Carson's 100th Day

Carson has already been in school for 100 days! As a celebration, all of the kindergarteners get to have a parade through the school sporting homemade shirts. The only instructions we were given was to be creative and represent the number 100. So here is what we came up with:

100 football beads (purchased at Hobby Lobby) each individually glued (Aleene's Super Thick Tacky Glue). Carson loved it, and we all placed bets last night to see how many footballs would still be on it by the time he got home from school. Carson guessed 10, Brian said 73, and I am hoping for 85.

Boy's Christmas Shirts

My Silhouette and I have a love/hate relationship! For some reason the calibration has never been quite right, so it doesn't cut in the place it says it should, cutting off the first part of the project, requiring me to re-do it.

Other than that, I absolutely love the personalized items I can create! I CANNOT wait to have my craft room so that I don't have to pull everything out of the closet each time I want to create something.

I dreamt these shirts up for the boys the other night and LOVE how they turned out!! (And I already have an idea for Valentine shirts!)


Personalized items are so popular right now, I may start selling some on the side!

The total project took about an hour (with all the Silhouette kinks and pulling out and putting up materials).


Font: Arial Black
Image: "Tree"
Paint: Tulip Fabric Paint- "Holiday Green Matte" & "Red Velveteen"

Fun Find Friday: Family Activities

I thought I would start something new on here and see how it goes! "Fun Find Friday" is pretty self explanatory: I find cool stuff and share a category with you on Friday.

Since there are still a couple of weeks left for summer, why not kick this off with family activities to get some quality time in with the kiddos! Links to the original website can be found by clicking on the underlined title.

Frozen Fun: A treasure hunt that is a cool way to pass some time in this heat! Project could be cheap or free depending on whether you want to purchase new treasure our just dig up left over party favors from the bottom of the toy chest. Toys can be frozen into a large brick for longer play time or into individual ice cube trays for those with a shorter attention span. Would also be fun to teach science by testing different methods for melting the ice (salt, warm water, etc.).

Milk Painting: You can all do this with items from your kitchen: milk, food coloring, and "magic" toothpick (one that has been dipped in dish soap). The dish soap makes the colors shoot across the milk creating a kaleidoscope appearance!

Scratch and Sniff Painting: Another easy art project! Mix Kool-Aid and coordinating paint color for a sweet-smelling craft project!

Drive-In Movie: We may need to wait until it cools off a little for this one, or just do it in our living room. Would be really cute to get all the neighborhood kids together with a lawn full of cars!

Soap Cloud: It seems like this project could do double duty as a science/cleaning project! Put a bar of plain ivory soap in the microwave for 2 minutes and watch it grow!

Rainbow Rice Play Garden: This sensory activity would be awesome for Deacon to explore in. You could make this project last all day! The blogger said she started with the book Planting a Rainbow then mixed food coloring, alcohol and rice together and let dry in the sun. What a nice alternative to gritty sand!

Painting with a Twist

One of my best friends, Lindsey, celebrated her 29th birthday yesterday by hosting a party at a place called Painting with a Twist. The way it works is that the host chooses a piece of artwork that all guests will learn to paint while sipping wine. Our instructor was a soon-to-be retired kindergarten teacher and her husband, and the art of the evening was a fleur de lis ("florida leaf" according to my co-workers lol). We used the same basic image, but chose our own colors based on how our homes are decorated. I have been trying to find something to hang on the wall in our master bathroom, so this event was able to kill two birds with one stone.


We started by tracing a large stencil on our canvas with a pencil and then painted around it for our background. (I thought about lying and saying I painted that free-hand, but if any of you attend a class I would be caught!)



The birthday girl and her mom:


After the background was painted we dried it and painted the inside.

Two hours later we had finished "masterpieces" to take home!

All the girls:

It was slightly stressful, just because we were perfectionists, but we all had a really great time!

Door Decorating

This week at school we had a door decorating contest. We had extravagant plans for a door, but after doing some pricing, realized we were going a little crazy. So the day before the contest we combined ideas and made a candy land theme. My team is so awesome and crafty, that when we came together this was the result:

And we got first runner up! Not bad, especially because Ms. Breaux's room was adorable, and her students worked hard to come up with it, including some of our staff and administrators:

3rd place went to Mrs. Berry's room:

Honorable mention goes to our math department and their incorporation of math into the holiday season! "Ho" to the 3rd power:

Mrs. Olive's "Baby" squared (she is due with twins!)

Some of the other classes turned out cute too!

Mario Invites

I am all about homemade birthday party invitations (last years), but this year I was at a loss of creative Mario themed invites for Carson's 5th birthday party. Luckily, Carson chose to be Mario for Halloween, so I decided to utilize pictures of him in costume and my favorite website, Picnik.

I started by uploading Carson's picture into my Shutterfly Studio for their collage. I like it better than Picnik for this feature because it lets you resize/arrange the photos within the collage and Picnik doesn't.

I then upload the completed collage into Picnik where you can choose the font and add words to your pictures. I only partially plagiarized the first part of the poem from the internet and then came up with the rest myself.

The best part is the price! Walgreens is running a special this week on their photos for 50% off with the codeword: TREAT (they usually have some great deal online). So, I purchased 50 prints for $4.75!!! AND they are ready in an hour for pick-up at the nearest store! By far the cheapest and easiest invitations I've ever made!!

My Mario Costume

When we were deciding on costumes for Halloween this year for the grown-ups in our house, Carson convinced us to go with Super Mario Brothers. Brian already looks kinda like Mario, so that was an easy plan to make. We went shopping last night and bought his hat and gloves; he owns a long-sleeved red shirt, so this week we just have to hit up some thrift stores to locate the overalls.



Carson suggested I be Princess Peach, but the costumes are goddy and I didn't want to spend the whole month hunting down a fluffy pink dress. I decided to go for the coin box instead.



After a little brainstorming, we came up with the easiest and cheapest make-it-yourself costume.

Free box from Brian's job

1 can metallic gold spray paint, 1 can glossy white spray paint


Gold glitter and spray glue

We sprayed the box gold first, then sprayed the glue and sprinkled the glitter when it had dried:

I googled an image of the coin box online, blew it up in Word, then printed it out. Once it was printed, I cut the question mark and traced it on poster board. Using an exacto knife I cut the stencil out of the poster, layed it down in the center of each side of the box and sprayed it white.

Here's how it turned out:

We kept the flaps on top and just pushed them inside so that we could run black ribbon through it without it showing the knots. The folded edge also helps the box from rubbing against my skin.

I have more accessories to add to the costume, but will save those until my pictures on Halloween weekend.

"SEW" Not Cute

The Christmas before last I decided I wanted a sewing/embroidery machine. I envisioned the creations I could make with my machine: one-of-a-kind outfits for the boys, decor for our house, gifts for friends, and possibly starting a business on the side. I only had one problem to overcome...I have never actually sewn before.

Embarrassingly, I must admit, Brian is WAY more domestic than I am. He can cook better, clean faster, and has actually used a sewing machine. His grandmother taught him the basics when he was younger, so he knows all the parts and how to thread the machine. I am clueless. About a year ago we paid for a private lesson on how to use the machine and my homework had been to sew a pair of pajamas, which has yet to happen.

Instead, we decided today that we would sew the boys Easter shirts. And not just any Easter shirts. FABULOUS Easter shirts. So fabulous that all of my friends would take one look at them and want us to sew shirts for their kids as well.

See for yourself how it turned out...

I found a basic picture of an Easter Bunny off the internet, printed it and traced it on cardstock.

Then traced the bunny on fabric and cut it out.

...and pinned it to the onesie and started sewing.

Get yours today, while there is no wait! lol

I almost put the shirt on Deacon to have him model it for a picture, but I'm thinking that is borderline child abuse...it appears we might need a LITTLE more practice.