Gift Idea: Favorite Book

The kids and I decided to give their cousin a copy of one of their favorite books for her 1st birthday. To make it a more complete and fun gift, I made a matching felt stuffed toy and bag to carry it around in. The kids loved the finished product and actually wanted to keep the little pigeon!

P.S. The Pigeon themed books by Mo Willems are great for beginner readers. My 5 year old, Sienna, loves them! They are very silly! Oh...and we found these "We Both Read" brand books at the library, and I highly recommend them for beginner readers too! The books have a page for the parent to read and child to read, so you really can enjoy reading together. Your child gets to have some of the story read to them, but the books integrate simpler text to get your little readers involved! Very fun!

Peacock Feather Earrings

Something I've been working on...

You can find the pattern for these earrings in my book.

Sleepover Spa Party

My oldest daughter just turned 10!

For her birthday party, she just wanted a sleepover with a few of her closest friends.

We created the invite using a pillow shaped graphic...it turned out pretty cute! For the goodie bags, we filled canvas bags with spa type supplies, like a sleep mask, spa socks, bubble bath, a manicure set, etc...etc... (we found most of it in the dollar section at Michaels). We planned on making homemade facial masks, but the girls were having too much fun on their own, so we never got to the facials. The party was a big hit, and the girls had a ton of fun!

If anyone else is interested in making homemade facial masks, here are the recipes I found:

Chocolate Facial Mask

Homemade Spa Recipes

Worms in Dirt Cupcakes

We made these "worms in dirt" cupcakes for my daughter Ramona's Birthday a couple of years ago, and she says her friends still talk about them...so Ramona wanted me to make them again. They are just chocolate frosted cupcakes dipped in crushed Oreos with a gummy worm on top. Easy-Peasy!

Photoshop Fun

Here are a few pieces of artwork I recently created using Adobe Photoshop:

Happy Valentine's Day!

We made these cookies for Ramona's class:

Sugar Cookie Recipe (we added sprinkles)

Frosting Recipe (we added some red food coloring)

Hope everyone has a "sweet" day!

T-Yarn at Michaels?

I thought it was funny...

While at Michaels yesterday (looking for stuff for my daughter's b-day party), I saw t-shirt yarn for sale in the center aisle! I don't think it was called the same and probably wasn't made out of recycled t-shirts, but it was the same idea. I was just surprised because I hadn't thought it had become so mainstream!

Here is the TUTORIAL I used to get started making t-yarn

(P.S. it's much less expensive to make it yourself~ especially if you use t-shirts you already have).

You're A Great Catch Valentines

Here's another valentine idea.

My girls are candy-a-holics, so the more candy they could incorporate into their valentines, the better! We came up with the idea to use Pixy Stix as "fishing poles" with a candy "catch" on the end. We used yarn to tie them together and attached a note that says, "You're A Great Catch". This idea could also be done using pencils and pretty much anything as the "catch". A baggie full of Swedish Fish candies would be really cute!

(tip: to prevent tangling, don't make the string too long!)

My Little Sienna is very happy with her catch!

Mmmmm.....

P.S. We found big bags of Pixy Stix in the dollar bins at Target.