A Look Back at 2009....

Some memories from the past year, in no particular order. Gingerbread Train
Happy Harvest!
Fairytale Town

Annual Harvest Festival photo (not the best this year!)

DD first (and hopefully only) "self" haircut

Our beautiful Patches, who adopted us. She is the best cat.

State Fair 2009

Family fun mini vacation

Me and Hubby

DS's first MLB game, SF Giants, they lost:(

Fun at Bass Pro Shop (that place is huge!)

Unexpected sweet moments

Trip to local firestation

Trip to Folsom Zoo

Lots and lots of fun at the park!

Lots of water play

First self built (with a bit of help) box car

First two wheeler

DS lost first tooth (and the second, a day later)

Fun trip to kid's science museum

So many fun and happy memories...what will 2010 bring? I hope lots and lots of the same!

Let's See...

10 days and counting 'till Christmas.

House is a B.O.M.B. Majorly. Nothing that can't be cleaned up in a good solid hour, but still unnerving. Why is it that I can't craft, teach and clean in unison?

Have my official "to do" list now. I try to put those off, but now I have one. Mostly gifts I need to finish up, shopping to do. I don't have a ton left, but need to keep track of it so I don't get more overwhelmed than I already am.

Remembering to include the fun stuff too. Today we decorated Patches "house" with wrapping paper and colored pictures. Her house is a over sized box. She tends to hide in it to escape all the hands that are constantly coming at her each day.

We still need to make our gingerbread men, have for a few years now. Our "tradition" so to speak, will make sure to make them GF.

Have my fave holiday movie waiting for me to watch. "Christmas Vacation" is my yearly holiday guilty pleasure, I always watch it while wrapping a big batch of gifts. I won't get to it tonight, but hopefully will tomorrow. It's so much fun.

More to do....it'll get done, if not then that'll be ok too!

Special Touches

How are you using special touches in your Christmas decorating? How are you repurposing things for holiday decorations? Can you see the cake stand, changing table basket, cookie cutters, salt shaker, cookie tin, planter, fruit stand, dip bowl, egg platter, dishtowel and glass platter that I've incorporated?

Living Room Refresh

Ok, so I started pulling out Christmas stuff today to decorate. I posted awhile ago that I was going to redo the living room. So, I did that and now wanted to show you my "after" pictures with the house almost decorated (still need the tree). So, before we start:

• Ignore the hopelessly dirty/fuzzy carpet
• Ignore the hubby reading his Sports Illustrated
• Ignore the fireplace play "house" in the far corner of the first picture. The plus side is it makes a great table for my purse!
• Ignore the stray toys that the kids missed at pick up time tonight
• Ignore the big 'ol pile of toys behind the end table shot, still trying to figure out where to stash those. Ok, so this is the "fireplace" area. I bought this recently, one of three purchases I made when "refreshing" the living room. Don't you love the stockings hanging over it? Good idea Momma!This is my second purchase, my new wing back chair. I *love* it, so very pretty. Love the pattern, love the upholstery tack trim, love the cherry legs, love her curvaceousness. Yes, you'll notice anything that's mine is a she.

The new kids "playroom" that I carved out. This is the front of the living room, by the front door. I didn't necessarily want a play area as soon as you opened the door, but that was the best way to configure it. The dresser in the back corner was my last purchase, going to repaint it black this summer. It has beautiful antiqued copper knobs.

The end table. Have my basket of library books on the bottom, right across from my wing back chair for reading. Love the little area for displays, remotes, coffee.

Entertainment center. I don't like the computer on top, but I don't want to move it by myself so for now it stays. Folding screen hides our unused wall heater.

The little end table by the chair is just hangin out right now until I figure out a new place for it.

All in all, happy with the outcome. I still am determined to make a removable cover of some kind for that horrible eyesore of a swamp cooler smack dab in the middle of the wall. I'm thinking wall art of some kind. A project someday...

Picturepalooza!

So, as most parents I have an overabundance of photos of the kidlets. Yes, I do scrapbook. Even then, I don't put every picture I take in my books so I have extras. Most of those extras go to the extended family.

Usually I just make mini albums with my extra pics for family gifts, but this year I'm trying to be a little more creative. I scrounged around my garage/craft studio and came up with some materials. I found some inspiration from a few websites, and poof...the following creations came to life.

Bottlecap Magnets and Push Pins

I used my 1" circle punch and cut out pics and then mod podged them into new bottlecaps. These turned out super cute. Pics where two out of the three kids are looking at the camera make awesome candidates for these bottlecap beauties.

Just hot glue either a magnet or a thumbtack to the backside of your bottlecap and your all set!

Scrabble Photo Easels

Someone gave me the pieces to a Scrabble game and I held onto them, knowing I'd think of something. I painted the wooden tile trays blue using acrylic paint, then hot glued the tiles to the tray, leaving a slight space behind for the photo.

I then finished off the front with some matching ribbon remnants I had and glued two buttons on either end.
I hot glued two tiles to the top backside of the tray, to act as a support for the photo. Otherwise the picture sat in the tray at a weird angle.

Photo Jars
Pint sized Mason jars, new. Took a family pic, backed it with cardstock and scrapbook paper. Slipped it inside the jar, instant photo jar!

Took some vintage handpainted wooden ornaments and hot glued them to the inside bottom of the jar, just to give it some extra cuteness.

Cut a circle of fabric, covered the top of the jar and then embelished with some grosgrain ribbon, rick rack and another ornament.

I decided to screw the ring on over the fabric, thought it looked cuter that way. That's it, super simple. Could also tweak this to use regular glass jars (think old mayo or relish jars).

Photo Wreath

Took a foam wreath from the dollar store and hot glued cardstock circles that had photos mounted on them. I made this pretty simple, next time I'll use some scrapbook paper too. Black and white photos would look awesome in this project!

It was a 10" wreath (I'm pretty sure), I used 9 photos in all. Three different colors of cardstock backers, rotating the colors.
I used a scrap of red grosgrain ribbon and affixed it to the back of my wreath with two "t' pins.

I then embelished the wreath with ribbon bows, ornaments and some mini bells. This would be a great project to use up random odds and ends of craft materials that you have lying around.

I'm linking up my beauties to Kimba's DIY Tuesday: http://asoftplace.net/

Get crackin' and make some for the Grandparents for Christmas, they'd love them!

Linking up to the following,

Button Broaches

Making button broaches with some of the many extra buttons I have lying around the house. My MIL gave me a huge bag of them awhile ago, so sweet of her! Anyways, I've used them for several projects but many of them are the "shank" style button and I hadn't figured out what to do with them. I took the buttons and layered them, putting the shank style ones mostly on top to fill in spots between. I think they turned out really cute, they are going to be gifts for many in the family this year. I didn't have the actual pin backs, so I just used over sized safety pins. I then used decorative scissors to cut black card stock for them and finished up the backs with printable labels I made on the computer. I'm excited to give them, I think they'll be well received.