Valentine's Day

I love the Pottery Barn Kids Valentine' Day Envelope for the back of children's chairs, so I decided to make one for Macy! Felt, yarn, and a glue gun!

I also made her a puffy-paint shirt that says " 'Owl' be your Valentine" and heart toast using a cookie cutter to stencil sprinkles =)

Austin and Emily Annual Halloween Party!

This year our Murder Mystery Dinner was Western Themed. The title was "The Good, The Bad, and The Guilty". I didn't want the fact that this was a Halloween party to be lost on the "western-ness," so I tried to incorporate the colors, pumpkins, candy and the like to mix them together. We had such a good time! I love this Halloween tradition more every year!

This is my proudest achievement- I used the "Hello, Cupcake" book for inspiration for the "coal" cupcakes, and kind- of the "hamburgers" (the book has the hamburgers as rice cakes colored with food coloring- I thought coco rice krispie treats would be yummier). The "ribs" are all mine though- they are twinkies covered in candy coating (like cake pops) and then a layer of strawberry jelly mixed with chocolate syrup. They were a little over the top as far as sweet, but I think they look pretty real! I was excited to think of something I haven't seen before.

This is my "Halloween" dinner- Chili in a pumpkin and "Candycorn" Cornbread (the top of the triangle is is white butter and then the cornbread is orange and yellow layers).

Here's everyone in their costumes- all guests were good sports and really dressed up- I think that makes it so much more fun!

Val and Dave

Me and Austin (I'm a Spanish Black Widow...kinda hard to see)

Em and Dan (Chief Breaking Wind!)

Candice and Tom

One more close-up of the coal cupcakes and ribs =)

sorry so long again...

Bella's Dino Hat

My newest creation =) (Macy agreed to model! What?!)

"White" Board

My arch-nemesis is The Library. The library is like Blockbuster to me- I pretty much pay a fee any time I check books out. In order to try and lessen the blow to our budget, I made this dry erase board out of an old picture frame, some burlap (LOVE) and my handy-dandy cricut. I have the design studio now and love it that I can make the things on my cartridges as big or small as I would like. I could have never made this "L" before. Oh, and I meant the L to be Lewis, but I guess it's library too. Now, I at least know what book is overdue...

Random Craft

Here is a project that I did for Christmas time but just never posted about. It's an Advent Calender made out of a mini-muffin tin, in case it may be hard to tell =)

Here's how the wall looks now...
It looks pretty messy- I'm going to take it down soon and just put it all in a book...I just had wanted her to be able to see it all at one time. (the open book shows the picture of King Mosiah's sons- that is the picture I used for the K week, but of course I wouldn't rip it out to hang it up...)


Is this getting boring? I'm sorry if it is...I'm still hanging on, so I'm still gonna blog it.

Letter M:
I have to be honest, over the holidays I totally relaxed my plan again. For M we still talked about Mary on Day 1, Made an M out of a picture of Macy on Day 2. Since it was Christmas, we did a lot of Mary and Merry Christmas. We also wrote and talked about her name, since it's "her" letter.

Letter N:
Day 1: We did Naomi this week so I could talk about Ruth, who I love.
Day 2: We made an N out of a Necklace
Day 3: We got special "Toy Story 3" mac and cheese and Macy got to keep several Noodles shaped like Buzz, Woody, Alien guy, and Hamm (I think?. She had fun making them talk- that girl can turn anything into a "baby".
Day 4:I had seen an Easter craft in Parents magazine where you could make a Nest out of that poster tacky stuff and sticks- pretty easy and fun little thing to do. I decided to try out their other craft too of cutting an egg carton and setting an egg in it to make a little chicky to put in the nest. cute.
Day 5: I made a little "flannel board" (though just paper...) out of the story of Naomi, Ruth, Orpah, and their husbands- and how they triumphed.
The Nest

Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth "Flannel Board"
Letter O:
Day 1: I'm not sure if it's really...umm, sanitary? But we made our "O" out of orange peel- people use them in potpourri right?
Day 2: I know it's slacker-ish, but I had Orpah be my letter "o" girl- a woman with an "O" name? Just gotta do it.
Day 3: Again with the slacker mentality- we played with our paper doll story board to tell the story- mostly so we could talk about Ruth again.
Day 4: We made Owl cookies- "WHOO is your Valentine?"
Day 5: We made an Octopus out of cool bubble wrap we stamped.
Owl Cookies

Ever had those times when things are just annoying and you feel grumpy for no reason? You know your life is really good, especially compared to so many bad things that could be happening, but somehow you just can't do anything but be in a bad mood? Yeah...never happens to me either...