Joy to the World Bricks

Just a quick one this evening!

I love these little glass bricks.  They have an opening on one end so I stuffed some white curling ribbon to each one and added the vinyl letters - super simple and super cute on the mantel! 

 

If you look super closely at the bottom of the snowflake O, you will see where I lived up to my motto of making you feel better about your crafting abilities.  See it?  You are welcome.

 

December Cabinet Calendar

I am a bit behind on posting this but here is my December Cabinet Calendar!

A close up on New Year's Eve and the pile of presents including the nicely wrapped dog bone for our golden Truman the Dog.

"With the stockings all hung in a row..."

I used my Cricut Expression, Gypsy and several different cartridges:
Trees - Create a Critter
Ornaments - Joys of the Season
December and Christmas Day Marker - Designer Calendar
New Year's Eve Champagne and glass - Simply Charmed
Date Numbers - Sesame Street Friends 
Stockings - Doodlecharms
Gift Packages -Winter Frolic and Doodlecharms
Dog Bone Gift - Create a Critter
Wreath Day Marker - Christmas

Hope you like it - I had a lot of fun designing it and my 3 year old has been having fun assigning family members different stockings and presents every day.  I would say she is excited about Christmas and we are having a ton of fun seeing the season through her eyes - I forgot how magical the holidays could be!
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Parties I am linking up to:

Catalog Inspiration - Crate and Barrel

Crate and Barrel Christmas catalog arrived the other day and I found some very fun inspiration to work from:

I LOVE this felt pillow!  I feel like I could totally do this even though there is sewing involved - different green felt circles on red felt with a pillow form.  I am sure it will take way longer than I am hoping but I am going to give it a shot!

I think these little placecard holders are adorable - not sure how I would go about recreating them but I have an idea or two that I might give a shot.

Loving this metallic leaf garland but I would do it in silver rather than gold since both my holiday china is the Reindeer line (love!) from Pottery Barn and it is rimmed in silver.  My formal china is also silver so I could use it other times of the year as well.

Did I miss anything that you loved from the Crate and Barrel catalog?  Anything you think is a must try?

Catalog Inspiration - Signals

If you are anything like me, you receive somewhere close to your body weight in catalogs every month! While I am a big online shopper, I am not a huge catalog shopper and I have absolutely no idea how or why I am on so many mailing lists. Consider this a quiet complaint because they are a great source of inspiration for projects to add to the Craft Binge list!


"You Are..." sign from Signals

I am going to make this and give it to my husband for Christmas - it will be perfect over his dresser as a little reminder of how important he is to me every day.  I already have it entered into my Gypsy, now I just need to cut it.  Theirs is 6" x 15" but mine is sized to 12" x 24".  I will share pictures and possibly a tutorial as soon as it is done!












I also really like these two as well! I can see the Be Bold sign in my daughter's rooms - maybe without the Be Obnoxious line  :)

 

Signals is certainly not the first place I would have thought of when looking for inspiration but I like what I found!

I was featured again!

Yep, Stephanie Lynn from Under the Table and Dreaming featured my November showcase. Thank you SO much Stephanie - I am so excited that you liked it!

Magnetic Cabinet Calender - November!

I am so excited to share my November Kitchen Cabinet Calendar - I have a bit of a crush on my cute little turkey fellows!!

I changed up my medium this month.  Prior months I used paper that I made into stickers with my Xyron machine but Ellie, my 3 year old, found them to be too appealing and wound up trying to disassemble the calendar.  They also left a heck of a residue on the wall so I started thinking about what I could use instead and settled on vinyl.  It is super thin which makes it much more difficult for little fingers to remove and I happen to have a nice little stash of vinyl to play with!

I used my Cricut Expression, my brand new Gypsy (my new favorite thing) and several different cartridges:
Pilgrim Hats - Designer Calendar
Thanksgiving Day marker - Designer Calendar
Date Numbers - Sesame Street Friends (I have tons of numbers between all my cartridges but these are the most simple ones I have found)

 
Dapper Turkeys - Create a Critter

The Gobbles - Create a Critter

I Voted circle for Election Day on November 2 - Designer Calendar
November - Designer Calendar
Turkey Day Marker Magnet - Designer Calendar  (you can see it on November 1)

Hope you like it - I am really happy with how it turned out and Ellie was really excited when she saw it this morning which thrilled me to no end!  I am already working on December and have some fun ideas for it so watch for that in the beginning of December!
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I was featured!!

Holy cow!  Oh my gosh!  Are you kidding me?!  *rinse, lather, repeat*

That pretty much sums up how I reacted when Jen at Tatertots and Jello featured my little Magnetic Kitchen Cabinet Calendar on her "Great Ideas 10/24" post.  To say I was excited is understating it a smidge. 



Same thing for Hannah at Young and Crafty! So, so honored!

Thanks Ladies for featuring me - such an honor! Watch for my November calendar posting shortly!

Magnetic Kitchen Cabinet Calendar

Wow, so I have been slacking on updating but not on crafting - been quite busy decorating for Halloween.  More on that later but for now I am thrilled to share my Magnetic Kitchen Cabinet Calendar!

It all started (as most of my projects do) with me toying with the idea of making something I saw on a blog - this time it was the Halloween Countdown calendar similar to the one that Project Naptime made but then I remembered that my Mom is the one who can sew...not me.  So I went to plan B - paper!

I initially had planned to do the countdown on a board that would be hung from the door leading to the basement.  I wanted it to be magnetic so I thought a sheet of metal would work but then I realized that the girls would not be able to see that since it would have to be hung pretty high and it would be crazy heavy - both things which kind of defeat the purpose of having a countdown calendar for the girls, right?  Looking for a different solution, I realized that the end of my kitchen cabinets would work beautifully and that with a little magnetic paint it was just what I had in mind!

I started by putting on several - and by several I mean 8 - coats of magnetic paint.  It took so many coats just to get the paint to be reasonably magnetic.  This stuff is pretty cool although it is quite smelly and very thick. I used a foam brush to put it on because I didn't want to pour it into a paint tray (Abby, my 7 month old, would have found that in 3 1/2 seconds) - it worked fine but a roller would have been faster and probably a touch more smooth.

After the final coat of magnetic paint went on, I put 2 more coats of the original white shade.  Can't tell there are 8 coats of black magnetic paint under there can you?  I was very relieved because about 5 coats into the very dark, very thick black paint, I was 100% convinced it was not going to cover up easily.  Thank goodness I was wrong!

While it isn't the most magnetic surface, it will hold a sheet magnet cut into a shape or the super strong, teeny-tiny dot magnets.  My favorite part is that if you don't know the paint is there, you would not be able to tell that the wall is magnetic.

As I mentioned, this was originally to be a Halloween Advent calendar but I realized that I liked the idea of having a calendar for the girls year round.  Some where accessible to mark the different holidays, special events and celebrations throughout the year so I created this:

Ellie, my 3 year old, loves it!  It took a while to make but it was not hard at all.  I used my Cricut to cut out the squares and each date - then I ran them through my Xyron machine to make them into stickers.  I originally used the repositionable cartridge but the squares kept peeling and falling off so I switched to the 'permanent' one and they are sticking fine 20 days into the month!  

  

Ellie and I added some cute foam stickers from the craft store - love my trick or treating ghost!

 

I used the Cricut to cut out a day marker magnet in the shape of a pumpkin - Ellie moves it every morning when we get up.  And throughout the day too, actually.  We change dates a lot around here.

 

I cut October out using Spooky Font and used the Xyron to make each letter into a sticker. I added the tree because I liked the way it looked and need something extra to fill up the space between October and the 1st.

I am planning on doing a new one each month - check back in the beginning of November for the latest calendar!  Hope you like it!

I am linking up to a few bunches and bunches of parties:

Halloween Wreath: Burlap and Glitter

I have to brag just a little - my husband and I were installing Abby's (the 7 month old) new tank car seat into my car. (my baby isn't such a baby anymore! *sniff, sniff*)  The car was parked in our driveway and a car a pulled up to the end of the driveway.  The driver said he was sorry to bother us but his wife loved our wreath and asked where we bought it.    I was thrilled to tell them that I made it.  *squee*

This wreath is so simple to make - it only took me about an hour or so from start to finish! 

I bought 1/2 a yard both of orange and black burlap and cut them into 1" strips the length of the fabric so I wound up with a bunch of 1" x 18" strips.

Tie them in knots on your wreath form and alternate blocks of the orange with blocks of the black or you could also do half in orange with half in black.

The only downside to this wreath is working with the burlap - so messy and itchy that I had to take a shower the second that the wreath was done while my husband ran the vacuum!  If I did it again, I would only do this outside.  :) 

The next step was to find something extra to add.  I had originally bought wooden letters that spelled BOO but saw the orange glittered Boo! at Target for a whopping $2.50 and went with that instead.  Much quicker and impossible for me to mess up.

I threaded the orange ribbon through the Os and looped it around the wreath as a hanger and that's it!  Halloween decor in under an hour!  Hope you like it as much as we do! 

I am linking this up to the Halloween Extravaganza on the CSI Project!

ABC and 123 - Letter and Number Walls

I want to instill in my daughters the same love of reading and words that my parents gave me growing up.

I also like really colorful stuff.  Just saying.

I have been trying to decide what to put on the walls of my daughter's playroom for some time.  I wanted something fun, colorful, educational and different.  When I saw Spearmint Baby's nursery wall with the alphabet in different colors and fonts, I knew I had found what I was looking for.

First thing I did was call my Mom because she is a wiz at finding things at thrift shops, garage sales and the like.  She went on the hunt and found several letters right off the bat.  It took a few weeks but we both just picked up letters here and there and by the time I went to visit them for a week in June, we had them all.  Then we hand painted, ModPodged and spray painted them all until I was happy with the variety.  Then using Command Strips (love, love, love) and a nail or two, I hung those puppies up!

I decided that it looked a little bland still so I added a bar with mini clothespins to display all Ellie's artwork and pictures of family.

 So that was done and I sort loved it but then realized I wanted to add some numbers so up these went on the opposite wall:

As an FYI - it is nearly impossible to find any zeros anyplace.  If I stumble on one, I will add 10 under the grouping but if I don't, no big deal.  They are still a touch bland but I might put stripes on the number 1 or polka dot 4 - we'll see!

From time to time, Ellie will look up at her letters and tell me how much she "loves her alphabet."  Aw, love that. Love her! Love my version of the letters too!
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Linked up here: