Happily Ever After.

This is an oldie but a goodie. I made this frame after being inspired by Lisa at Moore Minutes (inspiration here). I took a plain dollar store pine frame and sprayed it with Oil Rubbed Bronze. After that dried, I went over it in plain white. I sanded the edges (perhaps a bit early, my sanding is some what smudgy, but I like the way it looks). I removed the glass and covered the back with scrapbook paper.

I had just purchased my Cricut and all I had was the George & Basic Shapes cartridge, but it was perfect for this craft. I cut a tag at 2 1/2" on some pale peach cardstock and then tea-stained it a deeper color. Once that was completely dry, I carefully taped the tag on a piece of printer paper and ran it through my printer (the font is Larger Mime, found free here).

Once that was finished, I measured out my brown ribbon and fiddled with the placing of the tag. As you can see, the tag itself isn't centered, but the tag + ribbon is. Then I dug through my button stash and found several cute little buttons that matched the colors in the scrapbook paper and added those to the corner of the tag to pull it all together.

The frame sits on a faux shuttered window in our master bedroom and when life starts to get really hard, I look at that frame and remind myself that it could be a lot worse.

Advent.

So you all know I'm a wee bit obsessed with blogs. I mainly follow crafting blogs and recently in blogland there has been an abundance of advent calendar projects (gee...I wonder why...). I really wanted to make one for Ben - I remember as a kid we often had them at our house during Christmas, that were filled with chocolates and I loved opening the little doors and getting my daily piece of candy.

For Ben, I really just wanted something simple. First, I'm not feeding my 11 month old chocolate. Call me crazy, but I'm just not doing it. Second, he doesn't really "need" 24 days worth of tinker toys, nor would he get the concept. This project is mostly for me. ha. So, I set out to craft something that I thought would be age appropriate and still fun to look at. This is what I came up with:

After I agonized and debated and thought about it for what felt like forever (really it was just like a few hours), I decided I wanted to do circles. I picked out two coordinating Christmas papers and cut out 24 three & a half in circles with my Cricut (using George & Basic Shapes). Then I cut out numbers one through 24 again with the Cricut (this is a completely Cricut project, but it doesn't have to be - I just used what I had) in both red & green cardstock. Then I glued 'em on. Then I debated and agonized and thought about it for what felt like forever (really it was just like a few hours...sound familiar?) and decided to just do simple shapes on the back. So there I went, back to the Cricut, cutting out shapes and animals and what not and gluing them to the back of each circle.

Then i needed a way to display it. I re-purposed a frame I had hanging in the hallway by removing the glass and pictures and just using the back & frame. I stuck a piece of cardboard in the back and pinned up my circles. I did it in a random pattern, so the numbers are all over the board and it'll be a small adventure (for me... ha ha) to turn them over every day.

So there ya go. My first home made advent calendar. Nothing too snazzy and I'm sure I could have done a nicer job, but those efforts will be saved for when he's older and he really does get a gift every day.

(Cartridges used for this project: George & Basic Shapes (for the numbers on the front, circles & some images on the back; New Arrival & Doodlecharms)

Give Thanks Banner.

Here's a quick little tutorial on my spiffy new mantle pennant banner that I whipped up today. It's not the grandest one out there, but it's my version and I heart it. It's pretty simple to do - here's what I used to complete the project:

• 5 pieces of 8 1/2 x 11 scrapbook paper {I decided to use a burlap print}
• Coordinating paper {can be patterned, plain, whatever your heart desires - how you choose to cut your letters will depend on how much you need. I made 4" letters on my Cricut and used 1 and 1/2 pieces of 12x12 paper}
• Paper cutter {or scissors}
• Letters {I used my Cricut to cut them out because I have one, but you could easily use stencils, your printer or sticker embellishments, etc}
• Adhesive {I used several kinds - scrapbook e-z runner adhesive, a glue pen and tape}
• Twine {or other sort of stringing material like ribbon - I considered cutting some grapevine to use but by the time I got to that part it was dark so I stuck with the twine}
• Xacto blade

First, I measured out my pennants on the 8 1/2 x 11 scrapbook paper - I used two pennants per page. I used my handy dandy husband with his super precise measuring and cutting skills for this part {a less lazy person could easily do this themselves}

While the pennants were being cut, I chose my letter paper and cut to cutting the letters out on my Cricut. Once I finally had everything ready, it was time to get to gluin'. I chose where I wanted the first letter oriented and glued it down. I then used the previous letter as a template for placement of my next letter:
After all the letters were glued to the pennants, I cut vertical slits in the top corners on each side of the pennant {I found cutting on the reverse side gave the front a cleaner look}
Once all the slits were made, I strung with twine:
And hung! Please ignore my awful mantel - I have a mini gallery ode to my son going on that I haven't quite made myself tidy up and make more presentable. I chose to do each word on it's own swag and left some extra twine on either end of the word dangle freely.

Now that I see it hung, I wish I had chosen a more bold color for the backdrop, rather than the burlap print. I love that print, but compared with the muted browns and tans of the fireplace, it almost blends right in. I still think it's incredibly festive!

Hope you enjoy!

Recipe Binder.

Recently I was introduced to a new blog by my friend Jamie via FB. The Dating Diva's website - it's just date ideas and other things along that theme for keeping your marriage fresh and romantic. They had a post not too long about about making a binder to store your dating ideas in which I thought looked so cute. I took that idea and spun it off into my own version for a present for my friend Susan who has recently moved into her very first apartment.

Here was my inspiration:

(original post can be found here)

Anyway, from that I took my inspiration. Following all the steps and only changing things like the color of the pages and what I chose to write on the tags, I made a cook book for Susan in a patriotic theme (since she's doing Americana decor at her apartment). I wrote up and printed out about 10 or so recipes that are tried and true and stuck them in under the categories of "sides, main dishes and desserts". I created space for her to tuck in recipes she wants to try and there's plenty of room to add in her own favorites as she tries more out.

Here's my version (my pictures didn't come out as nice as the Dating Divas one did):