Saturday, April 30, 2011

Leo's cards

we made some Mother's Day cards to mail out this week.
from trying paint hand prints with Leo in the past I figured
this would be a major headache, but it wasn't too bad.
as soon as I'd paint his hand he'd make a fist or grab his foot!
we had paint everywhere, but we finally got the 5 that we needed.


and I made myself a little keepsake, too :)

Friday, April 29, 2011

slips 2

I got five good long sprouts off of two potatoes - the other four just mainly have long roots on the bottoms and tiny sprouts. hopefully they all catch up. this one sweet potato grew sooo fast this week. almost every time I passed by it the leaves were a little bigger and taller. it was pretty cool to watch! :) I have no idea why this one did so well.
they all had tiny little fingers coming off the ends of the stems when I pulled them off the potato. I'm assuming that's what turns into the roots now?
I suspended all five in a jelly glass of water with some thread taped across to hold them up. here goes nothing!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

s'meeps

this time last year I was laying on the couch snacking on peanuts trying to make it through the day. I'm so glad I get to enjoy some Easter goodies this year! :D I'm really wanting to have a Peep roast, but I don't know if we'll get around to that on Easter. we may cheat and do that the night before O:)

anyway, I tend to bite off too much when it comes to holidays and coming up with something totally handmade to give the family, but this year I slacked off a bit.I've been seeing Peep S'mores all over the Internet so that's what I went with this year. while I am pretty much leaving the assembly of these to the recipients - which was the main attraction! - I did alter the Peeps logo and print it on paper bags, so I don't feel too bad about not "making " anything.
feel free to use it for your own S'meeps gift :)

paper gift box

I won't show the Mother's Day gifts I made just yet, but here's the packaging.


I made these paper boxes from this pattern I found online after tons of searching! and I used this print I google image searched for and tweaked the color to get the blue one.

I think they came out pretty cute for just some printed card stock :)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

ninja bunny

I wanted to make some sort of rattle for Leo for Easter. I kept seeing all these cute fabric eggs online and thought maybe I could alter one and make a bunny. two failed attempts later I decided just to cover a plastic egg in felt and stick ears on it. and to keep it from being too girlie and cutesy I went with black. we'll see if it lasts the day!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

crinkle toy

Leo loves his crinkle lion but I don't always remember to bring it along with me when we go out, so I decided to make one just for the diaper bag.

I used an old sweatshirt, hoodie, and some smarties wrappers
did a rough cut out of Kermit and a larger rectangle for the back
laid out the smarties wrappers and taped them together
(I should have either taped them more thoroughly or just found something larger for the crinkle inside because after I was done some of the pieces shifted inside.)
sandwiched the layers and pinned
sewed around Kermit
pulled away all the cellophane from the edges and cut him out
Leo approved :)

Monday, April 11, 2011

slips

gonna try and grow some sweet potatoes this year. I read they do best when it's hot... so if I can't make them work I'm gonna just chop my brown thumbs off and be done with trying to make things grow!my potatoes tend to sprout when I don't want them to in my pantry or just sitting on top of the fridge, but I thought I'd see if the water method was any faster. guess I should have done half of these the other way to see for sure... oh well!
I cut them in half and shoved tooth picks in the tops so they'd hang in the glass of water. they should start sprouting on top and then I can pull the sprouts off and put them back in the water until roots grow to make slips that can then be planted.
supposedly, they'll just take over... I'll be happy if I get 3 small ones back to replace the ones I used here!

Monday, April 4, 2011

market bag

got another craft swap in the mail from whoopdwhoop :D



this crocheted market bag is made by Robin from TN.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

amazon mom

264 diapers on my doorstep in 2 days, only $25 - yay!

amazon mom

Thursday, March 31, 2011

squashed

I will be posting more crafts I've done these past few weeks later on, but they're all Mother's Day gifts so I can't put them up yet! so I'll try to catch up with some other stuff to make up for it.

today during nap time I didn't get to make anything fun, but I did make something. baby food. I was buying jarred food for .46 for 4oz. I never thought to make it myself because I figured there was too much involved, but basically ya just mash it up any way ya can so they can eat it. someone told me they were saving quite a bit making their own so I thought I'd give it a go.
I started with carrots and sweet potatoes. boiled the carrots and baked the sweet potatoes, then after they were cooked just threw them into the blender and stuck them in my collection of baby food jars and put them in the freezer. carrots came out to .19 for 4oz - was happy about that :) sweet potatoes were .25 - little less enthusiastic about that since I had to spend so much time and electricity making them.
anyway, today I tackled squash.


the instructions for baking the butternut squash were right on the label, so I did what it said (minus the brown sugar and cinnamon at the end) and pre-heated my oven to 400°F.
I lined a pan with foil so I didn't have to wash it later O:) and I wasn't sure how much of a mess it'd make in the pan sticky-wise.

cut the squash in half.

scooped out the seeds.

laid them cut side down on the pan and baked for 30-45 minutes.
(mine could have gone another 15 minutes or so.)

the dark spots on the outside were where the hollow spots were - thought that was interesting.

scraped the flesh with a fork.

scooped out and put in the blender.

blended until it was as smooth as I wanted.

I filled jars cause that's what I had (I boiled them before I re-used them) and left a little room in the top for expansion in the freezer.

made (6) 4oz jars.
I was hoping for more since I paid $3 for the squash and that's about what I would have paid for 6 jars from the store.... but oh well.

Friday, March 18, 2011

lil man's tie

I scored the cutest little tie onesie for Leo :)




and one for a buddy!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

chainmail ring

I was browsing google images during nap time today and found this cool chainmail ring:
you can buy the instructions for making this ring on this site.
I did my own quick version with a bead, bead cap and simple 4-1 chainmail for the band.

this video is super easy to follow for making this type of chainmail.