New Valances

We've been making some changes in our kitchen lately and a while back I added these new valances. I wanted something a little brighter and fresher in there. I was soooo tired of my striped burgundy,yellow,blah,blah,blah ones . Just too dark.

I pinned a tutorial for these from Pinterest (where else) and got to work. Well, first, I enlisted the help of my husband. He gives me motivation for projects like this. He's very handy, too, and knows how to sew and make things. He doesn't get scared by fabric and sewing machines like I do!

The tutorial was for "no sew" valances but I.....ahemm, my husband, sewed the top of these so we could use a rod for them. For the rest of the hems, we just used "Stitch Witchery" and and iron. It's great, you just put in a piece of the stitch witchery fold the fabric over it and iron. Easy. Even for me. I'm happy with the way they turned out and love that my kitchen looks a little brighter. You can find the link for the tutorial here.http://cherrystreetcottage.blogspot.com/2010/06/super-easy-no-sew-curtainsvalance.html

I Must-ache you a question. Do you like our 'staches?

So, do you like our mustaches? I think they are rockin' the 'staches, if I do say so! We had these fun mustache sippers to go with our Valentine's dinner a while back. I had cherry Crush(Crush/Valentine's Day. I thought it was fitting)for everyone to drink and I thought this would be a fun addition. I saw the idea on Pinterest and loved it! All you need are pipe cleaners(brown fuzzy ones) and straws. Just cut the pipe cleaner in the middle, wrap it around the straw and curl up the ends. You have a 'Stache Sipper. They would be great for parties. My kids loved them! Check out the original post here.

Rosettes

I finally made rosette pins! I've been seeing rosettes for a long time now all over the place and after seeing a sweet tutorial on Pinterest, I thought I'd give them a try. I made hounds tooth and crimson rosettes so I could wear them to an Alabama football game, but the possibilities are really endless with them. Use any color, pattern or fabric you want. I'm kind of bummed I didn't take step by step pics to show. Sorry. Once you get going, they are pretty easy. Mine are no where near perfect. You can see hot glue on the crimson one, but that's okay. Hopefully I'll get better the more I make. I will try to explain how to do it, but there are lots of tutorials out there. I am looking forward to making more of them!!

1. Cut a piece of fabric. Just depends on the size you want the rosette to be. For the larger ones, I did about a 5 inch long by 2 inch wide strip. For smaller ones, use less length.
2. Fold the fabric in half horizontally. You can iron it at this point so it stays down better.* Have your glue gun all fired up.
3. Start to roll your strip of fabric to make a center for the rosette.
4. Once you have a center, turn or twist the fabric as you go around the center and hot glue every so often so your fabric will stay together.
5. Once at the end of your fabric, just tuck it in the back of the rosette and hot glue.
6. Cut a small circle out of felt and hot glue to the back of the rosette.
7. Hot glue the pin or alligator clip to the felt. Let dry.
8. You can use beads, rhinestones, etc. for the center. Just hot glue to center of your rosette.
Not a great step by step, but hope it helps.

Hot Car Crayons

Recently my daughter and I tried a project that I pinned a while back called Hot Car Crayons. She had a good time helping make these and she LOVES coloring with her new heart crayons!
A cute and fun project! See the step by step instructions below.


1.First, make sure it's a nice, hot day out. (Which we have plenty of here in AL!) Have a silicone muffin or ice cube mold set out for your crayons. Get out your crayons and peel off the wrappers. (I read that Crayola crayons worked best for this so that is what we used. We do have an abundance of crayons!)


2. Break the crayons into small pieces that will fit into the molds. You can put the same color in each mold or mix up the colors, which is what I did.

3. Take your crayon filled mold out to your car and set it on the dash board. I put a paper towel underneath in case it melted over the sides. I left mine out for a couple hours, but it may not take that long. Just check it.


4. When the crayons have all melted, bring them inside to set up and get hard. You can just leave them out on the counter to do this or speed up the process by putting the mold in the freezer for a little while.


5. Pop the crayons out of the mold and start coloring! Both of my girls really like to color with the heart crayons! I'm on the lookout for other fun shapes we can make!

One Smart Cookie

This year we have two girls that we go to church with that are graduating from high school and both of them are "smart cookies!" I had seen some ideas for "one smart cookie" themed graduation parties done with cookie buffets(which I'll file away for my future graduates), so I decided to do a gift version of that. I think it turned out darling!

We still gave the traditional card & money, but added a can full of cookies! I had two clear paint cans, which I found at Michael's, left over from my daughter's b'day party and they were just waiting for something fun like this. It came together very easy: I cut a 12-inch long by 1-inch wide piece of scrapbook paper and wrapped it around the center of the can, attached with sticky strip. The strip didn't go all the way around, so that is where I stuck my center "smart cookie" label. I made the label on my computer, printed it out and then punched out the center part with my circle cutter and then mounted it on a coordinating piece of card stock I punched out with my scalloped cutter. It also has the same type of label on the top of the paint can that says, "Way to go!"(which I, of course, forgot to get a pic of. I do that a lot lately) Then I filled it with my family's favorite chocolate chip cookies! It's just the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. We love those and have been using that recipe for years. I've tried many CCC recipes, but can't find one I like better. You can find it here! I'm happy to say these were a hit with the two graduates!

Easter Buckets

These will be the kids' Easter buckets this year. I couldn't pass them up when I saw them in Target's Dollar Spot. They are galvanized buckets that are a bit smaller than an Easter basket, but they are a little bigger than the buckets they have had many times in the Dollar Spot. Great spring colors, too! We'll be using these for Easter treats and goodies, but not for hunting eggs. They will need a little more room for that. Good thing I have the other 25 baskets and buckets from past Easters out in our storage building......... Okay, maybe not 25, but close.

I used my Cricut to cut each of the kid's names and applied them to their buckets. Quick, simple and cute! Ivy will love the pink one since she is all about pink at the moment. Laci will love the green since she is so anti-pink right now. Trent, well, I don't think he cares one way or another as long as it has some goodies in it!

Blast From The Past- My Stamped Cards

Wow! What a blast from the past! I was browsing through some of our backed up pictures and came across some of the cards that I've made. Just thought I'd share a few of them today.

Their was a time that I made all of my own cards; b'day, wedding, baby. You name it! And used to be an avid stamper. I'm sure Stampin' Up loved me because I gave them lots of business! I just don't have the desire to stamp that much at the moment. I get my stamps out every now and then and do a few things here and there,usually stamping things other than cards, and maybe I'll get back into it later, but for now I'm enjoying other types of crafting a bit more.Have a good day and enjoy creating something!

Halloween Cake Stand

Today I have a Halloween cake stand to share with you. Okay, it's basically just a black cake stand, but I'll be using it for Halloween goodies. I'm also linking this up to Skip To My Lou's Made By You Mondays.

I've posted before about my obsession with cake stands and pedestals. Love 'em!!! Really! I do! The first thing my husband said when I made this one was, "Hmmm. So where are you gonna store that?" I guess he knows I'm running out of room because I have so many of them. But I couldn't resist making this. A black cake stand has been calling my name for a while now. I found a super cute one at Hobby Lobby, but didn't want to pay their price.......even with a half off coupon. So when I was in Wal-Mart I found black plates and bowls in their section with dishes and serving pieces. Best part, the plate was $1.75 and the bowl $1.25. Total price=$3.00! That's what I'm talkin' about! To learn how to make these easy cake stands go here!
When it was all dry, I tied on some Halloween ribbon to dress it up. I also see that this picture doesn't do it justice. The lighting is very bad, but trust me it's super cute!

Mantel Makeover-Halloween Style!

I love it when it's time to pull out the Halloween and fall decorations. It's so much fun! So last week I started making over my mantel for Halloween, trying to use things I already had on hand. I'm happy to say that I only spent $8 and most of that was on candy for the apothecary jars! I like the way it turned out and what I like even more is that I didn't spend a lot of money!
My three little goblins also love our mantel makeover!


I used a black frame I had in my stash and simply cut out a black #31 with my Cricut and applied it to the glass. My $1 black crowe and $1 pumpkin from the Dollar Tree go great beside it!
The apothecary jars are my kids' favorite thing about our mantel. Everyday my 3 yr. old asks me if I'm done with the candy yet. Nope, not yet! I made these a while back and love to use different fillers for them. For our mantel I went with( $2)candy corn and ($4)chocolate eyeballs. Eek!



I have had this set of three black frames from Target dollar spot stashed away in my loot for sometime just waiting to be used. I framed orange card stock and added the letters that I cut using my Cricut. To finish it off, I used a vase I had from Dollar Tree and filled it with some little branches I pulled off one of our trees and spray painted them black. Easy peasy!

Scratch Art

Recently, I was searching for more art projects to do with the kids in the after school program at the middle school and remembered something my son had done in one of his classes. I didn't know what it was called, but I knew he scratched off paint and pretty colors were underneath and it was kinda cool. So, on my search I found "Scratch Art" at Skip To My Lou in the arts &crafts section! Yay! She has all the directions, but I'll give them to you, as well.


On an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of white card stock color very hard onto your card stock. It doesn't have to be a picture, just blocks of different colors. Be sure to color hard until it is waxy looking. I found that it helps to draw a rectangle on the paper as the area to color in. That way, on your next step you won't be painting to the very edge of the paper.



Then mix together some black acrylic paint(maybe 2 Tbsp.) and a couple drops of dish detergent. Mix together and with a foam brush paint over the crayon. Let dry for an hour or longer.


Next, take a toothpick and scratch off the paint to make a picture or whatever design you like. I did a simple one to show how it looks. Hmmm. Looking at this I can't help but think of my 7th grade art teacher, Mrs. Stokes, and how she told us that the sun doesn't have sticks coming out of it. Ha!! Oh well, I like my pink and purple stick sun!

The kids at school had a lot of fun with this! We also did this for a family night activity,well, we still have to scratch ours. But my kids we're really into it. Give it a try!!

Magnetic Bookmarks

Another cute project to share today for magnetic bookmarks. This is another quick craft that I recently made with the after school kids at the middle school. I never really know how receptive they will be to my arts and crafts, but they loved this one! I'm glad I found it when I was browsing over the Family Fun website.

These are super easy to make! However, you can get as elaborate with the decorating as you want. The one in the picture is just a quick one I put together using markers, a felt flower and stick on rhinestone. I simply cut down the long side of an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of card stock for one bookmark(about 2 inches wide, I guess) and then fold that piece in half. Decorate. Then cut 2 small magnets and attach on each inner piece of the bookmark. Insert the bookmark on your page to mark and it doesn't fall out!! The school kids thought this was so cool. They decorated using the names of favorite books, teams or their name. A great activity for the kids!