Word Search Birthday Card -- Tutorial

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to share a quick little project with you guys.  The other night I made a birthday card to give to my pastor for his birthday (today).  There are a few reasons why I like to make cards.  First, it's cheaper.  Does that sound bad?  Cards are kind of expensive...$4 bucks a pop, sometimes, or more if you buy those annoying ones with music inside (which I would never buy, for the record.  Just stating a fact).  Secondly, it satisfies my desire to make something.  And the great thing about making cards for people is that it's almost instant satisfaction -- they really don't take that long to make.  And thirdly, I love receiving hand made cards myself.  To me, it says that the person took just a little extra care, thought just a little more about you when giving you a gift.  It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  So I like to do that for others, too.

The problem with making cards sometimes is that there's a time limit.  You have to have this card done by a certain date -- pressure, man.  And it can be hard to think of a really neat design in the allotted amount of time.  Enter Pinterest.  What an awesome website.

I did a search on Pinterest earlier this week and ran across this little guy.  The idea comes from a website called Better Living Through Design:

  

I thought the idea was really cool, had some amazing potential and possibilities, and super simple.  Jackpot.

So I made my own version.  The longest part of this project, and the least fun (isn't that how it always works out?) was typing out the word search.  I did this on my computer, and just added the birthday message inside.  I considered adding other words, but in the end decided to just stick with the message at hand.  I also considered adding a word list and making my pastor search for the words himself, but I nixed that idea too, because I wanted to give him a finished piece of art.

After typing out the word search, I scrolled down a few lines and typed out, "We love you!"  all in caps.  Then I printed and cut both pieces out.

I liked the idea above, but thought it was a little boring.  And I also thought it would be cool if it looked like a word search from a newspaper; all old, perhaps with a coffee mug ring, something that someone had been working on.  So I found my coffee grounds from that morning and rubbed a few of them across my paper.  I've done this before with other projects, and the result is a pretty stained up piece of paper.  Then I spilled some coffee around a clean mug and sat it on top of the paper, making the coffee mug ring.  I apologize for not having pictures of this fascinating process... I totally forgot about the blog -- I was so enthused by the art. ;)

After doctoring up my picture, I Mod Podged it onto a piece of thick sketch paper.  I didn't happen to have a large enough piece of cardstock at the house, but if you do, I would use that instead.  My card ended up being a little flimsier than I would have liked. 

By the way, if you've never used Mod Podge (or your own version of it), the key to a really nice finish is making sure that you press out all the air bubbles after laying your art down.  I learned this the hard way -- my first few pieces were all wrinkly.

Anyway, here's the finished card:

I stained up the, "We Love You!" piece and Mod Podged that on the back.  So this birthday card won't open up like a book -- just one piece with the word search on the front and the message on the back.

Oh, and I realized as I was editing these photos that I totally forgot a letter somewhere in the word search -- there's just an empty spot.  It was late when I was typing this up, and I guess I was tired.  But that's part of the appeal of hand made stuff, in my opinion -- the quirkiness.  Can you find the blank spot?  

Here's another view:

I like the way it turned out.  Except the coffee mug ring.  In retrospect, I think I ought to have used less coffee because I would have liked the ring to be more defined... good to know for the next time I need to fake a coffee mug ring.

Anyway, have you guys been working on anything small?  Does anyone else like to give hand made cards?

Linking up to these awesome blogs here!

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Busy, Busy Week

I know I've been a little MIA this week, but I have a good excuse.  Dave and I really opened a can of worms last Friday when we decided to paint the sunroom.  We had been talking about this eventuality for some time now, but decided -- sort of on a whim -- to get on it last weekend.  

Then I decided to move some ugly laminate furniture out of my bedroom and into the sunroom to add storage and then I decided that I should paint them, too.  Long story short?  I have been painting for nearly a week straight, and I am tired.  Seriously.  But I can't wait to show you guys the results.  I'm pretty excited about what I'm seeing take shape.

Sadly, I'm not done.  I still have to second coat the cabinets today, so maybe by tomorrow I can give you guys the reveal.   

But, I do have something to share.  This is a quick little spray painting project that I completed last weekend.

Back story: Yesterday was my birthday, and what I wanted more than anything else was to paint my kitchen cabinets white.  But we have neither the time nor the money to do this right now.  So, we decided to save up to pay a friend to come help us out (this is the same guy who painted the exterior of our house last year.  He's a professional painter and quite good -- and could always use a little more business).  This will take a few months of good paychecks, but at least we're on the right track.

Anyway, I decided recently that I'd like to pull my kitchen together with an accent color (or colors) to play off the white so that it feels more cohesive and less busy.  And I chose yellow and lime green.  So off I went to Goodwill last weekend to see what I might find there.  And this is what I came home with:

I love this little creamer.  It's terribly retro with those little mushrooms (which I actually adore), and it totally fills the yellow and lime green requirement.  And at 59 cents...

I liked this lime green bowl, too.  Simple and perfect for adding a little color to a shelf.

Then I saw this candlestick holder.  Not really my style as is, but with a coat of yellow paint, it might also be a worthwhile investment.

So, that's what I did...

While I was at it, I decided to spray paint the lids for my mason jars.

Do you remember this corner shelf?

I was getting so tired of looking at those tins.  I was really into that style years ago, but my tastes have kind of changed.  So I traded them out. You'll also get a glimpse of my new yellow lids at the bottom of this picture.  I'm kind of digging those, too.

Then I made a few changes to the shelf by my window.  From this:

To this:

I took the photo of the leaf years ago, found it recently, and stuck it up there.  I also moved the yellow cups to the corner shelf above and added the (now yellow) candlestick holder.  I love that photo series of my family taken last summer at a wedding.  Really need to get that framed before it gets ruined....

So, that's it!  Just a few small and very simple changes to bring some things together, but sometimes little things make a big difference.

What little projects have you guys been up to lately?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

 

Pinterest Challenge!!

So, I've been following John and Sherry's blog, Young House Love,  in a fairly committed manner for some time now.  I think I discovered them last spring when I was browsing the internet on staining concrete floors.  Obviously, that little idea hasn't panned out, but I did get to find a super cool blog as a result of it.

Last summer they, along with Katie Bower over at Bower Power, began a new tradition -- The Pinterest Challenge.

 

They did again last fall...and that was the point at which I said to myself, I have got to start a blog so that I can participate in this awesomeness.  

And then I went and started one, and now I've got a little something to play the game with ;)

Around a month and a half ago, I made a Valentine's wreath for our front door.  I have loved seeing it every time I come home, but I decided the other day that now that it's mid-March, it's about time to get rid of the pink and red hearts.  So I began a search on Pinterest, and immediately found something that caught my eye:

 

I am so loving grey and yellow, lately.  Anyway, as pretty as this wreath is, it isn't exactly my style, for better or for worse.  I loved the flower concept and I also really liked the ribbon hanger, but all of the tulle at the bottom wasn't doing it for me.  However, it made a great jumping off point.

So, here's my version.  I've got a little tutorial for you if you'd like to make something like this yourself.  First, gather your supplies.  Along with what you see here, you'll also need thread, a needle, and a hot glue gun.

Next, start wrapping your wreath form with the yarn color of your choice.

Done!  (This part is the most tedious and the least fun.)

Next, make your flowers.  I started by cutting this shape out of a piece of felt.  You can see that I sort of free-handed it and it's not perfect -- doesn't have to be.

After you've got your shape cut out, hand sew a piece of thread along the bottom, straight edge.  Then, pull the thread slightly until the shape curls into a "flower".  Sew the two ends together.

Next, cut out a circle and sew it in the center of the flower.  Repeat these steps until you have as many flowers as you'd like to add.

Put the flowers aside.  Cut strips of the fabric of your choice -- again, this step doesn't need to be exact.  I never measure.  I usually just eyeball things.  You'll probably need several strips.

And hot glue those babies randomly around your wreath.

I also cut a wider strip so that I could make a hanger.  This is a picture of the back of the wreath.

Finally, figure out the arrangement of your flowers and glue them on as well.  And...done!

Here are a couple wider shots for ya:

I am so pleased with how easy this was and the end result.  If you've followed me at all, you're probably beginning to get the sense that the style of this wreath is all over my home.  This is what my stuff looks like.  And I'm okay with that.  I like it.

Total cost?  Nothing.  I reused the wreath form from my Valentine's Day wreath (figured I'm going to want to make a different one next year, anyway), and the other materials I had on hand.

Total time?  About 2 hours.  But it took me a day and a half.  When you have little ones, you have to do these kinds of projects in stages (which is why the background in my tutorial changes three different times -- count 'em).

Have any of you made a spring wreath for your door?  I'd love to see what you've come up with!

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Linking up:

Young House Love
Embracing Change

Garage Sale!

If we could do this every week, we probably would.  Garage saling is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to spend a Saturday morning -- you get out of the house, you're outside (which is a big plus if the weather is beautiful, as it was last weekend), you only have to spend a little money (or none at all if you have more restraint than we have... but part of the fun is going with a little cash in your pocket), and you might score big and come home with all kinds of really cool stuff.  Dave and I both love it, and I hope we always do :)

Much of my home is decorated with garage sale and thrift store finds.

So we went on Saturday, and it was a lot of fun.  Dave and I are kind of hard core about it.  We go on Craigslist and find the ones we're interested in, map everything out, and figure out a plan of attack.  We bring the GPS with us so there's no wasted time trying to find an address.  We're strategic. 

When we came home, Dave had a new, large tool box, the kids had a new wooden castle playhouse with lots of odds and ends, including some cool wooden people and horses, and I had a couple of things.  The first was this little yellow bucket: 

Right now, it's just sitting on my front porch and being used as a planter box, but that may change.  I haven't totally figured out where it's going yet.

But the more exciting find were these babies:

I found them carelessly thrown on a bedsheet at the garage sale of a house in a wealthier neighborhood.  The woman manning the sale was a little distracted as there were several people that wanted to speak with her.  This can be kind of good -- that means that she might be so distracted that she's not thinking properly about prices.  Such was the case.  When I asked her how much she wanted for the shells, she glanced at them and said, "I don't know, maybe 10 cents a piece?"

Score.  That's what I'm talking about people.  This is why we go garage saling.

I picked up all of them, which ended up being 12 shells.  This was also good.  Just more than an even 10 meant that she might be willing to let me have them all for just a $1.00.

I didn't even have to negotiate.  She offered $1.00 first and she had herself a deal.

I knew immediately what I wanted to do with my new shells.  They are beautiful and they have these perfect little holes in them -- just right for hanging on a string.  I also have one lonely little hook left on my front porch.  It's been waiting for a wind chime, but I don't do anything quickly.  I like to let things evolve.

The first step was to figure out what kind of structure I wanted to use to hang my shells.  I decided that some weathered wood might be nice.  It just so happens that we have a lot of dead trees/branches in our yard and more weathered wood than we know what to do with.  So I found three small sticks that I liked.  Then I washed them off.

At first, I was just going to tie fishing line around the sticks, but then I decided I wanted something a little more permanent and sturdy.  So I asked Dave to drill a tiny hole in each one:

Then, I arranged them in an order that pleased me and strung a piece of fishing line through all three:

After that, I tied off the fishing line around the bottom stick and hung them up to see how they would hang.  In this pic, I'm holding them so that you get a clear picture, but they ended up hanging a little wonky.  That didn't bother me, though, because it's an easy problem to fix once you start adding the weights.

Then I laid out my shells in three rows and arranged them until I was satisfied.  I tried to put the smaller shells near the top and larger ones near the bottom.

I cut long pieces of fishing line and began to tie the shells on.  Starting with the bottom shell, I just put it on the line, tied a loop and knotted it three times, moved up the line a little, and strung another shell.  I estimated everything.

Finally, I was able to hang all threes lines on the top structure.  My plan was to hang each line on its own stick, but I realized quickly that I would need counter weights to get the sticks to hang properly, so I decided to hang all three lines on the very bottom stick.

And the result?

I really like it!  It's kind of beachy.  It wouldn't be my style to decorate my entire home with this look, but a little of it thrown in here and there is quite pleasing.

I might go back and add some sort of glue around the lines where they're tied onto the sticks...or maybe I'll get Dave to drill a few more holes in the bottom stick.  I don't want them to wiggle around while they're being blown by the wind.  We'll see.  If I start to notice an issue, I'll go back and modify.

Here's the view of the wind chime looking out into the yard.  The shells show up well, but it's a little harder to make out the sticks at the top:

Total cost for this project?

$1.00.  Love it.

Total time?

About an hour, including washing out the sticks and drilling the holes.  I made it on my front porch while my kids played in the yard.

Do any of you like to go garage saling?  What's one of the coolest things you've ever found?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Baggie Books

So, this is not an original idea.  I saw this online a couple weeks ago, and I cannot remember where I found it.  It was a way cool blog, though, and if it was yours (or if you've got something similar to this project) let me know and I will definitely link back to you!

With that being said, yes, I found this idea and immediately fell in love.  It couldn't be simpler: take a few sandwich bags, some masking tape, and some fabric, and -- voila -- you've got an educational material with endless possibilities.  I read about this and then made one for our family in about 30 minutes.

The materials: masking tape and five sandwich bags.  You'll also need a pair of scissors, and down the line, some scrap fabric and a sewing machine.  You could also hand sew this project, but with a machine I was done with the sewing in under five minutes.  

First, cut a piece of masking tape, fold it in half lengthwise, and place it on the closed end of one of the sandwich bags.

Then carefully place another bag on top of the first one, adhering it to the tape.

Repeat these steps, adding on as many bags as you would like in your book.  I made a book with five bags. After this step, I also cut off all of the excess tape on the top and bottom ends of the book.

Time to take things to the sewing room (aka, my bedroom).  Step one, cut a length of scrap fabric long enough to "bind" your book and quickly hem the sides.

Step two, sew your fabric right onto the plastic bags and through the masking tape.  I wasn't sure how this step was going to go, but it was pretty quick and easy.

Here's a close-up of the binding.  I just left the ends raw, since I figured that this book wouldn't last terribly long.  We might use this several times and then one of the bags might tear and I'll have to make another, so I didn't want to put too much time into this.

Okay, so how does it work?

My first idea was to do a color finding activity since Daniel is learning to identify colors right now.  I tore off scraps of construction paper and put one color in each bag.  I ended up with blue, white, black, red, and orange (in no particular order).

Then I had the kids look around the playroom and their bedrooms for toys or other small objects that were the same color as the scraps of paper already in the book.

Daniel liked this activity for about two minutes.  But Natalie loved this and was all over it.  She was the one to find most of the toys.  I guess because she's older?  Almost two-year-olds probably don't have very long attention spans.

Anyway, here's what we came up with.  The book got very bulky after it was all filled up:

Blue and white:

And red and orange:

I didn't take a picture of the black bag, but Natalie put a toy truck in there -- because of the tires.

I'd say this was a successful project.  It didn't take long to complete, and Natalie totally enjoyed carrying it around and putting things in each bag.  I want to try it again with Daniel, maybe at a different time of day, and see if I can get him more interested, perhaps looking at shapes as well as colors.  And with Natalie, I might try this activity with letters or numbers.

What ideas have you guys come up with to teach readiness skills to your kiddos?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Fabric Tulip Wall Art - Tutorial

This past weekend my husband and I got a little crazy and decided to get both of the kiddos new, big kid beds.  At first, we were just thinking Natalie needed a new bed, but then we began to think about how Daniel has been trying to climb over his crib rails lately -- something Natalie never did.  So we decided to go for it and get them both set up in toddler beds.  

We went for a quick search on Craigslist, and, within about three hours, secured both beds last Friday.  The next day, we ran around town picking them up, taking apart the cribs, saving one for new baby number 3 and dropping the other one off at my cousin's house (her daughter is also about to have a baby).  Whew.  It was a busy day.

We also made a stop at Target and bought new bedding.  We made a really big deal out of the new bedding purchase and I think the the kiddos were both really excited.  The end result is two, very cute and very small toddler beds, and two very cute and very excited toddlers.  They love them!  And, fingers crossed, so far it hasn't been a difficult transition at all.  We were expecting all kinds of misbehavior -- jumping around in rooms, sleeping on the floor...you name it.  But, for the last few days anyway, they've both found their sleep pretty quickly, and in their beds.  We'll see how things go once they get more used to not having rails around them.

Anyway, to make a much longer story short, I decided that they both needed some new art on their walls.  The toddler beds are pretty small, and they leave some giant empty spots above the beds that need to be filled.  I found a cool project on The Delectable Home that uses a bird as the subject matter for some easy fabric art.  Although I love birds, I wanted to do something a bit different for Natalie's room.  I ended up deciding to do some sort of flower design.

First, I gathered my fabric.  I just used up some scraps of fabric from past projects, so this was F-R-E-E!  You may notice in this picture that I also have one piece of an embroidery hoop.  I've had this for years...and I have no idea where its mate is at, so I've never done anything with it.  I decided to try to use the leftover piece for this project.

   

The next step was to trace a circle on the background fabric a little larger than the embroidery hoop and cut it out:

Then I began hot gluing the fabric to the hoop.  If you are using the whole hoop (both pieces), you could skip this step and just put the fabric inside the hoop the normal way.

Oh, and I did these next few steps on my kids' drawing mat to save my dining room table; thus, you'll see some crayon scribbles underneath.  Sorry about that!

So far, so good!  Time to add the flowers.

I free-handed a couple of tulips on my contrasting fabric and cut them out.  After arranging them on the background fabric, I then began to hot glue them on.  I love hot glue.  I use it for just about anything.

After staring at my finished piece for awhile, I decided that I chose two fabrics that weren't contrast-y enough.

The flowers just didn't pop like I wanted them to...they needed something. So...

I began to sew an outline.  This was purely decorative, and if I had known I would end up doing this step, I might have skipped the hot glue.  But, I will say that having them all hot glued on did make the sewing easier.  They didn't move at all and really, this went pretty quickly.

Finally, I was able to hang my art:

I like it!  I think the flowers look kind of nice against the yellow walls and also with the patchwork curtain I made for Nat Nat a couple of years ago.  I do think this space needs something more, though.  But I work slowly.  I like to let it evolve over time.

Here's a shot with the curtain closed so that you can get a feel for all the colors in this room.

And a close-up of the finished piece:

I think the girl approves!

Total cost for this project: nothing --yay!
Total time for this project: about three hours.

Next up: Daniel's room.  Poor thing.  His walls are kind of bare right now.  Good thing he really doesn't care.  This is more for me, anyway ;)

Thanks for reading!
Sarah