Mother's Day Gifts

You can count this as 2 weeks late... or 50 weeks early! I'll go with the latter. :)  
So, for Mother's Day here is my present from my husband:



















Yep, that's right - I asked for this entry set for our front door (which my husband kindly painted red last year, but I didn't post pics then, because with our brass door knob, it looked like a shiny Christmas present). I told the cashier at Walmart, when she asked, that this was my present, and she said "Well, that's not a very good present." I was like, "No, you don't understand. I pulled this up on KSL and said, 'Look honey, that's what you're getting me for Mother's Day. Thanks!'" :)
Here's a pic from farther away, so you can see the whole door in all of its cinnamon-y glory :)





















So, for my mom and mother-in-law, I had found a tutorial on these cute handprint trees (click here) and thought they'd be a perfect Mother's Day gift from the girls. Overall, for 2 of them, it only cost me $11. I found some ugly painting on board a little thicker than MDF and cut it in 2. Then stapled on some remnant fabric from Hobby Lobby. The handprints are from those table runners that are sticks with thread woven around them. I ironed it onto that cool fusable stuff before cutting them out (or they would have fallen apart) and then ironed it onto the blue fabric before I stapled it on. The flowers are cut from some scrap pink velvet I had laying around and the little middle parts of the flowers are old toille fabric from an old dress. Then I just used a brown very fine Sharpie to write on the text (Which is "Grandma: the charming gardener who makes our souls blossom)




















Then, from me, I had an adventure in trying to find good essential oils, then a good balance. I ended up getting mine from Puritan's Pride, they were having a sale (buy one get two for free). I will just say this, if you ever use Cedarwood, only use a few drops! Otherwise it smells like you opened up a cedarwood chest that had been closed for hundreds of years!

Anyhow, I just added Cedarwood and Jasmine essential oils to some meltable soap from Hobby Lobby and some Epsom Salt for... well, you know... soap and bath salt. Then made a book mark from the aforementioned velvet material and put jewelry charms at the end (Hobby Lobby had them on sale), and some make-up remover that I had seen on Pinterest (1 C water, 1 1/2 T Baby Shampoo (no tear, obviously), and 1/3 T Olive oil). Included some little cotton pads for the remover, put all the stuff in some old bottles and jars that have been collectin dust under my craft table, and called it good. :)

Luckily, both of these things can easily be done for birthdays or Christmas. Which is how I talked myself into posting this despite it being weeks late :)

Little lymericks for gifts

Want to write a cute little poem to give with a gift to a girlfriend? I have two - one for friends with a sense of humor and one for friends you aren't sure if they do. :) Let me preface this by saying that my husband has long been suspicious of women's motivations for giving sugary fattening gifts to their friends.  Sub-conscious (or conscious!) sabotage? I think the idea is wrong, but funny, so I wrote this one for a couple of my close friends I knew wouldn't be offended:

To thank you for being so sweet,
I decided to bake you this treat.
I'm glad that our friendship will last.
Now, EAT! So you'll get a big...

It's so much classier if you don't actually write the word :) And if you didn't make it, you could just say "bought you this treat" instead!

If you aren't sure how they'll handle that, you could just put:

I always love to see you smile!
You're one of a few with no guile.
To thank you for being so sweet,
I decided to bake you this treat!

Can you tell I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel just so I can have something to post on this little neglected blog of mine? :)

Need a gift for a boy 9-14 years old?

If you are trying to find a gift for a boy late elementary to jr high age, check out my review of Noah Zarc by D Robert Pease over at The Crooked Word. It's a space/time-traveling adventure and would be a perfect gift.

Photo Block tutorial

These are my belated Mother's day gifts to my mom and mother-in-law. You could do them for birthdays, Christmas, or just because though. What's great is there's a pic on each side of the picture blocks, so they can switch up which picture is showing, and there are four different quotes on the larger block about grandparents.

Namely: "Some of my greatest blessings call me Grandma"

"Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your kids"

"Grandchildren: the only people who can get more out of you than the IRS"

"No cowboy was ever quicker on the draw than a grandparent pulling a picture out of a wallet"

I just got one 4x4 from Home Depot, though it's really closer to 3.25x3.25 and used a circular saw (from my awesome neighbor again!) to cut it into the sizes I wanted.

Then I obviously sanded them.

I then spray painted them copper

Then I painted them antique white with acryllic paint. Then I just distressed them with some sandpaper.

Next, I modpodged the pictures on. I wanted to make sure they were cropped the exact way I wanted them, so I cropped them and then dragged the images to a Word document and just printed them on normal paper (I printed them down at the local UPS store).

Then I slapped on some varnish, so the pics would be protected.

For the main block - I didn't think I could use the CitraSolv technique since it says it cleans paint off surfaces and I didn't want that! I also don't have a Silhouette machine. So, I searched blogland and found a post about using ModPodge. For some reason I can't find the one I used, but heres the link to another one: http://jaimelyn11.blogspot.com/2011/04/pottery-barn-inspire-image-transfer.html

This is what mine looked like partway through. Just make sure you don't rub too hard, or the ink will come off with the paper. Where that happened, I just took a permanent marker and filled it in.

My mother-in-law's only grandchildren are ours, but I know she'll have more; plus only 2 blocks would have looked odd, so on the other blocks I used the paper modpodge technique for this:

The other great thing is that you not only can change what picture is showing, but also how they're stacked. I only took one other picture of an alternative:

Christmas gifts to family part II

The other gift my oh-so-lucky nephews and neice got is these laminated "quiet books". I looked up free printable games on the internet (word searches, mazes, dot-to-dot, matching games, and a bunch of tongue twisters for the 7-year-old) printed them off, cut them out and glued them to cardstock, then laminated them. I cut them to the same size, leaving a larger margin on the left where I then punched holes and tied it all together with ribbon.

Then, I got them a package of dry erase markers that have the eraser on the back of the marker.

Sorry for the blurriness, our camera is retarded.

Anyhow, this was for my brother and sis-in-law. She loves cooking, so I bought a herb garden starter at Home Depot, then glued on some burlap (gotta love the burlap, right?) and frayed the top and bottom, then tied some jute string and glued in place with 2 dots of hot glue.

My parents got "fire starters" for their fireplace. I'm not sure how successful these were. They had been burning a vanilla candle all day, so it was difficult to gauge how well these work.

Basically, you get corn husks from the store and some fresh herbs, spices, whatever you want.

Then run a corn husk under water briefly just so it won't break when you roll it up. Place contents that you want to in the middle and fold up the top and bottom and then sides. Finish off with some twine, or in my case (because I had so much) jute string.

The combos I used for them were: Rosemary and Sage (make sure you let them dry out at least overnight); cinnamon sticks and whole cloves; same as previous with dried orange peel; I also stuck some seeds from a vanilla bean in the previous two combos.

Christmas gifts to family part I

"Magnet Game" for nephews and neice.

You know those folder games that you copy out of a book and then color, laminate, put velcro and then glue to a folder? Well, I thought, what kid doesn't like magnets? So, I decided to turn it into a portable magnet game.

I started off with a frame I got from the D.I. (it didn't have glass or backing, so I'm not sure they even charged me for it, but most of the frames there were only $1) and painted it (2 coats of white acryllic paint)

Then I bought a small sheet of galvanized metal at Home Depot (it was only $5 and I have more left over) and they were nice enough to cut the size I needed for me.

Then I mod podged some cute scrapbooking paper to it.

I copied the face onto more scrapbooking paper and traced and cut out the little pieces (i.e. antannae, ears, hair, and rectangles on collar) onto different color paper and mod podged all those on.

We have a ridiculous amount of business card magnets from when my hubby was doing real estate left over, so I copied the face pieces onto the paper I wanted and mod podged those onto the business card magnets and cut them out. (I put a layer of mod podge on top to make them a little more durable.)

Then I used a plastic cd case to stick all the pieces in and used two business card magnets to stick it to the back.

My favorite response came from my oldest nephew, who happened to be the one opening the gift, he said, "I don't know what this is, but... I LIKE IT!!!"

:)

Why I would never be consulted by Hallmark for romantic cards

Yes, you read that correctly, the card says, "I'm drawn to you like a fly to poo!" I cut one of those pom poms in half, then cut out wings from ribbon and glued them on, then cut out circles and used chalk to give them "texture" and put hearts above the "flies".

What? Don't you think this would sell well? ;)