Decorating 101: Girls room

I love to decorate.  I don't think of myself as a great decorator, but I do try and it is fun to try things, even if they don't always turn out quite like I would have liked.  It has been especially challenging to decorating on a budget, (like a lot of us, I know).  I have really enjoyed Pinterest (also like a lot of us do), and have gotten some great ideas, which I will be posting when I get done with those projects, but for now I hope you'll enjoy what I did for my Elsa's wall by her bed. 

 When Elsa came home from school and saw what I did to her room, she LOVED it!  

I love it when that happens

If you would like the Wallflower in vinyl you can order it from my shop.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

I know the day is almost over, but I could not let this day go by without wishing everyone a Happy Valentine's Day. 

This morning my kids were so excited to see what treats were left for them today in their mailbox's.  We have a new tradition in our home for V-day.  I decorated these cute little mailbox's which I got at Target for $1.  I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the vinyl.  They turned out pretty cute and my kids have been enjoying looking in them everyday to see what treat they got.  Today was a bunch of little treats from their grandparents. 

 Then the kids got ready for school and I did the girls hair.  Yes, I had time to do their hair cute.  This is how I did it.

 Triple hearts

Braided heart

Then, while they were at school I made these little sweetie's.  I got the recipe from kraftfoods.com 

Let me just say that they were yummy!  It was a treat for the kids to come home to. 

 Cheesecake bites

These were from my visiting teachers.  (In my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, we have (and are) visiting teachers, who are assigned to 1 to 3 women of the church, we go and visit with them at least once a month and bring a little lesson/treat.)  We also make lasting relationships with some of these women.  It's a fun organization.

Anyway, that was my Valentine's day so far.  How was yours?  Now I'm going to make a nice dinner for my husband.  Have a great day!

Remember, if you want any vinyl cut and don't have a way to do it.  I take custom orders.  Just email me or go to my Etsy shop and convo me.

Fun Valentine's decorations

Well, Christmas came and went.  We had a wonderful holiday season and I hope you all did too.  It has been a while since I've blogged and I know, I'm a slacker.  I always have good intentions to do an update, but life gets in the way.  Anyway, so here I am....finally updating...YEAH!


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Today I'm going to show you what I've done lately.  As you know, Valentine's day is around the corner and I have had so much fun making a few decorations with my Silhouette.  It's such a fun little machine!  I guess I actually have only done one thing with it, but I have a whole bunch of ideas in my head and my sister and I are working on something for our kids and husbands.  So as I do them I will post them for you all to see.  The first thing I've done are these cute vinyl cuts.  I had this triple framed mirror by my door, which I love, but I felt it needed something added to it.  So I thought I would add some fun little vinyl to it for every holiday.  (It comes off really easy after the holiday's.)  This is what my mirror looks like and by the way, sorry for the picture quality it is tricky taking pictures of a mirror without getting yourself in the picture. 

I offer the vinyl in my shop!

What  Valentine things have you done lately?

Decorating for Christmas

The last couple weeks I've been busy getting my house ready for Christmas.  I love this time of year!  It has been so fun to do new things to decorate.  Like for example, last year for my birthday my sister, Hannah from Lily and Thistle, gave me a Silhouette.  Let me just say that I've had quite a bit of fun with it through out the year, but not as much fun as I've had this holiday season.  I've done a lot with it.  Here are just some of the projects...

Christmas countdown 

Want to know how I made this....

 I used a pizza pan, cut the vinyl letters and images out, and stuck them down.  Then I printed these cute little markers, to mark the days as we count down to Christmas, onto magnet sheets.  I only need one but couldn't decide which one I liked best, so I printed them all. 

 Next is my entry way decor...

I LOVE IT!

 The trees I cut with my Silhouette and put them together.  The holly berries I got at the dollar store.  The picture is my favorite.  I saw it on pinterest and recreated it in my Silhouette software (which is basically photo shop).  

I love my new entry way for Christmas...so simple!  I might put something else in it, but if I don't get around to doing anything, I think it looks just fine the way it is.  What do you think?

Daily Menu Board

This is just a fun little project I did one day.  I got the platter at the dollar store, sprayed chalkboard paint on it and slapped on the vinyl letters (carefully, of course), and voila, a daily menu board.  My kids love it and so do I because they're not always asking me what's for dinner, lunch, etc.  

If you would like to do this but don't have a Silhouette or cricut, or know anyone that does, then you can go to my shop and purchase the vinyl.  It would make a great gift don't you think?!  You don't have to use a platter, but I think it kind of works in the kitchen.  Don't you?

Well, that's all for today.  Come back soon for more ideas for gifts.  I'm working on some now and am pretty excited about them. 

Goodies for the holidays

Hello everyone!  Here are some of the things I have been working on lately.  

 This year we needed a new treat plate to set out for Santa.  So I got out my trusty Silhouette and cut some letters, this cute little tree and stars and now we have a cute plate for Santa's treats.

I needed more Thanksgiving decorations, so I made this.

This plate is meant as a decoration only, as it's made with vinyl, and I don't know how I would wash it with out taking the vinyl off.

 It looks pretty cute on our piano though 

and the candy corn is for all we are thankful for......the kids loved that!

 These were fun to create.

I saw some like these online somewhere and thought I could make those.

 Do you want to know how to make these cuties.....

 1.  Cut your ribbon (grosgrain) in the shape of petals and heat seal the edges.  

To heat seal; just lightly run a lighter or flame around edges until they are sealed.  

Careful not to burn them.

2.  Take a needle and thread and sew along the bottom of each pedal.

 3.  When you sew all of the bottoms, connect to the first pedal and sew it up really well.

 Next, you end up with poinsetta's like these.

 Now you can decorate them however you like and put them on a ribbon covered clip or a pin for the brooch.

Have fun making these and have a great holiday season 

and stay tuned for some other things I'm working on!

F.H.E.; Journal writing

Before I start my post, I'd like to apologize for not being very good lately at keeping my blog.  Since the last post we have had many things happen (all good).  First of all, we traveled, by car, to San Antonio, Texas.  (It's about a 23 hour drive, ugg!) We went there to visit my husbands family who live there.  His younger sister, Danielle and her sweet family just welcomed a new little one and we went to attend the blessing of their baby girl and also to party hard at their little boy's 5th birthday party.  Good times were had by all.
Then, when we got back home from that, there was Halloween and a 4 day weekend for the kids.  We had a good Halloween /Nevada day.  The kids costumes were pretty cute and creative if I must say.  Our oldest, Dallin was Link....from Zelda.  Our next boy, Calvin was a guy from one of his video games, Raze...kinda like Halo (if you know what that is, if not count yourself lucky. Ha!)  Our next one, Elsa was Kit Kittredge dressed in her hobo clothes.  Elsa has read all of Kit's books and loves her.  Our youngest, Abby wanted to be a barbie and we got a wig for her, then one day out of the blue she changed her mind.....again.  (She had been doing that quite often) and wanted to be a girl spider.  I thought that would be fun to create and I hadn't gotten too far on her barbie costume, so I made a spider costume and a couple big bows for her hair.  She was a spider for her cousins birthday/halloween party in Texas, but then for the actual holiday she went back to wanting to be a barbie.  So since we already had the wig, and a dress-up carousel with a LOT of dress-ups, I let her change her mind.  After all it does only come around once a year, right?!  Well, October was great, but now it's time to start getting ready for Thanksgiving and then CHRISTMAS!  I love this time of year!

Tonight we had our Family home evening.  For those of you who don't know what that is.  It is something we do in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints every Monday.  We get together and have a little lesson about different things pertaining to the Gospel of Jesus Christ such as loving one another, service, prayer, paying tithing, etc.  It's something our leaders have told us to do to make our families closer together and to teach our child how to make good choices and be good people.  Anyway, tonight I did the lesson (we rotate responsibilities) and I have been wanting to get my children to start writing in their journals, since they are getting old enough to start doing that.  (The oldest is 12, then 11(on Wed.), then 8 and finally 6 years old).  So I did a lesson on journal writing and how God commanded the prophets of old to keep a record so that we could have them to read and learn from. (Which are the Bible and Book of Mormon.)  Then I applied that to us today and explained that we need to keep a record for our children and grandchildren and so on. 
I remember when I was young and I had to write in my journal.  Sometimes I just didn't know what to write about and I now that I am a mother I knew how my kids felt when I told them they needed to start writing in their journals.  So to make it easy for them, I went to the dollar store and got four tin boxes.  Then got online and googled "journal prompts" and a whole bunch came up.  So I printed off a few and I let the kids decorate their own "Journal Jars".  Elsa, my 8 year old was especially excited, because this is what she loves to do.  She loves to write stories and decorate things.  Abby loved making hers also.  The boys made theirs but they weren't too excited about it.  (They're "pre-teens")  Anyway, here is how they turned out.

 The snowflakes were already on them. 

 She wrote, like, five journal entry's and of course drew pictures

 I used my Silhouette to make the decal's and words...I love that thing!

Full of journal prompts....now they have no excuse to not write in their journals, right?

So what have you done with your kids to help them create good habits?