Easy Colorful Mobile

Well so much for 20 posts this month.
Unless I put up 12 posts in the next couple days :)

Luke needed (and still needs) art and decor for his new bedroom.

Enter fun-ceiling-hangy-art.

Supplies:
1 embroidery hoop (inside loop), any size you want
string, yarn, floss, or ribbon (ribbon is easiest
scrapbook paper
beads

shape punches, cricut/silhouette/whatever or a good pair of scissors and lots of patience (yeah, right!)

I wasn't really thinking "tutorial" when I made this

but it's really easy. You could probably figure it out without reading my mumbo jumbo!

STEPS:
1.Paint your embroidery hoop loop (just the inside loop is needed), then while it's drying you can cut out your circles.
2. Cut your ribbons all the same length, a few inches longer than you want your mobile to hang. I used 4 ribbons around the outside, and one hanging down the middle from a criss-cross of ribbon. I hot glued them as I wrapped them around the embroidery hoop. Make sure these are very secure! {see picure below}
3. Next, secure one end of the string for your beads, thread on your beads (making sure you have an equal number for both sides (like 18 & 18 =36 total on one string or more if you want it much longer). And then secure the other end. Then do it again for your second string going perpendicular. So really you have just 2 strings of beads going from on side to the other creating 4 shorter strings when you hang it up. Make sure these strings are REALLY secure because the last thing you want to do is restring all the beads because it broke and they all fell off!!! {i know because it happened to me!}
3. Cut out all your circles from your scrapbook paper.
I used a lot of different patterns, and my circles were mostly 1.5 inches. On this one that I made first, I had some circles that were bigger and I threw in ovals and diamonds, but it's easier if you just use all the same shape and size.
Also, you need TWO of each pattern per circle going on your mobile. You will glue a front and a back to a ribbon. For example, if each ribbon hanging from the mobile has 7 circles, you will really need 14. Finally, I have 5 ribbons for hanging circles and each one has about 7 circles hanging from it, so I need 35 circles (times 2 = 70 circles cut out!) I used lots of different patterned papers. i hope all that annoying math stuff makes sense. I didn't actually count when I did this, I just had like 15 sheets of patterns and cut out 8 circles of each...which was more than i needed, but then I could just put them on as I wanted to without being to matchy-matchy.

4. Take 2 circles of the same pattern (or different if you prefer) and glue them front & back with the ribbon in between. That's so when they twirl around you don't see the ribbon on the other side of the circle. Repeat until you've glued on ALL your circles!! Then you are done!

Voila. Done.

Here's another version that I made with a friend for her nursery:
More beads, less circles, using skinny ribbon instead of string to glue the circles onto
{sorry for the bad lighting in the picture}

Valentine’s Day

I hate posting picture days after the fact, but I've just been way too swamped around here. 

I decided to make cookies with Luke for a fun activity. 
I made the dough that morning and let it sit in the fridge.

By the afternoon we were ready for messes and fun so I pulled it out and put him up on a barstool.  He had fun helping me punch out the hearts for our cookies.  He pushed really hard, it was really funny!

a little cookie cutter photo-art

a little flirt apron

waitin’ patiently

And Done!

Delicious!

6 hours 15 minutes.

That is how long I waited in line.

But let me start at the beginning…

Roberts Craft, a pretty popular craft store here in Utah, is closing it’s West Jordan Store.  This week everything in the store was 75-90% off.  Tues-Friday it was 75%off and then Saturday was 90%.

My good friend & neighbor, Shelley, and I went last Wednesday to check things out.  We got some really good deals (like I got a curtain rod for $7 and she got a huge frame for only $15!  We also got lots of other little goodies like beads and scrapbook paper.)

Saturday rolls around and I wasn’t really planning on going back to Roberts, especially knowing it would be busy being 90%off and a Saturday.  However, I had a few things still in my head that I wished I’d gotten and would regret not getting later when I wanted them... so when Shelley called me Saturday morning to go I said “YES!” not really knowing what I was getting myself into.

We made a quick decision to leave her 2 kids with Scott & Luke at my house.  Scott offered and I was thinking we’d be gone for 3 hours tops.

We got to the store at about 12:30 and started hunting for the things we’d been thinking about.  I did notice there was already a pretty big line, I thought there were two lines actually.  They wrapped around the store.  But I didn’t really think it would be too bad.  First mistake.

 

I finally decided to hop in line at about 1:00. I figured it would be pretty easy to hop in and out of line to finish my shopping with Shelley there holding our place. 

Thirty minutes go by.  Scott calls to ask what to feed the kids for lunch and how to put Shelley’s 16 mo. old down for a nap.  We estimate being in line for another 1.5 hours at that point. (this is about 1:30.) 

3:00—decide to call my mom since she called me earlier and I couldn’t really talk at the time.  We talked for 20 minutes and I moved about 3 feet in line. 

3:30 Scott calls me again.  He’s doing ok with the kids, but is wondering what is taking so long.  At this point we had found out from some ladies who’d been in line longer than us that we still had HOURS to go in line.  So I told Scott that we had NO idea when we’d be back.  I didn’t really hear from him again.  We were feeling pretty stuck at that point.  We’d already waited for 3 hours and we knew we still had at least 2 or 3 to go. 

So we waited.

Here’s what the line actually looked like.  Yikes.

and waited.

we rolled our eyes and shook our heads in disbelief as we watched the sun go down.

We inched our way around and up the isles and FINALLY made it to the check-out at about 7:10. 

It took literally 5 minutes for the both of us to check out.  We practically ran to the car and sped home!

It was still a 30 minute drive home and we arrived at exactly 8:00. 

Best husband ever.  He didn’t even really complain about our excursion taking 8 1/2 hours when it should have only taken 2.

SO, now you want to know what I bought, right??

Of course you do.

Here’s what $713 worth of craft stuff looks like.  I did get a lot of this at 75%off and then the rest I got at 90%off on Saturday.  Overall I spent a bit more than $100. 

{The only thing not pictured is the $30 curtain rod that I got for $7.  I forgot to include it.}

261 sheets of scrapbook paper. 

jewelry making supplies

I can’t wait to show you what I have planned for all this stuff!

the little wooden animals, cars and such are going to be made into magnets for a giant magnet board in Luke’s new room.

I paid $.59 for this awesome bubble vase.  It’s the perfect size for a pencil or paint brush holder.

I have awesome plans for these shiny pebble rocks too.  {those are my containers, I’d already put them away before taking the picture}

3 punches! I paid about $4.50 each, add that up and it’s less than price on ONE punch at regular price!!

chipboard numbers {a future Luke’s room project}

Here it is all again.

The END.

It’s a good thing I just organized my craft closet!  It wasn’t all that hard to find places for all my new stuff!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

So I thought for Valentine's day I could do lots of things here on this old blog...so what to do?

I decided to share the song that was playing when Scott told me that he was certain he wanted to marry me! So I declared it "our song"!

{sorry it's kind of big }

And here is a current love song favorite!
{Rythm of Love--Plain White T's}

And here is a binary heart, sending this out to my very own smarty-pants husband:

Happy Valentine's Day, Love!

& A Happy day to all of you, too!!

to eat on.

Scott and I got a new dining table!

We love it! It has a leaf to make it even bigger and awesome and the best part about it is that it stores right under the table (it pops out when you want to use it!)

We have two more chairs coming, but I think we’ll be building a bench for even more people to sit at this awesome table.

It’s definitely a nice change after our old table for the last 2 1/2 years.

these are the best two pictures I could find (in the ten minutes I looked) of our old table and chairs.