Thursday, February 28, 2013

Niagara Falls Photo Book


You'll love award-winning Shutterfly photo books. Start your own today.

I am sharing our vacation photo book with you so I can get a $10 gift card to Shutterfly. Enjoy!

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Patching with Style

As part of the Pintrest Challenge over at Young House Love, here's my Pintrest project.


On my last post about Pintrest, I mentioned that one of the ideas I saw and tried was how to patch jeans with some style. I thought I would give a step by step of how I patched a few of Rebecca's jeans. It's been a while since I did a crafty blog and I am excited to share this with you.

First you need some jeans with holes in the knees, which Rebecca has plenty of.
 Find some cute fabrics, which I have plenty of.
 You will also need some embroidery thread in a variety of colors that will coordinate with your fabrics.
 I used Stitch Witchery to fuse the patch to the jeans. So far it has held up very well through several wearings and washings. This pictures shows 1/4 inch, but I actually used 3/4 inch. I just didn't have the packaging for that size.
 Cut the fabric large enough to cover the hole with at least 2 inches around each side. This piece is about 6 inches square. Line the right side of the fabric with the stitch witchery and hover your iron over it to soften the stitch witchery (these are the directions on the package).
 Position the patch upside down on the jeans, the jeans are inside out. Again follow the directions on the stitch witchery package to attach the patch.
 The directions said to place a damp cloth over the patch and press the iron on the cloth for a few seconds, lifting and pressing again.
 Once the patch is in place, choose some matching thread and begin hand stitching stars around the patch in an artistic way. This is the most tedious part and takes a little while. You will have to have one hand inside the jeans and pull the thread through. You can also add different color stars to one pair of jeans. Be creative!


When you are done with the stars, flip the jeans inside out and tie off the thread. The inside won't be pretty, but no one will see that part :)
 Here are 4 different pairs of jeans that I have patched for Rebecca.


Thanks Pintrest for the great idea. Rebecca loves her "new" jeans!

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Pintrest-ing

Printrest  has been around for a while now and everyone is pinning everything - literally. Pintrest has become the new Google search for some. I was hesitant to join at first, but when I fully understood what Pintest was and how it worked, I was hooked.

Back in the day, I actually had a primitive form of Pintrest that I made myself. There were many crafty blogs that I followed and if I saw an idea that I loved I would copy and paste the web link into a Word document (I know, not even a Google doc - primitive) with a little note by it so I could reference it when I had the time. Pintrest has made it so much easier to "pin" all those great ideas that you want to save.

I have the philosophy that I only want to pin things that I actually think I will use someday. I have seen other people with thousands of pins just because they like it, but what is the point of pinning something if you are not actually going to use it? I don't want my Pintrest boards full of fashion I will never own, houses I will never live in, food I will never make, crafts I will never have the time to make, or abs that I will never see in the mirror.

To this day, I have about 250 pins on 11 different boards. I like to keep my boards clean, especially my recipe board. If I try something that I don't like I delete it right away. Keeping things simple and organized, has helped me have quite a few successes.

I have tried many recipes - lots of good freezer meals, a few sweet treats, and a great chicken rub that I have used a lot. I have also used some ideas for school - nothing that has drastically improved achievement (unfortunately) but some cute activities the students had fun with. There are a few craft ideas that I really want to try and maybe this summer (when school is out) I will have time - one can always hope. I really wish I had documented some more of these successful ideas from Pintrest, but here are a few.

Add peal and stick tiles to the cabinet under the sink (not sure about yours, but my cabinet was pretty gross). 
I patched Rebecca's jeans with a little but of style. These are now her favorite pair.
Many of these ideas for Blake's first birthday party came from Pintrest.  Actually, I might repin this image back to Pintrest so others can maybe use the ideas.

As much as I love Pintrest, there are few draw backs:
1. If I'm honest, I spend way too much time browsing. Time I should be actually doing something, rather than looking at pictures of things I wish I could do.
2. It's easy to get a little depressed and discontent while looking at all the wonderful things other people are doing - knowing full well that it will never be me.
3. People can say anything and claim anything they want on the internet, so don't believe everything you read or see. (One of the pins that always makes me laugh says something like "Make your own laundry soap and save $200 a year!" I don't know about you, but I figured out that I spend about $80 a year on laundry soap, so I don't think making my own will save me $200).

With all that said, get out there and start pinning (wisely, of course) and have some fun with it!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day

Here is a Valentine's Day card that I made for Dan from the kids.
5x7 Folded Card
View the entire collection of cards.
Shutterfly is giving me $10 off my next order for posting it :)

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Farm Photo Session

Recently we had a friend, Andrea Kirkegaard, take some pictures of the kids for us. 
They turned out great! Enjoy!






Now I just need to get some printed and hung up around the house. Thanks again Andrea!!