't this just everyone's favorite? You can't go wrong with a slip 'n slide!

Splash Out ball: Have you ever played with one of these? They are SO fun! It's a ball that you put a water balloon inside and play a game of hot potato with. The ball has a timer in it, and at random it will pop the balloon, soaking whoever happens to be holding it! Here's a picture I found on Amazon.com.

Relay Races: First team to finish wins! I DO LOVE A GOOD RELAY!
~Wet Towel Relay: This race starts with a bucket of water with a towel in it for each team. To run the race you pick the towel up out of the bucket, put it over your shoulders, and run to a certain point and back, where you put the towel back in the bucket for the next person.

~Pass the Cup: This is the relay where you have a bucket full of water on one end, and an empty bucket at the other, with your team in a line between the buckets. The first person on the end with the water bucket fills a cup with water, and then your team has to pass the down the line. The catch (of course there is one, that's what makes it fun!) is that you have to alternate passing "over" (over your head) and "under" (under your legs), and pass this way over, under, over, under down the line, trying not to spill the water so that you can fill up your bucket the fastest!

~Balloon Toss: This is the game that you play the same way as an egg toss. You have a partner and everyone stands the same distance apart, then you toss the balloon, and after every toss or two you have to take a step back and toss across a farther distance. And here is a BRILLIANT adaptation my mom and her friends are making to this game. They are using ziplock bags filled with water instead of water balloons so that they don't have pick up a million little bidgies of water balloon from the church lawn after the party is over. I told you. Brilliant.

~Fill Up the Bucket: I think this relay is similar to the Pass the Cup relay, but instead of having to pass over and under, this time you pass normally, except your cup has holes in the bottom, so you'd better pass it fast!

And for refreshments they are having snow cones, watermelon, and ice water!

Doesn't this sound like the perfect water party??? Summer is here! Get outside and have some fun with water!

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Hooray for Quilt Camp!

One of the blogs I read is The Inspired Room. Each Friday this year she has been focusing on living a beautiful life.

Here are a few things I did last weekend to live a beautiful life:

Learned something new...

Spent some quality time with some of my in-laws...
Was surrounded by the beauty of nature...
Created something beautiful...
And I did all of these things in one place...QUILT CAMP!

My husband's Aunt Christine has an AWESOME quilt shop. It's called Around the Block Quilters Shop. It is mostly an online store, but if you are ever in the St. Louis area you HAVE to go check it out in person! It's located in O'Fallon, Illinois in the basement of her house, and boy is it beautiful. Take a look:She's got tons of beautiful quality fabric, and the long arm quilting machine shown in the first picture in this post. She lets people rent time on her machine, which I would totally take advantage of if I lived near her! There are also some really cute quilt patterns in her shop.

If I were to recommend one thing you could get from her shop it would be a Dew Drop kit. It's a small round (for boys, or shaped like a flower for girls!) quilt that you can put on the floor (or where ever) for the baby to play on. My husband's grandma made one for our baby boy, and we have used it multiple times per day for months! I love it!

Chris was the mastermind behind Quilt Camp, and it was so fun getting to know her and learn from all of her quilting expertise! She picked different quilt patterns for each of us to make, and we all used the same cute fabric line, Objects of Desire. Here's what we started with:

And here are the finished products!

It was such a fun trip! All we did was eat (a lot!), sleep (very little!), and SEW! And we loved every minute of it!

Go check out Around the Block Quilters Shop and Chris's blog Sew and Sew's Mom. She has a couple of FREE quilt patterns that are really cute on the blog. I love this one with cute Charm Bracelet fabric:

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Sweet Rewards

Thanks Elizabeth for letting me bother you with my BIG time nesting! I will have house pictures for you soon!

First, show off my great kids. And yes for those of you who can count, Elizabeth said I am almost done cooking my sixth baby and there are only four kids pictured. Number three baby, died of SIDS at two weeks old and so is not in this picture. Just so you won't think Elizabeth is doing any false advertising. :)


They clean the house for me. Okay, not really, but they do their part. Want to know the secret? Rewards.

I know I personally will move mountains for a little recognition. Apparentley it works for kids too. At our house we use what we call "the marble jars." They are just little mason jars with each kids initial on them (you could use whatever you had...this is what I had and it keeps it fair between the three big kids).


We review how they did each evening as part of the bedtime ritual and they decide how many marbles they should get that day. They can get one marble for each chore they do and one for good behavior at church on Sunday. They lose marbles for not doing a chore well or quickly (my oldest routinely loses his load the dishwasher marble for playing in the dirty water instead of loading the dishes. Eww!). They "self manage" and decide if they deserve a marble for any given chore. We rarely have to intervene, because they know when they haven't done a good job.

Here is a sample of yesterday's chores:

taking out the trash

The oldest, who is eight, loaded the dishwasher, took out the trash, put his own laundry away, watered the potted plants and picked up everything off the floor in the family room.

cleaning his room

Number two, who is six, emptied the dishwasher, put his laundry away, put the one year old's laundry away and folded all the towels for the kid's bathroom. He also started cleaning his room as an extra chore (to earn another marble) but gave up, so decided he didn't get one for that.

Playing in her half painted room because she already finished chores!

The three year old brought all the dirty laundry from the hampers to the laundry room, put her own laundry away, and fold the towels for Mommy and Daddy's bathroom.

When they fill their jar they get a date with Mommy or Daddy to go do something fun without the other kids. That is a BIG deal at our house.

This system works well for our family. Maybe it will work for yours! Check out the Works for Me Wednesday party at We Are THAT Family. Thanks for stopping by!

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