Happy V-Day

Are you ready to see the coolest Valentine's ever? Even manly enough for the most manly boys in your family? Here they are.


tutorial here

I was so excited when I saw them, that I rushed right out to Wal-mart and started stocking up w/ supplies. Then I realized that I have 4 half made sailor suits for my etsy shop and several other half finished projects lying in various spots around my house. I then realized that they only person that would be impressed w/ my efforts were the boy's teachers. So I saved myself a few hours of time and bought these instead.

I think I made the right choice, since I can't even get one of my boys to take 5 minutes and fill them out.

I while back, a friend of mine had a Minute to Win it party for her teenage son. I thought it was a genius idea and it was a big success. Here is a gold mine of quick and fun games from the show's website. I'm the room mom at school and we've been playing a few at all of the school parties and they've been a big hit. Most of them just you stuff you have lying around the house and the kid's love them (cheap and easy!) The "face the cookie" challenge was the best. Check out the web-site and add some fun to your next party.

Our Second Cricut Cake

First of all, don't be shy to leave a comment or "follow" me. Both greatly help my self-esteem.

So remember our first attempt?

Since then we've played around w/ fondant and now can cut out shapes w/ ease and very little frustration. Our fondant got all hard and crusty and I was going to throw it all away, but my genius daughter stuck it in the microwave for about 10 seconds and with a little kneading it was good as new.

My mom is 60 and we're going to have a big bash this weekend and my kid was in charge of the cake. My Mom requested red velvet cake w/ cream cheese frosting. We made Paula Deans recipe here. I don't think I was overly impressed and will go back to using box recipes. It tasty merely "fine" and was denser then I thought it should be. (The recipe called for "vinegar" and all I had was apple cider vinegar so that might be the problem). It might also be that cake just isn't my favorite snack. It didn't make as much as we thought so we had to whip up a box mix as well.

We wanted to try and cover the cake w/ fondant and heard that squares are easier to cover. We need to work on our corners-next time. All the white shirts are a little bit of an inside joke. For some unknown reason, by Mom wears some sort of white shirt at least 7 days a week. We made them out of the Cricut Frosting sheets. The sheets were pretty easy to use and even though you can't tell in the pic, they showed the little detailed cuts on the shirts. We used the Everyday Paper dolls cartridge to cut them out. They do dry really quick and can crack easily so you need to get them off the mat and on your cake quick. My biggest complaint is that they are a rip-off ($5 for a 12x12 sheet).

We rolled black fondant into long ribbons and layed it around the bottom and put three fondant balls at each corner.

Overall, my kid is getting faster and better. She can do everything except roll out the fondant. Her 12-year old arms just lack the muscles of her Mama's big guns.
Tadaaa!

I've mentioned before that I'm just not a fan of decorating cakes. What I didn't mention is that due to scheduling conflicts, we woke up at 5:00 am to finish this bad boy before school. Driving her to school today, my daughter told me "we make a great team" and how she was so excited w/ how well the cake turned out that she "would be smiling all day". So worth it.

PS-The Cricut Cake mini is on sale @JoAnns's for $99 and you don't even have to wake up @6:00 on Black Friday to get one.

Grown-up Playroom

*Hey Pysch fans-can you spot the pineapple?


This is the first house that we've had an actual "playroom". Most of our houses we just had a pile of toys in the corner of the living room (and several other rooms as well). We don't own a dining room table and so in our last house we called the dining room the "playroom". It was decorated around a train table and had kinda a transportation theme decor. Our new house has an official playroom, but our kids are way beyond choo choos. Hubs was excited and called dibs on decorating the new hang-out. Since decorating is not his favorite thing, I was thrilled. He's very artistic and has wanted to paint a mural on a wall for years. I really wanted him to do a version of Starry Night with of view of our street instead of whatever Van Gogh saw outside his window. He was inspired by this:

It's by Piet Mondrian. Click here for a quick art history lesson.

Here's our wall. He drew on the lines and then we used painter's tape to mark it off.  The yellow was a pain-I think we did about 89 coats (and it was even the kind w/ the primer in it).
Hubs is a huge collector and I think he just wanted somewhere to display all his "treasures".  His parent's loaned us some antique signs.  I love this coke bottle cap.

I know the chair doesn't belong. We've got and antique dental chair that will take it's place as soon as we fix it up.
Bad pic. I guess I should have figured it would happen if you try and take pics of licence plates.  Can you see the targets on the far right wall?  Those are new additions.  Subtle messages to any teenage boys interested in our daughter.
Santa brought us a ping-pong table and my son a new electric guitar!

If you come visit, you get to sign.

My Mom got these for me in Poland in 1991 and I love them. Russian leader stacking dolls-the idea just makes me smile.

Assorted stuff that Hubs collects.
In Germany they have these awesome chocolate eggs filled w/ toy surprises called Kinder Eir (kid eggs). Here's our collection. You can't by them in the US b/c it's against the law to put non-edibles inside edibles. If you're ever in Europe, buy at least a dozen b/c they're awesome. Rumor has it you can also get them in Canada.

It's everyone's favorite room.  I'm not crazy about the sporting event plastic cup collection, but overall I approve.   The kid's love showing it off and getting people to sign the wall. 

Bella Swan lives here

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I love red brick houses and have always wanted one. However, they clash with bright cheery V-Day Decor. I thought I'd solve the problem by sticking to red, black, and white, but it turned out looking like something from Twilight.

While not thrilled w/ the wreath, I love the rosettes. I made them with the frayed edge of the fabric and I like how they turned out.

If you want to make your own here's where I got the

football room furniture redo

My poor boy's were living in a room of hodge-podge furniture-and not in a good way. One day, When I walked by their room a few weeks ago it was even messier than usual and it motivated me to fix the problem.

Oak bunk-beds

My little brother's 1970's old bedroom furniture. It looks so much worse in person. It's sitting next to a bookshelf that was in the foyer at church w/ a sign that read "free". I painted it white for our last house.
Step 1. Remove all the clutter and leave it in the hall. (Our hallway looked like an episode of hoarders for a few days).


Step 2. Wipe down all the furniture

Step 3. Paint. I used Behr paint w/ the primer already in it, so I skipped that step. The color is Mark Twain brown from Lowe's ( I think it's the perfect red-brown). However, if you're using white paint, you MUST prime first or it will turn nasty and yellow. I use a roller, b/c it's better with brush strokes. My paint sprayer works even better, but it's not an inside toy and I wasn't hauling all this furniture down stairs.


Step 4. You could be done, but I wanted to give it more dimension. So I lightly sanded the painted surfaces. (This is great if you aren't a great painter and have some drips)






Step 5. Mix 1 part paint (I used Behr's Espresso Bean)to 4 parts glaze. I used the Ralph Lauren kind. Then you brush on the glaze mixture and wipe off the excess. It dries really quick (hence the no pics), so work w/ small areas. If it's too dark, you can take a wet rag and try and remove the glaze. If it's too light-add some more. It's super easy and hard to mess up, so just have fun w/ it. how-to video

I hated the old hardware, but couldn't find anything that would fit, so I sprayed the old stuff w/ a few coats "Old Rubbed Bronze".
So much better. I don't know why I waited so long. I cut those letters out of contact paper on my cricut. By the way, that shelf was made of way to thick and heavy lumber.

I still have some finishing touches, but it's so much better. I just hope my bro doesn't see this or he may want his stuff back.


FAQ
1. I did make the shelf. Actually, all you do is buy a piece of lumber and then those things you stick under them, so there's not much to make. It also cost under $10. My tips would be-buy a skinny thin piece of wood. This one was so heavy that it was really hard to hang and was not good for my marriage. All I wanted was somewhere to hang the millions of trophies kids get these days and so I could have made things much easier.

2. The bunk are are pine, the rest of the stuff was all the fake stuff

3. I did not to a coat of polyurethene on top. It makes it too shiny and it's easier for me just to touch up paint if it gets dinged up. Since it's in my very active boy's room, it will get dinged up and that's also why I went w/ the roughed up and glazed look.

4. I think oil-based paints have a better finish, but not as good of colors and are harder to clean up.


UPDATE: Check out the toy boxes I made w/ my dad.

3-D wall art

I love this cover of the West Elm catalog. It made me really want to paint an entire wall charcoal grey. I love the chalk drawings, but we have textured walls and so chalk wouldn't look good.
My daughter's bathroom wall needed some sprucing and so I thought I'd try it there. I found a roll of white contact paper from the dollar store and cut out the flower and stem using the Cricut Cake Basic cartridge. The entire project took about 5 minutes and cost under a dollar. I may go back and add some picture frames like the West Elm pic. What do you think?

Dry Erase Menu Planner

Around 4:30 almost every day, I have a small moment of panic. "What's for dinner?!?!!?"
A girl at church had this idea for a cute menu planner and I thought it was genius (and cheap)

First type up a simple weekly Menu planner and print it out on a transparency.
Choose a piece of scrapbook paper. You could also print out your menu directly on the scrapbook paper.
I painted a cheap frame green to match my kitchen.
Put it all together and TaDa! Dry Erase menu planner.