It's been awhile since I've shown up here hasn't it? I apologize for my absence, but he reality is still that I haven't crafted anything. At least until last night/this morning and the night before.

Yesterday kicked off teacher appreciation week at Dev's school and today was bring in flowers for your teacher.

Since I'm trying to save money at every turn, I decided to see what I had around the house that would work.

Enter coffee filters.

I actually tried this project a couple of months back, but never completed it so when we started this project Sunday night (nothing like teaching your kids about time management) I figured it would be quite simple to get it done. The instructions can be found {HERE} on Ms. Martha's site.


I'm so silly. I should know that nothing ever goes as planned, but despite my mishap the flowers got done and look lovely.

I would say a few things about them though.
1) Make sure that your floral wire is secured tightly with the tape and maybe even add a drop of with glue to the first set of petals so that the stem doesn't pull out while you're working with the flower.
2) This is probably a no-brainier, but don't use pen to trace your petals on the coffee filter. I couldn't find a pencil so I used a pen and that's why I have nice blue tinged petals in the purple rose.
3) Martha uses nice water colors. I used crayola watercolors. They're not as intense as what Ms. Martha got but I like them nonetheless.
4) If your stem does come out of the flower after you've painted it, like mine did, I just folded the tip of the tape back towards the flower and taped that up like a boutonniere. Worked just fine.

I'll be sharing another teacher appreciation gift later this week!

So one of my very dear friends is having a baby, and when she announced that she was pregnant some months ago - I knew just what quilt to make the new baby.

I'm relatively new to quilting, but in my searches early on (when I was getting interested in it) I came across this quilt tutorial at Moda Bake Shop.

Its call the Baby Life Quilt, and its adorable. What's better?!?! It works for any baby, any style.

My friend is doing a Classic Pooh scheme in the new boy's nursery, and while I found tons of adorable Classic Pooh fabric, I did not buy any of it.

I want this quilt to be able to be used for a while, and not be niched into just the infant category. I'd like her to be able to use this quilt for a good long while. So I picked fabrics that were yellow, brown, green and blue. Still within Classic Pooh colors, but a little more modern. I'm going to do a zig-zag stitch around these letters in a dark brown. I think that'll set them off nicely. Oh and I'm not certain about the fabric I used for 'eat'. I was thinking maybe I could use the harlequin pattern from 'repeat', but I'm not 100% on that yet. What do you guys think?
Here's a close up!

So here's where I'm at right now. Only the word 'repeat' has been ironed down to my background fabric, but this baby should not take very long to do. The only thing I'm scared of is the quilting part. In all the past quilts I've done - I've only done straight line quilting, but this time I think I'd like to maybe try some freehand quilting. Eeek!

Wish me luck!

Ain't winter grand? First H started getting the sniffles, then that went to full blown infection. Harrison oh so kindly shared his yuck with his Daddy and I.  He's so sweet and taking those sharing lessons we keep telling him about to heart. So Steve and I have been ill since Wednesday or so. By Thursday night, Devlin was feeling the effects although to a much lesser degree. There is light, because by Friday Harrison was mostly back to his charming, lets-annoy-the-crap-outta-the-other-men-in-the-house self. Steve felt good enough to go out and promote his new magazine (seen here!), and me and Dev. Well, I'm getting better slowly. My energy level is not where its supposed to be, but lots of vitamin C and fluids in general have been helping and Dev is getting his dose of Delsym and Vicks. Hopefully we'll return to our charming selves soon.

Being as that we're the house of ill, I did not get crap done. Well that's not entirely true. I started stuff. Its not done. Which is aggravating. So I am going to share with you guys what I made for my nephew and two nieces for Christmas. :)

I've shared Bri's with you guys before. That was done in like June. The other two...well I was not as proactive. I tried to do something different for each kiddo, and I think I accomplished it. I also really enjoyed that these gifts are so unique and personalized.

I did end up making my aunt and my sister some quilled items but like a Dodo I forgot to take a picture of them. I just did a T for my aunt in colors that I knew she'd like and then a fleur di lis for my sister, which I accented with some silver stickles around the outside.

Well I hope that you guys enjoyed, and hopefully I'll get my energy back and get finishing some of these unfinished projects.

Just imagine all of the possibilities with this simple and easy design. Buttons, appliqués, flowers, painting! The  possibilities are endless!

I am so proud of me! I have started Christmas stuff! Well, actually I started back in June, but that would have just been obscenely early to post about it. :) So here's one of the things that are done! 

You may remember that I made a quilled monogram a while back. Well that spurred the creative juices for this one. I opted to go with black since I had neon cardstock. All of the paper is 1/4" wide. Then I just went to town and went through some modge podge. I just painted the modge podge onto the strips after I'd curled them and set them down. I got a three pack of shadow box frames from Michael's for $10 as well. I plan on doing two more of these, in different styles. This one is for my eldest niece. :) Here are some more shots of it! 

This shot is without the flash....in case you were wondering :)

I almost feel like I should have a special 100th post. You know like TV shows do, but being as it's Father's Day...That will be my special 100th post special!

I'm going to keep it short and sweet, because I have lasagna to make for family dinner tonight, and it happens to be one my Dad's favorites!


But here are the gifts I whipped up for the Dad's in our family!





The washer keychains are all over bloggy land, but I used Helping Little Hands tute on it. Obviously I need practice, but at least the thought is there, and that's all that matters. ;-)

You all have seen two of Steve's gifts, but in case you missed them they are here:
Shirt
Coasters

I also made my dad some coasters, and Steve helped me pick out appropriate songs for him. My dad's favorite band is Pink Floyd. Every Sunday morning, while Mom was making breakfast for the family, Dad would have Pink Floyd on the stereo. Either Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall, there were probably all of the albums at one point or another, but those were probably the two most listened too. I also remember that one of the CD cases had a small LED in it that blinked. I can't remember which album though.  I also remember Dad beaning my sisters in the head (at different times though) with a baseball while playing catch. I am very happy to report that he never beaned me! Dad was immediately concerned and did the fastest sprint you've ever seen as soon as the ball left his hand. :)

Here's to remembering all of the father's that have past on before their time and to ones that are still here. Here's to remembering all of the good and passing by the not so good. Here's to celebrating our fathers, for no matter what our history, they helped shape all of us into the people we are today.

Happy Father's Day!

This is what we're creating, sans the flap on the bag.

 So Mom has provided the base tutorial for her car.Go tote! It has two pockets and is deep enough to cram a ton of stuff into it. The flap however is not included. I will have to get after her for that. ;-) I will also apologize because there are no pictures to go along with this tutorial yet, but I hope that you all will get the gist of what we're trying to explain! I have finished pictures of Devlin's Tote to act as your guide.

car.Go Tote

I hope you enjoyed this and have a wonderful day!

So I got another Father's Day gift knocked out today, and I'm very excited to share it with you all. I've been on a definition kick lately and since there are a plethora of baseball terms to choose from, I decided that we needed some baseball terms defined for these coasters. I also bought this Omni Transfer Medium a while ago, and have not had a chance to use it until now. Other than being messy, and probably needing to improve my technique, I'm very happy with how they turned out. :) So without further ado, on to the show!

Stuff you'll use:

4" square tiles
cork mat
Gorilla Glue
Omni Transfer Medium
Clip Art
Modge Podge

What you'll do:

Size the clip art to fit the tile. I would make the print about 3-1/2" square. Print out your clip art using a laser printer or copier. According to the transfer medium ink jet prints do not play well.

The directions on the medium say to paint three coats onto your image. First coat horizontally, second coat vertically and then the last coat diagonally. Let it dry between coats and then after the final coat.

This is the 2nd coat. The paper will wrinkle up and what not, but don't worry it'll work out. :)

While your images are drying you can cut your cork to fit the bottom of a tile. I would cut the cork to slightly smaller than the tile.

I picked up the white gorilla glue. It said it dried twice as fast as the brown glue and was waterproof....probably useful given what we're doing. :) I wiped down the tiles with a damp cloth and then applied the glue to the backside. make sure to get close to the edges but not too close. Don't worry if the glue  expands past the edges, you can remove it later. Press your cork onto the back of the tile. You'll need to weight your cork and tiles down. So what I did was layer each tile/cork piece between a foam plate then on top of all that I placed a vase filled with gravel and flowers. It was a very lovely tower. :) After the glue dried, I went back and just picked off the glue that seeped from the edges. Your fingernail will do just fine.


When your images are nice and dry, trim around them leaving a 1/4" margin. Lay them in a shallow bowl, sink or Tupperware filled with water and let them soak for at least 20 minutes. After they've soaked for a bit, take one of the images out with the backside up, start rubbing the paper off. I would scratch the paper with my nail and then just rub my finger gently back and forth to remove the paper. Once I got all most all of the paper off, I put it back in the water and moved on to the next one.


After I finished rubbing the paper off all of the images with my finger I then went back with a lint-free towel and gently rubbed the backside again. This removed a little more paper. Let all of your images dry completely.

Don't do this.

This works better. :)

Once the images have dried, brush more medium onto the tops of your tiles. Then center your images over the tile and set into place. I burnished the tops and edges with my fingers (part of the mess mentioned earlier) to make sure there were no air bubbles or folds, etc. If there were I gently worked them out, or lifted the image and then laid it down again. Be very careful during this step because you can rip the image. After I was happy with how everything was set, I left them alone to dry. You can also trim the image if need be during this step.

I sealed mine with some modge podge after everything was said and done, just to create another moisture barrier. I don't know if this is necessary, but its what I did. :)


Place into decorative container and put them to work.

The obligatory coffee shot. :)

I hope you guys enjoyed today's lesson. :) These were a lot of fun to make, and I'm sharing with you these images in case you want to make your own set of baseball coasters for the Dad in your life.

Update!

I'm pleased to announce that this project is a DIY Club finalist!




Enjoy your day!