leaves craft...

This week Noah and I had some fun crafting while Naomi was napping. We cut out leaves on the cricut and then I let him paint them with fall colors. It was messy, messy and more messy. After they dried over night, I sewed them together.

I liked the way it turned out!

melted crayon canvas

This weekend I was in the mood to make something fun and craft with Noah.  I had been organizing our playroom and wanting to decorate in there. I'm hoping to paint this weekend. It's one of the only rooms in the house that hasn't been painted since we moved in. I got this cute idea off Pinterest which originally comes from Crayon Wishes and Popsicle Dreams. This is so easy and so fun! Honestly, Noah didn't help as much as he would have liked. It takes some time and the blowdryer and crayons obviously get very hot.

It's simple though, just hot glue 59 crayons to your canvas, ours is 16x20, and then hold your blowdryer or heating tool (I also used an embossing heating gun) and melt away. I love how it turned out and can't wait to get it hung in the playroom.

 (I would recommend either doing this outside or on tile floor because the crayons dripped in some places, but it was easy to peel off of the tile.)

fun Halloween crafts...

The last two weeks we made some fun Halloween themed crafts. This was great to do while Naomi was taking a nap, to spend some one on one time with Noah, and keep him quiet!

His friendly bat. Two hand-prints and a footprint all upside down. Small googly eyes and he wanted him to have a red mouth for whatever reason. The little "ears" are his pointer finger prints. He is getting very particular about what colors he wants things.

 The Silly ghost. He had the option of what facial expression he wanted him to have, silly, scary, happy or angry. We have been learning about emotions, and he loves when I pretend to be each different emotion. Especially angry, oddly enough. =)

More ghosts. These are just his footprints again and fingerprint eyes and nose.

Then I felt like we needed a little Jesus in the display so I just traced out the letters, which I am terrible at, and let him paint them. Nothing fancy at all, but I was out of ideas!

{All of my Halloween craft ideas came from the blog eighteen25.}

Happy Valentines Day

I'm a sucker for Valentine's Day! Actually, any holiday for that matter. It's a chance to decorate and give a gift, which I enjoy doing.

This year, with Noah being in preschool, we did Valentines for his classmates and teachers.

I got this idea from Eva on her valentine's post from last year.  I've been pretty excited about doing it this year! I think they turned out really cute. The project was very simple. We broke up several crayons, and them baked them for 15 mintues in a heartshaped mold. I then attached them to the print out and then tied them onto celophane bags with a few conversation hearts.

  "Have a colorful Valentine's Day!"

The print out came from the long thread.

 I also wanted to make something for his two teachers who he adores. They are so sweet to him, so I wanted them to know I was thankful for them loving on my baby.

I made heart shaped brownies and filled the bag with chocolate and the brownie.

-yummo-

 covered clothes pens with some red paper...

 and attached this cute print out to the brown paper bag.

{idea came from eighteen25}

very simple, but cute, simple and inexpensive.

My sweet boy headed to school. (I also made the shirt, which took me several hours, no joke.)

this is the best smile I could get!

Hope you all have a wonderful day!!

Crafty...wednesday??

So I have obviously not been keeping up with my Crafty Thursday posts. I can't even keep up with my blog reading like I would like, much less do any blogging of my own. BUT, this week I am on a mission! I have 2 projects I have been wanting to complete since moving into our house. One is this piece of furniture:

As you can see I started experimenting with it, only to be seriously let down at my color choice. So I'm going to give it a go again, and go with a completely different color and see how it turns out! What do you think??

Also, these guys will hopefully be turned into something great this week as well! Pending that my children take wonderful naps at the same time. I'll keep you posted of the final results!

Lastly, check out this piece of furniture I picked up from an estate sale this weekend. I L.O.V.E. it! It was intended for Naomi's room as a book shelf, but now I'm not sure it will fit. So it may end up in the play room as more storage.

So here's to a wonderful home improvement week for me! I'm going to go get to work...

my growing list of things to do...

Now that I am passed the sleep deprived newborn stage of life, I am on the mission to really start making and creating things that I have saved over the last year or so. Number 1 is organizing and decorating our very bland playroom. I am SO thankful to have a room that contains the ever growing toy collection we have. But man is it a mess! At the end of the day, I just don't feel like messing with it at all, so I just toss the toys in the baskets and close the door. This last week, we started to organize and clean it out. We bought shelves and storage bins with a Home Depot gift card we got for Christmas (great gift btw for new homeowners!) and I actually threw away a FEW things. :o) I hate getting rid of toys! I always think, one day he just might want to play with it again! ha

So, I have lots of ideas on decorating this room. My color scheme will be red and orange, trying to keep it gender nuetral and funky. Budget issues have not allowed me to do too much with it, but I am working on inexpensive ways to spruce it up a bit. I am going to hunt down the perfect fabric for curtains which I hope to make myself. I don't like that you can see right in the glass doors at night. I want a large rug because Noah keeps complaining that the tile is giving his knees boo-boos. :(

Here are a few fun DIY things that I plan on working on soon!

I love this wreath. Eva posted this on her blog a few months back and I saved it and have been dreaming thinking of it since then. I want to do it in bright colors, mostly red and orange I think. She uses hers as a Christmas wreath, but I think in the right colors it wont look very Christmasy at all.

{source}

I saved this a looong time ago, and unfortunately can't remember what blog it came from to give them credit, but I definitely want to do this with "N"'s for both the kiddos names.

Once the playroom is completed, I have several other things I hope to work on.

{source}

MUST make one of these soon! What a great idea! She turned a bunch of her son's old T-shirts into super cute hats! Lots of Npah's T's get stained and end up trashing them. I can't wait to try this.

{source}

Lastly, this playmat. Oh. My. Word. Eva also posted on her blog a while back and then today, I saw another one on Prudent Baby's site. I do think I will either need help from a more novice sewer or get some lessons before I attempt this! But it is definitely on the list this year for Noah. Maybe for his birthday.

Now onto things I have actually accomplished!! I have been working on baby shower gifts, mostly monogramed bibs and burpcloths and ribbon socks. Naomi has a nice stash of matching sets that I made for practice. I plan on trying to post these to Etsy or facebook soon to sell. Thank you for those of you who have already bought some from me! I made this set for my niece Norah.

 Lastly, I made this wreath for Naomi's room to hang above her crib. I really love it!

Ahhh, so much I want to do and some days, just no time to do them at all!

having sew much fun!

This is my day late Crafty Thursday post!! I barely sat down at the computer yesterday and honestly didn't even know what day it was!

I tried to put a little but more thought into some of my Christmas gifts this year. I really am enjoying learning to sew and craft, so I thought I would put my "skills" to work and make a few things for my kiddos and my nieces.

The one I was most excited about was this crayon apron for my niece Halle. I followed a tutorial by Samantha from Bobaloo!, found on Prudent Baby, which are both awesome blogs to follow btw! Halle was getting artsy things for Christmas from "Santa" so I thought it would go along with it perfectly. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought and I really liked the way it turned out!

Isn't it cute?! I had my eye on this fabric for a while and thought it was perfect for this. And I have to say I was happy when she put it on Christmas day and started coloring. (although she could very well never touch it again once it got home!)

I also made a SUPER cute crayon roll for my niece Kerrigan, but, it is the case of the missing Christmas present. It is NOWHERE to be found. I seriously think it may have gotton thrown away. :( So I owe her one in the near future. And unfortunately I didn't even take a picture of it.
I also made some things for my kiddos but need to take some pics of them! So, stay tuned!

Crafty Thursday

"...while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads..."

Well, I have failed in keeping up with my Crafty Thursday posts but I'm back and ready to roll! I will make up for my lack of posts with several things I have been working on. I have been super busy with so many projects but haven't actually completed too many. This week it's down to business, I am running out of days before Christmas.

Today was Noah's Christmas party at his playschool. I was signed up to bring goodie bags and had absolutely no idea what to put in a goodie bag for 2-3 year olds. So thanks to the blogging queen Eva, she sent me this great idea, from eighteen25. Super cute marshmallow sugarplums! I actually very much dislike marshmallows, unless they are melted on something, but I figured, what kid wouldn't like this?? Oh my I think they turned out so cute!!!!!!!

 So here's what I did...

Poke plastic lollie pop sticks into the large marshmallows

 Melt chocolate (I used Wilton white chocolate), and dye your desired color. I first tried to do purple, since apparently sugarplums are purple ( I googled this), but it was a fail... 

  so I tried again and just went with a light blue.

now dip the marshmallows into the chocolate...

 then directly into the sprinkles

 stick them into something sturdy to dry , I used styrofoam cups.

 then bag them up, add a cute ribbon and attach the tag provided by eighteen25! (found here) It says "may visions of sugarplums dance in your head." On the back it says from: and I signed Noah's name.

 cute and simple!

I bagged these into a larger gift bag with a candy cane and a few pieces of chocolate. I was very pleased with the end result. I had a few extra so I wrapped them up with a Christmas card and some candy for his teachers as well. They are just too sweet and Noah adores them.

 Also, this week we decided to whip up some Christmas cookies and let Noah decorate. Fair warning to moms with two year olds, while they will thoroughly enjoy this, it will be ridiculously messy!! We had such a blast doing this with Noah though.

And LASTLY, I made this Christmas shirt for Noah last week, this is the best I could get of him modeling it! Ignore the food on the face and the jacket falling off of his shoulders!

He calls it his "sock" shirt. He insisted on looking down at it the almost the entire time I tried taking a picture of him in it!