A purse for ME!!!

YAY!!!! I finally finished my purse!!! I have a purse!!! NOT a diaper bag (although it is big enough to hold diapers and extra pants)- A REAL PURSE! For ME!!!

No, I did not reward myself with a trip to a real fabric store (I don't deserve it anyway it because I haven't hung those camo curtains or finished that quilt as I was trying to bribe myself to do). I found some at Walmart which was passable for me. However, after I started it, I began to wish I had made the striped fabric the exterior rather than the lining.

This is what my 4yo did all by herself while I was finishing it up! She is a bit crafty herself!

When I was done I went out and visited my sister at her work for her belated birthday surprise. I made her hers first, so here we are showing off our bags!!!

Again, thank you SEW much (I couldn’t resist) to my friend, Sheila! She has a fantastic etsy shop- sewfaithful.etsy.com you should go check out her fabulous pillows!!!

Cakes I Have Made...

I am sick, so I don't have any NEW things to show off, but I thought it would be fun to show the good, bad, and ugly of my birthday cake attempts! These are just the ones I have digital pictures of...
Piggy cupcakes!!! Saw this in a Family Fun magazine at the doctor's office and since my 2yo ONLY wants to wear her pig pajamas lately, this was IT! The snouts are marshmallows cut in half and dipped in sprinkles. The ears are Starbursts candies cut diagonally and the rest is regular and mini chocolate chips.

My 4yo loves Hello Kitty- and thankfully, she now can say the "k" in Kitty! I put chocolate wafers for the eyes and made a stencil to put yellow sprinkles on to make the nose since I was out of yellow food coloring. I melted chocolate in a baggie in the microwave and cut the corner off to make the whiskers and letters on the unpictured cupcakes. Those are Skittles all around the bottom- just for fun!

My son wanted a cake with Elmer Fudd hunting Daffy Duck! Well, I wasn't even gonna try that one in icing (especially after last year's disasters) so I printed them out and glued them to another piece of paper with a toothpick smashed in the middle. I was feeling creative, so I put my son's face over Bugs' in the Looney Tunes circle. I had extra blue icing so I drizzled for more color.
Since their birthdays are so close, we celebrate them together, so my 6yo daughter got cupcakes, too! Hers were Littlest Pet Shop and I washed all of her pets and stuck them on top. I made flowers with blue icing and m&m's on the rest.

This is one of my favorites! The big monkey is an 8" cake, 6" cake on top, and another 6" cake cut for ears. The eyes were Hershey kisses and my sister had to get there early cause I only had one! The cupcakes were my favorite, though. The ears are mini vanilla wafers, the face has a regular vanilla wafer with the top edge cut off, an the eyes are chocolate chips. However, I think the mini cupcakes were eaten the fastest!

This was my attempt at a My Little Pony layer cake. The icing was sliding a bit, as you can see, where I put the little ponies. I also used My Little Pony fruit snacks to decorate it!

This had to be my worst cake birthday ever. It took me so long the little stars were mushy and melting. I tried to make my own flesh colored icing. It is a bit more jaundice than you can even see in this picture. I don't like preformed pans. Lesson learned.

Same birthday party. Disaster #2. He wanted a trapper cake. As in furry animal trapping. Yeah. So.... I made a round cake and added cupcakes and mini cupcakes for the chain. Then I went crazy with a tube of black icing and tried to copy his trap in a frantic last minute- post mermaid failure frenzy!

The previous year was much better! This one has an interesting story. He wanted one of those photo cakes with his wrestling picture on it just like his cousin had. Well, the tournament was the day before his birthday so I told him if he pinned I would put a picture of him pinning the kid on his cake (although it was too late to order a cake- I figured he had lost every match so far so I didn't have to worry). Well, he DID pin! But my camera batteries died. So, he posed with his cousin and I printed them out and used Twizzlers to make the wrestling ring!

This was the FIRST mermaid cake- MUCH, MUCH better! I used Twizzlers around the bottom to fill in the edges of the platform and decorated with Nerds and Swedish Fish Ocean Life and cut up green Twizzlers. The rest is a typical doll cake.

This was one of my favorite cakes, but I forgot to take a picture! It was a sheep cake and was covered in mini-marshmallows!

Here is my son's General Lee cake from his Dukes of Hazzard kick! I liked the Oreo wheels the best! :)

And my daughter wanted a horse cake. The bridle and reins are Fruit by the Foot, which got mushy after awhile. I also used Gummy Savers, half of an Oreo (for the eye), and an m&m.

Finally, I have some butterfly cupcakes made with pretzel wings, icing bodies, m&m heads and Pull'N'Peel antennas.

I hope these gave you some cute ideas and also a good laugh at some of my mistakes! I enjoy making these for my kids because it is always a challenge (like the time my 3yo son wanted a "deer-huntin-shootin-cake) and it is something that makes them feel special.

My Mothers Day Gifts

Well, now you have seen some of my Mother’s Day projects- the hand scrub and the scrapbook. Now, let me show you what I got for Mother’s Day:

Rocks.
My 4yo gave me the prettiest rocks she could find. Some are sparkly. There was a pink one, too, and she cried when her little sister lost it. They may just look like rocks to you, but I know that these look like precious gems to a 4yo and it was truly a heartfelt gift!

I also got an assortment of flowers from various sources.

And my 10yo son made a card in school that read:
“All the flowers bloom in May. Now take me to a Chinese buffet.”
Can you tell that he changed the poem they were supposed to write?

My Kindergartener made her card when I was there helping the class and hers read:
“Dear Mom, Thanks for being here today.”
Sometimes a heartfelt thanks means the most.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15

Grammy's Scrapbook

For Mother's Day this year my sister and I made Mom a scrapbook...
of all Grammy's grandchildren!

My little hunter man! Love those funny-looking velvety 3D squirrels!

My mermaid lover! Those stickers were not good with the glitter paper so we had to use Super Glue! The leftover bubbles on the letters were so cute!

She picked her own "farkly" princess stickers!

If you can't tell by the bucket pic- she is a monkey sometimes!

Loved these frogs! Crazy like the kids! The girls are actually in front of Grammy's flowers (she wasn't home!)

These white velvety word stickers were really nice.

The argyle reminded us of sweater vests- which his daddy likes!

Pics from the night they got to hold him!

We used 3D things to make the ultrasound "pop" off of the pic I took of her belly in the Walmart parking lot before we got the pics printed!

Pages ready for Grammy to fill in when she is born!

It was a special gift- one that sacrificed a precious nap time and was lots of fun to put together!

Sugar Scrub in Prettied-Up Old Jars

So, I found this super easy idea for sugar hand scrub here and wanted to try it really bad! It uses dish detergent and sugar- how simple! I got aloe and pomegranate dish detergent because I am so indecisive. The girls even helped my mix it up, which they thought was a lot of fun!

Instead of canning jelly jars, I found some old $1 candle jars that were once use to freeze jam as well- that counts as a jelly jar- right?

The lids still had the original candle stuff on them that I knew would not come off without a fight. So I didn’t. I took packaging paper and traced the lid. I cut the circle out just inside the line, then wrote on it and decorated it with stickers. But- paper would get wet and ruined if you are washing your hands with this stuff, right? I used my old laminating trick- packaging tape! Just be careful when you pull it off of the table or whatever it has stuck to (I ripped one a little). Then I used double-sided tape to attach them, tied a pretty ribbon around and viola!Thank you to Kate at the Gaines Gang for the great idea!

Camo Taggy Blankies

Our church has had a influx of baby boys this month, so I made a few of these taggy blankies.

The fronts of these are camouflage and the backs are Scooby-Doo camo!

I like using different textures and widths of ribbon to make them more interesting for the babies who will chew on them.

I have made them before and I think they are a lot of fun to make. They seem to be a hit! :)

Prom Flowers

I have been working on some craft projects lately, despite my lack of blog-posting evidence. Most of them were surprises, so I couldn't risk revealing them early!

First... prom flowers! My baby brother's date had a gorgeous red dress and requested silk calla lilies. So, since we have done our own flowers for weddings we just hit up Michaels, armed with coupons, and this is what we came up with.

I know, he looks ecstatic!

It was the first time I have worked with anything tropical, or done an arm bouquet vs. a nosegay.

We sprayed it with silver glitter to add some sparkle, too!