A Merry Little Christmas| Digital Design

The past few months my creative outlet has been focused on my photography and digital design in the form of Christmas cards!! 

I am excited to share a few that I have designed now that they have been sent out and there will be no ruined suprises from the wonderful families I have photographed this season. 

For now, here is the card I designed for my own family!  Thank you to my wonderful friend and talented photographer Alice Addington of Addington Images for the photographs of our family!  They are a true treasure.

Homemade Superhero| (featuring) iLoveToCreate Fabric Fusion and Crystals

I am the first to admit that I am not great at sewing.  While I am a perfectionist in other aspects of crafting... I just don't have a love for the sewing machine.  (I do have high hopes of changing that!!) 

One thing I do try to get the sewing machine out for each year is to make Halloween costumes.  This year the girls were going to each be a homemade superhero... ie- Super Hannah, and Super Claire!

With the help of Pintrest, I found a great cape tutorial and got to work. 

I did employ some Aleene's Fabric Fusion to help with the logos that weren't sticking well with the 'wonder under'... and I added a little dazzle to their masks with some Tulip Glam it Up Iron-On Crystals using the Tulip Cordless Heat Setting Tool.

If I am being honest, the costumes were cuter in my head then they ended up being once they were done, Oh well!  :0)

The girls loved them and had so much fun running around and yelling "Coming to Save the World!!" 

Fall Inspiration: Halloween Costume Banner

I saw this adorable idea for a Halloween Costume banner this morning and have been thinking about it all day.  Such a FUN idea to bring out each year and add to as years go by... I have decided I MUST make this this year. 

FREE printable banner is available through the How Does She blog when you sign up for weekly emails!!  I have been receiving these emails for about a year now and have never been disappointed with their crafty inspiration. 

Organization: Kids Toy Bin Labels

This summer we made some big strides as far as the organization goes in our house. 

Claire's room has been an orgizational nightmare for awhile.  She is just at an age where she does enjoy playing with most everything she has and it doesn't seem to matter how much effort she puts into keeping things picked up and sorted... the toys always end up in a big pile. There just wasn't a place for everything.  Not good. 

So, I found this shelving and canvas bin system at Costco and thought I would give it a try.  Once I put the shelf together, Claire and I went through her toys with a 'Less is More' mentality and really tried to reduce the toys she wanted to keep.  I felt that including her in the process helped her understand that we just don't have room in our home to fit EVERYTHING, and that when we only keep what we love it is much easier to find the toys we want to play with.  (Ok, so I would like to think that is what she learned... but if nothing else she did not get upset that we sold or donated many of her old toys and stuffed animals.)

We ended up with seven categories for our eight bins and I headed online to find some ideas for cute labels.  While there were plenty of cute kid's toy bin labels available, I just didn't find any that really fit my style or the color scheme for Claire's room.  I also wanted to make sure the labels included pictures for my pre-schooler who can not read yet. 

Here is what I came up with ... colorful and organized labels, printed at Costco as 4x6 matte finish prints for $0.13 each - actually they were printed two-to-a-print, so 6.5 cents each! 



Fall Inspiration: Button Pumpkin

I'd like to thank the ever addicting Pintrest and a crazy beginning to photography season for yet another lull in posts. 

Fall has found us... today was our first day with a temperature lower than 80 in awhile and I was so happy to see the cloud cover that I went out and bought a box of chi tea to celebrate! 

Right now I am contemplating if I have enough various orange buttons to make this sweet little fall craft.  Check it out over at Auntie Lolo Crafts.

iLoveToCreate: Repurposed Fabric Covered Bulletin Board

Poor Claire, my youngest daughter, has had bare walls for quite some time.  It's not for lack of thought or intention, it is just that I kind of have a phobia when it comes to decorating.  I want to LOVE what I put on my walls... for goodness sake, I will have to look at it EVERYDAY!  It has always seemed like a lot of pressure.  Pretty much the only reason things get put on walls around here is if John harps on me enough to get it ready, then he will hang it.

As was the case with this easy project! 

We like to call this our $1 Bulletin Board.  We spent a wopping $1 on the frame and had everything else on hand.  It was a great way to repurpose an old cork bulletin board as well. 

Supplies: 

• Frame - Ours was found at ReStore (it has a chip in the back was a gaudy gold color, so John painted it black...you can't even see the chip when it is on the wall!)
• Corkboard - We had an old board that was actually in our yard sale pile... John cut out the middle section to a size that would fit inside the frame with a utility knife
• Fabric - enough to cover the board with a few inches extra on all sides
• Stapler - Regular old office one, the staples in a staple gun would have gone through the cork
• Aleene's Fast Grab Tacky Spray
• Hanging hooks, grabbers, fastening clips, or whatever you like to use to hang the final product (find at any hardware store)

• Decide on your frame size and cut corkboard to fit inside the frame
• Measure enough fabric to cover the corkboard, plus a few inches on each side.  Iron the fabric and place it wrong side up on your work surface

• Go outside and spray the good side of the corkboard with Aleene's Tacky Spray
• Quickly place the sticky side of the corkboard onto the wrong side up fabric
• Start on one side pulling the fabric taught and stapling it down on the back of the coarkboard, work your way around until it is all stapled
• **I also flipped the corkboard over and  placed a large, flat tray or book on the right side to make sure the fabric sticks to the cork, I left this for about 30 minutes to dry

• Place covered corkboard into frame, we made sure ours stayed tight with fastening clips
• Add picture hanging hardware and hang on the wall... (John did this part)

...and the final product!  Almost too pretty to add her treasured photos and memories :-)

Rearranged China Cabinet | Home Decor Project

When we were in the process of buying our house, this china cabinet was one of the selling points to me.  It was a built-in piece of furniture and was a convenient storage spot.  Score!

Not so much.

Fast forward six years and I was completely lost when it came to the decor of the china cabinet.  Every time I passed it, I wanted to throw out its contents and start again.  It had become a catch-all for items I didn't want to get broken... not the beautiful display I had once envisioned. 

See... such a hodge podge!

So, one day a few weeks ago I enlisted the help of a friend (Thanks Brooke!) and we got to work.  We used only items I had on hand and rearranged everything in a more cohesive way. 

This is basically a post to (a) thank my sweet friend for her help and (b) remember the way we displayed everything in case I need to use or clean the contents. :-)