Old Mirror - New Chalkboard!

I came into contact with this old beautiful mirror a little while ago. The only problem? There was no glass in it any longer. It sat in my living room for months just waiting to be re-purposed but I couldn't figure out what to do with it.

 Here is the before:

After much thinking, I painted it with chalkboard paint I had left over in the garage and took off to find the perfect poem. Here is the final result and it was not as hard as you would think! I found a tutorial that suggested keeping the chalkboard damp as you wrote on it and I would suggest it too. It made the writing neater and easier to continue the writing. 

Little Mermaid 5th birthday

Last weekend was my daughter's 5th birthday and we decided to go all out for it. We even had Ariel attending the royal celebration!  I searched all over pinterest for ideas for a classy, fun, beautiful party and here was the outcome!

Royal guests were directed into the clubhouse. I made this sign from scrap wood, some tulle, and flowers with shells glued inside for a beach effect.

Once inside, the royal guests were able to select wands and crowns (for the girls) while the boys were able to pick out an eye patch and sword.

The dessert table was a huge success! I worked on cupcakes with brown sugar on top and chocolate shells all week. The chocolate shells were very easy to make with molding chocolate (bought at a local craft store) and a plastic mold also bought at the craft store. I handmade the seaweed as well. This was probably the easiest part of the party! I found tulle type material at the local fabric store (on clearance even) and cut into long strips. I tried to make the edges uneven for a better seaweed effect. Then I took the strands and sewed a straight line down the middle so it would bunch up. Looked great and got a ton of compliments on it!

The blue cups are actually blue jello with a sweetish fish inside. Also easy to make and were a big hit. Just take blue jello, refrigerate, and right before serving cut a slit in the top and place the fish inside.

 

The marshmallow octopus were not hard to make at all but, were time consuming. Making sure all parts of the marshmallow was covered and making sure the legs were long enough to show after the marshmallow was placed on top. I did these 2 days before and stored in an air tight container.

 

Rock candy made a nice effect to the table and the bonus was I didn't have to do anything to it other than place in a nice cup!

Stained and decorated treasure chest with the party favors in and around. I decided on small sand toys along with a bottlecap necklace for each kid. The girls had princesses to chose from while the boys had pirate necklaces.

Cute homemade card

Found this super cute idea for cards to make from the kids for the grandmas for Mother's day.

Found the idea here
http://theeducatorsspinonit.blogspot.com/2011/09/grandparents-day-card.html

This is the version we made, basically took some scrap paper, and then got the kids to do their handprints, added a photo, and voila, a super cute card the grandmas loved!! I also made extras so I could keep them for myself!!

Magnetic Chalkboard

As I am sure you have all seen the oil drip pan magnetic board is all over Pinterest at the moment. I thought it was a good idea but I am not a fan of the bright silver hanging on a wall. After a lot of thought, I came to the decision to paint the pan with chalkboard paint. What an amazing deal to have a huge magnetic chalkboard for the kids for under $30!

Here are some examples floating around from Pinterest at the moment. You can click the picture and it will take you to the original source.

I set about on my project. Laying the oil drip pan flat on our outdoor table, we painted 3 coats of the chalkboard paint and let dry for 24 hours (it was in the sun also, so I am sure it dried pretty quickly). Afterwards, I brought it inside and hung up with no damage 2 way tape to the wall. I was a little skeptical it would hold but so far so good and it feels pretty sturdy. I kept staring at the board thinking it needed something else. Digging through our stash of paint, I discovered a paint sample 1/2 pint I bought in the oops paint section a while back (it was 50 cents and who can resist that?!). Taping off the edges of the pan with painters tape (I only use the green tape now!) and set about to paint the edges. I am very happy with the finished product, and so are my kids!

Oil Drip Pan - $10 at Walmart
Chalkboard Paint - $15 (for a lot more than I used so this can be used for several other projects)
Painters Tape - $0 (already had)
Paint - $0 (already had)
  TOTAL - $25

Home inspiration

Home inspiration. Okay, so we moved to our home when I was 22 weeks pregnant with our twins and had an almost 2 year old running around. House decorating got put on hold for a little while... well honestly until recently. My living room is the first room you see when you walk in the door and really left something to be desired.

I did what any person would do, and enlisted to help of my facebook friends. Everyone had a suggestion: painting the walls, putting up art work, moving things around. Then one friend asked if she could come over to help me. And that she did! Not only did she come with suggestions but she brought things with her to show me what it would look like. I took her ideas and ran with it! The end product, I am definitely proud of and wanted to show you what under $200 in just a few purchases can really do to a home!

Ikea white shadow frames with matting: $19.99 each. Scrapbooking paper: already on hand (but if you bought it would be about $1 each). Throw pillows from discount store: $40 total. Tree bought 2nd hand for $20. The lamp was being thrown out by its owner since the shade broke. It was a brown color. We changed the color (spray paint) and glued the shade back together and viola!

Hope this inspires you to look around 2nd hand and keep your eyes peeled for some good deals!

Easter Egg garland

Got this idea from pinterest, and it was a quick and easy project. The first time I tried it I used thread, but my son pulled on it and it broke. I re-did it using ribbon to be able to keep it up until Easter! I even put it in my Easter box and plan to bring it out next year! This is a bad pic, but the only one I have.

Here is the original pin 

Easter Bunny Tracks

Okay if you have little ones around and you do the Easter Bunny, now is the time to cover their eyes, send them out of the room, or come back when they are in bed! I am going to show you how to do the infamous bunny tracks in your home.

Things you need:

Pencil

1 piece of thick paper or cardboard

Scissors

Powder (baking soda, corn starch, baking powder, baby powder...)

Optional: Bunny feet template

To make stecil, you need a thicker paper (I use cardstock) as the powder is going to start to weight down the paper after a few tracks.

Trace bunny feet onto the cardstock with pencil. I free handed mine but you can find several templates through google images. Cut out the bunny feet by gently bending paper in half to get a small slit in the foot then cut around in a circle. This is slightly time consuming but, it does not need to be perfect.

Find the location you would like the bunny feet to start at and place your paper/cardboard down on the ground. Sprinkle powder (I used corn starch as it does not have a smell to it) in said location. Carefully lift stencil up in one upwards motion and move to the next hop spot. Continue until you get the the baskets.

Destroy all evidence of stencils and powder anywhere else in the house! Also remember that it is okay if the powder sprinkles out of the stencil a little, a bunny hopping down would cause that anyway!

Beach Glass Mason Jar Vase

Okay so I had these orchid and calla lily stems from vases that were broken. I kept the flowers hoping that one day I could figure out something to do with them. Well I bought a ton of these mason jars for one project that left me with 9 jars in my garage. Here we go....

You need one clear mason jar. These ones I bought at Target and they were fairly inexpensive but hard to find on the shelf, I had to ask two different workers where they were.

Next was some Beach Glass. I bought two bags worth but only used one really. I bought clear and a beige colored one. These you can find a local craft store.

I hot glue gunned the stems to the bottom of the mason jar to prevent moving around while pouring in the beach glass and let dry. Once dry I just poured in the beach glass and viola! A beautiful new piece for a shelf and I get to re-use my flower stems.

Fun Fur Spring Wreath

The beautiful fun fur Spring time wreath! I saw this over and over and over again before I finally decided I needed to do this! The original post was all in another language but here is the link. I bought the wreath and 2 full rolls of fun fur. I was a little disappointed that my local craft store did not have any plain green fun fur but this turned out even more eye catching with the spring color stripes. This wreath turned out awesome, but I need to warn that it takes a very long time to wrap. When I finished up two full rolls and at least 90 minutes later, the fun fur covered about two thirds of the styrofoam wreath! Quick thinking led me to taking some ribbon I already had laying around and alternating pink and purple around the remaining part of the showing green styrofoam.

I had also bought some artificial daisy flowers and some clusters of fake eggs to put around the wreath. Here is what the flowers looked like.

Note, there is wire on the back so you can easily wrap around the wreath. The fun fur does a good job hiding wires.

For the eggs, I just pulled each cluster of 3 apart and stuck the pick into the styrofoam. I do want to also say that I made the cute little flag that is on the original wreath that says, "barefeet welcome". I used a toothpick and wraped a piece of paper around it, cut into a triangle, and wrote the above saying in marker, then wraped scotch tape around it to stick together but also to laminate it. Well, within a month it had faded to this. I suggest using a sharpie if you decide to do this.

Good luck with your wreath! If you decide to do it, it is a lot of work but I think completely worth it! I get tons of compliments when people come over!

Ice Tray Crayons

I've seen this quite a bit on pinterest and have been saving up the broken crayons. I finally found silicone ice trays at Ikea for $1, so though it was the perfect time to try it out!

The hard part was taking the paper off the crayons, my nails got a bit messed up, and I eventually used a kitchen knife to to score the paper and peel it off. I had my son's break up the bigger pieces and put they in the trays. Then we put them in the oven at 200 degrees, it took about 10-15 mins. I checked them after a few mins, and had to add more crayons once it melted a bit. I think I put some non-crayola crayons which we got from a restaurant, and those did not melt as well.

After taking them out of the over, we left them to cool. I used only the star mold, and when I popped out the crayons some of the tips broke off. I should have used the heart molds, which I also bought but I was saving them to make jello jigglers. The kids didn't mind that a few were broken, and enjoyed coloring with them!

Peep Wreath

This inspiration comes from Tried and True's blog. When I set out to do this peep wreath, I thought it would be inexpesive and beautiful. I let my 4 year old help out while my little ones napped. She had a good time until she realized she was not going to be allowed to eat the marshmellow goodness. I did let her pick one to eat though, it was blue if you are curious.

Supplies: 3 packages of peeps, toothpicks, and a styrofoam wreath. I used the green wreath as it was cheaper than the white ones, for some reason.

We started by piercing the peep with a toothpick and trying to stick it in the wreath. This was easier said than done. The toothpick was going through the peep instead of the styrofoam! So quick problem solving lead to me sticking the toothpick in the stryrofoam first and me and my 4 year old then placing the peep ontop. This worked much better for us.

When we finished we were left with a mostly filled peep wreath. There were way too many gaps for me though.

I stared at it for a day before raiding my craft bin and found a bag of feathers. Perfect! A few hot glue gun dots and a pencil to help push the feathers where I wanted them, and I was left with a beautiful, compliment worthy wreath! I just tied the ribbon around the wreath in two places, pushing it between the still soft peeps. Mission accomplished!

And for those wondering.....
It has been up for a month and no I have not had an ant invasian with it (knock on wood!)