Gifts: Lined Drawstring Bags

This past week I enjoyed not only all of the Holiday festivities, but a wedding, too!  We were lucky and blessed to attend my cousin's wedding in St. George and doubly lucky to have Justus' brother and his family host us as well.  As a thank you, I made his wonderful wife and amazing sister in law, a lovely drawstring bag.

I used Jeni Baker's Lined Drawstring Bag tutorial from her blog: "In Color Order."

Here is a picture of the pattern for different sizes.  I used the tutorial to make my bag.

Long note: my sewing skills are beginning-intermediate rising.  This means I can sew a straight line on my sewing machine with confidence, but curves scare me to death.  My background in sewing is mostly limited to quilting, with straight lines all of the time. Plus, I have some experience following a simple pattern.

Here is my result:

Sorry for the poor cell phone pictures.  I snagged these during our drive up to the wedding.  I stayed up too late the night before to finish this blurry bag and wish my cell phone took better pictures.

In summary, I put this bag together in about half an hour and thoroughly enjoyed the tutorial.  It includes both clear pictures (for visual learners like myself) and well-put instructions (for those who actually read all of the instructions before starting).  I used ribbon instead of making the "strings" to save some time.

Plus it features a whole bunch of adorable fabric!  Highly recommended these drawstring bags as a gift or for wrapping one!  The only hard part is selecting which fabric to use :)

Happy Pinning!
Kate

Christmas Charades

Source: Moms& Munchkins

This weekend my littlest daughter and I have been sick with colds. What this means is there has a lot of couch laying and cartoons. Sunday night rolled around and we needed a little movement. I took the opportunity to get out this Christmas Charades Game I'd found on... pinterest.

Emily can't read these words so my husband and I would take turns telling her what to do while the other person guessed. We had a really good time. Of course my husband got the weird ones like 'reindeer games' and 'santa sitting on a beach.'

I realize now I should have taken a video, but we were having too much fun to worry about videos :).

If you need a fun family activity night I would recommend this. I think I'll keep the jar out and pull it out every now and then. Hopefully with Emily being 4 it'll take a few times to catch on that we always have the same words.

Have fun!

happy pinning!

Letters To Santa

December 1. According to my daughter Emily, today is the "First Day of Christmas." She predicted snow and it snowed so we started our Christmas activities. 

There has been a lot of chit chat about what the girlees want for Christmas so tonight we documented it.   I found these two templates on pinterest. One with lots of lines for Emily to write her own letter, and a smaller one for Lyla to "write" her letter on. 

Source: Step into 2nd Grade

 Source: Skip to My Lou

Here are my little letter writers hard at work.

Lyla's letter

Dear Santa,

My name is Lyla. This year I have been good. (I asked her if she was good or naughty). For Christmas I want a purple present and a My Little (wittle) Pony. I love your reindeer. Do they like cookies?

Love,

LylaEm's Letter

December, 1

Dear Santa,

I want a My Little Pony remote control car and baking supplies. I am a good little girl. Thank you.

Love, 

Emily

Hopefully we'll have lots to report this month (at least until the 13th when my vacation starts).

Merry Christmas & Happy Pinning!

Day 5: Color By Letter Turkey

I majored in Elementary Education in college. I don't teach now, but I say I am a teacher at heart. Not to stereotype teachers, but to get our degree we had to color, paint, dance, and sing our way to graduation. Part of me just loves little art projects, coloring especially. 

I am not a natural artist. Not in the least. Not even close. So as a little girl (and a slightly bigger girl) really loved coloring books. I also really loved those color by number pictures. I am now pushing that love onto my children.

Alas, here is the color by letter Thanksgiving Turkey

This was one where I sat down and did it too. Emily had fun, Lyla lasted about 3 scribbles. Emily and I enjoyed some nice conversation, but I would have to say the highlight of the night was at the end while comparing our pictures. 

Emily said, and I quote, "Wow Mom. Ours kind of look the same." 

For being a good sport I told her she could pose however she wanted. 

Original Pin: Reading-with-kids Thanksgiving 

Day 4: Knitted Bow Hat

A few days ago, while I was wasting time scrolling through pins, I came across this picture. Yes, that is a cute baby, but DANG that is a cute hat. 

I crossed my fingers and hoped it would take me to a tutorial, but my luck was run out. It led me only to the picture. Rats. 

I couldn't get the hat out of my head though, so I set out to figure it out. I found a pattern for the hat in a knitting book I own and I googled (gasp) "knit bow pattern". I found one I liked and surprisingly it was really easy. 

I knit a lot of baby hats for gifts and my older daughter has been jonesin' them for a while, so I decided I'd make this one for her. 

I personally like the proportions in the one I found on pinterest better, but I'll toot my own horn and say, I think mine is pretty darn cute as well. 

Credits: Original Pin Life is Beautiful

Bow tutorial A Common Thread

Day 3: The Perfect Fall Playdough

Since I've started looking at Pinterest I've been kind of intrigued by these homemade playdough recipes. The very first one I saw on the internet was a couple years ago and it was about making playdough with all natural ingredients. The colors were made with berries and other things found in nature. I thought it was pretty cool until I read the end that the playdough would stain your clothes and hands. Then I thought it was dumb. Who wants to go through all of that work to have it mess up your clothes. 

We've come a long way in the last couple of years. A couple weeks ago I made jello playdough. It was pretty cool. I would recommend it. 

Today we made the PERFECT playdough for FALL! I'm a little obsessed with fall right now. This is my new favorite playdough. The texture was smooth and easy to manipulate and it smelled AWESOME. You use cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. After playing with the kids for a while I washed my hands for dinner and they still smelled like cinnamon. Yum. I didn't color it and I thought the natural color really matched the smell. 

This is Emily's version of The Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. Can you see the coconuts? 

Usually I make this kind of stuff and then hand it over to the kids to play with while I do something else. Today; however, I sat down and played with them for a while. It was pretty fun, I recommend that too. 

Pin Source: Be Organized

happy pinning!

Day 2: Balloon Ping Pong

This activity is one I've wanted to pull out and do for a while. Today was a good day. We are taking a go at potty training our little Lyla and so everyone has been cooped up in the house. After a few too many tv shows I busted this activity out. Wasn't the worlds biggest hit (pun!), but it worked for a little while.

It is as simple as it looks in the picture. 1 balloon, paper plates, and popsicle sticks. I used left over ones from yesterday's activity, but the thicker ones would definitely be better. We will do this again sometime when we have friends over. 

Pin Source: Pen N' Paperflowers

happy pinning!

Day 1: Popsicle Stick Bridges

November 1 came and I needed to do my first day of pinning. I had all sorts of great ideas for cute crafts, fashion forward outfits, delicious dinners, you get the idea. However, WHAM, busy day hit and any sort of "extra" thing I wanted to do that day had to go out the window.

One thing I HAD to do that day was teach my local cub scout group. I knew what we were doing for most of the day, but I had to build a model of a bridge. Hhmm. My first thought was to take wooden blocks and just see what they came up with. That felt a little lame, so I did a Pinterest search (not to be confused with a Google search) and came up with these cool popsicle stick bridges.

Most tutorials recommended using wood glue, but that was going to take way too long to dry, so hot glue it was. I laugh now thinking about my 8 cub scouts each armed with a glue gun. We had a few burns, but all in all they did pretty good.

Sadly, we were crazy busy at cubs so I don't have a picture of any of the ones they made. I'll just say they weren't quite as pretty and lined up as the one above. They all decided that their bridges would kill people. Oops.

Thanks Pinterest for helping me with cubs today, I really appreciate it.

Pin: Angry Chicken: Learning About Bridges

happy pinning!

Jambalaya You be Lyin'

Ok, ok, I know the title is cheesy at best, but it's true!  The jambalaya recipe that I pinned on pinterest was no bueno, no good, utterly devoid of any flavor.  
Isn't jambalaya supposed to be full of wonderful, fantastic flavor?


Original pin:
American Family Easy Crockpot Jamabalaya found here.

Really easy directions to follow and the added bonus of the crock pot.


Results:


Loved chopping up all of the vegetables for this one (my mom used to call me her little rabbit growing up = love vegetables).  YUM!

ignore cluttered kitchen please :)

 Looks tasty, right?  But then...

Color died in the crock pot.  Yes, I knew this could be a possibility, but was hopeful my pinterest dreams would come true.
The long process in the crock pot also sucked the flavor out of the sausage and POOF disappeared.


Like I said, no bueno.  Removing pin... Don't let this discourage you from pinning recipes that are new or seem a little daunting.  For every bad pin, there are hundreds of amazing pins.  


Like the Boston Cream Pie Strata cake... which will be featured soon :)




Happy Pinning!
Kate

Super Hero Cape

Pinned it: Superhero Cape Tutorial

Pin Source:

Personalized Superhero Cape Tutorial
from the blog Crazy Little Projects: http://www.crazylittleprojects.com/


Review:

• Pros: Quick and easy cape!  Straight forward instructions.  The double layer of fabric ensures durability.

• Cons: No printable pattern.  So unless you are comfortable with free handing to something similar pictured below, not the tutorial for you.

Results:

Very happy with the cape!  Super cute!  I made it larger than the instructions called for because I was trying to have it fit the age range of 4 - 12.  One minor adjustment: add more velcro so that the cape is more adjustable for the different children who will wear the cape.

All and all, I will use this tutorial again.  Hmmm, maybe as personalized gifts for the nieces and nephews?  So much potential!

Happy Pinning!

Kate

Preschool Graduation ABC Salad

This year I did a preschool co-op with 4 other Mom friends in the neighborhood. We had a great time (and so did the kids). This morning was their "graduation" party. We were having a little lunch after and I needed to bring a side. A while ago I saw alphabet pasta at the grocery store and bought it just because it was fun.

The preschool graduation party would be perfect! I am not a whiz in the kitchen, by any stretch of the imagination, so I set out to google. I came up with you can use alphabet pasta the same as you would orzo pasta. I love orzo pasta salads. It was time to ditch google and trust pinterest. I found all sorts of delicious looking orzo pasta salads, but settled with one that had arugula. It is called Tri Colore Orzo from the blog Lauren's Kitchen. 

It is really yummy. Be warned: It was not a hit with the kiddo-s, but I wasn't too surprised by that. They had pretzels :). If you make it, make sure you put in lots of "stuff" maybe even more than she has in her recipe because it can taste kind of bland if your bite isn't full of yummy cheese, nuts, or cranberries. Mmm. I think I will go have another bowl now.
                                   
                                     

Number and Letter Art

Recently my husband and I celebrated our four year wedding anniversary.  The week before was especially crazy and I was trying to figure out what to give my husband.  Then I remembered an idea I pinned.

First, quick background story, I am a person who remembers things visually, but I am not necessarily the best with dates and numbers.  A few days before our anniversary my husband asked me what I wanted to do on Thursday (our anniversary) and I replied, "we don't have anything, right?"

In honor of my poor memory, I went to my pin featuring letter art pictured below:

On the blog Shanty 2 Chic, the author used photographs of letters to spell out her daughter's name.

The pin linked to a flickr photo site that had FREE letters and numbers for download.  The link is HERE. You can simply download an image and print for free.  Really that simple.

The only hard part of the project was picking which of hundreds of pictures to use for each number.  There are seriously hundreds of letters and numbers available on the flickr site.  There are one that are black and white and color.  Seriously thousands of possibilities.

You can follow the step by step tutorial the blog provides for creating the board pictured above, but I chose to pick up a frame from Ikea instead.  Note: the RIBBA frame requires 5x7 pictures for the slot openings.

The results:

My husband laughed out loud when he opened my gift.  He is currently picking out a prominent place to hang it in our apartment so that no one will forget our wedding anniversary.

Happy Pinning!

Kate

Chevron Knit Baby Blanket

About a year ago I learned how to knit. My first projects were baby hats. I loved to make them. I ventured out once and made a baby blanket. It took FOREVER. I messed up a lot and had to retract often so I then decided it would be once in a blue moon that I would make a blanket.

My brother's wife was pregnant with a little boy and I asked her if she would like a blanket. She said she would and I thought I would make the same one I'd made before. Before I could start she requested a chevron baby blanket. I set out to the wonderful world wide web to find a pattern.

This is one reason I love pinterest. It makes bookmarking things around the web so easy. You can find everything you want quickly. No more trying to remember obscure web addresses. I ended up pinning 2 different patterns.

This first one is Winterfest Afgan from Freepatterns.com

I took the pattern to my knitting group to get the advice from the more experienced ladies. They all said that I could do it, but they wouldn't. For me that meant it was a no go.

The other one I pinned was from Knitting Nonestop.

It was much simpler so it was the one I went with. 

And ta da... Here is my knitted chevron blanket for my newest little nephew.

I think I am going to go ahead and delete the first one, but I think I'll keep this chevron one around just in case I ever need it again. Does that make me a pin hoarder??

happy pinning.

Inspiration Pins

I use pinterest for inspirations all the time. Please take a few minutes to read about a little journey I've taken over the last few months and the wonderful woman behind it.

The first time I was introduced to a Whitney Johnson was reading her and her family's introduction in our church's monthly newsletter. I'm pretty sure my thoughts went from, "wow, Wow, WOW" as I read about her history. She really seemed to have it all together.

The first time I think we exchanged words was kind of embarrassing on my part. It was 2 weeks before I was due to have my second daughter Lyla and I was at church. I had psysched my brain up to have her 2 weeks early, just like her sister so  I was very discouraged when I was at church instead of in labor and delivery.Whitney sat next to me and said, "Are you okay? You look kind of sad today." In my total lameness I say something like, "Yeah, I just want to have this baby." End of conversation. I felt like a total loser.

So, 2 weeks later enters my second, most beautiful little brown haired little daughter. One of the top 3 best days of my life! (My Lyla is really cool!)

 The next few months, however, became a total BLUR. There was very little sleep, very much crying, oh and MOUNTAINS of snow that year. I entered a slump. I wasn't happy and I certainly wasn't motivated.

Finally spring came around and things started to look a little nicer outside, but little sweetheart still wasn't sleeping and it was really taking it's toll on me. My church held a day conference for the women in the Boston area and I was so excited to go! I carpooled with some of my best girl friends and it was awesome!

At the conference I attended 3 break out sessions.
1. How to Fight Fair in Marriage (don't remember much about that one)
2. If Mamma Ain't Happy Ain't Nobody Happy
3. Dare to Dream

Seriously!!!!

2 & 3 were incredible. It was fascinating to get in the mindset from the Mamma one that it really truly is okay to have my own life/interests/passions and it will even make me a more incredible mom (because we all know I'm incredible.. haha..).

From there Whitney Johnson taught her Dare to Dream session. The wheels in my brain were all over the place. First Whitney asked everyone to write down their dream. I think I wrote, "Get a full night's sleep." Then erased it, because I knew that isn't even close to what she meant. I spent the whole hour honestly, truly trying to figure out what my "dreams" are. I have lots of dreams for my children, and even my husband, but not really myself. By the end of the conference, I still hadn't written anything down and I was NOT okay with that.

Yes, Following your dreams can be hard WORK

A few weeks later I was asked to give a talk at church. The night before, with tears in my eyes, I went to my husband with one word, "help." I don't feel like I am incompetent, but it wasn't happening for me that night. He patiently helped me for a few hours and we put together what we both agreed was a pretty decent talk; complete with his vocabulary, and my embarrassing stories.  A few weeks later Whitney asked me if I would be interested in writing a guest post on her blog. Whoa. I'd read her blog, every Sunday to be exact, and I knew the genius that came out of her blog. No, I was not capable of that.

She patiently and wisely told me to write for 15 minutes a day and see if anything came to me. Well I did, and I certainly did have a few ideas, but to my own loss, I never did write a guest post. I really should have. Even though I didn't post, her ideas continued to motivated me. I needed to make some changes. At 28 years old I really needed some dreams.

At first I had this idea that dreams had to equal $$. I spent months trying to figure out how I could make it rich. Eventually I got past that idea and thought if I become a bajillionaire that is awesome, but I needed to be more realistic.

Also, the logistics of "dreams" really bogged me down. It seemed like everything I could think of required time, moolah, and sacrifices on my whole family. I was pretty overwhelmed.

 I finally decided to start small. From my journaling I learned that I was obsessed with the idea schedules. So I started "scheduling" my days. I found that most of the time I had plenty of time to get everything done I needed too. I also needed a new hobby. I love to craft and there are some women I go to church with who knit. I thought knitting would be a good new hobby. I picked it up and loved it. I loved my new friends and how kind, intelligent, and supportive they were.

Then I became involved with pinterest. It was incredible. Here are all of these things I could do to "date my dreams" like Whitney encourages. I can see how I like being a domestic goddess by trying all of the cleaning stuff. I can throw awesome parties with those kinds of ideas. It may sound like I'm joking here, but it was fun to think that with this fun little "pin" I can learn something new.

I think about this all the time. 

To date, the most influential group of "pins" I've had are my exercise ones. About 3 months ago I made a conscious decision that exercise was going to be my "thing" for a while. Basically my "dream" was to become in control of my body again. I used money I'd received as birthday gifts for a gym membership and started going whenever I could. It was a priority. Some mornings I would put my workout clothes on right away and tell myself I couldn't change until I'd exercised. (This kind of backfired some days because, really, who wants to change out of comfy clothes...) I would find motivational thoughts and pictures that would push me to keep going. Sometime a few weeks ago, really early in the morning, some of my running buddies and I thought it would be fun to run a half marathon. So that became a "Dream"for me. My family is incredibly supportive. My husband wakes up with the girls when I'm gone in the mornings and my parents talk to me about my progress.

This is my favorite thing to think about when I am in a spin class.

As of today I have lost every pound I set out to lose and will be running my first half marathon next weekend. I may, just may, order the dress I "pinned" and titled 'weight loss reward'. I am happy so very happy these days. I am proud that I'm accomplishing a goal and am excited to see what kind of dream I can come up with next.

Weight loss reward??

Thank You Whitney for being such an inspiration to me. Thank you for writing your blog each week and now for your book.

Please click here to help me win a chance to have lunch with Whitney!!  Thanks :)

Kate's Intro & Water Bottle Bowling

Just like Alison, and many of you, I've caught the Pinterest craze.  At first I was so excited to pin almost everything in sight.  Then I decided that I needed to do some of the things I pinned and it was at that time that Alison started the blog. Insert excitement!

Just a quick note about me: Kate.  I'm a twenty-something redhead who works in the construction industry and I help out with my church's childrens organization.  I love my husband and enjoy using my spare time to quilt, pin, and read.  My favorite treat are chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. Joy!

Today I'm sharing one of the first pins I saved on Pinterest: Water Bottle Bowling.

As a part of my role in my church's childrens organization I get to plan and carry-out the Halloween party or Trunk-or-Treat.  We typically have several games at this activity and I am eager to find great activities.  A few weeks ago I was asked to substitute with our Bear Scouts and decided to try out the water bottle bowling activity.

Original pin source: Parents.com

The instructions simple: Fill 10 water bottles with water and add a few drops of food coloring for fun.  Use a piece of sidewalk as your bowling lane.  Small confusion: didn't really say which ball to use.  Another site said to use a softball or baseball, but knowing my Scouts, I couldn't trust them with a hard ball.

Results:

A group of happy scouts! It's really that simple. 

We used a kickball, which was a little bouncy, but added a nice variable to the game.  The only issue was that my kickball was not completely round and tended to curve to one side or the other. One other suggestion is to have the kids take turns setting up the pins after their turn.  (My arms started getting tired around the 8th round.) Otherwise: COMPLETE SUCCESS!

I am really looking forward to using this at the Trunk or Treat and adding glow sticks into the water bottles.  Perhaps all of the bottles could be orange?  The possibilities are endless.

(P.S. sorry for the cell phone pictures, I was kicking myself that I forgot my camera!)

Happy Pinning!
Kate

Church Lacing Cards

One of my best adjectives to describe my children is "busy." They aren't naughty or  mischievous, they just like to be doing stuff. I'm totally in love with is 99.99% of the time. That other .01% is 

1. On airplanes

2. At church 

Our church is unbelievably accepting of small children and we are SO incredibly lucky to go to a congregation that is very patient, so I don't ever feel like we don't belong. That being said, lately I feel like I need to beef up my "church activities." 

I have a pin for LDS lacing cards from a blog called We Talk of Christ, We Rejoice in Christ. Basically they are images with holes around them and children use shoe laces/ribbons/yarn/etc. to thread through the holes. This is a little too much for Lyla (who is 1), but I thought would be a nice one for Emily (4). I got all of my clip art from Melonheadz LDS Illustrating. 

We have only used these for 1 Sunday, but they kept her occupied the whole time. She did a few different activities with them. First she used all of the yarns and went through whatever hole she wanted mkaing a "web" and also would use multiple colors. I'm not really sure what else because I was actually paying attention to the speakers! It was awesome. 

(Justin was in the hall with Lyla spying on the secret service men that were there with Mitt Romney. We'll think of something for her next week.)

Totally awesome activity that I put together in the morning before church and was very effective. Every week it will probably get boring, but rotated with other stuff it will remain a hit.

Oh, one last thing the laces came from Oriental Trading. They work great.

Happy Pinning.

Sandal Update

The evening after I made the flip flops I had to take both my little ones to a pack meeting where I am a cub scout leader. It was later in the evening so I had them in their jammies and Emily desperately wanted to wear her new flip flops. It was kind of a dreary/rainy evening as I remember (it might have just been chilly I dunno). Anyways the poor girl could not figure out how to walk in the flip flops! She's never been one for flip flops to begin with and so it was kind of a mess trying to walk in these alteredones. However, it was too cold and wet to go barefoot. She teary and frustrated, I'm late, and of course the shoes FALL APART. I should have had my cubs tie my knots to make sure they stayed in. They both came apart (while Emily emotionally falls apart) and I was left to carry 1 four year old and 1 one year old up a path to a door only to find it locked. So I carried them both (Em's in tears now I'm chuckling because we look so ridiculous) around the building to another door. Then we have a fabulous time at pack meeting. 

Moral of the story for me is cute flip flops look cute in pictures, but I think I will stick with slip on jellies. 

Ruffle Flip Flop Make-over

There are some CUTE flip flops out there right now. I was at Old Navy and Target this week wanting to buy 15 pairs of flips flops for myself and each of my girls. Then I was also feeling the urge that it was time to get the sewing machine out and make something. I remembered this pin from a couple weeks ago and thought I'd give it a go. Enter Ruffle Flip Flop Refashion from The Mother Huddle.

I bought my $3.00 Old Navy flip flops and went to my fabric scraps for the rest. I actually cut from bigger pieces of fabric, but no joke scraps will literally make this project.

It took a little longer than I thought it would. First time projects usually do, and there is one step I didn't pay close enough attention to that would probably fix the funny looking toe piece, but all in all they're pretty cute. Em likes them anyways.
Now I just have to hope the knots I made with the bias tape will hold and they don't fall apart. Maybe I should have had my Webelo scouts tie the knots as a test :).
Happy Pinning :)