Mother's Day 2014

we went to Matt's mom's house this Mother's Day for a cookout.

the boys ate too many Cheetos, pulled out every toy their Grandma has, and played in the sandbox until they were thoroughly gritty.

 

 

 

 

Leo played badminton for the first time, and he did pretty well!

 

 

the boys weren't too agreeable to sit long enough to take pictures, but I think these that I happened to catch at just the right moment are my favorites - they remind me of pictures I have with my dad and Grandpa Gene.

 It was a great Mother's Day :)

Mother's Day gifts

for mother's day I did a couple of gift baskets for my mom and Matt's mom... and forgot to get a pic of them when they were finished!  this has become a common problem for me lately :(

I made 2012 Mixbooks - I think a year without one would be a disappointment!  I feel bad that Jack isn't in there (except for the sonogram pics) but he shoulda showed up sooner! ;)

 

I did get some pics of the grandmothers with both boys, so they'll at least have those.  I framed them and also put them on the fronts of some pocket mirrors I found at Michaels.

     

I saw this set of washcloths and made my own with some cotton twine, and added a loop on one of the corners so it could be hung up on a Command hook in the shower.  or, over the stove and used to set hot pots on.  they're cute and they were fun to make however they get used :)

after seeing so many posts around about using transparencies in liquid soap dispensers, it gave me the idea to laminate pressed flowers (some from my yard, some snatched here and there!) and submerge them in liquid hand soap dispensers that I peeled the labels off of.  these were a hit, and I'm totally making myself one next.

I used some fabric napkins I had leftover from the granny square pillow to put in the baskets as liners, and added some bar soap from World Market that smelled sooo good, and Ghirardelli chocolate assortments.  gift baskets are so much fun to put together :)

2012 Mixbooks

I did photo books for our mothers last year, and I told myself I'd work on the next ones along the way so I'd be ready for Mother's Day this year... didn't happen, but I was still able to throw a couple together and get them ordered in time! I didn't put as many "stickers" in these books, but I had a lot more pictures to arrange. I still like how they came out.

Mixbook - Create Beautiful Photo Books and Scrapbooks!"> | Learn About Mixbook Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

Mixbook - Create Beautiful Photo Books and Scrapbooks!"> | Learn About Mixbook Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

my mother's day

I showed Matt the cake I wanted to make and he immediately said "no, I'll do it." he's so sweet! he cleaned the house, baked the cake, and made dinner for the family that came over that night :) any time I tried to do something he'd tell me to go sit down... which got a a little annoying because I wanted to help! he's too good to me :) it was a wonderful 1st Mother's Day!

mixbook

for Mother's Day, I put Leo's pictures from last year in photo books from mixbook for his Mé and Grandma :)

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

mother's day jewelry

this copper and blue crystal bracelet and earrings are for my mom. I used a byzantine weave and sorta just made up the pattern as I went along. I went with making my own rings for this one, which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I've made jump rings before, but not 100's of them at a time! I used two different sized knitting needles and just wrapped the wire around until I got what looks like a tight spring, then just clipped them apart. nothin' to it! ;)

I did silver and multi-color stones for my mother-in-law's bracelet. I did a search online for pictures to go from for her bracelet and found one I liked on Dawanda. then I found the earrings I wanted to do - so much harder than they look!

I found a cool site that's a great place to start if you want to get into chainmail, but they didn't have the byzantine weave I was looking for. this particular weave was hard for me to understand with just pictures, but I happen to find a video! I dunno what I'd do without the internet :)

mother's day cake

I decided, since I haven't done one in sooo long, I'm making a layer cake Sunday for Mother's Day, and this is the one I'm going to do!it's not totally from scratch, but I don't have time for scratch! and who can argue with something that looks this good? I can't wait :)

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 :)

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 :)