12 Days Of Pinterest: Day 1: Button Tree!

 

DAY 1:

One of the first images I pinned was this amazing button tree...It was created by a married couple in Melbourne, Australia named Kim and Jodi Wiley. Together they are the masterminds behind Art by Wiley and they sell these fantastic button tree creations on their Etsy (It's closed until further notice right now, but I sure hope it opens back up again, because their button art is fabulous!).

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Besides their button trees (which are ALL freakin' fantabulous!) they do some pretty amazing canvas paintings. So go over and leave them some love!

Ok, now on to what I made with their button tree as inspiration!

I didn't have any canvas on hand, and I COULD have waited to go to Michael's to pick one up, but I just didn't feel like it and HAD to make the button tree, like That second! So I took one of my busted picture frames and used the cardboard backing; Boog and Belly "helped" me paint it white.  After they went down for a nap, I lightly penciled my tree shape and then painted it in with brown. When the paint was all dry, I took a can of clear spray paint and gave it a "once over" so it would get a nice glossy look to it. Then raided my button stash for green buttons. 

I wasn't entirely happy with it until I added the brown corduroy ruffles along the edge to frame it. For now it hangs above the couch in our living room, but as soon as I come up with something better to fill that huge space, it'll be moved elsewhere. 

If you haven't visited Pinterest, you really should. It's open to the public to look around, but in order to "pin" anything for yourself, you have to join. Which requires an invitation. Which sometimes takes a few days to get accepted. But it's worth it I promise!

12 Days of Pinterest!

I'm sorry, I have been MIA for the whole month of November, but I have a good excuse!!!

As an ode to one of the most addicting websites I've ever been on since the creation of the Internet, I've decided to do a "12 Days of Pinterest" session where I take one of my "pins" and actually make something like it so I don't end up like this pin:

 

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So here is the logo I came up with for this short 12 day span of complete Copy Cat-ness 

(but hey, copying is just a form of flattery right?)

And don't worry, if I'm using your image and/or project for my 12 Days, I will be linking up your website and giving full credit. Because I'm nice like that :)

I hope you're all having a great December, and that your Thanksgivings were full of food, family and friends!

12 Days of Pinterest starts tomorrow!

You can follow me here!

The Importance of Watermarking Photos

This weekend I was going to try to finish up some projects and update the blog with crafty goodness. BUT I read House of Hepworths blog post from Monday about why she puts her logo on all her photos (read about it here). She is a fantastic blogger and I love reading about what she has been up to and all the insanely creative ideas she has.

Reading that post I have decided that I need to go through my blog and replace ALL the pictures I have with adjusted ones. I just figured out how to do this with my PhotoShop, but it is still taking some time, so bear with me as photos disappear and reappear. With the increasing craze over Pinterest, it's easy for someone to "pin" an image and not give credit to the original source (ie Googling a picture and giving Google as the source for the picture). If you're on Pinterest, and know how it works, please take the time to giving credit where credit is due and linking your pins to the original source.

Other than all this, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I will be going up to Fresno with my Aunt Chrissy to visit my cousin TC in the hospital. For those of you who don't know me personally, he was in a really bad accident last weekend and was airlifted to two different hospitals (finally ending up in Fresno). I can't really share with you the extents of his injuries though. He has been in-and-out of surgeries, under a medically induced coma to help with pain, and has finally gotten his intubation tube out I believe. He will have to learn to walk again, but all signs point to the fact that he will be fine and with extensive physical therapy will be back to normal. I love my cousin (he's 22), but once he starts feeling better and can get around well, I'm kicking his butt for scaring the crud out of me and being stupid. Just like we were kids.

Halloween Night

Halloween was fun this year because Boog was really into it. He had spent the entire week leading up to last night saying "Trick or Treat" and "Happy Halloween".

This is the kids at Trunk Or Treat on Friday....They had a lot of fun hanging around their cousins and playing with other kids!

Halloween Night

I may be kind of biased but Belly is the cutest Belle EVER!

And somewhere along the way Boog acquired a third eye for his Pirate Eyepatch

"I a Pirate! Aaaarrrrrrr!"

He's the most handsomest (is that a word?) pirate in the world!

The kids had tons of fun Trick or Treating around the neighborhood. I had my cousin and her 3 year old son go with us (he'd never been Trick or Treating before!). The boys held hands walking together (so cute!) so I could push Belly in the stroller. 

Is it just me, or are there less houses who pass out candy than when I was a kid? I think we only got candy from about 12 houses, if that. Not complaining about that too much, since the kids don't really need that much candy, but it still makes me saddened to see so many people forgoing this holiday.

But this brings me to my rant. If any of this fits you, I'm sorry.... These are just my personal opinions, not meant to offend anyone.

1. If you're old enough to dress "sexy"....you're probably too old to be Trick or Treating. I quit going when I turned 14. But if you MUST go, Please! don't crowd the little ones who were already at the door! I can't tell you how many times my kids were bombarded by high schoolers...Wait until little kids are out of the way, and THEN proceed to the door. Please and thank you.
2. If you have scary elements at your house and you're waiting at your door for the Trick or Treaters (and you can SEE them coming)  DON'T drop the huge scary spider on the little kids! A lady did this to my kids. It scared Boog  and he ended up backing into the stroller and falling down. Her response? "Well I guess I shouldn't do that to the little ones!" No, duh! As we walked away and some more little kids go up, she does it again. This time one of the kids is crying. Really? She didn't learn her lesson the first time?
3. If you are sending your kids out Trick or Treating, it would be REALLY NICE if you passed out candy too. If you are out with the kids, that's fine. Pass some out when you get home. Last year we had walked up to a house where SIX kids were leaving the house...one of them told us "Don't go up there, we're not handing out candy." Hmmmm.
4. If you're not wearing a costume, you shouldn't get candy at all. It's kind of like going to a random stranger's house on any random day, ringing their doorbell and then telling them to give you candy. Just because. It's Halloween folks! Dress up if you're going out! I especially dislike it when those of high school age come to the door with no costumes on. If they took the time to get dressed up, I won't begrudge them some candy. I may be kind of iffy in wanting to give them some, but I'll give it nonetheless. Don't come to my door with your regular clothes on and when I ask you what you're supposed to be, tell me "Uh.......popular?"

That's all I have for now. I could probably think of more, but I really don't think you want to see EVERYTHING I have to say. So I'll just leave it at these four things.

Hope you all had a wonderful time either Trick or Treating, passing out candy, or going to a local "Safe Halloween" event!

This is Halloween, this is Halloween!

Halloween is tomorrow and I'm JUST NOW getting around to posting my mantle??? Wow, get it together Nichole!

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday to decorate for. I love putting spiderwebs all over the bushes, carving pumpkins, cutting out paper ghosts to tape on my windows....Ok, y'all get the point. I love it :)

These three wooden pumpkins I picked up at Rite-Aid. Everything was 50% off for Fall items, making them $1.24 each.

This pumpkin was another Rite-Aid clearance item. Originally $7.99, I got it for $3.99. I used my stash of black buttons and hot glue to spell out "Boo" and added a skeleton on top.

The R.I.P. sign was a door hanging I got at Michael's Arts and Crafts last year for $4.99(?). This year I took off the wire hanger and put it on the mantle instead. The white vase is one I already had, I just added some black ribbon, paired with orange polka dotted ribbon, and made a black felt flower with orange stone accent. The branches were free from the dead bush outside our front door.

The black frame is from the 99Cents Only store. I printed out the image off of Google onto a page out of Anne Rice's "Blood and Gold" (my book got damaged in a flood at our storage place). The glass jars are old. I just printed out the labels from another site I found off of Google (if I can figure out where they came from I will post up the link). For the Vampire Blood jar, I just put water in with some red food coloring.  The Skeleton bowl is a candlestick with a bowl hot glued on top; purchased at the Dollar Tree. Filled with Spanish moss, one full skeleton, and another skeleton broken into pieces (all purchased at the Dollar Tree). Tied a black ribbon around the candlestick.

"Witches Way" signage from the Dollar Tree. The ghost with the pumpkins is from Avon; he lights up and changes colors. I nabbed him from my wonderful mother when I moved out almost eight years ago. And another skeleton (comes in a pack of 4- they are supposed to be a garland, but I pieced them apart).

This bunting is not exactly an original....I saw it while looking around on Pinterest (you know, that place that sucks you in longer and faster than Facebook? You can follow me here). The one I was looking at was made out of scrapbook paper (check hers out here); I liked the idea of it, but I wanted mine to be more durable, so I opted to use felt instead.

 I think it turned out cute :)

Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween!

Switchin' It Up

When I first started this blog, I didn't realize how exhausting it would be to only identify my children as "Monkey #1" and "Monkey #2". So, for sanity reasons, "Monkey #1" will now be "Boog" and "Monkey #2" will be "Belly". And yeah, that's really what we call them at home, so it will be easier for me to write about them in this capacity. :)

Happy Monday all!

Color Plaques

I've been working with Monkey#1 on colors lately, so I've been trying to group his toys together to show him the various ranges that a color can have. However, I wanted him to be able to see how the color is spelled as well.

Since the monkeys' bedroom walls are pretty much barren, I wanted to make something to hang. I made a trip to the 99Cents Only store and picked up a few wall plaques:

I spray painted the plaques white. Project mistake #1: I laid a damp washrag over one of the plaques to try to take off the picture. BAD, very BAD people! These plaques are made of that cheap particle board, so all it did was make it look disgusting.

 Project mistake #2: I didn't use a primer first, so I ended up doing like 5 coats of spray paint. HUGE waste, I know (insert major frowny face here)...

Once they were (Finally!!) coated and dry, I hot glued old toys, buttons, flowers, really whatever I could find to go on the plaques, one color scheme per plaque. I had to make sure I left enough space open on the plaque for the color to be painted on.

Then I took out my stash of acrylics to paint the names of the colors and the sides of the plaques. Which brings us to Project mistake #3: I should have used stencils to write out the color words!

Yes, I know the words look all funky...apparently my skills in painting are limited, and do not include painting words free-hand. Oh well, think my kids will still like them?

Here they are all hung on the wall.

Since I made them and hung them on the wall, I've moved them to a better space and arrangement in their room. Monkey#1 has his colors down pat, still working with Monkey#2 but she still has plenty of time :)

Linking up to : WhipperBerry