Growth chart

We've lived in 7 houses/appartments in our 10 years of marrage, and 9 of those we've had kids, I always wanted to mark up the back of our pantry door with their hight and age but what would the point of that be? so after all this time I saw this on pinterest and fell in love! So I immediatly made one.

 I just bought a 1x4x6 (it would be cuter if it was like a 1x6x6, but I have this little corner wall in our kitchen were I wanted to hang it), stained it, marked the inches and drew on some numbers! I started at 6 inches so it would be able to be hung and so my tall husband could mark his hight. 

Green cleaning

I've been really trying to get my family healthy with eliminating dyes and fructose and hydrogenated oils, all that good stuff. Then while I was cleaning I realized all the crap I'm sending around in the air in my house! I love to bleach the heck out of my bathrooms and that probably isn't good for us to breath in. So I did a little research and made this cleaner 

1/2 water, 1/2 vinegar 

cut up oranges or any other citrus

fill a jar about 1/2-3/4 full with your citrus then add your vinegar and water. 

Seal the jar and let it sit for about 2-3 weeks.

There was a ton of pulp in it so i strained that all out while poring it in the spray bottle. 

I was a little unsure about the whole thing, could it really clean as well as my trusty 409 and bleach? 

It was amazing! I started with cleaning my kitchen with it and WOW it was great, left no residue and cleaned my stove like crazy! highly recommend making this! 

Pines

I love Christmas decorations and this one turned out really cute...

I had this wooden box that you could totally make, so easy. filled it with some sprigs of pine from trimming our tree. Put some mason jars in with candles and wa-la! it was the perfect center piece for our Christmas Eve dinner.

fun kid gifts

So I'm a huge dork and always make my kids give thankyou's and card for people like teachers, coaches, friends, whoever deserves it! they hate when we do this but it always ends up being so cute! 

This one was for the swim coach, it was the end of the season and it was almost Thanksgiving so we made a turkey, duh! 

1st you make your kid find out their favorite candy bar. We then wrapped it in construction paper and cut out a head, feathers and feet. I didn't ask him to write things on the feathers, that was all his own and I was so proud of him! it was really cute like "you're a way better coach than coach Scott" and "Thanks for getting in the water that once". He's a pretty goofy kid. 

This is another one we did for all our little neighborhood friends for Christmas, SNOWMEN! It was a fun family activity, we made a little assembly line, one wrapped Hershey bars in white paper, the next glued on black dots for coal eyes and mouths, the next drew a carrot nose then we tied a scarf. They were really cute! 

Halloween Block Characters

It's been awhile since I posted on this blog, but I thought I'd share a really easy craft my sister and I made for Halloween.  We got the idea from this blog, but made a few adjustments.  Here's what you need:

• 6" wooden blocks (we cut down 2 x 4's)
• Wooden knobs (found at the craft store)
• Craft paint in sour apple green, orange, gray and white plus paint brushes
• Craft foam sheets in red and black
• Ribbon (for the witch's hat)
• Floral wire (for the witch's hair the pumpkins stem)
• Permanent marker
• Hot glue gun
• An old white t-shirt for the mummy

It's pretty easy to tell what we did just by looking at the pictures, but I'll give the details anyway. We first painted our blocks.  Then as they dried we cut out the foam for the different characters (the witch, vampire and Frankenstein).  Once the paint dried we hot glued the foam on.  We also cut the t-shirt into inch wide strips and wrapped our mummy block.  Next, we drew on the faces of each character with a permanent marker, which we found a lot easier to handle than a paint pen.  Then we added little accessories like Frankenstein's knobs, the pumpkins stem and the witch's hair (which we twisted around a pencil to get it to be curly.)  Also, for the witch's nose, we paint a triangular piece of foam green and hot glued it on. I thought they turned out really cute.  Even though it took a little bit of time, it was a pretty simple craft.

Olympic Ribbons

My family does cowboy camp every summer for our family reunion. Since this summer is the Olympics we're going to have our own little cowboy Olympics! I saw these little ribbons on pinterest (my favorite place)  and I'm going to attach a little treat to them and write what they won! 

They're super easy to make and you could do any colors/patterns.

here's a link for the how to... RIBBON HOW TO

Blinging up your cheap curtains

Okay so blinging might not be the right word for what I did, there are no rhinestones or glitter on my curtains (that would not be cute), but I did take some cheap 10 dollar Target curtains and jazz them up a bit and this is how I did it:
After looking at way more expensive curtain options for my very NON-permanent living space I realized that just some cheapo plain Jane curtains at Target would suffice and be the most practical option for us at this time.  The problem is, I can't ever leave really plain things alone, I always have the desire to jazz them up.  So I decided to buy some fabric that matched my living room and do some jazzing.

1) I cut a strip of fabric wide enough and long enough to cover the bottom of each panel (I think I purchased 3/4 of a yard and that was plenty to cover the bottom of my curtains).

2) I then folded the top end of the fabric under to give it a more finished edge and pinned and then with the other edges I tucked them around the edges of the curtains and pinned.

3) I then sewed about a quarter of an inch around the entire parameter of the fabric to secure it to the curtain and then ironed it to give it a nice finished touch.

4) And then I was done.  Easy as pie I tell you... actually I dare say it was easier than pie!