Utah Roots

 I'm still here....but here is a little "personal post" about my real life and what we have been up to around here.  We took our kids to Utah...where I grew up, and where I met my husband. It was a really fun trip! (I apologize to all my Utah friends- I would have loved to see you!) We were there for family events, and our time was limited.  We visited cousins, ate at fun restaurants, and had lots of fun family events. We had sun, and snow- which being from Arizona, we were not prepared for. Here are a few pics of the fun...

 My boys loved seeing BYU in real life. They really loved the book store- but all they wanted to do was look at books! Today they picked going to the library over the park. I may be raising a bunch of nerds.....let's hope they stay cute. and smart. and rich someday. ha ha.

 This is my 80 year old grandma. I love her. I started running marathons with her when I was 19. She has been an inspiration to me in so many ways. She lost her sweetheart of over 50 years, about 3 years ago. She recently met someone, and they got married. She is so happy, and we are so happy for her. Being that she runs marathons, I'm sure she has another 20 years...and who wants to be alone for that long? She is the kind of woman everyone wants to know.

My favorite mountain. I climbed this mountain numerous times as a kid and young adult. I learned many things from those long climbs, and I love that mountain.

Of course we had an Easter Egg Hunt with the cousins, and I went to all my favorite FABRIC stores. Oh yes I did. Let's just say I have a lot of sewing to do.

Hope you had a Happy Easter! I'm excited to share some fun posts soon....{I couldn't help but sew something on our little trip.}

Cardboard Tube Bunnies {by kids}

Last year I made these Easter Bunnies from cardboard tubes. Let's face it- no kids helped me create those-because if they did, they would not look like those . If kids helped me, I would get these:

 These are still very cute, but these are the kid-friendly version.
First I cut the tubes in a bunny shape, so that it was all one piece-ears and all.
Next the children painted them- expressing themselves-- with lots of colors. (ha ha) I used washable paint.
And last- I used tacky glue to attach googly eyes, a button nose, and a fuzzy ball tail, and I used a sharpie for the whiskers.

Pretty cute. And the best part- it was basically free- and the children loved and treasured their creation!

Thanks for reading! Happy Spring!

Leprechaun Craft: Dudes from Cardboard Tubes

Don't be jealous that I stayed up late tonight making leprechaun dudes from toilet paper cardboard tubes. Seriously, I know it is really cool, that I now how 3 more dudes that think I am "da' bomb", but you can have some too. tee hee-

 So I know this blog is turning into the "one holiday post a month..." and I am sorry-{sigh}. But when I get to my 62 sewing projects, you will be happy and lucky that you stuck with me. Now on with the lucky dudes... I have had this idea in my head for weeks, and since St. Patty's Day is around the corner, I had to get it out of my head.  
Leprechaun Dudes from Cardboard Tubes:
You need:
cardboard tubes
paint
scissors
sharpie markers
button or scrap paper
Cut cardboard tubes to make a hat shape on the top half by cutting out the back part of the tube.  Paint the hat part and the back part that won't show green. I painted the face a cream color, and the crazy red orange hair by making random lines.
I used sharpies that were the same color as the paint I used, to cover my paint mistakes and do some outlining. I had some of that tape with dots on it, that I put over the black band part -which you could draw on with a sharpie or paint on, and glued a yellow button on top. That is it. I think kids would have fun with this craft. If you have little ones- I would cut out the shape of the leprechaun first, then they can paint it.

And I finally have a St. Patrick's Day decoration. ha ha ha. OK not really, but I have 3 more dudes in my house.

Thanks for reading! Happy March!

Summer Table Runner {w/ Riley Blake's Sugar-n-Spice Fabrics}

I love this fabric collection from Riley Blake. It is called Sugar-n-Spice. Being that I have all boys, I really couldn't use it to make something for them. :)

 So...I made a little table runner from it. I used most of the turquoise and red fabrics, along with some fabrics I already had on hand.

I also used some jumbo ric-rac.

I really liked the size of this table runner, so I made this one almost the same size.

 I cut my fabrics about 15 inches long, and 4-5 inches wide. I have a round pedestal table so this size works well for me. I cut about 12 pieces for the table runner. I simply sewed these together to make one long strip of fabric. I added a light weight batting, and  fabric for the back. I sewed right sides together, left one end open, flipped it, pressed it, and top stitched it. That's it. I really like the bright colors in this collection.

Thanks for reading! Happy Summer!

Easy Peasy Fabric Flowers {turn them into magnets or something else}

 Do I dare join in on the biggest fabric flower trend ever? Well I did-in my own way. I might even make a wreath using fabric flowers. {gasp!! everyone is doing it...} For preschool, we made our moms a cute fabric flower pin. At least I thought they were cute! I also made some into magnets (shown above) which I like even better. There are so many things you can do with fabric flowers besides put them in your hair...(which most of the time I am not going to do because I am OLD....ha ha- but occasionally I give in and wear one.)
Below are the ones the preschoolers made for their moms last week. I gave them 4 circles that were 4 different sizes, and they had to put them in order from largest to smallest. Then I hot glued them. They picked out their own button. I already had pins glued on little pieces of felt for the back.

 IF you want to make the magnets, which is my favorite, I used a small wooden square from the craft store- you can buy bags of wooden cut out shapes for a few dollars- get the lightest ones you can- and then hot glue a round button magnet to the back. These can also be purchased at the craft store, or at Walmart in the craft section. Everything is hot glued together.

What else can you do with fabric flowers like these?

These truly are easy peasy. There are so many great fabric flowers out  there- I can't even begin to list them! If you have a good one -on your blog or a blog you have found- please list and share!

THIS POST on Tatertots and Jello had lots of good ideas for fabric and paper flowers! Jen always finds the best ideas out there in the ever so huge and amazingly creative world of blogs!

Have fun!

Spring Sign Tutorial {using juice can lids}

In case you missed the tutorial at Creation Corner, here it is! Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter weekend!
Enjoy!

Today I'm going to show you how to reuse those frozen juice can lids to make something fun and springy! Earth Day is this month, and this project is all about recycling and using up materials that you might already have on hand.

Supplies:

 6 Juice Lids from frozen juice cans

Fabric Scraps

Scrapbook paper scraps

Small piece of twine

A board {I recycled a wooden sign I had that I wasn't using by painting it}

Spray Paint

Chipboard lettering, vinyl letters or stickers will work too

Hot Glue/ glue gun

Modge Podge (but glue will work)

Scissors

 Spray paint your juice can lids and piece of wood. The spray paint does not stick really well to the juice can lids, but you only need it on the edges. Let dry for a few hours.( If you don't have a board, you could use a long piece of fabric, such as burlap. That would work also.) The board I had was black, and had a saying on it. I was tired of it, so I just painted it and reused it. 

While that is drying, cut your fabric for the ruffles. You need a strip of fabric about 2- 2 1/2 inches wide for each ruffle. I cut my fabric about 24 inches long, and ended up having a few inches left over that I cut off at the end.

 Fold your fabric strips in 1/2 lengthwise and iron.

Set your stitch length to 4, and run a long stitch for gathering along the raw edges of each ruffle piece. Leave the threads long on each end.  To make your ruffle, you are going to pull one thread from the end and the fabric will start to gather. {If you don't have a sewing machine, you could do this with a needle and thread.}

 Next attach the scrapbook paper to the juice lids. If you have a fancy machine, you could probably cut your circles out with that. However, I used scissors and traced the lids on the paper and cut them out. I used scalloped scissors to make the edge more interesting. I attached the paper using Mod Podge, but glue would work too. I hot glued the chipboard letters on afterwards. You could also distress the letters with ink or paint if desired. (If you don't have chipboard letters, stickers, vinyl lettering, or even printing letters off of your computer would work.)

Decide which way you want your sign to go. I wanted to hang mine on the front door, so I went with

vertical, but horizontal would work too.

Lay out your ruffles, deciding which fabric you want to go with which letter. Don't worry about the messy threads just yet. ;) Now you are ready to glue the ruffles onto back of the juice lids.

 Carefully, apply hot glue to the lid, and place the ruffle around the edge. Fold the raw edges under so they do not show.

 Once that is done, hot glue the pieces onto the board. It is easiest to apply the hot glue to the fabric, instead of the lid, when doing this. Now trim the threads and glue strings.

To hang the sign- I made a tassel and attached it to some twine.

To make a tassel, cut fabric into very small strips so it looks like ribbon. Tie it together in the middle, and attach to the twine. {You could use ribbon or wire to hang this up also.}

Hot glue the twine to the back of the sign, making sure it is even on both sides.

Hang your sign up and admire your pretty craft creation! ☺☺☺

 The best part of this is, it cost next to nothing! If you have a "stash" like me, you can just use it up to make this. AND no one will know you used juice can lids to make this. :) I'm off to start something similar for summer!

                                                           Happy Spring Everyone!

Happy Easter Sunday

Wishing you a very Happy Easter Sunday!

Easter Party Activities for Kids

Here are a few of the things we did this week from preschool for Easter and Spring.

 In the past, we have used Easter Eggs to match lower and upper case letters. This year, I had them find a letter from a bowl of letters (tiles found at a discount store years ago) and put them in the egg that matched. They also practiced ABC order, but putting the eggs in the carton in ABC order.

                              Super simple- chalkboards w/ Easter Egg Chalk to practice writing

Spring Sorting using tweezers and muffin tins- I buy these little erasers all the time at the dollar store, and use them for sorting tubs, etc. Every season there are different ones that match the holidays. The kids love them. They don't know these are erasers :)

Spring grass, flower, and rain painting- What kid doesn't like to paint?

We also made rain in a jar this week- to go with Spring weather. {Even if our weather is pretty much the same every day here- hot and sunny, repeat, repeat, repeat... :) }

The Enormous Carrot is a really fun story to read around Easter.  After reading we made our own Enormous Carrots. We also used the wooden carrots to practice basic subtraction, with a song from Charlotte Diamond, called 10 Crunchy Carrots.

Edible Birdie Nest Treats are always fun and the kids love to eat them.

Thank you Target- for providing the cutest little Easter favors for our party. I filled these cute bunny baskets with a pencil, a plastic egg w/ candy, a bunny notepad, and a few other small items.

 We decorated Easter egg shapes with markers and Easter stickers- another thing that kids just {love}-stickers!

 Here are the cute bunny baskets we made from a recycled milk jug. We used them to collect small candies that someone {maybe the Easter Bunny?} hid all over the classroom!

Hello super simple cupcake decorating! :) I have decided that kids don't need a lot of extras- they are just happy with a cupcake with frosting. I gave them a few jelly beans to put on top. HERE are other simple Easter Cupcake Ideas. I know there are really cute Easter Cupcake ideas out there- but these are super simple and the kids are just as happy as if I slaved for hours to make something fancy... :)

We ran out of time...{as usual I over plan things...} but we may have attempted my Don't Eat the Peep game. We played "Bunny Bunny where's your tail" a silly simple game I made up where you hide the bunny tail (a yarn ball)  - that of course they loved. Ya gotta love kids! 

That is my super simple Easter Week and Party for preschoolers.

 What fun things are you doing for Easter?

I'd love to hear!

Happy Easter!

Kids Crafts: Bunny Basket from a Milk Jug

This is one of the things we are doing in preschool today. I seriously need a whole month for Easter  and Spring crafts! There are so many fun and cute ones out there.  You can find lots of ways to recycle a milk jug on the internet. Here is my version of a Bunny Basket from a milk jug.

I used a razor blade to cut off the top of the milk jug. Then where the nose was going to go, I cut two slits on either side. I twisted the three pipe cleaners together in the middle, and threaded them through the slit, to make whiskers.

From your paper scraps, cut ear shapes (use cardstock so they stay up) and eye shapes. This milk jug had 1/2 circle shapes left on it, after I cut it off- which was a perfect place to put the eyes.

Next glue on the pieces. I used Elmer's glue. The cotton ball tail and fuzzy ball nose could use a staple, or some strong tape. The ears work best with a stapler.

I think the kids are going to love making this! I have a fun game to go with it- "catch the bunny tail" using a white yarn ball. It should be fun!

Thanks for reading!

oxoxo