Birthday Shirts

 My son turned 3 this month and his two current obsessions are Legos and Angry Birds.  So I used my Silhouette and heat transfer to make him a shirt of each. They were a hit.

Jump Start on Christmas

This month we had a crafting weekend with some aunts and cousins. We made a lot of things and I decided to get a jump start on some Christmas Decor items.  I made the snowflake wreath from a OTC kit that I had.  I also finally cut out all my boxes and put them together for my Silhouette Advent Calendar. Now I just need to add my numbers to the boxes.  I also made some glitter ornaments (like Karen has shown) and a countdown flip chart for December. Hopefully pictures of those to follow.

First Birthday Shirts

 This month Erin and Gail took a request from a friend to make 1st birthday party shirts for her son.  The cute sock monkey on the brown shirt was a full iron-on purchased at Hobby Lobby.  The white shirt we designed with the silhouette to match the invites and used heat transfer in red, brown, cream, and black to cut out and heat press.  We learned a few new tricks in creating the shirts so that's always helpful!

Laundry Sign

I have seen a lot of signs on Pinterest that give me a giggle so I have been trying to make some with my own spin on things using up some of the supplies we have around the house.  I really like a lot of the laundry signs or displays for missing socks.  Everyone has missing socks, and I am tired of the pile on my dresser, so I thought I needed a sign.  I used up some left over paint from one of the bedrooms to paint a board.  Then I ran some washi tape along the top.  I used my Silhouette to cut out the saying in vinyl and attached that.  I ran washi tape over the top of some clothespins and then mod podged over it to make them stick.  I coated the whole board in polyurethane and let it dry completely.  Then I used tacky glue to attach the clothespins to the board.  Some of my inspiration for this came from Here  and Here.  However if you type in Missing Sock in Pinterest you will get a whole slew of fun options!

Magnet

We love books in our house.  Since having kids my addiction for buying books for myself has mostly ended and instead I have a slight problem buying hoards of books for the kids.  I am trying to be good about rotating some of them out seasonally.  A while back I bought this metal bucket from Target.  I decided that it would be fun to decorate it for each season and have this be our main rotating book location for the living room.  I finally got around to trying out my magnet paper on my Silhouette.  I found the shape in the shop, colored it in and merged it together.  Then I printed it out on my printer and then ran the magnet sheet through the Silhouette to cut it out.  I was pretty pleased with how the first attempt went.  Now onto making them for each season!

A Visit from the Tooth Fairy

My daughter recently lost her first tooth and the tooth fairy was ready at our house!  I found great ideas on Pinterest and went a little wild:)  The reaction when she saw what the tooth fairy left was priceless.

 Grandma and Grandpa have a fairy door on one of their trees and the kids are very entertained by it.  Once I saw this  I knew the tooth fairy had to leave a door at our house.  This door magically appeared over night when the tooth fairy stopped by to collect the tooth.  It is placed in between the wall that separates the kids' bedrooms, so easily accessible for the tooth fairy to visit either child;)

 Well what did she put her tooth in?

 This cute pouch.  I used the dimensions from this tutorial to make the pouch.  Then I had Grandma (thank you!) sew it together quick and sew on the ribbon so it would loop around the door knob.  I then used my Silhouette and Amy Robison's awesome tooth fairy kit to cut out heat transfer for the pouch and then ironed it on.  The "tooth fairy" then attached a mini key to her door on the ribbon of the bag.  We also used Amy Robison's Lost Tooth Certificate to document the big day.  So much fun!

Since we did my daughter's pouch I went ahead and made one for my son as well, now I just have to hang onto it until he looses his teeth in a few years!

Canvas Project with the Kids

I bought a package for skinny 4x4 canvases thinking that we would do this project with the kids for my daughter's birthday party since she requested that they paint.  Ooooh I am so glad I ended up vetoing that idea to pain with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds! I had the canvases so I thought that we could have some fun with them around the house.

I used my Silhouette and cut out a vinyl unicorn as requested.  My daughter wanted a pink unicorn so I had her paint the canvas all in pink and then let it try.  I then attached the vinyl unicorn and had her paint the canvas again in purple.  After she was done painting we peeled up the vinyl and had this.  She chose some ribbon out of the stash to make it into a door hanger for her room.

My 2-1/2 year old is into trucks, machines, etc.  I had him pick out which machine he wanted to do and he chose a digger.  I stuck his vinyl digger straight to the canvas and let him have a go with the paints.  Once he was done we peeled it up and had a white digger silhouette.  He wanted to be like big sis and picked out some ribbon so we could hang his project in his room.

Fun with Vinyl

 So I had a little fun with my vinyl this week.

 I know I've seen this one somewhere, but can't remember where exactly.  I put this on the tub in our master bath.  The hubby actually noticed it the first day it was up.   

 We repainted all of our main floor and so this kid art display had to come down, along with my vinyl.  So I finally got around to putting up a new "Masterpiece" sign on the wall.  I previously had used a font called FREEZE that I ended up being not too fond once it was cut and on the wall.  So when I recut it I switched it to MY OWN TOPHER font. This display idea came from here and it works great for displaying the kids art.

Pony Party

This month my daughter celebrated her 5th birthday and she is big into horses, so she wanted a pony party.

 I found this card on Silhouette and she told me very specifically what needed to be what color. I think it turned out to be a pretty cute invite.

 She is also big into crafts so we planned a lot of crafts for the girls to do.  This was one of them.  I used pieces from other silhouette shapes (hair and ears came from a cow) I had and then free handed a few pieces and cut them all out in advance to make these horse treat bags.  Yes, I think the pink nose looks a little like a pig, but the kid wanted pink and purple and was happy with it:)  We also decorated horse cut outs with ribbon, glitter glue, google eyes, and gems.  And of course we made pony bead bracelets and necklaces!  

Wedding Gift

 One of my cousins got married this month and I created this card and variation on a split letter for them as part of their wedding gift.

Pirates Aaaarg Cool

To kick off the summer break we have been doing theme weeks at our house before things get to busy with other activities.  This week was Pirate Week.  Oh my, there are soooo many fun things to do with Pirates!  We made Pirate food, pirate shirts, pirate crafts, pirate hats, read pirate books, watched Jake and the Neverland Pirates, painted treasure chests and went on a treasure hunt.  I still have way more ideas so I think we are totally going to have another pirate day sometime this summer.  Here are just a few of the things we did . . . 

Made pirates to eat after seeing this.  My kids thought their pirates needed arms instead of a sword, I think they just wanted more pretzels:)

I had way to much fun making these pirate shirts.  For the "girl" pirate I used glitter pink heat transfer for the bandanna and glitter black heat transfer for the eye patch.  Got my inspiration for these from here.

We also made pirate spy scopes/telescopes.  For the pirate hats I followed this tutorial and then cut out the skull and bones with fuzzy white heat transfer and ironed it to the hat.  I didn't have white thread (or I couldn't find it anyway) so I didn't do the extra stitching around the edge, but the kids enjoyed them anyway:)  The eye patches I ordered from OTC.  This pirate is also holding her treasure chest.  I found these at JoAnn's for $1/each and let the kids paint them.  I also made pirate maps  -- torn the edges off brown craft card stock and drew a simple picture map of places to go around the house with a big "x" where I had a little box with some goodies in it.

A very fun and crafty week!

Anniversary Gift

This month my sister and brother-in-law celebrated their 3rd anniversary and I decided to make a fun little gift for them.  I looked at items I pinned on Pinterest and various websites that suggested dating ideas (The Dating Divas website is still one of my favorites!) and then I typed up a whole bunch of dates in different columns in a word document.  Most of them I tried to keep to a few sentences.  Then I printed out the pages on different colored card stock and cut them all out.  I put all the strips of paper into a little box that I decorated. I also included a homemade card and a gift card to Caribou Coffee (some of the dates may need some extra motivation:)

I did a mix dates and most of the ideas were inexpensive ones.

Some are normal dates (go bowling, try a new restaurant, go to a museum you have never been to, etc.)

Some adventurous/unusual dates (find the best climbing trees - test them out an document it, go indoor mountain climbing, etc.)

and some at home dates (have a living room camp out, write love letters to each other and seal them up for a date night 20 years from now, Game Night, Food Taste Test Night, etc.)

Hope they have a good time!  

I am totally going back through the list to pull out all the at home dates for me and my hubby to do.

Let's Learn Center

My kiddos seem to like learning new things if it is done in a fun way that relates to their interests.  There are soooo many blogs of great quick and easy activities to do at home with the tiny tot set.  I seem to pin a lot of these ideas to Pinterest, but don't always sit down to actually make the activities even though a lot of the time I have the supplies at home already.  I needed a way to get things a little bit more organized and easily accessible.  I decided to sit down and actually do a few of the activities and then organize them in a crate with hanging file folders.

  Here are some of the activities that I completed this month for the kids to do:

I printed and laminated this great Dump Truck Counting Mat to use with some transportation beads we have.  I printed and laminated these Lego Counting Mats as well.

I was really excited when I saw that these boy themed lace up cards were the free shape of the week from Silhouette recently.  We love lace cards at our house.  I printed them out, used the Silhouette to cut them out, laminated them and then punched the holes in.

I also printed up, cut and laminated a bunch of these Lego Patterns cards.

I also love the Preschool and Tot Learning Packs from this website.  I've printed up and laminated the packs for Cars, Doc McStuffins, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  They have all been a hit at our house!

"Super" Glass Etched Mugs

For my brother in law's birthday I took a set of 4 glass beer mugs and glass etched his "Family Logo" into them:)  I cut the design out of vinyl on the Silhouette and then weeded the part I wanted to show up.  I then placed the vinyl on the mugs and applied the glass etching, waited 45 minutes (it says you only have to wait 15, but longer seems to be better).  Then I scooped the excess back into the container, took up the vinyl and washed them up.  They came with a case of beer - they were a hit!

Car Garage

My son likes to try to take his toy cars to bed with him. Bad part is they keep him up - he tries to play with them, runs them up and down the wall, then ends up rolling on top of them when he falls asleep.  I  noticed that he likes to put his stuffed animals "to sleep." So, I thought, if he had somewhere to put his cars to sleep, maybe they wouldn't end up in bed with him every night.  

 My daughter "donated" her shoe box for this craft.  I put the lid on the bottom of the box. I cut off the front panel of the box and used it to make dividers.  I cut a slit in the back and front of the box to slide in the dividers.

 Then I used some fun duct tape that I picked up at Home Depot (great selection of designs!) to wrap the shoe box and divider to make it more steady and durable.  Since my son likes to tuck in his animals with a blanket I figured the cars should probably have a blanket too.  I took some extra felt I had and cut it with pinking sheers so that it would have a fun edge to it.

Overall, my son is enjoying this greatly.  He has it placed on his bookcase and part of our bedtime routine is to now tuck his cars into bed before he gets into bed.  First thing in the morning he "wakes" them up.  Very cute.

Heat Transfer Gifts

 We had a cousin that gave birth to twins last month so I made these onesies as part of their gifts.

Some family friends had little girls celebrating their 4th and 1st Birthdays this month so I made these t-shirts.  I was happy to be able to use more pink glitter heat transfer!

Customized Stickers

 For Christmas I told my kids they would each receive a book a month from "Mom's Book Club."  I received some sticker paper for my birthday and decided to try my hand at making some stickers with my Silhouette.  I used the same book work I used for the Wordy Thirty Party Decorations in December.  I put the worm in a circle, made another circle and added the wording.  I printed them out and then cut the designs on the Silhouette.  Worked pretty slick.  So each month I am adding one of these stickers to their books.

St. Patrick's Day Shirt

I asked my daughter if she wanted to have a shirt for St. Patrick's Day and showed her some of the designs I had purchased from Silhouette.  When she saw this one there were holes in the font for "PROOF."  She asked if I could put rhinestones in those holes. I said, "You bet kiddo!"  So here is the final product.

Valentine's Decorations

 For Valentine's Day I used my Silhouette to make this shirt for my daughter.  I used white flocked heat transfer and black glitter heat transfer.

I also had grand plans to get some Valentine's Day Banners done this month as decorations.  Did not get them done in time for Valentine's Day this year, but I did still get them done in the month of February and they are ready to go for next year!

Shirt Extravaganza

So this month I had Erin's heat press on loan for a week.  Of course I had grand plans, but saved them for the night before I needed to get it back to her.  Yikes!  I did get 7 shirts done in 3 hours though - not too shabby if you ask me.  (2 are not posted yet as they are gifts and I don't want them to see them yet!)

I made a Vikings shirt for my hubby.  Have to combat all the Packer Love on the blog here!

 I am in love with the pink glitter heat transfer that I purchased a while back.  I've been looking for an excuse to use it to make something for myself.  When I saw this quote while browsing the internet I knew how I could use it:)  I added a little flower on the corner of the shirt for a little more oomph of it!

My cousin had a new baby girl this month so I used the pink glitter to decorate a onesie and did a big brother super hero shirt again as well.

My daughter is into anything with ponies, unicorns and the like.  And being a young girl of course she seems to gravitate toward pink, purple and GLITTER.  So she got this Pegasus unicorn out of pink glitter as well.  She loves it and has worn it just as soon as it comes out of the wash.