Counting to 100 flashcards

Who would have known that a boy would be so excited about flashcards?!  Since he's going into kindergarten in the fall (sniff, tear!), we've been working on some kindergarten prep workbooks over the summer to keep up with what he learned in preschool this last year.  While the workbooks have been great, I felt like we needed something that was smaller and that we could just pull out at any time.
I decided last night to make up some flashcards real quick, counting 1 to 100.  There was nothing difficult about this project at all...a stack of 3x5 cards, a keyring, a hole punch, and some markers!  In addition to just writing the numbers on each card, I also spelled them out.  Figured we'd keep up on the letter recognition as well as number recognition!
For about half an hour last night, all he wanted to do was go through the flashcards!  We counted to 100, spelled out a few numbers, and then had him identify random numbers.  When he was done and it was time for bed, he asked if he could take them to his room and put them by his bed so that they "could watch him sleep".  (There's a backstory to the objects to watch him sleep that I'll tell another day!)  While in the car this morning on the way to swim camp, he begged to take the flashcards along and was shouting out numbers to me the whole ride!  At some point, I'll let him practice writing his numbers on the cards too.  Here's to keeping up with education over the summer!

Checkerboard Cake

When I discovered this checkerboard cake pan set, I knew that I had to pick it up!  It looked like so much fun!  I happened to have a coupon at the time I found it at Joann's so I grabbed it.  The cake pan sat there in the kitchen, mocking me for about a month until I finally had some free time to actually pull it out and use it!
When the day finally came to make the cake, I decided to let the boy help me out too.  He had a great time mixing up the cake batter and helping me pour it into each of the pans.  I let him pick the colors to do for the cake.  He picked one of the color combos that was shown on the box...yellow, pink and purple.  He wanted an easter cake!  I think it turned out pretty well for the first attempt at using it.  I definitely see it getting used quite a bit in the future.
It takes 3 boxes of cake mix, so it makes quite a bit.  I did each box in a separate bowl, so that I didn't need to divide it out for each of the colors after the fact.  One of these days, I'm going to find a recipe so I can make cakes from scratch.  Until then, boxed mixes work just fine for me!  To make each color, I used my icing colors...just a little bit goes a long way!  Food coloring will work in a pinch too, but that has a tendency to make the cake batter a lot thinner consistency.  In order to keep the batter from seeping under the ring divider, you want to keep it fairly thick.  The most challenging part was putting the batter in each section of the divider while it was in the pan.  I'd read reviews of people putting the batter in bags and piping it in, but pouring it slowly from the bowl worked pretty well for me too.  There was enough batter left to make a dozen cupcakes as well.  We certainly had our fill of cake in our house for a week or so!
I made a double batch of icing in order to have enough to put between each layer and cover the cake.  I've discovered that I prefer to make my own icing over buying the cans from the store.  It just tastes so much better!
For an experiment to see how to use the cake pan, I was pretty pleased with the end result.  I can't wait to make it again sometime (and for someone other than just my family to eat) and see the expressions on people's faces when they cut into the cake!  It's a lot of fun!

Superhero cape

Every boy needs a superhero cape! I decided a few weeks ago that the boy finally had one of his own. I perused pinterest and had a basic idea in mind of what I wanted to do. Last week, I loaded the boy up in the van and took him down to Joann's (trips that alway make hubby cringe!) to go pick out some fabric fornh7s superhero cape. The fabric pattern choices were all his! I tried to tell him that maybe the patterns he wanted wouldn't quite go together so well, but he wasn't to be swayed from his choices! A yard of each was more than sufficient, and made a cape that will last him for years to come!
This weekend, I had a couple hours to sit down at my sewing machine and I was able to get a pretty cool cape whipped out!  Even with my fairly basic sewing skills, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

I started out by cutting out the "Super J" logo for the back of the cape.  I had some sheets of felt laying around, so I grabbed a couple of pieces that would go with the material.  I wasn't sure what shape originally to use as a shield, but ultimately decided on a circle because I had some paper plates that were the perfect size to fit on the felt!  I traced around the plate and cut out the circle in red.  Then, using the same plate, I drew a J and cut that out to trace onto the felt as well.  I traced the J backwards so when I cut it out, any marks that were on the felt would be on the back.

Next, I cut out a rough pattern of what the cape was going to look like.  I grabbed the boy and measured how long I wanted it to be by holding the material up to his neck and seeing how much I was going to have to cut off the edge.  Once I got the first piece cut, I laid it on top of the other piece and cut out the inside piece.

Yes, those are some BUSY patterns!  BUT, it was what the boy picked out!  I couldn't sway him into picking something solid that would go with the train print!

I then pinned/sewed the felt to the fabric that was going to be showing on the back of the cape.

Step number next was sewing the inside and outside pieces together.  With right sides facing, I sewed up 3 edges together, leaving the top open so I could turn it right-side out.  After trimming the seams back and turning the cape right-side out, I decided to add a finishing touch and top-stitched around the 3 sides, again leaving the top open.

The next step was figuring out how I was going to finish the top and still have a way for it to attach around his neck, with room for him to grow as he gets older.  I decided to fashion some bias tape out of some of what was left of the train fabric, since the train side was most likely going to be facing out most of the time.  I made it long enough to have a tie on each end of the neck.  The edges that weren't on the neck were just sewed together, and then I stitched the edges closed.

At that point, we were able to call the cape finished!

He didn't take it off for the rest of the night, and ran around the house, yelling "Super J to the rescue!".  I'd say that the superhero cape was a hit!  I made it big enough to fit him for many more years to come.  Heck, it even fits me!  When he was done saving the world, he told me to put it on (with the other side facing out, of course!) and instructed me that Super Momma was now to rescue him from peril!  I certainly hope that I can live up to the Super Momma title for a while longer!

I'm back!

So, since this here blog doesn't get read tons, my absence most likely wasn't noticed!  In any case, we've been so insanely busy the last couple of weeks, that blogging has been the lowest on the list of priorities.  Simply surviving has been what life has been about lately.  The reason why?  Hubby was coaching boy's high school swimming this year and championship season was the last couple of weeks with districts, and then state this past weekend.  I'm totally going to brag on my hubby here for a bit...he had a great group of boys swimming for him this year, and took the largest team to state that the school has ever had!  I'm an insanely proud wife, but we're all insanely tired too!

I decided that I wanted to make something for the team, since the banner somehow went missing partway through the season.  The final product turned out pretty close to what I had envisioned too!  I love it when projects turn out like that!  I used my silhouette cameo, and spent a couple hours getting everything cut out.  After that, it was just a matter of getting everything layered and stuck down.  The font I used was "varsity", which I was able to find free online.  By the time the state meet came around this past weekend, a couple of the parents had donated some money to get a new banner made up.  The new banner looks really sharp, and they'll have it for next year now too!  I think the boys appreciated the fact that at least for the district meet that they had something up in the stands.  I don't know though...they're teenage boys!
State went pretty well.  There were 2 relays and 4 individual swims...the most that this school has ever had go!  I may be biased, but I think that my hubby is a pretty great coach!  All but 1 swim made it back for finals on the second day, and the team placed higher than they ever have.  Although the season ended on a high note, I think everyone was ready for it to be done!  I can deal with a 3-month swim season!  After years of age group swimming, and having meets once, if not twice a month...EVERY month, having 2 weekend meets in 3 months is a pretty good deal!

Since we both had the day off work today, we made the most of it and had a much needed family day in Seattle.  We took a trip over to Seattle and took a ride on the great wheel.  It was a bit spendy, and the views would have been better had it been a completely clear day out, but it was fun nonetheless!  Since the wheel is pretty new, we decided to go for a ride just to say we'd done it.  After that, we had dinner and then came home.  I love family days, and we make the most of them when we get them!

Here we are in our gondola on the great wheel!

Tomorrow means back to work, and getting back into a "normal" routine...whatever that is!  I'm looking forward to things somewhat settling down for a little bit!

New Creative Memories tools coming in March!

I love all my Creative Memories tools!  Of all the stuff that's out there, you just can't beat the quality of their tools or albums.  You truly do get what you pay for in the industry.  I love when new stuff comes out and get especially excited when they release new tools.  The new shape maker tool is one to get excited over!  While I still love all the original shape maker tools that they came out with, but I don't pull them out very often.  This might be just the thing to get me to pull my old shape makers out, especially if these new shape makers are a different size than their old ones were!
Along with the new shape maker tool, there's several more products coming in March to get excited about, including a new cricut cartridge!  I can't wait until I can get my hands on them!  If there's anything you're interested in, be sure to visit my Creative Memories site.  You can find a link to my site over on the sidebar on the right.

Melty Beads

Does anyone remember these things?

Melty beads!

I remember making lots of projects with these darn melty beads when I was a kid.  In a state of nostalgia last week, I picked up a few, ok a lot of these when I was at JoAnn's looking for my next project to do.  I had the boy with me, and I got him all excited about making fun stuff with them.  I've discovered a few things...those darn beads are a lot harder to work with when your hands are bigger than they were 20 years (yikes!) ago!  Also, the things that you can make are a lot more intricate than they were back when I would make things with them!  Seriously!  3-d projects and everything!  The only things that I ever made were things on the square and circle pegboards.  I think I figured out how to make a heart.  I do remember having a lot of magnets made out of these beads all over the refrigerator.  Feeling ambitious, I picked up one of the 3-d project kits.  Oh.My.Word., did my back hurt after being hunched over the table trying to follow the pattern and make sure I had the right colors in the right place!

Seriously!  Look at these patterns!

This was one of the easier ones.

I do have to say though, they look pretty cool when they're done.  I've still got a few more to go until I've got this whole set finished.  The poor boy wants to help so bad with this one, but the patterns are so complicated with the different subtle shades of color on a few of them.  It's somewhat hard for him to manage the small beads too.  I think if I would have picked up a kit with the larger beads, that would have made a difference.  Heck, maybe the larger beads would have been easier for me to pick up too!

3-d projects...who knew?!

I decided to pick up some off-brand $1 kits at Michael's thinking that maybe those ones would be a little easier for the boy to make.  While they're certainly easier, the quality isn't that great.  They didn't melt as nicely as I would have liked, and a lot of the beads split while they were being melted too.

All that being said though, it's still a fun project.  The boy is waiting for me to finish with the kit so that we can "make our own designs" with the rest of the beads.  So far we've done pretty well keeping them contained.  There haven't been too many that have spilled on the carpet (yet).  I'm fearing the day when one of us gets a little too excited and doesn't pay attention and knocks the whole container over onto the floor.  I'm not sure whether I'm going to cry or laugh if/when that happens!  I did read though on the manufacturer's website that there's this cool little "vacuum" that you can get to clean all the beads up!  I might have to look into that if I can find it!  Meanwhile, I think I may have to stock up on some smaller containers to keep all the different colors separated out.  It takes more time digging through to find the right color than it does to put the beads on the peg board.

Hubby asked me what exactly I planned to do with all of these once I was done making them all.  I stared at him blankly and retorted that the grandparents were all going to get magnets made with love by the boy for Christmas this year (Mom, you've been warned)!  At least these will be cooler than the (lack of) designs that I came up with as a kid!

DIY Kid's Pajama Pants

I will be the first to admit that I am not a great seamstress.  I know enough to get through a project.  Patterns sometimes tend to confuse me.  My mom used to make clothes for my sisters and I when we were younger, and I always wanted to learn how to do that too.  Other than starting to sew a pair of uniform pants together in girl scouts when I was in middle school, I've mostly taught myself everything I know about sewing.  One of my strengths has always been in spatial reasoning, and I can usually fudge how to put something together.  My mother-in-law, knowing that I was the crafty type, gave me her sewing machine back when hubby and I were still dating.  She was a crafty person, but had no clue how to sew.  I think she told me that she had either never used the machine, or had maybe used it once or twice.  I had somewhat of an idea how to sew.  I figured I was at least doing something right when I figured out how to get the bobbin filled and the machine threaded!  My first projects were blankets, and all that those consisted of was either putting a finished edge on some fleece, or sewing some binding to the edges.  There was one time, back when hubby and I were dating, that he was working in construction and needed a work apron.  I thought up a pattern in my head and went to work.  Not having a clue what I was doing, it turned out pretty well, and he wore it all the time when he was at work.
Anyway, I like to peruse pinterest for random projects to do.  I've got a board filled with sewing projects.  One of them caught my eye because it looked pretty easy.  That particular pin I found was this one:

Source: mycottoncreations.blogspot.com via Erika on Pinterest

After reading through the easy step-by-step directions, they looked easy enough to make, so I made a quick trip over to JoAnn's to pick up some material.  My first stop was the remnants bin, to see if I could find something cheap to do a first run on (just in case I screwed something up).  Since I had the boy with me, I asked him what kind of pants he wanted.  It was no surprise to hear him say that he wanted Thomas!  I found some fleece, and bought a couple yards.  I figured I could get a pair of pants out of it for him to wear now, and then have enough left over to make him another pair of bigger ones later.  I would make up a tutorial here, but seriously, the pin that I linked to is great!

The first pair I did were the green ones.  Using a pair of pants that fit him as a pattern, it didn't take too long to get them cut out and sewn together.  The longest part of getting the pants made was making sure that I had everything lined up correctly so I could cut them out.  I have a bad habit of not pressing my fabric, and also not using a measuring tape.  I tend to eyeball everything.  Sometimes, eyeballing things comes back to bite me!  The green pants ended up with one leg being a smidge shorter than the other.  Even so, it doesn't stop the boy from wearing them all the time!  He's growing so quickly right now that most of his pants end up looking like highwaters.  Having a pair of pants that had one leg a little shorter than the other didn't really matter much!  They were a trial-run, and just being used for pj pants anyway!  My second run was with the Thomas material.  I purposely made them longer so that he could wear them longer, and also so if I did happen to short one leg, it wouldn't be as noticeable!
Overall, I don't think I'll ever use another pattern for making pajama pants.  This one was so easy, and I had both pairs of pants finished within an hour total.  Can't beat sewing 2 seams, and then rolling over the top and the bottoms to finish them off!  As is typical with fleece, they get softer with each washing.  I did notice the other night that one of the seams had come apart, but it didn't take anything to pull out the sewing machine and fix them up real quick.  I think the next time I make a pair of these I may double-stitch each seam, just to give it a little more strength.

Birthday Cake

I don't claim to be a good cake decorator by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy dabbling in it.  Something about being creative is such a release for me.  When the boy requested to have another Thomas the train themed birthday party this past year (he's a bit obsessed), I jumped at the chance to try my hand at making another cake for him.  Imagine my annoyance surprise afterword when I discovered that there is actually a legitimate Thomas the train cake pan!  Regardless, I still enjoyed making the cake and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  Being a novice cake baker, I had no clue how many cups of batter one box of cake mix made, so I mixed up two.  There was extra batter left, so I used what was left to make cupcakes.  We were eating cake for a while after the birthday party!  One of these days I'll do cake batter from scratch, but when time is a premium, I don't feel bad using a mix.  The cake was baked 2 days before the party because that was when I had a chance to do so!  Decorating was done the morning of the party, which included mixing up the frosting.  After finding a good recipe for buttercream frosting, I won't buy the stuff in a can anymore...it just doesn't taste as good!  Not only that, but I can control the consistency of it better from scratch as well.

After the birthday party, I found and bought the actual Thomas cake pan.  I'm (not so) secretly hoping that the boy's obsession lasts another year so I can get some use out of it!

Cricut cartridge review...Designer's Calendar

I have a collection of several cartridges for my cricut.  I'm ashamed to admit that I have some of them that I haven't ever used.  I was thinking this weekend, as I had some crafty time that I could start a series here on some of the cartridges I've got.  I guess you could say that I already kind of did that on the chore chart cartridge.  In any case, in my couple hours of crafty time that I had this weekend, I decided to pull out the Designer's Calendar cartridge.  When this cartridge very first came out, I wanted it.  I just didn't want to spend what they were asking for it.  I found a great deal on it during the black Friday/cyber Monday sales this past Christmas and just couldn't pass it up any longer.
For the past year, I used calendar pages that were in a kit from Creative Memories.  I either missed that they made a kit for this year, or there wasn't one.  These pages were on display in the kitchen on my Everyday Display.  I love those things!  They're magnetic and fit a 12 x 12 page perfectly in them.  In any case, I had decided that I wanted to make my own calendar pages this year.  I knew that it was going to be quite the undertaking in looking at the different aspects of the calendar cartridge.  Being one that doesn't like to back down from a challenge, I decided to go for it and the project went remarkably easier and faster than I anticipated!

To start, I picked out what I wanted for the background paper, and then picked a couple of cardstock colors to coordinate.  My first cut was the calendar grid.  Cut out at 8", it fit nicely on the 12 x 12 page, with room at the top for the month and other embellishments.  The trick to this cartridge is to slow your speed down and increase the pressure when you're making the smaller cuts, like the numbers and the corner embellishments.  I had the speed set at high for the grid and it worked just fine.  The month and the corner embellishments were both cut at 2", and the date numbers were cut at 1".

There wasn't a whole lot extra that I did to further embellish the calendar pages, other than outlining around the cuts with my Creative Memories pens.  Have I mentioned that I love those things as well?!  They're some of the best pens that I've ever used when crafting.

Instead of cutting out the days of the week, I decided to just write them in.  There were a couple of reasons to this.  Firstly, I wasn't sure how big to do them and I didn't want to spend a ton of time experimenting, and secondly, I didn't want to have to deal with teeny, tiny cuts!  I did try to cut out one of the holiday ones, and it was pretty small.  Had I changed some settings on my machine, it probably would have cut out better.  Lesson learned for next time around!  

I could have added more to the 2 calendar months that I had time to sit down to do this weekend, but I ran out of time.  Hubby was out at a photo shoot while I was crafting, and after he got home I wanted to spend time with him instead.  Family time takes precedence over crafty time.  If he's home, I'm spending time with him!

Overall, I loved this cartridge, and I really can't wait to sit down and make out the rest of the months for this year!  In looking at the back of the cartridge box, it looks like there's more options than just doing a grid for the calendar as well, which is really exciting to me!  It was really easy to put the calendar pages together, and there wasn't a ton of deciphering that needed to be done to figure out the booklet either.  I'll have to remember to post the rest of the month pages that I make for this year.  I see a lot of uses other than just making calendars out of this cartridge too.  It's good to remember to think outside of the box when using my cartridges!

Chore Chart

The boy has a knack for asking for things whenever we go to the store.  Our knee-jerk reaction was always to tell him that when he was older and had a job and earned his own money that he could buy whatever he wanted.  That would always bring up the questions from him when we would go out about how he could get his own money.  Enter the chore chart, and allowance.  At 4 years old, we don't think that it's too young to start to teach him responsibility about money, and about helping around the house.  We've given him simple chores to do, that we know he can do without too much reminding.  If he gets all of his chores done during the week, he earns his full allowance.  If he doesn't do some of them, or if we have other behavior issues (which are thankfully rare) with him, then he loses part of his allowance.
I've had the Chore Chart Cricut cartridge sitting around for a while, in preparation for the day when a chore chart would come into play.  For the longest time, I'd had the background cut out so I could get a feel for what it would look like.
I learned a few things about this cartridge when I finally put it together.  Firstly, the cuts for the days of the week can't be done small...it just doesn't work...it's too small!  I tried and tried and tried, and wasted quite a bit of paper, cutting them out at 2".  I'll save you a headache...don't try it!  While it would have looked super cute if it would have worked out right at that size, it was just too small to get those pieces off the mat.  Secondly, it takes a bit of thinking to figure out how exactly you want the chart to work!  The chart is a 3 row by 7 column format.  This means that if you want to put the days of the week in there, you're limited to 2 chores a day, or if you want to put one chore for each row, then you've only got 6 columns left for days of the week.  Doing it that way means you're missing a day of the week (which I guess could work out if you wanted to give the kid a break for a day).  Also, there comes into question what you're going to want to do to make it reusable so you don't have to cut out a new one every week.  Lets face it...with a full time job, I don't have the time or energy (let alone paper!) to tackle a project like that every week!

My initial test cut of the chart ended up being too small.  When I did the test cut, I was just using some scrap letter size paper, so I was limited to a 6" cut.  While cutting at that size probably would have worked, it just ended up being too small.  Sooo...I grabbed some 12x12 paper and made a new chart.  I believe I was able to get it to cut out at 8" tall with that, which gave me a little bit more room to work.  We gave the boy 3 chores to do...feeding the dog, making his bed, and putting his toys away.  The cuts for those chores, while still having tiny pieces, were easy enough to put together.  I cut those out at 2", I believe.  Everything got laminated, and I put magnets on everything so that it could go up on the 'fridge.  I had a roll of 1" magnet material laying around at home (leftover from my menu calendar), and I decided to use that to mark the chores as being done for the day.  I simply covered them with some paper and wrote the days out on them.  That was much easier than trying to make the days of the weeks cuts off the cartridge.  While the cricut and my silhouette cameo are great tools and I love to use them, sometimes there are simpler solutions!  In any case, here's pictures of the final product.  We've been using it for about a month now and it's working out pretty well so far.

The whole chart put together.  I ended up putting the chores to do on the outside of the chart, so that we had a full 7 day week to work with.

Close-up of the markers.  I made them different colors to make them fun, and so that the boy would have a different color for each chore.

The ones waiting to be used are lined up alongside the chart.  Markers for the current day are usually under the chart, and ones for the next day are usually above.  I rotate them through in the evening so they're ready to go for the next day.

Close-up of the chores to be done.

 
The boy has been keeping up with his chores for the most part and he enjoys earning his allowance money so that he can buy things that he wants to get.  It's been a great way to teach him responsibility, and how to save money.  If he doesn't have enough to get what he wants, he can either buy something cheaper, or he can save it up to have more money and buy something bigger.  The first week's allowance went to some playdoh!

Christmas Gift Tags

I try to make tags for the gifts we give at Christmastime every year.  Usually I have grand intentions, but the execution of said ideas doesn't fully come to fruition.  I remember a few years ago, I just took to using a sharpie and writing everyone's names right on the wrapping paper!  So much for cute, homemade tags!  Last year, I got as far as getting the tags punched out and then just scribbled the names on them.
This year however, I had a few extra minutes to add some finishing touches to them.  I think they turned out pretty cute!  I used my Creative Memories tag maker and punched out as many tags as I could get out of a 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock.  A quick dig through my stamps, and the perfect one was found!  Then, it was just a matter of stamping and embossing.  I used my versamark watermark ink pad, and some white embossing powder.  A blast of heat, and they were done.  All that was left to do was to write everyone's names on them.  They're not much, but I think they add just enough of a personalized, crafty touch.  If I can't find the time to make everyone's gifts, I can at least make some tags!

Homemade Laundry Soap

I LOVE Pinterest!  I've found so many fun ideas there, and actually had a chance to try a few.  Well, this one pin in particular intrigued me.  I've always wanted to try making my own laundry soap and had seen this pinned quite a few times.  I figured I might as well give it a try.  I read through all the comments on the blog post and decided that it couldn't be too difficult to do and should last us a while.  If I could save some money on laundry detergent at the same time, I figured that would be a win!  I usually buy the big bottle of detergent and it lasts us quite a while.
To be honest, I'm really not sure how much we're saving or going to save because I hate doing laundry!  I do as little laundry as possible because a) I hate doing it, b) I'm never home to do it and c) I hate doing it!  Actually, maybe I should clarify that...the actual process of gathering up the clothes and physically putting them in the washer and dryer is easy.  Hubby does his own laundry and I wash my clothes and the boy's clothes, although give it another year or so and he'll be doing his own too.  It's the darn putting the clothes away that I just seem to never find the time to do!  I think I actually put clothes away 3 to 4 times a year, when mount laundry gets too high and when there's actually a day when there's nothing else planned and I go on a house-cleaning rampage!  The last time I put clothes away ended up in a trip to the hardware store after the bar in the closet came crashing down at 3am because of the weight on it!  The thing just snapped clean off the wall and made quite the racket in the middle of the night!  It didn't help that the wall support was also holding up the shelf in the closet either, and that was rather heavy as well.  The last 6 shirts I hung up did the poor thing in!  We discovered, in putting new brackets up that the closet rod was never hung level to begin with.  Funny what you learn about your house when random things start breaking and you have to fix them!

Anyway...the pin that I was going off of was here:

Source: beingcreativetokeepmysanity.blogspot.com via Erika on Pinterest

which led to this blog post.

It took me a bit of time to gather up the materials I needed because I wasn't really in a hurry, and every time I went into the store, they were always out of borax!  Eventually, I rounded everything up and had an afternoon where there were a couple of free hours for me to get it made.  The longest part was grating up the soap.  Since we've got a front loader, I not only grated the bar of soap, but ran it through the food processor as well to make sure that it turned into a really fine powder that would dissolve easier.  I also added in a bottle of Purex crystals to give the detergent a bit of a scent.

All that's needed for the soap is: (it can all be found in the laundy soap aisle at walmart)
3 bars fels naptha (I grated them up and then ran it through the food processor)
1 box borax
1 box washing soda
1 4lb box baking soda
1 tub powdered oxyclean (I used the larger, 3lb one)
1 bottle purex crystals (optional for a light scent)

I'm pretty sure we're going to have laundry detergent for a LONG time!  It only takes 1 to 2 tablespoons per load, and with as much detergent as this makes, a tablespoon is nothing!  I add the mix right in the drum when I do a load, instead of putting it in the soap dispenser on top.  I'm not sure why, but everything I read said to do it this way, so I do!  I finally found a big jar at walmart, and just had to make it look fun.  To be honest, I really was just looking for another glass etching project!  I don't remember what font I used, but I thought it looked fun.  I grabbed some spare vinyl, cut it out, weeded and put it on the jar, then let the etching cream sit for a bit before rinsing it off.  I'm pretty pleased with the result, and so far the soap seems to be working like every other brand of laundry soap that we've ever used.  As long as the clothes come out looking and smelling clean, it's a winner in my book!  Now, if I could just solve the putting-the-clothes away issue!

Office Christmas Decor

I work for a small company, that at times is insanely busy.  At other times though, I'm all caught up on paperwork and I'm able to bring my cameo and my cricut in and get my crafty on.  My boss has mentioned several times when the decor is done that he really likes how it looks and is glad that my coworker and I take the initiative to spruce the place up...as long as work continues to get done!
Christmastime has always been the main time that the office gets decorated.  Every year we add a little more.  This year, we decided to try vinyl.  I love how it turned out, and it was so much easier than cutting out, layering, and laminating a ton of paper.  We've still got the paper decorations from years past and while they still look good, we noticed that they faded A LOT!  Green and red just don't do so well sitting in the window!  By the time we pulled them down last year, the green had faded so much that it almost looked blue!  Note to self...don't use cheap paper in my scrapbooks!
Anyway, as I was saying, we decided to try vinyl this year.  We did a trial run over the fall to see how it would hold up, and we were very impressed.  It's so easy to work with, and fairly easy to take down.  The only downside is that you can't save it for next year once you take it down.  That's not necessarily a bad thing though...just means that we can come up with new decor next year!  Oh darn, another excuse to bring my stuff back in!
I really love how the windows turned out.  We used a combination of things that we had leftover that I cut out with my cricut last year, and things that I found in the silhouette store and cut out with my cameo this year.  Using the laminated paper cutouts on the inside of the window, and the vinyl cutouts on the outside, really gave the decorations a sense of depth too.
Now to come up with ideas for the rest of the holidays!

We used two different colors for snowflakes, cut out at various sizes.

 I loved this design as soon as I saw it and just had to use it!

 I loved this one too, and only did one for each window since it was a layered design.

 The whole window, well one of them.  The other one looks nearly identical.

 Paper/laminated cricut cutout from last year

I'm not entirely satisfied with how the pictures of the window turned out.  It's quite hard to get a good picture of the windows of the office because there's so much glare and reflection off of them.  Oh well, at least I've got something to look back at next year when we're decorating again!

Teacher Christmas Gift

It's a safe bet to say that I have a huge addiction love of vinyl.  I love the look of it, and the fact that it can be taken down from the walls without damaging them.  This also means when I feel like changing something up it's as easy as designing something new, cutting it out and putting it up on the wall.  It's also great for other fun projects.  

For thanksgiving with my family this year, we decided to have some fun and decorated some tumblers.  The tumblers with straws seem to be all the rage lately, and they're easy to personalize with a little bit of vinyl.  I had a couple of cups left over when all was said and done, so I decided it would be the perfect gift to give the boy's teacher for Christmas this year.  He didn't want to wait until this week to give it to her, so she got it for thanksgiving instead, but the thought was/is still there.  It was so much fun to watch him run up to her and give it to her.

I got the hint at the beginning of the school year that she loves teddy bears, so I figured that was a good place to start.  I happened to have a cricut cartridge that had a teddy bear on it, so I picked out a few colors and went to work.  An hour later, and I had a finished gift!  I used outdoor vinyl because it stands up to abuse better.  The cup can be washed and the vinyl won't come off.  I've heard that it will survive the dishwasher, but it isn't recommended.

I used the "Create A Critter" cartridge for the teddy bear, and then fired up my sure cuts a lot program (which isn't available anymore, and is the reason I now have a Silhouette Cameo) and picked out a font that I liked and cut it out.  Layers can be kinda tricky because the vinyl really likes to stick to itself, but working slowly and trying not to do layers that are too big make it a little easier. 

Glass etching

When I was (very) pregnant with the boy, my middle sister got married. I was in the wedding party and as much as I wanted to help do things, at 36 weeks pregnant, there really wasn't a whole lot that I was physically capable of doing! There was one project that I was able to help with and it ended up turning into an addiction! She had toasting glasses for the whole wedding party, and had been working on etching everyone's names into them. Well, wedding day came and the project wasn't quite completed. Enter uber pregnant sister to finish the job! It was while I was finishing up the project that I discovered just how much fun glass etching was/is! The glasses turned out super cute, and I decided that if I ever got the chance that it would be a fun project to do again.
Fast forward a few years, and I still hadn't forgotten about that project. The problem was, I couldn't really think of anything worthwhile to do. One day a couple of months ago, I finally had a good idea for a glass etching project. I got sick and tired of how messy and disorganized that our laundry area had become and I went on an all-out cleaning spree! You know the type...the cleaning spree where nothing is safe from the garbage can, and you end up with stacks of random things that need to be put elsewhere. This whole cleaning spree was inspired by a mug that we had on top of the dryer. In this particular mug goes all the change, and other random knicknacks that end up in the dryer after a load of laundry is done...see where I'm going with this? I had found the perfect jar to use to throw all of our "laundered money" in, but there was no place on top of the dryer to put said jar, hence the cleaning spree!

Anyway, once I had the laundry area cleaned up, I finally got to work on my laundered money jar. I had some scrap vinyl left over from another project I had done, so I pulled out my cricut, threw a cartridge in, and made a quick stencil for the etching. I stole borrowed a paintbrush from the boy and grabbed my jar of etching cream and went to work.

After letting the etching cream set for a couple minutes, I rinsed it off, but it didn't look like it had set long enough.  I made sure that the jar was completely dry and put another coat of etching cream on.  This time I let it sit longer, rinsed again and pulled off the vinyl.

I ran downstairs, showed off my latest creation to hubby, and then proceeded to the garage to set the jar on top of the dryer.  I quickly put the change in there that had been collected in the mug (see that john deer mug in the background?), and left the mug to throw other random dryer treasures in!

I'm really not sure how much more change has been collected, or what is going to be done with the change that we collect.  I'm sort of thinking of letting it be a place that I raid for coffee money!  Finders keepers, right?!

Anyway, there you have it.  Glass etching...a quick and easy project that can really spruce up an ordinary jar.  Now, to think of the next thing that I'm going to etch.  I've heard that pyrex is a good candidate for that, but I just need to come up with something catchy to put on it!