A purpose at last :)

So, do you remember my ‘getting creative at the dollar store” post?  Well those bad boys have been sitting around the house with no purpose. but today, as I was going to chuck ‘em….I fell in love with them! 

 

Cute, huh?

Count Your Blessings

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I wanted to write out all of the wonderful things we’ve been blessed with.  I came up with this blessings board…a neat way to see day to day our many blessings and to write and rewrite them with the family. 

I started with a plane wooden frame…took the glass out and taped straight across so that the words would be straight. Note: be careful with the glass! I cut myself a few times just moving it around.

 

I took the backing of the frame and covered it with burlap.

Made some burlap/fabric florets and voila!

It’s so nice to see all the things we’re blessed with and even more nice getting input from the family day to day.  Use a chalk marker to make the “blessings” stand out!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Spicing Up My Spice Cabinet!

I don’t know about you, but my spice cabinet always seems to get messy fast.   Well I finally decided to do something about it!  I bought these 4oz spice jars from Crate and Barrel.  Then I used my silhouette to create 4” circles and printed them out onto colored vinyl (color coded according to spice…I know, I’m anal)

    

I labeled them and voila! Drab to Fab!

   

And it even made room for me to use this old cabinet for other uses!

 

Happy organizing!

Who said "nothing in the world's for free" ????

FREE Holiday Cards from Shutterfly

Shutterfly is my stop for all photo prints and cards every holiday!  Have you been over there lately??

Shutterfly's photo books are fantastic! I’ve made them for my kids grandparents and even been given them as gifts…they are beautifully done and come out exactly as you create them!

I recently made these for my parents and in-laws.  I took photos of my kids throughout the year and put them with the month they went with! (i.e. Peyton in her Easter dress was the April pictures!)  

 

I am totally going to use this holiday photo card! I cannot wait to put the kids in cute Christmas clothes and snap pics for these bad boys!  I can never pick just ONE photo to use so this card is perfect with its 6 photo spots!!

Good News! Shutterfly is offering 50 free holiday cards!

Click here for more info.

Pier 1 redo

So to begin the holiday season, I was looking through the Pier 1 catalog and came across this cute wreath:

I thought it was so cute but for $75…there’s no way I’m paying that!!! So off to the dollar store I went and here’s the tutorial:
I bought an 18” wreath and wrapped around it 3 strands of 9ft. garland. 

   

I then hot glued different size glass/plastic ornamental balls around the wreath.

Final cost- $9!!!! All materials from the dollar store!!!

Merry Christmas!

Turkey Favors

My mom asked me and my son Lucas to make the Thanksgiving favors this year.  When I went into Michaels, I was totally disheartened to see that right after Halloween they skip over Thanksgiving and go straight to Christmas!! How sad is that?!?! So I had to be creative and come up with a favor on my own…no kits for kiddies.  I bought fall colored jingle bells, small foam leaves (which I cut down to be that funny thing that hangs from the turkey’s mouth), googly eyes, wooden hearts, and fall colored feathers.  Lucas painted the hearts brown for the turkey’s feet and with a little hot glue these guys came out kinda cute! I also added a magnet onto the back so they could be used on the frig. 

**Note: In turning the jingle bell so that the part you would put the string is the face, it makes the turkey’s nose!!

Yumo!

I made a pumpkin cake and apple shaped cupcakes for my daughter’s 1st birthday.

For the pumpkin cake, I made two separate Bundt cakes using yellow cake mix and put a few drops of red food coloring into the mix to make it orange.  Once cooled, I cut the bottoms of each so they would sit flat together and iced them.  For the leaves, I went outside and plucked FRESH leaves from the trees.  I melted green chocolate (Michaels) and literally painted the veiny side of the leaf. I stuck them in the freezer for about a minute and then took them out and peeled the leaves off of the hardened chocolate.  The veins were imprinted into the chocolate! Too cool.  I took green tube icing and free styled the “vines”.  The stem is an upside down ice cream cone!  The finished Product:

 

The “apple” cupcakes I made out of red velvet cake…iced them with red icing; topped them with red sprinkles; added a tootsie roll and some painted leaves :) and voila!