First project down....several hundred to go...

In between tidying up the house, helping out at school and preparing for a night out with my baby brother (who leaves for Iraq in a couple of weeks...how we will miss him...) I managed to get started on a project I've had materials for but had forgotten about for some time now.

A plain mirror has hung in our entryway since we moved in, it was one of those "well if you can't use it I'm going to give it away" type of things, but didn't really go with anything else in our house. Still, it seemed to fit there behind the front door....very useful for making sure I don't have flour or Mod Podge stuck to various body parts before I head out the door.

It was just a plain wooden frame, painted gold but meant to look distressed. I should have taken before pics but this is how it turned out after ...

Definitely fits in with our decor better now. It's amazing what a little Mod Podge and fabric will do :)

I had 2 fat quarters and used 1.5 of them, I used Mod Podge glossy and 3/4 inch brown grosgrain ribbon.


I cut my strips of fabric wide enough to reach about a 1/2 inch onto the mirror side and reach around about 1 inch onto the back of the frame...about 4 3/4 inches

I coated the frame with a relatively thick layer of Mod Podge and placed my fabric over it, smoothing it to remove bubbles.


When the entire frame was covered with fabric I let it dry (about 30 minutes) then attached the ribbon. I trimmed the corners so they would form a dovetail when set into the corner of the frame and tried to adhere these with Mod Podge as well but had some trouble getting them to stick properly so in the end I used a little hot glue to secure them.
Ewan is such a good helper....he does a wonderful job painting on the Mod Podge...
When the ribbon was in place and dry, again about 30 minutes, I flipped the mirror over and secured the fabric in the back with another bit of Mod Podge.

After the back dried I flipped the whole thing over yet again and applied 2 more thin coats of Mod Podge to the outside of the frame over the fabric, letting it dry in between coats. It's slightly glossy but with texture and I really like the way it turned out!

Of course now I want to do this to at least 100 other objects my house. It was fun, easy and quick. I did the coats of Mod Podge in between household chores like switching laundry, folding and vacuuming. I can see my computer cabinet covered in some beautiful sari type material with little mirrors all over it and the boys' bookshelf in cool pirate material with red and black shelves!!! I think I need an intervention....

So much coolness, so little time..

I have been working hard, reorganizing and moving around...and now my craft area looks like this...

The drawers to the right hold all of the boys coloring books, paper, glue, markers etc...the table to the left holds my Cricut, sewing machine and has tons of open space for sewing or other craft projects now that it's not taken up with storage!

The bottom still holds my serving dishes, but look at all that room for more craft/art supplies up top!

...instead of all jumbled together in plastic crates and baggies. It's not perfect yet, but OH so much better. However this creates a whole other issue: Inspiration. And not just inspiration to do one project. Seeing all of those supplies out in the open and easily accessible just makes me add stuff to the list that I had forgotten about.

I wanted to cover an old mirror frame with cool fabric and ribbon, bought supplies but then they got lost in the mess. Guess what I found while reorganizing? You guessed it! Material I purchased with nothing in particular in mind is now staring at me begging to be made into something. Oh look! I have an entire bag full of little glass mosaics the boys and I can do something with.

And if I remade my hutch into a craft center, what other furniture do we have that I can reinvent? I have 2 plain, white bookshelves that are just begging for something to make them stand out....fabric, paint, pictures of some variety!

All of this leads me to the interwebz and my fellow crafty moms....and that my friends is where my true addiction lies. All of these wonderful, artsy, crafty (and usually sassy!) women make me wish there were 12 more hours in a day!


Ten links in random order that are causing my to-do list to grow and grow....
1. The most snuggly blanket...Ewan wants one badly...
2. Very cool fabric decoupage....I have SO many items in my house I want to redo with this...
3. Beautiful skirt that I want to make!
4. Love these ornaments for next Christmas but I'll have to start them soon or they'll never get done!
5. These are so cute and I think I can adjust them to make them look Leprechaunish too!
6. These look like a fun project for springtime!
7. I haven't had a garden in years but this year I want to change that..
8. This makes me want to give every window in our place a facelift..
9. Have been wanting to learn to knit for years but now I really want to make it happen!
10. All of these tutorial/patterns are so pretty...who can decide??

And this barely scratches the surface. You can't click just once...there are so many wonderful ideas out there!! I'm going to attempt to narrow down things to a few projects per season....the mosaics, garden and skirts for spring..knitting and crocheting over the summer while the boys play. I just don't know if I can wait to start some of these!!

And of course I'll share all of my escapades with you! Wish me luck ;)

what the boys did while I slaved away!

Doing a dancy dance!!

Just want to send HUGE thank you's to Shannan B at Mommybits, thanks to her we will be seeing Yo Gabba Gabba Live! at the Aronoff Center on March 20th. Ewan has been doing a dancy dance ever since!! Thank you Shannan :) You Rock girl!

Melancholy and the Infinite Snow Day...

Snow days have their place in the universe. There is a time of the year when I start longing for a good snow day just like I did for Christmas day when I was a kid. I go all summer having the boys to myself every day all day so by the time school rolls around I am ready for a little break and the boys are ready to see their friends again. But by November I am ready for that snow day when I can have them both to myself again for one whole day. We either pile on the couch and watch movies, or find a craft we can do together but however it is spent it's just nice to have them all to myself for a day or two.

Once the school systems banked snow days are used up though, I start to think "well, now I'm going to be sitting in the school car line instead of sitting at the park/pool/backyard playing". As a rule we don't have this problem much.....living in Kentucky we usually get just enough snow to appease the kids' desire to play in it, but not so much that we feel trapped at home with cabin fever for weeks on end. Unfortunately this February is proving to be a major thorn in everyone's side (and that's the pleasant way of saying it...I had more of a "pain in the...." in my head when I wrote this).

We have apparently broken the record for snow in February going all the way back to 1914...the most recent total I've gotten is 21.08". 21 inches of snow. I have NO idea how I'm going to get the boys in my van when and if we ever have school again..it's been banked in by the snow plow and there's a good 3 feet of snow next to the driver side door. The boys are completely over playing in the snow now. It was fun the first few times....now it's just cold and they get wet and there are only so many snowmen and snowball fights you can have. They are forecasting more snow for the coming weekend which will mean yet another snow day on Monday. I should have banked some extra 'sanity' along with those snow days....

Happy Chinese New Year! xīn nián kuài lè!

Liam has been learning all about Chinese New Year from his wonderful Chinese teacher at school. She's such a sweet lady who really wants the kids to be excited to learn about the Chinese culture, I'm very thankful Liam has been able to learn from her this year.

In honor of Chinese New Year..the year of the Tiger!...we made new year lanterns this weekend....


We found inspiration at Musings from Kim K, and while we still need to add a few embellishments I think they turned out beautiful! We found vases at Goodwill while shopping for Liam's Abe Lincoln costume, we had tons of red tissue paper leftover from our Valentine mailboxes, and the boys had a ton of fun putting them together!

There's a party in my tummy!

My good friend ShannanB aka Mommy Bits is giving away a pair of tickets to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live when it hits Cincy on March 20. Check out her incredible blog for a chance to win!

A pocketful of posies...

Part of the reason I love snow days is getting the boys to do crafts they normally wouldn't want to take time out to do.....battling galactic bad guys takes precedence over card making, you know. ;) Don't get me wrong, they are always keen to get started on any and all crafts when I pull the supplies out but little minds start to wander when the craft is deemed a little too "girly" for them...

They did enjoy making these pretty flowers for teacher gifts today...there's a great tutorial at Full Circle that shows you how. We used Tootsie Roll pops because the boys love them best, so we cut the circles a little bit larger than you would for Dum Dum lollipops, and we added an extra layer of tissue paper because they wanted to use lots of colors.

Yesterday we worked on our Valentine mailboxes. Once upon a time, long Looooong ago when I was in school this was one of my favorite projects. I still remember the beautiful doily hearts and pink and red tissue paper, it really is a girly project! The boys really enjoyed making theirs, none the less.....even though Liam had to wear a Trooper costume to make his..just to make sure that no 'girly' rubbed off on him in the process...
Ewan was very meticulous about where everything went....
I guess I should pick a more manly craft for our next project....I think we are going to decoupage their bookshelf with their own Star Wars artwork, that should be epic enough even for them!

Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.~Shakespeare

(a small pile of the books I have currently...where do I start??)

I have a pile....a mountainous pile...of books in front of me. I have craft books (3 at present), fiction of the historical nature (3 of those as well), fiction of the vampy kind (aka Twilight that I received from my lovely hubby for Christmas...that one falls at the bottom of the priority list right now), self help/spirituality type books (3 of those too, I'm noticing a theme here..) and the library just called to say that I have 4 more items in to pick up. What was I thinking??? I can't pick a starting point, how am I supposed to digest all of this in one month??

On top of the reading that is piling up I also have craft projects galore waiting for me. Again, at present I have many, many quilt blocks waiting to be pinned together and made into the quilt I have planned in my head, 4 different crochet items in the works, Valentine cards for teachers that are as yet unfinished, 2 scrapbooks already in progress and 2 in my head that I want to start. Liam has asked to make some of the craft projects that are in his Ancient Egypt library book and we need to finish their Valentine boxes. This is on top of the projects I am finding in the aforementioned craft books that I want to work on. I need a list, a way to organize it and apparently a strict schedule so that I can do all of the things I NEED to do (laundry, cleaning the house, cooking, etc) but also find the time to do the things I WANT to do (spend time with my kids, sew, scrapbook, make cards, crochet..maybe even watch a movie with my hubby).

How in the world did I get myself into this situation and how do I manage to read/craft myself out of it now??! How do YOU fit in all of the stuff you want to do but still manage to be productive at your "job" (be that staying at home with your kids or in a workplace environment)? I'd love to hear how all of my fellow mom's manage their time.....

edit: After posting this I realized that I did manage to knock a few items off of the list between the weekend and snow days! (none of the reading, but some of the crafts anyway!) I finished up 2 crochet projects (then added 2 more to the list..ha!), we made our Valentine mailboxes, we finished our teacher Valentine cards and I finally got the house completely clean (and it stayed that way for an entire HOUR!)