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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Three clear glasses, two creative hands and a gold permanent Sharpie marker...

This month's Crafty Club was held last week at my friend Janine's house. She found a cool idea on Pinterest. She bought clear, simple glasses for us to decorate with gold and silver Sharpie markers. All seven of us decorated our glasses the way we wanted, and I must say, they turned out pretty amazing! Here are a few of our finished products:

This is my favorite out of the ones that I decorated.

These are my three completed glasses. Which one do you like best?

One of Joy's masterpieces. She used painters tape to mask part of the glass, then colored in between. 

This is another one of Joy's. I really like this one :)

Here are Erin's (sorry it's blurry, she sent it to me via cell phone). She put candles inside, lit them and placed them on her counter. These will look great on display for the holidays.


Janine said that we could bake the glasses in the oven to "set" the Sharpie markings permanently, but I'm a little scared to try it. I'm just going to leave mine alone and hope I never need to wash them! I'm planning to use them as candle holders.

This was a REALLY easy craft for those of you out there looking for something "homemade" to make and give as gifts this holiday season. I highly recommend trying it :)


Have a peaceful Thanksgiving everyone!
Love,
Erin

Monday, November 25, 2013

Feeling mappy

With a new baby arriving sometime in April I've been busy planning Liam's new "big boy room." We're hoping to move him into his new room sometime in the next couple of months. 

The new baby will move right into Liam's current room once it's born (although it will be sleeping in a bassinet in our bedroom for the first couple of months). So I'm not going to change anything with that room. It's owl themed, which is good for a boy or girl, so I don't have to worry about the baby's room at all :)

Liam will be moving into the bedroom that, up until very recently, was Matt's at-home office. We moved Matt's office to a different bedroom (our largest bedroom in the house) which will now be Matt's office + guest bedroom. I'm not sure how happy Matt is about have a guest bed in his office...but we really wanted the kids' bedrooms (the two smallest rooms) closest to our bedroom. Oh my gosh, did I just say kids? Like plural? Like more than one kid? Ahhh!!!!

Anyways...in Liam's future room we need to paint the new window we just had installed, and put a fresh coat of white on all of the trim. And then I get to decorate it :) I'm sure you're wondering what the theme will be in Liam's new room? It's going to be a worldly/map inspired/happy travels kind of theme. 

A bit of my inspiration actually comes from the book All The World, which Liam received as a gift from our friends when he was born. The book is an amazing story about how all things/people/animals are connected and important. I think it's a great story for Liam to grow up with and understand someday. 

I finished a little project for his room last week. I'm sure I saw the idea on Pinterest or in a magazine a while back. I thought it'd be cute to put on a shelf in his new room. 


I bought cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby, which spell out Liam's name. They were less than $2 per letter, so this entire project cost me around $8. 


I searched our home & cars for a variety of maps. I'm sure we won't miss the the maps too much (hello GPS). 

And I already had a squeeze bottle of Tacky Glue here at home.

Over the course of 4 nights (one letter per night) while watching TV, I cut and pasted the map pieces onto the letters. It was kind of a pain in the booty, but it was well worth the outcome.



My favorite thing about making little craft projects like this for Liam is that someday I can say "hey, your mom made that for you when you were a toddler." And it feels good that I didn't just go out and buy already-map-wrapped letters for more $.

And the rest of the maps that I have left over? I can use them for a couple more mappy projects :)

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

We'll treasure every measure

Way back in April I posted a photo of this boring ol' piece of wood, with the intention of making a giant growth chart for Liam:


Well it's been seven months and we FINALLY finished the project! 

As most of you've probably seen (on Pinterest, in stores, on DIY sites online), do-it-yourself wooden growth charts have become quite popular. Here are two kinds I found online and that I fell in love with:

From Headwaters Studios on Etsy

From the Dear Lilly blog

I really liked the layout of the 1st photo -- the way the numbers are centered on the wood and upright. And I really liked the wood & rustic look of the 2nd photo. So I decided to combine the two and make one of my own.

We bought the piece of wood from Home Depot and then Matt lightly sanded it. I used a yardstick and pencil to lightly draw in the inch and feet lines. I bought some inexpensive stencils from Hobby Lobby and found a Min wax stain color in our basement that I liked. I taped the stencils to the board and dabbed stain over them with a cloth. And VOILA, it's done! Super easy and very cheap.

We wanted it in our house where it can be seen, but didn't want it in a main living area, so we decided to hang it in our back mudroom. 


Liam is just shy of 2' 8".

Okay...so Matt and I are going to measure our heights too! But we actually want to see if we'll SHRINK as the years go by :) And you need to know - Matt was wearing shoes when I measured him for this (he cheated), so he's not that much taller than me :)


I'm more of a "measure your kid on the inside of an old door frame" kind of person. My mom has an awesome measuring spot in a doorway in her garage (all of her grand kids height measurements are there). But Matt and I aren't sure if we'll be living in our current home forever, so we thought it'd be best if we can take the growth chart with us wherever the wind may blow us :)