In Progress

Unfortunately, nothing new to show you yet. I do have two promising projects in the works though and I figured I tell a bit now.

I thought I would finish my perpetual calendar project with my mom this weekend but it turned out we were too busy on our trip to have time to work on it. Here I thought we would be bored at night and need an activity but instead we had no time for crafting at all. I did get to stop by a cool craft store in Santa Barbara. I wish I had known about it when I was still going to school there! I guess that is life.

I am still really interested in making the calendars so hopefully I get a chance to work on mine soon.

The other project that I have been wanting to do for a while but am just now starting is a map so my husband and I can start pinning places when have been.

I found a coupon online for Aaron Brothers and got the canvas. It took me a while to decide what size would be good. I ended up with a 24x36. Maybe some kind of nod to my former work. Then I went online and found a free basic black and white map. Then I used Gimp to make 14 8.5x11s which I have all printed out. I am planning on using them to "trace" what I want to paint later.

That map project is going to be very time consuming I can already tell so it might be staying in progress for a while but at least I am making progress right?

UPDATE: After I started my map my husband mentioned that I chose the wrong perspective so I gave up for a while but having my first comment inspired me so maybe one day I'll finish :)

Cards: Birthday Blocks/Cake

I have made some of what I consider really cute cards. This round I didn't find any to be too amazing but this one was kinda cute so I figured why not share.

This is the outside. The picture is a bit blurry. (Did I mention I hate my "new" camera?) It says happy in there though on the pink block.

On the inside I wanted something but it took me a while to come up with what and this what I ended up with.

I put a personal not in the big blank space :o)

Not my best but kinda cute nonetheless. Even with the pink I gave it to a boy!

On a side note: I inspired my mom and I wish I had take a picture of her best card. It had a simple stick figure looking solemn with it's eyes close and it said "on your birthday I wish you..." and then on the inside it didn't say anything but had an awesome black background and there was the earth, the moon and glitters stars. I thought it was awesome. Not sure if my uncle got it but it was awesome.

Gifts: Picture Frame To Do List and Card

Okay, so to be truthful the first time I tried this I failed. I failed miserably. I might post a picture of how bad it was but in my misery I already threw out the evidence. The second time was almost worth the efforts of the first and you can't learn unless you try, right?

It may look easy and simple now but let me tell you if you saw the first one!

Anyways my tips:

1) Don't use glitter paper. The glue dries clear but you can still see exactly where it is on that stuff and it does not look pretty.

2) Print the wording. I tried cutting it out the first time and it took forever seriously way too long and it didn't even look that good in the end.

3) Invest in stickers. I only used half of a 1 dollar pack here it is way better. 

4)I cut those lines myself from the paint chips I mentioned last time and I like that I could get matching colors to my stickers. Not necessary for you to cut them but it might prove useful to have a stash of paint chips of your own.

5) I used a skinny dry erase marker to put a couple of check marks on there so you could tell what it was.

6) A check "box" doesn't have to be a box it could be a flower :o)

7) Keep in mind whatever size frame you are using may end up covering some of your design so plan ahead if anything in close to the edge!

I also gave Molly the markers to use it (new) I used one of my own to write on the frame and I gave her some dollar store nail polish so the first task could be true! You can't tell from the picture but I kept with the original idea of glittery by adding a bit of glitter glue but very sparingly so as not to distract from the list.

For those concerned about my cheapy budget turned cool gifts. I spent $1 stickers, $2 frame (left over from table number at my wedding, ha!), $2 on dry erase two pack, $4 on dollar store nail polish, $1 on glitter glue and wasted $2 on original frame and glitter paper:( Not too bad all told.

Gifts: Board with Magnets

So I have been crafting and now I am posting. I wish I had taken more pictures of projects before I gave them away but here is a taste at least.

My mom has a ton of siblings which means I have a ton of aunts and uncles and cousins, and well relatives in general. Being out of work has made the traditional $20-$25 dollar each seem a lot less do-able. I still wanted to do something so I decided I wanted to see if I could turn 5-10 dollars each into the acceptable gift range. I think I succeeded but as mentioned I didn't take picture enough. The first project I don't have pictures at all which is rather disappointing but I will try and get you the gist in case you want to try for yourself.

My first inspiration came at the dollar store. I bought a bag of one inch glass circles. I had seen them turned into magnets and thought it was perfect. The dollar store did not have magnets:( I went to Staples and found the tape I wanted was more than what I wanted to spend. Instead I decided why not buy pre-made magnets and ripe the magnet off? Hahahaha. Yes. That is just what I did. It cost me $1.99 a pack. I bought three 2 for gifts and one for myself or maybe someone else down the line.

They actually ended up working better than expected!

The design showed above was the last package I opened and did not work as well. When I ripped the magnets off the first batches I realized that the design came off pretty easily as well. So I didn't even end up using the dollar store glass thingys. I save the packaging and put my magnets back into them after I had changed the pictures. People seemed to really get a kick out of this detail. They did a double take when they realized they were the ones in the photos!

The photos were easy enough as well. The hardest part was having well the photo. I had to dig through some digital archives of mine to locate enough for the specific person(s) the gift was intended for. But sure enough I found them, put them back on my memory card and went to Rite Aid. Although I might have liked to try and format myself and probably could have saved money taking them to my former work. I couldn't do that. I just couldn't.

Rite Aid was fine. I prefer higher quality prints of photos but the ease of use of their machine couldn't be beat. I put my card in. It took a second to bring up pictures (my fault I had a ton on there) and then I selected collage. It let me choose roughly 8-9 to put on to a 4x6in photo which ended up being pretty much perfect sizing. Here is an example of other photos I printed and cut from the same sized sheets. I think they cost me like .45 a sheet because I did them instantly instead of coming back later or another day.

They came out really cute with pictures of family all small inside but of course no pic of that (sorry).

I decided this was not going to be enough. I kept trying to think of a cool way to display them or something to make the gift fit the appropriate price range. As of now I was only a couple bucks in and so I could afford to purchase or make something else but what?

I tried putting the magnets on coffee cans but then shouldn't I put something inside. I thought about on beer cans because what guy doesn't like beer, right? But nothing seemed right. Then I decided to go shopping with my mom. I was running out of time and she needed to go to Walmart anyways so I said what the heck I'll take a look around. Now I don't love walmart sometimes things are cheap but often you get what you pay for:( And the parking, service and overall experience well sucks!

While I was there searching all over I found a tin plate that had cheesy wording for .50. I thought hey I could remodel this:) But that proved difficult. I mean little time. Little inspiration. Then my mom pointed me toward back to school she is a teacher and I figured glue was on sale or something :o) Instead she showed me a $4.50 white board. Small but it could do the job. But for that price I wanted something well more impressive than this mini board she was showing me. I ended up finding it a couple isles over 2 bucks for a similar sized board. Most of the colors of border were bad like weird plastic red or purple but she dug in there and pulled out 2 navy bordered ones which were perfect! Two for the price of one made even me happy.

We continued our tour of the store and I thought paint chips OMG walmart has paint chips. I didn't know exactly what to do with them but I knew I needed some. So I got a bunch and felt this trip to be a success. I passed some cool duct tape but it wasn't quite right. And not super cheap either I might add. Then I found my inspiration. It is the start of football season and I had seen a lot of football related items but the price is never right on that stuff. Anyways, for these boys the team of choice is the chargers. I found gold sparkle foam sheets and had to buy one.

I cut a bolt out used a sparkle marker to outline in blue glued it to my dry erase boards and voila. The perfect spot to put my homemade magnets! Sorry you have to use your imagination on this one but it turned out really cool trust me! I gave them away before I thought to take pictures but I will try hard to remember next time!

Zebra Cupcakes

Alright, so just as an FYI I am not a great cook nor do I claim to be but I am married so I do cook daily(try at least).

Yesterday I felt like a treat. My husband is on this perpetual diet as of late well since January. He insists that I cook what I want even though he is not afraid to opt out and make himself something else. I try to avoid him doing his own thing at all cost. So as a compromise I try to healthy up a bit whatever I feel like cooking. Sometimes it means skipping things altogether, sometimes it just means I make some interesting substitutions. In this case I took out eggs and oil, dropped down the quantity and added applesauce to replace moisture.

The only good thing in my mind about my husbands weight loss and fitness kick is he has broadened his horizons some with what he will eat. Dessert has been almost entirely cut out but fruit and veg have definitely been on the rise. I can't hate on that!

When I was a kid I had a friend whose mom was really tough but really awesome in the kitchen. She scared me and I loved her at the same time. I do love to eat. My own mom was poor and with poor cooking skills which usually didn't end up too promising for me. So one time my friend's mom made us a treat when I was over at their house it was very memorable so much so that I will never forget- Zebra Brownies. I didn't know what the heck was in them but ooo they sure did taste good. Yes they were black and white but I don't remember any crazy awesome design just taste. This is want inspired me.

 I browsed the brownies recipes on food.com which is my go to and they had two Zebra brownie recipes neither very healthy (I mean at all) and several suprise cupcakes (these didn't seem quite right either). In an attempt to be able to say at least that I was thinking of him I made up my own recipe of sorts. Hahaha. So here it is:

Zebra Cupcakes

Ingredients
1/2 packet of yellow cake mix
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup slightly overflowing:) chocolate chips
1 egg
2 single serve servings of apple sauce
......
1 package of cream cheese (light)
1/4 cup of sugar
1 large splash of vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix the first five ingredients well. Scoop into cupcake liners (already in pan). Do not over fill at this point you should have quite a bit left at this point. In separate bowl mix last 3 ingredients (I could have eaten all of this part before cooking). Divide this mixture into the 12 cupcakes. Put remaining dark mix onto of white. I wasn't careful about this step because I was planning on frosting but in hindsight I might have tried to cover more evenly. Cook for 18-20 minutes. Remove from oven let cool. Enjoy!

Why only a half of the mix you say. Well I only have one cupcake tin which makes 12 not 24. Also, I didn't want there to be so many that if I ended up eating them all I would gain the weight he has been losing. Who cares those things always have coupons and go on sale right?

I had thought that I would frost some with cream cheese flavored frosting but it proved unnecessary and I know my hubby would have avoided those ones for sure!

What would I change if I made them again? More chocolate chips. They really stuck to the cupcake liners so maybe a tiny less applesauce or replace one serving of applesauce with another egg. Not too sure. I don't care to much I would eat a million of them as is:p but that is just me. I think there was more than enough "white" part to make many more cupcakes but frankly that is my favorite part so I didn't mind. I read that you can replace cream cheese with "creamed" cottage cheese. I might try that too I'd have to compare calories and see if it was really worth it!

If anyone makes improvements on this let me know. I would definitely eat them again!

Men's Shirt Turned Apron

I never thought I would be interested in Pinterest. I saw people posting links to random things on my Facebook feed but never felt that interested. Until recently. I actually tried it and now I have an addiction. I pin and pin and pin. Until a couple days ago that is all I did. Thought oh this is nice or that is nice or oh man I gotta remember that but really did little.

I tried a couple little things.

 I save empty tp rolls for my wrapping paper. (Which I still love and think is genius)

 

I found a dollar store.

 

But in the end I was thinking more about crafty things than doing:( So this weekend I decided I needed to put and end to this. Well, really I started on Friday but I'll talk more about that in a sec. So I decided to be a do-er! Here is what I did.

 

Many of you will have seen that on the DIY of Pinterest many a church group has changed a father's or brother's or husband's old button down shirt into an apron. I saw this too. I did not have an apron of my own of any kind. At Target the aprons were like 30 bucks! In my opinion the ones I saw in store were not even that cute. Isn't half of what an apron is for is being cute?

 

On Friday I went to the local Good Will. I found men's shirts for $5.99. I felt this was more than fair so I started scouring the racks. I found two of the same which in mind made me feel like I scored even bigger. No one has two of the same shirt in different sizes right? So perhaps mine had never been worn (which I have found often to be the case with more specialty type items as such places). It was a nice shade of purple. Even better since I like purple:) I decided since I was already there I should check out the women's section as well. I mean why not right? And the idea struck me that if I used two shirts instead of one the end result could be better that what I had seen online:) So I set out to find an accent shirt.

Here is what I decided on.

 

I made a sketch of what I thought I wanted because what I saw didn't have that detailed directions. My mom borrowed and broke my sewing machine and plus I am not super skilled anyways so what else you may see in this picture is my hot glue gun. Yep. I am lazy. I completed this as a no sew project.

 

 I started by cutting the lace bottom off the "accent" shirt and pinning it on the "apron" shirt. I started in the front middle because the lace on the bottom of girlie tee was not going to make it around the whole bottom of my man shirt. I continued until there was nothing left to pin. Then I started gluing by undoing a pin or two at a time. The small sections helped me keep everything where I wanted it.

Then I cut off the arms because I wanted to use um elsewhere and although I knew that it would have to go at some point even if I didn't have a clear idea of how the back was going to end up. So yeah I cut the sleeves off.

I also decided that at this point it would probably be good to know where the waist should be. I tied a ribbon on a button to give me a point of reference.

 

Next, I turned the bottom section of the sleeves that cut off into pockets. I left them with the buttons on because I think buttons are cute:)

This also required a lot of pinning and I found it to be a little plain. Soooooo I cut the spaghetti straps off the "accent" shirt to use as design?

When I pinned and glued the sleeve pockets I did it so they don't lie flat on purpose there is something about puffing them up that fit better with my vision:)

All this took a long time. I think the worst part was the back just because I couldn't decide what to do. I didn't take a good picture of this but maybe someday I'll add it on. Basically, I thought I wanted  to stray from the halter design of others that I had seen but then eventually did a half and half. I cut the top back off but left the bottom half and attached my string (cut of the the "accent" shirt of course) to make a wrap dress kind of effect. Jury is still not out about if that really worked so well as I had hoped but alas not all projects can be perfect, right?

I cut one last accent off my "accent" shirt, glued it onto my apron and voila! Here is my finished product.

 

So I decided this is my first (real) project. It took hours of blood, sweat and tears but I think the result was worth every minute. You will have to tell me what you think!