Pinterest & Look what I made....

Back in August a friend of mine sent me an invitation to Pinterest. I took a look around the site a little bit before creating an account and I had no interest. It seemed too complicated and just too much. I couldn't see myself using or needing virtual pin boards to post my ideas because I could just bookmark stuff in my favorites and be done with it. Except that sometimes I would forget why I even bookmarked the site in the first place but....

This year we decided to have a somewhat "homemade/low budget Christmas." We aren't the type of parents that go crazy and buy our kids 20 presents each; plus with 6 kids who could afford that? Sometimes I feel like there is so much clutter and so much "stuff" that will find it's way to the bottom of the toy box in 2 weeks. We aren't ruling out store bought completely but just adding a couple of gifts that maybe have a little more usability or sentimental value. So for the last week I've been collecting some ideas for homemade items that I love that don't look like my kindergartner could've made them. Let's face it there is some REALLY ugly homemade stuff and just because I'm going for low budget and homemade doesn't mean I'm going for piper cleaners and toilet paper rolls...you know.

So here is where PINTEREST.COM came in. I was having trouble keeping all my ideas together and remembering why I was saving certain websites. I decided to check out Pinterest again and OH MY! It's perfect....and now I'm a little addicted. I love how I can bookmark not only the site, but a photo of the item I loved and a little comment about what I was thinking when I pinned the item. PLUS, by exploring other peoples pin boards I've come up with so many more ideas that I hadn't even thought about! I'm so excited. You should join Pinterest.com and add me as a friend. Seriously. (And I'm not getting paid to write any of this...just in love with the site and it's only been one day!)

So while I was searching for ideas on Pinterest I found this scarf made from a tshirt which was posted on TidyMom. Cool Huh?


In that post she also had a link to a video tutorial which had a couple of other different ways to make scarfs from a t shirt. I didn't have any t shirts lying around but I had some old jeresey pjs that didn't fit Ashlynne any more and I figured I could test it out on a little scarf for Julianna. I just cut the top in strips and stretched them out a little, tied them together with a little piece of fabric, and added some embellishment and VOILA! So cute. These would make cute Christmas gifts.




Homemade and I didn't even use any pipe cleaners OR toilet paper rolls.

My Genius Solution to Melting Popsicles...

I LOVE POPSICLES! I hate the ooey, gooey, icky, sticky popsicle mess. So to combat the nastiness that is a melted popsicle I got a little creative and invented:

The Amazing

"Melting Popsicle, Dripping Collector, Thing-a-ma-jiggy"

Okay, okay so it's really just a plastic cup that I cut in half, with a slit on the bottom to put the popsicle stick through....but isn't it GENIUS?!

I had to pat myself on the back after that one.

A Crafty Weekend....

Over the weekend we had our annual stake "Super Saturday." It's my favorite activity of the year because I get to let all my creative juices flow and learn some new things.

This weekend I made....

An adorable little HOOTER HIDER/nursing cover-up Tutorial Here

A Grab 'n Go Diaper and wipes holder Tutorial Here

The wonderfully crafty gal that was teaching the class also had these adorable fabric covered wipe cases which I carefully studied and I thought....I could TOTALLY do that (plus I only had to use my hot glue gun and I LOVE My hot glue gun) So when I got home that night I got to work and covered a matching Wipe Case to match everything else!! :)



I love Crafty Weekends!

I now have a Rubber Ducky bathroom....

We are in a rental home so I am pretty limited on all the fun decorating I can do....for instance take the upstairs bathroom:




Cute enough, right?!

Ew, NOT! I hate the pink, floral-y wallpaper and the old lady like patchworky quilt shower curtain...but it is what it is, beggars can't be choosers...so I dealt with it. Until recently...remember this picture???



I know he's ADORABLE, you don't have to tell me twice. But it gave me this amazing idea....I NEED TO HAVE THIS PICTURE HANGING IN MY BATHROOM!!! It's too cute not to be hanging somewhere....but it doesn't really match my old lady, floral bathroom. So I decided I needed to change the shower curtain and get some color in there, but have you looked at the price of a shower curtain lately?!? OMGOSH!!!! I am so not paying $25 for a shower curtain, sorry. So I got bummed again and I dealt with it...until....I went to Target yesterday for some retail therapy when lo and behold I find:



and this:



ON CLEARANCE!!!!!! The curtain was originally $27.99 and I paid $6.64. The curtain was really supposed to be only marked down to $18 but they messed up and had to honor it! The mats were roughly $5 each. When they rang it all up I paid less for all three things then I would've had I gotten the curtain at full price!!! I love savings like that!

My kids upstairs bathroom now looks like this:


So now I have a Rubber Ducky bathroom to match with the cute picture of Mr. Liam...

Look what I found for $9.97 at Walmart...

Look at it! Isn't she LOVELY???


What? You don't think it's amazing?

You have no clue what it is??

It's my new magnet board!!!!

Actually, It's an oil drip pan to stick under your car when you are doing mechanical things, duh.

Maybe you'll think she's pretty now....right?!




So, for months...and I do mean MONTHS...I have been wanting to make and put up one of those cute little magnet bulletin boards that everyone seems to have. I'd heard that "Roberts" sells them and all you have to do is decorate them and VOILA! But I don't live in Utah and we don't have a "Roberts" and I can't find the darn things ANYWHERE.

So next I went to GOOGLE (my BFF) and tried to figure out how crafty momma's living nowhere near a "Robert's Craft" can make these cute little magnet boards. That proved to be an amazing wealth of information that included power tools and trips to Home Depot for sheet metal and picture frames....and....and.....and more elements to the project than I could possibly worry about. See, I'm a LAZY crafter and I'm incredibly impatient so I need results now in the fewest steps possible. Sorry crafty mommy's I'm gonna take the easy road....

Well then last week, I'm wandering around our local Walmart and my husband stops in the Automotive section for something...I don't know some guy thing...I forget. Anyway, staring at me is this amazingly HUGE METAL drip pan. OMGosh...my brain was OOZING with ideas. I wasn't sure if it was magnetic so I went and grabbed some magnets off the shelf in the Office Supply aisle and yep...it's real metal. Yippee...I did a flip right there in the aisle (okay I only did it in my head). So, I went back and bought it earlier this week.

Next I went to Hobby Lobby (they don't have those in Utah...so THERE "Robert's Craft," whoever you are) and got some cute paper, went home and modgepodged it!!!! Isn't it wonderful? Isn't that the coolest?? No cutting sheet metal or purchasing a frame. The whole project cost me less than $15 and it would've only really been like $10 if I hadn't bought the scrap paper! YAY ME!!

What do you do with old dressup costumes??

Brinton has this beloved, raggedy spiderman costume that is 3 sizes too small and a little torn in the legs. I was re-organizing the boys room since Liam has more stuff now and I came across this well loved costume in the toy box. I was debating throwing it away when Ashlynne suggest I hang it on the wall. I thought...ummm...nooo...BUT I could make a window treatment out of it...right?! So that's exactly what I did. Perfectly fitting for a SPIDERMAN bedroom, don't you think??

P.S. I even changed Liam's crib to spiderman sheets...hee, hee....he is such a big boy now

In other more exciting non-health related news.....

Last Friday I got a little crafty...



Ashlynne had a piano recital. Her first recital with her new teacher, Marie, here in Kansas. She adores her teacher and is learning soooo much.



Liam is standing up...actually he has been doing it for several weeks (he started a couple days after he began crawling) but for some reason I hadn't gotten a picture of it yet.


My mommy is here visiting for the next month!! (So is my daddy...)


My inlaws, Jeremiah's mom and step-dad, are here for Thanksgiving....


Julianna is ADORABLE.


Elise and I did an impromtu silly face photo session! (hence the wild hair and Elise's interesting clothing selection...gotta love dress-ups)


Brinton got brand new shoes!


and lastly, Jeremiah thinks he is really HOT!

Tutu Cute and a little pizza chef....

I've known for several weeks that our church Halloween party was going to happen last night. It seemed a little early in the season to have to get costumes ready but I figured it would be a little less stress to have to come up with costumes so far in advance....you know, so that way we weren't running around at the last second trying to come up with ideas and finding all the stores are out of every costume. Much to my dismay my kids COULD NOT come up with any concrete ideas on what they wanted to be so I was left scrambling at the last minute anyway. They literally left me with about 48 hours to put their costumes together...(which wound up being fun cause I have begun a new obsession with making tutus!!)

I am so happy with how everything came out and now we are all set for Halloween, right?! (Except for Brinton who still doesn't know what he wants to be and unfortunately I don't think he'll look too cute in a tutu)

So here are the final products:

Sweet Daisy Elise

Daisy Tutu Costume

Our little Lady Julianna

Ladybug Tutu Costume

Punk Rock Princess Ashlynne

Punk Rock Princess Tutu Costume

and our 10 minutes before we leave Pizza Chef Brinton


Little Liam was the cutest monkey you ever did see but we forgot to bring our camera to the party and I didn't dress him till we were there...so no pics...for now. Sorry, but he really was very, very cute! :)

Feliz Cumpleanos!!!

What:
A surprise birthday dinner for Jeremiah

When:
Sept 26, 2008 (Birthday Eve)

Where:
The Bowles Family Restaurant

Menu:
Soft Shell Tacos w/ all the fixins
Quesadillas
Chips & Garden Fresh Salsa
Jeremiah's favorite "Jones Soda" Berry Lemonade
Yummy Chocolate Ripple Cake

The Table Settings:


Bullfrog Napkin Rings made by the kids:



The birthday boy arrived from work and was immediately swarmed by our children.."Close your eyes Daddy"



SURPRISE!!!!!



Yum, Yum, Yum!!



Relaxing with his boy after a perfect Birthday Dinner Surprise

Super Saturday...

This weekend our ward and 3 other wards got together for SUPER SATURDAY!! Super Saturday is an all day crafting extravaganza (like how I use them big words??)for the relief soceity sisers. They offered tons of different craft classes and other classes such as home organization and self defense...HI-YA! Apparently, not all wards have them, what a shame cause it's my favorite day of the year!!

As always I signed up for a bagillion projects but thankfully because they were super easy (minus the hairbows...yikes!) I got them all completed! I even took a cake decorating class (I wish I would've taken pictures of the awesome rose cupcake I made). In the food storage class we learned how to make "meat" out of wheat gluten and holy moly they tasted just like real chicken nuggets!!! Ridiculous!

So following are some of my creations...

Oh the joys of vinyl! My favorite one is the Family frame. just gotta find a place to put it.

Hot gluing the hairbows...only got burned once! :)
A hairbow for all seasons...a new obsession, too! I've already bought stuff to make more!

When you can't sleep.....

Not sure what happened to me last night but I just COULD NOT sleep. If I were pregnant you could say I was "nesting" but believe me...we've been trying for a year...I'm not pregnant. But I guess I caught a little bug last night or something because I was in super mom high gear!

It started with the Laundry room. My laundry room is small and the little shelf that keeps all the soaps and such was just piled with stuff and part of the shelf was coming apart (after repeated attempts to hammer it back together) So I decided I couldn't take the laundry room clutter anymore and I had Jeremiah drill some screws in the shelf so that it would stop coming apart. After that was done I made it all tidy and put things in there spot....but that was not all...no that was not all...



After I finished in the laundry room I realized there were tons of pictures that just needed to be put up in the worst way. I mean we've lived here for a month shouldn't we have some pictures up yet?! So I went "happy hammering" around the house...I put up the family picture, and decorated the fireplace with pictures, and hung the wedding picture, and hung pictures in the playroom and in the girls room...but that was not all...no that was not all...






I decided that the pictures in the play room were lacking a certain...something...I purchased these rub-on transfers from a catalog a couple months ago and hadn't used it. I had painted the red board during a relief soceity project gone wrong but realized it could actually be salvaged. So I decided to start a crafty project at 11:30 last night....but that was not all...no that was not all...



After I hung the new little sign (which reads..Live Well, Laugh Often, Love much)I realized there was still space to hang more stuff!! By this time the family had obviously given up on me and everyone was asleep. I proceeded to hang some cute little word frames up as well (sans pictures...but I'll fill those in later)So by then its way past midnight but I still couldn't sleep...so obviously that was not all...no that was not all...



Well...I couldn't have such a cute little playroom with such a huge mess...so I took all the books off the bookshelf and put them back neatly....I put all the toys away (every last barbie shoe and dinosaur) I placed everything in its place and thought...that looks great I'm done...but that was not all...no that was not all...



The computer in the playroom has been sitting on the desk, cables everywhere and not hooked up so I decided to become a "Techie" and hook it all up. Yay! We now have a working computer in for the kids...but you guessed it...that was not all...no that was not all....



I creeped into the girls room and put away all the loose play kitchen food (and believe me Elise has MILLIONS of play food pieces) Then I creeped in Brinton's room and picked up all his rescue heroes. I thought I would go into my room and straighten the bathroom but I caught a glimpse of the clock and it said 2:26am!!!! So I tried to lay down but I was tossing and turning so much. I went back in the play room and watched some special about celebrities in rehab on E! and finally started to feel tired at around 3am. The last I looked at the clock as I crept into bed before I drifted off to sleep it was 3:06am!

I woke up at 7:30 this morning...a little tired but so proud of all of the wonderful little projects I did last night!! :)