diy ripped jeans

So, my birthday was a few weeks ago.  I don't get to go shopping very often, even though I LOVE clothes and fashion.  The two times I DO get to shop are after my birthday and after Christmas.  But money doesn't go very far these days and, after spending all of my birthday money, there were still more things I wanted/needed.  I would have liked to get some new jeans, for example.  

I dug through my clothes and decided to give these old F21 jeans a makeover.  It's pretty subtle, but I think it's just what the doctor ordered.  I used a pair of fabric scissors, a safety pin (or you could use a needle), and some tweezers for the holes.  And I used a cheese grater, sandpaper, and foot scrubber to try and distress the thighs (the foot scrubber worked best but if you don't have that, the other two will do).

I chose these jeans because they were cheap and I don't wear them very often (I have a different pair of dark skinnies that I wear most of the time) so I knew it wouldn't matter if the whole project went wrong and I had to throw them away.

                                      BEFORE:                                                   AFTER:

I MAY do a little more distressing later today to give it more of a drastic change but for now, I like them.  If you do some of your own, send a picture (I'm talking to you Tare.  You're the only one who reads this blog).           ; )

{Here's a good tutorial for getting that ripped jeans look}

and the music is one of me and my husband's favorite bands, The xx!

I love you because...

When I saw this on Pinterest I knew I had to have it! 

I needed a simple version like this for our bedroom with the hope that it wouldn't look too cheesy,

so I just made my own and bought a frame on clearance at Micheal's:

We've had this hanging on our bedroom wall for a month now and it has been so much fun!

We write on it secretly, when no one is looking :)

I have found myself looking forward to seeing what my husband writes about me, and when I notice that it has changed it is such a fun little pick me up during the day. It has helped me look for the good and wonderful things about my husband rather than focusing on the negative.

I'm thinking I want to have one in each of my kid's room too.
What a fun way to let each person know you've thought about them and you notice how special they are!

As mentioned, I originally saw this on Pinterest which led me to Kiki Creates. Check out her cute ideas! There are a lot of different ways you could do this to make it work for your family like putting it on your refrigerator, in the playroom, inside closets (in case boys think its too cheesy, but you know they would secretly love it).

You can visit her etsy shop for more colorful versions.

If you're looking for a more simple design, you can print my plain version here!
{Go 'File' to 'Print' or just click the printer icon in the upper left corner}
It will fit in an 8x8 square frame. Simply place the paper behind the glass and use dry erase or window markers to write.

Art Party: Part I

We celebrated Griff's 5th birthday last Saturday. I can't tell you how excited I was! He hasn't really ever had a BIG celebration. Our poor little middle child always gets the short end of the stick, so I REALLY wanted to do something to show him he's loved and to celebrate him, because he's a very special addition to our family.

When I think about Griffin, I think. . . CANDY, SUGAR, COLOR, ART. . . .so I decided on an 'art party', with lots and lots of color. It's a regular thing for me to be asked by Griff, if we can PLEASE paint the walls in the house with rainbow colors, so I worked hard to make the house a big rainbow.

Like I mentioned before, playing hostess stresses me out, so I decided to keep it small. We invited Sarah and her family! Sarah's son, Jack, is just one month older than Griff and he's one of Griff's favorite people in the whole world.

Friday night, after the boys went to sleep, I put twenty colorful balloons in their little room. I also put a note and some candy in their mailboxes.

this is after he woke up in the morning:

I worked all night long after they went to bed (Brad was on a camping trip with the scouts that night and was away at work the two days before that, so this was pretty much all up to me to get it done). We bought a big pack of colorful paper at the party store and I went to town making decorations with it- party hats, dot garlands, zig zag streamers, and paper strip garlands. There was SO. MUCH. MORE I had in store, but obviously I didn't have much time so a lot went undone, and I was fine with that. My main goal (aside from making the birthday boy happy) was to keep myself from stressing out. The day couldn't have turned out more perfectly.

thanks to eric, for sending me some of the pics from his phone

From the moment he woke up, Griffy was in such a good mood. He's not used to getting so much attention. : )

Wish I could say the same for his sis.

Another thing Griffy likes, is to help mama do some baking (see this post). In the morning I had him help me make these mini chocolate cakes. He had fun pouring everything in and licking the spoons afterwards.

After our guests arrived, we went out for pizza, then came home and each kid got to decorate their own mini cake and scoop of ice cream.

It seriously took him a good 4 minutes to blow the candles out. This boy cracks me up.

I used these little paper bowls left over from some Valentine's treats, to hold mini m&ms and regular-sized m&ms for decorating their desserts. We also had big and small gum balls and sprinkles in every color of the rainbow. I found the tiny colorful spoons at Zurchers.

Total sugar overload, but I didn't hear anyone complaining! I had the kids watch as I poured 7up into the cups and they changed different colors.

We took some time decorating and eating and then headed outside for some art! This is far too long already, so I'll tell you about the rest in another post.

credits:

balloons in the room- crafty moods

party hats- oh, happy day

zig zag accordian streamers- oh! party

chocolate cakes- a little bit of everything

strawberry cream cheese frosting- glorious treats

paper strip garland- minieco

magic color-changing drinks- petitchef

Paper Snowflakes

I love the whimsical touch it can add to a home, to have lots of homemade paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, but sometimes it's hard to know just how to make them.

I thought I'd share my FAVORITE tutorials:

Last year we used this one, from 'Here's Looking at Me Kid', and made garlands strung in rows, from the ceiling. SO easy, and they turn out beautifully. We went right back to the same tutorial again this year, but tried using parchment paper, cut into squares, and hung them over the table, and over the old window on the bookshelf. I love them even more!

This is the first time we used this tutorial, from 'Kerli and Animals' (which I also mentioned in this post), and I thought it was ALSO very user friendly. You don't even have to start with a square. We used regular printer paper for these (haven't hung these ones yet but I'll post a pic when we do).

I've seen a couple of tutorials out there, that I don't understand, so I hope this helps someone searching for something a bit easier.

Homemade Christmas

I really wanted to add more COLOR to our home this Christmas. Our color scheme is usually red, gold, and creme, but I figured, if we were changing the tree, why not change everything?

Some colorful Christmas pictures that inspired me:

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The problem is, it's kind of hard to just change it all on a whim, when you have a limited budget and none of your old decorations match, so I did my best. Over the next few years, we'll be able to accumulate more color. (Knowing me though, I'll probably want to switch to an all white color scheme by then.)

So anyway, I brought some color into our home, by making this ornament garland I saw on Pinterest.

Since I was going to need a lot of ornaments, I bought the cheapest ones I could find, from Wal-Mart. They came in sets of 8, for $2.50. AND I used a few of our old red ones, too.

I would have liked to use ribbon to hang them, but I prefer to keep the spending to a minimum, and I didn't have any ribbon on hand, so I used twine. It shows in a couple of places, which bothers me to no end, but I finally had to settle.

We hung it by our table.

(I decided to just leave the balloons up, from Penelope's birthday. That way, we get a little more use out of them.)

I made the wreath from a tutorial on Good Knits

tiny winter scenes

Every Christmas season, I see these cute little winter scenes in mason jars, and I've always want to make some of my own.

I picked up three bottlebrush trees at Wal-Mart. I soaked them in hot water and bleach for half an hour, like I had seen on YouTube. Nothing happened, so I tried again, with more bleach.

Still nothin'.

Oh well. No white trees for me.

I cleaned them, sprayed them with 'Snow' (I got it at Roberts but I'm pretty sure you can get it at Hobby Lobby and probably any other craft store), and sprinkled them with Martha Stewart glitter.

After they dried, I put some sugar in the bottom of some mason jars, and put the trees in the 'snow'.

I wanted to find a tiny little reindeer to put with one of the trees but never found one. Maybe next year.

I love the simplicity of my little winter scenes. They add a nice touch to our table without being 'too much'.

It's {FINALLY} beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I feel like we kind of got a later start on decorating than we usually do. We've just been behind this year. We had family in town for Thanksgiving and everything else took a back seat. It took me awhile to get going again. It's starting to look like we're not even going to get Christmas cards out! : (

But the house is looking festive at last, and that makes me happy! We'll start with the tree.

Usually our tree looks like this:

I LOVE it! It's HUGE, and FULL, and BEAUTIFUL!!

But this year we wanted something different. With a curious little one year old running around, we didn't want the big tree falling on her and we didn't want her to break the ornaments. We came to the conclusion that we needed a smaller, more sparse, simply decorated, Christmas tree! It's funny how you get so used to the 'norm'. I almost felt nervous going to the tree lot to look at SMALL trees! Like I wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. It's just a tree, I know, but I wanted it to feel like Christmas and it usually DOES. . . .with our BIG tree. So I got a little nervous.

But when we got this gem home, we all fell in love with our humble little tree. It's just cute. Not overbearing.

Hubba built a little table for it to sit on, and I got some new, cheaper ornaments in the next few days, while he was at work.

I used this tutorial for the snowflakes. (If you're going to make these, DON'T FORGET her note in the beginning of the pattern! The dc are actually sc!! I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong at first.)

I also got some tinsel garlands and a few small ornaments from Wal-Mart. I added some candy canes and my 'peace sign', and she was complete.

The boys have told me on numerous occasions, that this is the BEST tree and that it's so much prettier than any we've ever had. You can imagine, from what I told you before, (about my self-esteem hinging on my children's acceptance), that I was beaming after hearing that. They were so excited to show daddy the decorated tree, when he came home from work in the morning.

This cotton ball Christmas window is something I saw on pinterest and LOVED the idea of 'snow' around my tree, so we strung up some cotton balls and craft pom poms from the ceiling with thread. I LOVE!!

tomorrow: tiny Christmas scenes, an ornament garland, and a crocheted wreath

Birthday girl

As I mentioned before, we just celebrated our teeny little girl's one year birthday. I love this girly so much and we had fun celebrating with her. Some details:

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1. The 'party' table. We don't do big parties for our kids, with all of OUR friends. Just don't see the point. So it was just the five of us, but I always love to make it special, with some decorations and a cake. (Balloons, tapered candles, polka dot napkins, and small paper plates from Zurchers! Who knew they had such cute party supplies there? I also got some stripey straws there.)

2. Flower Garland. I just bought a bunch of artificial flowers from Wal-Mart. I formed the flowers into a garland and connected them to each other using flower wire (don't know if that's the correct term. I got it in the flower section at Hobby Lobby). Then I cut off any long stems that were sticking out and, voila! A simple way to add some color to the party decor.

3. Chocolate cake with Salted Caramel Frosting. My frosting was too runny but the cake was still delicious. (Note: We don't drink coffee so I replaced that with an equal amount of water and a teaspoon or so of cardamom.) Remember my cake stand?

4. I made Penelope a chevron blanket, from this pattern. There's a similar one for FREE, here.

5. Presents.

6. Our antique store find. Remember this post? Also, tissue paper and tulle flower tutorial here.

7. & 8. Birthday girl, enjoying her cake.

DIY Little Girl Leggings

Oh. My. Goodness!!! I love these! I always thought I could use old shirts to make leggings for my girls, but I tend to doubt myself until someone else tells me it really is possible. While perusing Made quite a while back I found this tutorial and I was so excited!

I made some cute little green and white striped capri leggings for Addie back in the spring. She wore them almost everyday throughout the summer!

So, when I found a red and white striped shirt at the thrift store (with the perfect amount of stretch!) I knew my girls just had to have some candy cane leggings for the holiday season!

I really wanted to make a pair for both of my girls so I got a little creative. I made Addie a pair of pants from the body of the shirt, and I used the sleeves to make a pair for Ellie. I wouldn't recommend doing that, but it all worked out in the end. They love their new pants! Well, Ellie doesn't really care, but Addie wanted to wear hers for a week straight. I had to convince her to let me wash them.