Ashley's Wood Quote

I recently made my sister a wood quote for her 26th birthday. I love this quote and thought it would be perfect for her.  After I gave it to her she told me it was a quote she's always loved. Success!

I am very happy with the finished product, hope you love it Ash. :)

Sidewalk Paint

I've had this tutorial for sidewalk paint on my Pinterest for a while and finally decided to try it out with the kids the other day.  The recipe in is simple; 1 cup of water, 1 cup of corn starch, and food coloring.  Of course the best part for Cambria was making the paint. The girl loves to get in the kitchen to make anything.

Ezra liked eating it.

And painting himself.

It quickly became very messy.

All done and covered in paint.

dirty babies

We finished with some naked hose action. The paint washed off them, their clothes and the concrete easily. We'll definitely be doing this activity again! 

Spring At Our House

Casey's 19th

Casey and the babies and one of her gifts I made.

Happy Birthday Casey Simone!

Always remember, Sisters = Soulmates

I love you and am so happy to call you my sister.

And Cambria thanks you for being her favorite... ;)

Egg Carton Gardens

Whenever we buy eggs I think about how we could do something fun and creative with the cartons.

And every time I just throw them in the recycling.  

But not anymore! 

I've decided I'm going to start doing things with these wonderful little egg holders.  

So for our first project we planted seeds.

First we painted them in our jammies. {and yes, my floor often looks like this}

Meticulous painting.

Then we added some glitter because, why not? :)

Later that day we went out back and filled them with soil.

And then we quickly came inside to plant the seeds because the gnats were EATING US ALIVE.

We planted some zinnias, sunflowers, parsley, oregano and carrots.

And now we wait...

Except LOOK what I just found!!

I can't wait to show Cambria in the morning.

Handmade Love

It's Valentine's Day and I love these three people. 

{in addition to many others, and I hope all of you know who you are}

But what I really wanted share with you guys is the gift I made for Kyle. 

It's a verse that we both love from a Mumford and Sons song.  Loooooove that verse. 

I was originally just going to find a scrap piece of wood to write a quote on but was inspired via Pinterest by this and this.  So I then decided I wanted to make the project a little bigger by putting pieces of wood together for a longer quote.  I first headed to Lowes to scope out what they had.  I ended up finding a 12 ft piece of pine for a little over 6 bucks.  I had an extremely nice employee at Lowes help me cut the 12 ft piece into four 3 ft pieces.  I also picked up a long skinny piece and had him cut that into 3 smaller pieces to hold everything together (I'll show you what I mean in a second). 

Can you see the long piece of pine he was cutting?

I got a cheap brush and some stain while at Lowes.  I just picked a random sorta dark color.  I painted the stain on the wood pretty thick, let it sit for about 15 minutes, and then rubbed it off with a rag.  I did this 3 or 4 times on each piece until I achieved the color I wanted. 

The top piece has had 2 coats, the middle piece needs to be whipped with a rag and the last piece is in it's bare form.

Brush it on.

Then rub it off.

The top piece was finished and the last three needed rubbing.

 I forgot to get a picture of the wood before I added letters, but here you can see the color pretty well.  After lots of trial and error, I decided the best way to write the letters was by cutting them out using my Cricut machine and then gluing them on.

I poured glue onto a plate and just dipped the letters in the glue.  I used looooots of glue.

My messy workspace. (a.k.a. our dining room table) 

I then took two of the smaller pieces and glued them to the back of the boards using Gorilla glue.  The pieces on the back serve to hold everything together but also for hanging purposes.

I arranged the larger pieces, turned them over and then glued the thin pieces to the back.  {I plan to add nails for extra reinforcement} 

Strong stuff.

I put books on top of the glued pieces to help it hold while drying.

And when I flipped it back over it looked like this! I am so very pleased with how this project turned out.  I really think it may be my favorite thing I've ever made.  Kyle really likes it too, so that's good. Much better than chocolate or something. :)

I hope you felt love today, whether it was Valentines related or not.

Mr. Turkey

Thanks to some inspiration from Pinterest, Cambria and I made this little guy a few days ago. 

I think he miiiiiiiight be the cutest little turkey I've ever seen.

I'm so glad she begged me to use the "big eyeballs" instead of the small ones, they really make him adorable.  

We now have four of these guys hanging out around our house, lucky us.
Pine cones, felt, eyeballs, and hot glue-simple! 

trick-or-treating dis year

Halloween 2011

Holidays make it easy to compare how things were different in years passed.

Last year we only had one kid outta the womb.

She looked like this...

And we had one kid in da womb.

He looked like this...

This year those kids looked like this...

We had a Tangled, a.k.a. Rapunzel. 

{despite all attempts to convince her to be something other than a princess}

And we had a doggy...

We've been talking about this day forever and it didn't disappoint.

Well, for Cambria anyway.

Ezra was kinda tired and miserable towards then end...
Of course, Cambria only wanted Casey to take her to the doors.

 We had a bit of a mob for just one trick-or-treater.

 Cambria made out with waaaaay too much candy which Kyle and I will probably end up eating.

 And Ezra was a good sport, like always.

 And some of us actually did get to take Cambria up to a few houses. 
{you so can't tell my mom and I are related in this one..}

 And Mimi!

 

And we did get a family pic in front of our home. 

 

I made Cambria's wig using this tutorial. 

It takes waaaay more time that you would think and it's reeeeally hard keeping the yarn from getting...tangled. haha 

Tonight I concluded that watching your own child run from house to house in excitement is lots more fun than being a kid yourself. 

Happy Halloween :)