Memorial Day

Memorial Day Decorations

Banner #1

    Red star

 White Star

 Blue Star

Banner #2

 Red Star  

 White Star

 

 Blue Star

The 2 banners are different- All the stars were made from paint chips from a local lumber yard. I love free paint chips! Glue and glitter on the side, glitter from Craft & Hobby Connection by Martha Stewart. The silver paper was a gift and I used foam stickers to elevate the stars off the white stars for some depth. The ones by the window I tied on the white and blue ribbons onto the back on each one individually, while the other one I laced all 3 curling ribbons through - which meant glitter everywhere- but they turned out nice. 

The best part is I'll leave these banners up all summer- to incorporate the Fourth of July and even Labor Day. 

Print from Le Paper Studio- a college classmate of mine owns. 

Our other DIY has been - Soap Making 

It's laundry soap, and it's pretty easy to do.  

 Melting the soap.

 We found the recipe at the Duggar Family website. 

I did the option of Tea Tree oil, which I didn't have to do, but it smells so good! 

  

 The mixture turned to gel overnight. 

You gotta love the helpful, handy hubby who lets me take photos of him! 

 The next day- 

We had the need to buy a mixer- found in the paint section of our local lumber yard store! 

 It does an awesome job of mixing our laundry detergent. 

Pouring it into an old laundry soap container. Gave 2 of these to family and still had one for us, plus extra. 

All the ingredients were bought for less than $20, and I still have more- except I'll have to buy another bar of  soap- but that's only $1.00 at Wal-Mart. This $20 includes the bucket and the lid, bar of soap, borax and Arm and Hammer Washing Soda (not baking soda). Extras we bought were: paint mixer for our drill- about $7 - $8. A $2 pot to melt the soap and a $2 grater from a garage sale, and a Dollar Tree stop for some measuring cups. The most expensive thing in this process was the $24 Tea Tree Oil, which I hear you can get cheaper at Target- not from the specialty store. Why didn't I look there first?

Look in the vitamin aisle. 

Saving money feels great!

No more buying detergent at $18/ time- this will last a while and it wasn't that hard to do, either. 

 How do you save money? 

Happy 10 year anniversary!

May 12, 2012:

Here's what we did-

• previous night dropped son off at Grandma's house (the farm)
• got up early on a Saturday
• rode our bikes to the Ottumwa Park (avoiding traffic)
• walked The Race for the Cure 5K race in a little over an hour
• hubby was proud of me, because I was able to keep his pace. 
• rode our bikes back home
• went out for lunch at Appanoose Rapids in downtown Ottumwa- yum! 

 Hubby's lunch. Yes, that is a burger sandwiched between 2 grilled cheese sandwiches!

 I had their Pork Tenderloin, no I didn't eat it all! :)

Beautiful example of what could be and should be in downtown!

• Went to scrapbooking store Craft & Hobby Connection for a project I was doing- that's complete now, more on that another time. Yes, hubby went in with me- you know he really loves me if he went in there! 
• Went to our first movie in a long time! Before 6pm, so we still didn't pay $8/ person. Yup, you guessed it- The Avengers. 

•  Ended the day with a hot dog cookout and s'mores at the farm and also, we picked up our son (here he is being silly). 

• Here's our 4 year old son (our only child) playing 'Captain Jack Sparrow' and Papa John and Grandma Shirley by the fire! 

Hard to believe 10 years has gone by since that cold, windy day at the campground where we got married! 

Time flies when you are having fun, though! 

Wordless Wednesday

American Gothic

Last Wednesday a friend and I went over to the American Gothic House not far from our home. Her daughter L and my son C had a fun adventure day- the first of many throughout the summer, hopefully. Our plans include going to fun places that the kids will enjoy like Des Moines, Iowa area attractions: Blank Park Zoo, Science Center, Living History Farms- so stay tuned for more adventures with C & L! Our plan is to take the kids once a month somewhere fun, outside of our town, preferably cheap or free- for the big events we are saving up our money! 

Wednesday we made a short day of it and went through the Gothic House Welcome Center, dressed up the kids- gave my son a pitch fork! Yikes, what was I thinking? He did pretty good, and he didn't even poke anybody with it when he was holding it. The day started out cold and we were unsure if it was going to rain or not, but after our picnic at the local park, it turned out pretty nice!

 This photo is the kids in a wooden truck near the old train depot. There's a wooden train, and a wooden truck, and a wooden tractor. L loves trains just as much, if not more, than C does, so they were both pretty happy. Next time, C said "we have to eat on the ground" instead of at the picnic table, because that's what picnics are all about aren't they? We had a great day, with great friends!

The mommies had some fun of their own, looking for another geocache in the area. We found it, after a while of looking. The kids helped a little, and were perfectly okay with sticking their little hands in places to look for the cache that they probably shouldn't have been doing, but only because of all the wasps in the area. Grrr. If you don't know, I'm a geocacher- read all about more of my geocaching adventures on this post.

Is it summer, already? Let the adventures begin!

Our Cruise

I thought I'd share the video I made of our cruise, it's about 15 min. long.  We had so much fun, and it was so great to see my family again (we live closer to my husband's family).

We left snow in Iowa, and we drove to St. Louis, stayed the night with some friends of ours, flew out the next day to Orlando and then caught another flight to Fort Lauderdale. I'd do it differently if I had to do it all over again! We did get on the boat, but I didn't know if we would or not- it was pretty close!

We set sail from Miami and went to Cozumel, Mexico; Belize City, Belize; Isla Rotatan (Honduras); Grand Cayman; then back to Miami. Mommy got an expensive massage on the boat- but SO worth every penny! My son enjoyed Camp Carnival every single day, and got his face painted more than once!

The other two kids you see in the video are my nephews- we can just call them A and K. A is 6 months older than my son, C, and K will be 3 in May. All the boys had fun, especially on the pirate ship in the Grand Cayman! Arrggg! So much fun.

Vacations are great, aren't they? It was so nice not to have to worry about dishes, cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. etc. etc. for one whole week! But it all came back once we got back home!

Are you planning on going on a cruise anytime soon? If so, which company do you cruise with? Where are you planning on going? If you've never been on a cruise, where would you want to go, if you could?

Tutorial for game holder

 My 4 year old son has a V-Tech Reader electronic device, partly because we aren't willing to pay the money for Nintendo GameBoy until he's older. I love the Reader because it's rugged- he's dropped it more than once and it hasn't broke- yet! The games run from $5.00 to $25.00- and they seem to be fading the Reader out because of the new tablet-like device. 

I hate the fact that I couldn't find a small bag or wallet in the stores with individualized pockets for the different games, so I made my own. 

Here's what you need: Glue Gun (I've had mine since my days when I was an Architecture Student)

Small Baby Wipes container 

Plastic Pill Bags (found in the pharmacy section of a major box retail store)

 

 Glue Gun

 Before the Glue

 The back of the plastic bags

 Close up of the plastic bags

 Empty out the games before using the hot glue gun

 The first bag I glued all around, but I quickly realized that melted the bag a little, so I decided to place the glue on the plastic wipes container after about 15 seconds cool down time, so it didn't melt the bag. I also only put the glue on the top of the bag, where the seal of the plastic bags are.

 Completed project with one game.

 Inside, completed project loaded with games. The bags are even big enough for 2 games each, just in case he gets more games for Christmas or for his Birthday!

Great idea, perfect for the trip we are going on soon! I don't think anybody will know what's really inside of here! Now, my son will have to practice opening it by himself. Hopefully his games won't get lost anymore! 

2012 Desk Calendar

Each year I try to make a desk calendar for my hubby at work, since he's away from my son and me all day, I try to think of something unique that will brighten his day throughout the year of pictures of us.

I designed most of these pages using free digital scrapbook paper I found online from Free Digital Scrapbooking. They also have papers, embellishments, shapes, alphabets- although I prefer to use free fonts I have downloaded.

For the months of April and June I decided to take a short-cut and edit a little bit of Erica's design from over at Confessions of a Homeschooler. Her pages were amazing, but I wasn't looking to go that big, so I did a little Photoshop work. (My printed paper size was 3 1/2 x 6 inches tall.)

It's fun to watch my son grow up, and I always use photos from last year's month. Like for February 2012 I used a photo taken in February 2011.

I was going to make it like this one I found on Pinterest.

Source: anounceofcreativity.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I didn't exactly follow the instructions so it came out more like an accordion, rather than a star. Oh well, it still works- I just gave it some of my own flair! 

The actual images are on the slideshow below, the photos of the calendar together are above. I started the calendar in February 2012, and ended it in January of 2013. That's only because that's how the last calendar ended and it's a little helpful to do it this way because of Christmas season being so crazy and January is a little slower. I used silver card-stock, because I got some for Christmas from my sister-in-law who works at a print shop!

View all the calendar pages on this slideshow. 

Don't get me wrong, I love making paper crafts and creating with my hands from nothing, back in 2010 I spent six hours on one project- a present for my parents! See that post.  But, from time to time, enjoy some digital scrap-booking. This also gives me time and creativity to figure things out on my own in Photoshop, rather than my smart husband telling me how to do something easier/ faster. Although I went to school for Graphic Design, I will admit it hasn't been my favorite program to work with in the past, but it's growing on me!