silly picture frame

i love being surrounded by pictures...always have.

i adore most pictures frames...classic, big, tiny, wooden, colorful, whimsical. i made this one a while back, but thought i would post it here as encouragement to allow a picture to dictate the frame sometimes.

i love this picture...so classic us...shaun and i acting goofy and landon practically rolling his eyes at us :-)

the quality isn't that great, but i was having a hard time with the flash and a reflection.

the frame is from wally world...the same white ones i use for most frame projects...it's about 7 bucks i think. stickers are also from there and i used some Zig pens for the caption, which reads "and I'm supposed to take these people SERIOUSLY?!"

quick and easy, part 2

These are wooden sayings that i picked up at Wal-mart and simply put complimentary ribbon in various places. they are a wonderful and check baby shower gift or even birthday, graduation, etc. they are pretty small, but you would apply the same idea to larger wooden sayings if you found them somewhere else.



i don't know if you consider this a craft or just a random arrangement of two things! we have the wreath hanging in the kitchen area and prior to last week there were little "frames" hanging from the wreath that i had created with patterned paper and pictures of the family. i decided they shouldn't be there anymore because they were several years old. then i wasn't pleased with the looks of it, so i grabbed a picture of L and his dad and taped it to the wall in the middle of the wreath. if nothing else, it brings me satisfaction to:

1. make something out of things i already had.
2. have another picture of my boys around the house!

very quick crafting projects, take 1

while i was taking pictures of my "new" rooms today, i thought i could snap a few shots of some things i have done in the past...most of which involve my favorite things:

1. polka dots
2. clipboards
3. pictures
4. color

Easy Picture Frames:

These frames are from Wal-mart...i think they are about 6 bucks.

i bought some stickers from there as well that were white dots with silver metal around the edge. i took some of L's crayons and colored in the circles and then attached them at random. i have done some of these frames where i lightly colored the white frame before attaching the stickers and other times i have just attached them without coloring.



If you don't feel like putting forth the effor above or you cannot find those stickers, just use price tag stickers.

When we moved, L's room was painted light blue, but we didn't do much more than that. i wanted to liven up the room, so i took his circular sticky price tags, colored them variations of blues and greens and attached them to his letters.

on a rampage

i don't know what on earth has gotten into me, but for the past 2 days i have been going OFF around the house...moving furniture, cleaning baseboards (Dana--you'll have to check out my effort next time you're over), and actually attempting to organize. all of these things might be normal for most of you reading, but for me, all of the above are things i typically think of often, but don't actually ever DO any of them.

Project 1: Get rid of Christmas decor so that there are not TWO sofas in our reasonably small living room and there will be room for RED DINOSAUR and GREEN DINOSAUR (another story). in the process of taking down the tree and trying to find places for all of the new toys and gadgets, i felt a need for change. so, the train table got moved to L's room, which meant i had to move the glider that we don't use in there anymore elsewhere...fast forward...glider now in living room with only ONE sofa! the best part...the living room is now truly brown and blue because the sofa is brown and the glider is blue. granted, i don't know how normal or cool it is to have a glider in a living room, but whatev.

Project 2: the office

for anyone who has been to our house you know i rarely let you see the office despite its convenient location across from the hall bath. why i ever called it an office, i'm not sure as it had no purpose other than to catch everything that didn't have a "place." so, for 3 years, i keep saying i'm going to do something with this wretched room, but never did. somehow in last week in the blizzard, with no power, i found it appropriate to move two filing cabinets from across the room and put them in the closet of the office because i think they are hideous and i thought i could hide them in the closet. wouldn't you know the dag on things were about a quarter of an inch too deep to fit in the closet and be able to close the doors. i would have known that had i measured, but i didn't bother! there was NO WAY i was going to move them back and i'm glad i didn't (just wait, you'll see why). it took me a minute or two, but i decided i'd just take the doors off and put up a tension rod with some fabric or a curtain. granted, i haven't bothered to do that yet, but it will get done before the end of the week. here is what it looked like now...a little crazy, i agree, but a few days ago, imagine the ENTIRE ROOM looking something like this.



After i got the doors of the closet off today, i was trying to figure out where i was going to store these mugs...then i wondered if i could use them as decoration. i think i've seen in a magazine how they used a shutter for a message center. i don't have room in the kitchen for that, but i thought, why not use them to display pictures??? by no means is this complete, but what do you think?



i used another one of my favorite things (binder clips) to attach the pictures to the slats of the doors. the best part is that there is a menagerie of pictures from childhood up to current (or at least that is my intention!).

i like it so much that i'm considering taking our closet doors off in our bedroom too as they are always open in the first place.

Project 3: Downstairs

let's just say we have an enormous TV that doesn't fit our room, so we're trying to be creative! more on this later...we just got started and had to hit the pause button as this weakling over here couldn't help muscle man move the TV!

It's only Monday of an entire week off, we'll see if we have the stamina to get the entire house looking decent before our return!

sampling of Christmas, part 2

take-out organizers...i made these a few years ago and organized them in binders, but i had bought these really cute file folders for Landon's Love that i haven't really done anything with. i thought to cut the file folders to create a front and a back and then i still used the sheet protectors (other than polka dots, these are my favorite things...EVER). I put a "Shh..secret recipes" sticker on the front with a label. The intention of these is for folks to put take out and delivery menus in the sheet protectors and to keep this folder somewhere near the phone. i love these...they are simple, yet so handy for folks who get take out or delivery often.



wooden picture block...i was searching craft blogs the other day and came across little birdie craft blog (see 'blogs i follow' list) and saw the most precious idea...wooden block with pictures. check out their website for some darling examples. one of their tips was to use matte pictures only and all i have is glossy. since i was looking just the other day, i didn't have time to get matte prints. my brain got to searching for ideas of how i could still create a wooden block to display pictures. here is what i came up with...



instead of mod podging a picture to the wooden block, i used decorative paper and then embellished it with a little binder clip of sorts so that the picture could be changed at any time. i really like how it turned out and cannot wait to do more. for anyone out there who might try something like this, but are having a hard time finding wooden blocks, i might suggest contacting a local cabinet showroom. my husband was able to bring home old samples that worked perfectly! if you don't feel like going that route, check out the little birdie blog for some ideas about where to get some wooden blocks.

photo garden...i got this idea from Michaels years ago but have yet to create it. i think i intended to do it for Grandma and Nan a few years ago and never got around to it. i used the most random things (straws for the sticks because i couldn't find skewers, ripped green tissue paper for the grass because i was too lazy to walk downstairs and get pipe cleaners or nice paper).



fleece scarves...this is my "little black dress" of the winter when it comes to gifts. this all started about 5 years ago when i received the most wonderful gift from a student of mine. she had created a warm and stylish scarf out of fleece. i adored the style and appreciated the warmth because I DON'T DO COLD. these scarves are as easy as cutting a strip of fleece and then cutting strips along the length to give it a little character. in the past i have sewed down the length, but i don't think it is necessary. this was the first year i tried using those fleece throws that are in every store. i got mine at Walmart for less than 8 bucks and was able to get 4 adult size scarves out of them. my only complaint with using the throws is that it seemed to produce a lot more lint all over the place. i think shaun was afraid to eat in the kitchen for a few days because there were little blue fuzzies flying around like mad. this picture isn't the greatest, but it might give you an idea.



treasure jar...i embellished these with picket fences and flower stickers. i drew in the stems. i added stickers to spell out our nieces names. 7 year olds typically have tons of treasures, so i figured this would be a cute place to keep them.



family boredom buster kits...these will have to be late Christmas gifts as my printer isn't cooperating, but i have compiled tons of ideas from magazines and our own families and come up with fun things to do together. whenever i can get these completed i'll try to post a picture and a sample page.