Happy 1st Birthday Baby Sis!

This past weekend we celebrated Baby Sis's 1st Birthday! I cannot believe it! Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday she looked like this.

But alas they all grow up...so my sis and I decided we wanted to go with a western theme party but not a cutesy one with the matching plates and cups. This is what we came up with. Its not professional looking by no means but I think we did a pretty good job with what we had.

My little birthday girl seem to really have fun and that's all I can ask for!



DIY Play Kitchen

Hello all! Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

We had lots of fun around here and Santa brought Big Sis a kitchen!

I have seen these DIY kitchens all over Pinterest and decide I had to make one!

Colorful DIY Play Kitchen

Whats-Cooking

 So a few months back I spotted this TV table at a yard sale for $5! Well already having this little plan in my head I snatched that sucker up! (It was brown, I forgot to take a picture before I started priming.)

When I was in high school I made this little bookshelf in wood shop class. It had been sitting in our building collecting dust as you can tell. But I had big plans for it :)

I don't have pictures of the process but I will show you the finished product and explain everything we did.

 I will give you a bulleted list of all the things we did.

• Primed and painted the bookshelf and TV shelf. (Paint I already had)
• Screwed both together.
• Cut a scrap piece of plywood to back the whole thing.
• Cut doors out of another scrap piece of plywood.
• Screwed the back on and hung the doors.
• Installed the faucet. (Already had the faucet from our recent bathroom makeover)
• Cut a hole for the sink and set it in. (A metal bowl we already owned.)
• Hung a white shelf above the sink. (Already owned the shelf.)
• Gave the whole thing another coat of paint.
• Painted polka dots on the "fridge" doors.
• Installed door knobs that really turn for oven knobs. (Already had the knobs.)
• Installed the doorknobs on the "fridge" and "oven" (Already had the knobs.)
• Hung a little skirt to cover the under the sink area.
• Cut out some "oven eyes" out of vinyl on my Silhouette machine.
• Sewed up some pot holders and an apron. Hung them on cup hooks. (Used scrap fabric)
• Covered with a blanket and waited for Santa to come!

Here is a cute pic of Big Sis playing on Christmas morning. (Looks like I need to clean my TV)

Me and my hubby are so proud of our little project and just in case you missed it, we only spent FIVE DOLLARS!!!

Have a great day!

P.S. Go check out all of the neat Pinterest projects out there!

Young House Love

Hi Sugarplum!

Christmas is here!

Woohoo! I know its been a few months since I've posted but oh man it's been busy around here!

I really wanted to do an advent calendar for the kiddos this year but December 1st sort of snuck up on me. So I decided to use what I have and create a dry erase countdown.

I had this frame hanging on my gallery wall for football season.

I just cut out a piece of scrapbook paper and put it in the frame. Next I used my Silhouette to cut out some vinyl and adhered it to the front of the glass. Now I can just write my number on the glass. Voila! A dry erase Christmas countdown!

There's Ricky our elf watching our every move! Hope everyone is having a good day!

Hair Bow Tutorial

A few days ago I had a friend ask me how to make hair bows so I thought that I would post a quick tutorial. I have made lots of hair bows and I have tried lots of different ways to make a hair bow and this method is by far the easiest that I have tried.

Here is what you will need.

Ribbon

Hair Clip

Scissors

Hot Glue

Floral Wire

My ribbon is 1 1/2 inches wide by 25 inches long. In the end my bow ended up being about a 5" bow.

You can use whatever size ribbon you like and depending on the size bow you want you can adjust the length accordingly.

You will also need a smaller piece of ribbon just about 3 inches long you will see why later.

First of all take your ribbon and form into a figure 8 like you see above. Sometimes I like to put just a tiny dab of hot glue between the layers just to keep them together.

Next take your ends and bring them to the center slightly overlapping one another, I also like to put a dab of hot glue here as well just to keep the layers together. Be careful and don't put to much glue here because it will hinder your gathering process.

Now gather the center. It may take you a few times to get the gather to look just like you want it. That's why I glue the layers together, so you don't have to start all the way over if you don't like the gather. Now wrap the center with a small gauge floral wire to hold it together.

Next you are going to take your french clip apart and glue the bottom piece to the back of your hair bow. (Sorry I don't have pictures of this step.) Now take your smaller piece of ribbon and tie a knot in the center of it. Glue the knot to the front of the bow and wrap the ends around to the back. Now glue the ends of the ribbon to the clip. Put your clip back together and there ya have it.

You can see in this picture how I wrapped the smaller pink ribbon around the back.

Here's the front.

Here it is on my little munchkins head!

Have a great day!

Hairbow Holder

This past weekend we went to a birthday party for the little girl of a dear sweet friend. I always try to come up with gifts that you can't buy at your local Wal-Mart. I decided to throw together a hairbow holder for her literally the night before. It took me 20 minutes and most of that time was spent letting paint dry.

I didn't take any pictures while I was making it but it was really simple. I took a piece of wood and painted the base pink then I used my Sillhouette to create a stencil and simply stenciled on my letter.

Next I just hot glued some ribbon on and there ya have it!

Have a great day!

Doda!

We had a full schedule this past weekend including our "Doda" party. My sweet little M turns 3 this Wednesday and she has been begging for a Dora party. The thrifty mommy in me wanted to make her cake all by myself. So I started researching fondant. After reading several tutorials I found this one to be the best.

My first batch did not go so well but I decided it was because my marshmallows weren't smooth enough so I tried again and got a pretty good result. It's not perfect but M said it was "bweteful" and that's good enough for me!

I made this little t-shirt with my Silhouette, some contact paper, and some craft paint. I forgot to get a good picture of the Dora hair bow I made also. (She didn't want to smile for me.)

Well thats how I've spent the last few days and just for fun I'm going to leave you with a few more pics from the party. Also head on over to Lines Across My Face for her linky party!

Have a great day! ~Candis~



Why is it that kids have to pile up on eachother to open gifts? lol







Owl Changing Pad

Right now we're living in an apartment so the kids have to share a room. At first, I wanted to do blue, pink, and green and then found this owl fabric that I loved. I decided that Little Sis will be sleeping in our room the first couple of months and hopefully we'll be moved out by then, so I would just do the theme for JJ. However, I still had to have all the important baby gear in there, so it's all done in his theme. :)

I've had visions of the perfect changing pad dancing in my head for months and almost bought one. Then I thought, why would I buy one when I could sew one?! I set out to find a tutorial and found this one from Star over at A Load of Craft. It explains it perfectly, so I'm not going to. I'll just show ya a couple pics of my process and any notes I can think of that might help.

 I decided to make my pad with minky down the middle and my owl fabric on the outsides so I had to do some piecing. I measured the width I wanted the minky which was 11 inches and then cut the owl fabric 11 inches wide, haha. Because of this, I just cut another owl piece 11 inches and then the minky 11 inches and pieced them all together. After it was all sewn, then I trimmed it down to what I needed.



This is the whole piece draped over the changing pad to make sure my minky lined up correctly.

I followed Star's instructions about tracing the pad and making a pattern.



Ok... it's not perfect. :) My fabric bunched around the corners and nothing I did fixed it. It was my first try, and I'm ok with the imperfection. If someone comes over and notices the corners of my changing pad aren't right, they will be invited to re-sew them for me. Haha!



When Star is explaining the corners and she says to pull the corner and get the bulk and then sew a triangle, I noticed alot of people were confused by this. At first, I was too, but once I figured it out, it was really easy. So I wanted to make sure and post this next picture because I think it shows what she means a little more clearly. At least it shows where the triangle is supposed to be sewn better. This is what makes the fabric wrap itself around the bottom corners of the pad.

And this is my finished product!

Hopefully between my tips and Star's wonderful tutorial, you can make your own!

Soon I'll show you more of the room. Like I said, we hope to be moving soon so I don't know how "put together" it will be, but I'm trying. Also, my crazy wonderful husband decided Little Man needed a tractor bed for the room. Nevermind the fact that a tractor doesn't match my owl theme at all... At least I talked him into painting it blue! I'll post that soon.

Thanks!

- Sarah

Linking up here