Casserole Cozy

A casserole cozy! So practical for church potlucks and bringing dinner over to a family in need. I decided to make one for my mom's birthday.

I got the idea from Homemade by Jill who got the idea from 2 Little Hooligans.

I took Jill's suggestion and used canvas belting for the handles and I ditched the Velcro and made ties instead. This was partially done out of necessity but I like the look of it too. Most difficult part was sewing on top of the insul-bright material because it tended to pull and scrunch but other than that it was fairly simple to construct.

Good bye Bow Hello Rosettes

I mentioned this earlier but bow making is not a strength of mine so I decided to get rid of my bow on my temple picture found here and change it to a few flowers. These flower tutorials are everywhere! I looked at this one as a guide from the blog The Secret Stitch Club.

Journal Jars

Making journal jars was an idea for our church craft activity. Here is a link to a journal jar on the site Made.

I love you every hour of the day!

Love is in the air and so is the sweet smell of chocolate.

I made my hubby a "Valentines clock" for Valentines Day. Each number is a note with a message from me to him. He can only open a note when it comes to that hour of the day. The paper was cut using my Silhouette.

My little dude got this monkey card. I copied this idea straight off of the Silhouette blog. You can find the example here. The original lollipop was found and consumed earlier today. He enjoyed the magnetic letters as well.
I was surprised by this sweet Valentines card. I do love homemade Valentines cards especially from my boys.

Happy Valentines Day

Spiritual Art

I was asked to help do a craft at our church that would be considered "Spiritual Art" and $2 per project.

Yay a crafty activity!! Well I first went to the mecca of all things crafty u-createcrafts.com and clicked on the label that said "religious". From there I found a cute temple block craft from the website lilluna.com. She and her husband antique temple pictures to be used for this craft. This project is becoming fairly popular based on the number of different temples she had on her site. However, she didn't have an Atlanta temple so my dear friend Stacy helped me out and sent me a great temple picture.

I was expecting 15-20 people to sign up but we had over 60 people sign up! We had around 50 people at the activity too. What can I say girls like to craft...or they like anything that is free.

I managed to stay in the budget and in the end spent $1.80 per craft. They didn't charge me at Home Depot to cut the wood so that was a life saver and I learned at Kinkos it's 9 cents a page to use the copy machine with USB port opposed to 48 cents a page to use the printer. It's the exact same quality. This helped me save so I could spend more money on ribbons. Everyone did a great job especially with their ribbons which is something I am very dysfunctional at.

There was a second craft too which were these cute vinyl tiles that are super easy but turn out so sharp.

Receiving

Christmas is a season of giving but who am I kidding it's fun to get things too!

My sister-in-law Jill gave me Craft Hope, a book I wanted that is filled with crafts and organizations that are in need of those crafts. The pictures are lovely in the book.

My mom surprised me with a big gift I was totally not suspecting! Just wishful thinking...

(photo from http://www.dana-made-it.com/)

Holy moly a Silhouette! Let the fun begin. My husband and I (since we got it before Christmas) played around with it a bit. I'll have to get some pictures of my first projects (journal jar and nativity tile). However, I do have a picture of a silhouette made with my Silhouette. We took the picture below at a pumpkin patch and I took out the color and heightened the contrast so that it would be easier to trace on the software.

Viola! A silhouette of my little guy. A perfect keepsake for his baby book. I can always remember how he likes to jut out his bottom jaw.

I'm excited to make more fun things.

Sentimental Gifts

God. Country. Family. Those things get me every time. I'm sentimental and I admit it completely. When I make a gift for someone it tends to be sentimental opposed to practical. I do like to make gifts for family around Christmas time but it's usually only one person. Too much stress otherwise.

A few years back I made a freshman guide for my brother. Last year Mike and I made a storybook for Matthew and this year I made a photo book for my grandma. My grandma's birthday happens to be Christmas day and I wanted to make something special for her. She's a strong women with a good heart, and whom I think I look the most alike of any of my grandparents. I loved looking through the pictures seeing the clothing, cars, her changing hair styles and my mom as a little girl. I also found some ancestor pictures online by googling their names and connected with a second cousin who had a genealogy blog! Ha who knew. I gobbled it all up, loving it all because like I said I'm sentimental. Here are some pictures from the book.

My grandma's father is on the top in the middle. She never knew him because he died when she was 6 months old. This is one of the pictures I found online.

My grandma is in the middle.

My grandparents wedding day.

The bus.

Totally Jackie O in this shot!

A pictures worth a thousand words.

I love this of my parents.

That's me.