one of the things i miss about home....

is the endless supply of craft utensils. "Hey mom do we have any more hot glue sticks? Thread? Yarn?" And of course, my mom would go up into her crafting room, dig around, and find what I needed. That's the bad thing about moving out. You have to buy all of your own stuff! But hey, we gotta start somewhere right? I'll tell you a secret my friend.... that somewhere, that I just mentioned.... is Walmart.

I may have splurged just a tinsy little bit. But I know myself. I make use of everything.

DIY: Nursery Decor

This is a little project that I just threw together today without doing any shopping or any driving. It's low budget and doesn't require a lot of materials. You can't beat that!

Here's what you'll need:

• 1 frame
• butterfly hole puncher
• 1 sheet of card stock
• 1 grocery size brown paper bag (I got mine at WinCo)
• wheat grass or anything similar
• glue stick
• scissors

The easy steps:

1. First cut out the paper bag to match the size of the glass in your frame, then crumple a couple of times and then stretch and flatten out on the back base of your frame.
2. Next, arrange your wheat grass on top of the brown paper until you have your desired look complete (I found that less wheat grass looked better since it emphasized more of the leaves against the paper bag)
3. Place your punched out butterflies behind the wheat grass and then glue down on paper bag.
4. Now set your glass over the arrangement of butterflies and wheat grass and trim any excess grass sticking out from the side with your scissors. Now you can finish by placing the glass and backing in your frame and viola!
 

p.s. If you look closely you can see my silhouette in the frame. Have a lovely day!

Matt being a good sport and getting it done. 

 We also finished the mobile that I've been working on and got it hung up.

 Also found some more treasures at goodwill recently, such as:

1. A yellow blanket to go in the newly painted nursery. $4

2. A key rack. I'll make some use of it somehow. $2

3. A cloche. Might fill it with fake lemons or something. $4

4. Two heart-shaped cookie cutters. $0.49

p.s. paint may look really yellow, but when I was editing them on my laptop (which is super dim) I brighten them up a lot. So the paint isn't as bright and bold looking as shown in the pictures above.

DIY: Woodburning

What you'll need:

• Wood burning tools and tips
• Something to burn on. Michaels sells a variety of different shaped wood to burn on. Oak is the best.
• Carbon paper for tracing
• Scotch blue tape (or something that is strong enough to hold your picture in place, but easy enough to remove from your wood piece so as to not leave any tape adhesive behind)
• 1 pencil
• Wood varnish

First pick out a picture and edit it to make it black and white (this will make it easier to trace since the lines are more defined).

I chose something with bark around it for an old time feeling.

Place your carbon paper where you will be tracing your image.

Next place your image over the carbon paper. Tape and secure and trace.

Make sure you put enough pressure on your pencil so you don't have to go back and trace again.

Then we burn the wood, sand the piece down and put 7 coats of wood varnish on and let dry.

These make great gifts! I made this wood burned duck for my dad for his birthday this year to go along with his Ducks Unlimited themed office.

The almost zoo trip...

 Today Matt and I decided to go to our local zoo. We had made a trip to the zoo before only to find that it was about to close in 15 minutes. So this time around, I was determined to make it on time! We pulled our way into the parking lot and walked towards the entrance. Finally! On time. I was ready to look at some caged wild critters! $4 dollar admission too. It was going to be a perfect (and cheap) day. As we approached the entrance though, we noticed many people leaving, and we also noticed the cars leaving, AND we also noticed the entrance gate closing..... Turns out, the zoo was closing early due to the over priced rodeo next door... So we turned to plan B: return library books and check more out. Which was fine with me since the library is literally right next to the zoo. After stocking up on 13 or 14 books and a couple of dvds (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was one of them, a favorite classic of mine) we headed downtown to look at some shops. Despite the zoo closing up on us again, a good time was had elsewhere.

As you can see, I usually check-out cook books and anything craft related. Particularly at the moment, I'm going to try and pick up wood burning. I have a great teacher to boot too! My husband, wood burning extraordinaire! Here's something that he recently did for my mom's birthday:

He wood burned a picture of my family's dog, Ben, and made it into a clock. My mom went crazy over it!

Well now it's time to get some grub, cuddle up on the couch and watch a good old black and white film.