So I’ve been seeing a recipe floating around Pinterest for homemade Soft Scrub. I love using Soft Scrub, but the price is a bit high so a cheaper do-it-yourself version got my attention. It seemed too simple to be true, but I gave it a go anyway. I recently cleaned out our garage and realized our cooler lid (which used to be white) was pretty gross. So it became my test for the homemade Soft Scrub. Please excuse the dirty garage floor, I did this in the garage last week while I was doing the garage sale between customers 🙂
Next I mixed baking soda and bleach in a glass bowl and found a dollar tree toothbrush and mixed it.
Then I scrubbed just one side of the cooler to see the before and after effects…
I was pretty pleased with the results! Thanks for stopping by and reading 🙂
Sooooo… I have a three-year-old little girl who is full of drama. Probably not the only one in history, but one of my current dilemmas. When time out time comes for bad behaviour I find myself with a little girl on the bottom step screaming, kicking walls and not able to even calm down enough to learn her lesson. This was getting worse and worse until I told my husband, “there has to be a better way, I’m going to research this.” So I went online and read other mom’s advice, dr’s advice, psychologist’s advice, etc. Nothing was really working. Finally I saw something called a mind jar. This was a mason jar filled with water, clear gel glue and ultra fine glitter. You shake it and the glitter settles slowly as you watch you relax. The original ones I saw were to teach children to meditate (not my goal). I loved the idea of getting Bella to focus on something else and relax. Then I saw on Pinterest that some moms were using it as a timer for time out also. Genius! So I didn’t have to watch the clock or set a timer, and it would calm my Bella. Well, I did not like that it was a glass jar (she is three, and who gives a three-year-old glass?).
So I found a water bottle (Smart water was the brand) that was totally smooth and not too big around for little hands to hold.
I removed the label with goo gone (it was very sticky under that label)
Next I filled each bottle with about 3/4 (* edit 5-3-12, I used hot water so that the glue “melted” better… room temp or cold will cause it to stay separate) water, an entire bottle of glitter glue and a small tube of ultra fine glitter. I kept playing with the mixture until the glitter settled at about 5 min. I added more clear gel glue to make it go slower or more water to make it settle faster. Then I had my sweet husband (who knows when I handle glue I tend to glue body parts together accidentally) to super glue the lids on. Another thing I didn’t like about the mind jars I saw, the mason jars were not glued shut and knowing my kids they would just open them and spill or drink them (glue and glitter… not something I want my kids drinking). Here are the finished jars.
Here is one settled and one in the beginning stages of settling…
Here is one of the bottle half settled at 2 1/2 minutes and the other totally settled. Sorry they are purple and pink, those are my girl’s favorite colors (right now) but you can make them with any color glitter. I’m sure blue, purple or green ones would be really cute too.
Here are some of the products I used to make them.
Now time out in my house looks more like this….. and I love it
While making these Eric and I were amazed at how relaxing they are even to us! I think I want one, can I go to time out please? 🙂
We are blessed to have two huge trees in our front yard that shed pretty yellow colored leaves each fall. My girls really love the leaves because they look like the “star leaves” from the kids movie Land Before Time. They call them dinosaur leaves. Well they have begun changing and falling, and even though our entryway now has a warm fall painting (from my previous post) I decided it was still too empty. The girls and I went out one day last week and picked a bunch of pretty yellow leaves and brought them inside and pressed them all morning and through nap time between wax paper under very heavy books. While they were napping I got out my paraffin wax melter I had gotten at a garage sale for 5 dollars brand new never used (great for feet and hands) and I melted some paraffin wax so it was ready to go when they got up.
When they got up we used my scrapbooking heart punch and punched a heart out of the middle of half of the leaves and kept the hearts to put on the unpunched ones.
After we punched out the hearts we dipped the leaves by the stem (the girls loved doing this and giggled the whole time). At first I let them lay on wax paper to dry until I realized that doing so made the back half of the leaf’s wax come off! Evidently the hot wax on wax made it stick to the wax paper. So I found just setting them on the kitchen counter was fine and when dry they came right up totally in tact. I dipped the punched hearts (since there was no stem to keep tiny fingers safe) and then laid them directly on the unpunched leaves (previously dipped). The hot wax was adhesive enough.
Once they were all dry I laid them out in a pattern that I liked..
Next I took some twine from our gardening stuff and tied a single knot around each stem spacing the leaves approximately the same distance apart until they were all tied on and then I hung it in our entryway. Now I really love how fall it looks 🙂
Well there it is, when we were done Katie laughed and said, “We are so silly momma, dipping leaves in wax.” I’ll be silly with my girls any day, these memories are priceless to me.
I love painting with my girls and I decided last week while decorating for fall that my entry way needed a fall painting. I love involving my girls in any painting/craft I can so I grabbed a canvas and squirted it with a bright orange colored paint and let my girls finger paint it until it was covered. I then let it dry and took some scrapbooking sticker letters in different shapes and sizes, spelling out some of my favorite words that remind me of fall and put them in the right hand corner.
Next the girls fingerpainted the entire thing again over the orange and stickers with a nice green paint (knowing the first coat of color would leak under the stickers a bit for a distressed look). Without letting the green totally dry up I let the girls use wet scrunched paper towels dipped in brown red and yellow paints to dab all over the canvas. Because the paper towels are wet it removed a bit of green in some places to let the orange color come through and also gave the overall painting a distressed look. I didn’t let them do this for very long or the whole thing would end up just a brown mess. Once we were done though, each fall color (orange, green, brown, red and yellow) were represented in a nice painting.
This I let totally dry and then peeled up the stickers.
I really love how it turned out and it warms up our entryway nicely 🙂 Oh and it cost nothing, I was given several nice canvases recently by a sweet friend who encourages my artistic habit and I had all the paint and stickers. Hope you enjoyed it!
Ok, so… a while back I posted on my Facebook that I wanted to use some old bulletin boards from college days and update them to be used as art display boards for during preschool year for my girls. Well I got some great feedback and was all set to do something awesome with them when I went to Target a few weeks ago and saw these:
On CLEARANCE! For 2.49! Ok, I didn’t want to spend anything on this project but I bought 2 for 5 dollars. They were much more suited to my end goal of changing out art every week. So every little paper they brought home was proudly displayed but for a limited time (a week) then retired to the school year box. I’m really an anti-clutter girl and at the end of the year I plan on letting them choose their absolute favorites and keeping only those. These boards have a big magnetic/dry erase side that I could just put up some art with magnets. Then on the cork side there are big rubber bands so no sharp push pins needed(one of my concerns with a 3 and 4 year old) and the papers just slide under the rubber band and stay in place! Ok, and I loved the green color since the girl’s room is done in green, pink and white.
So once I got my cheap finds home I decided to personalize them with their initials in a girly wooden cutout from hobby lobby (99 cents each, plus 40% off coupons made them 59 cents each). I painted the initials pink and used a white paint pen to put polka dots on them. I hot glued the initials in the lower right corner of the boards.
I also wanted to make magnets to match, so I got 8 clothespins and painted them with the same pink and then dotted them with the white paint pen also.
Next I found some plain magnets from a past project.
I painted them pink also because the show under the clothespins.
Then I hot glued them to the clothespins and each girl’s board got four of these each.
I hung them in the hallway right outside their room so they can see their work displayed every day! My girls loved it and I like how it turned out also. My total cost was less than 7 dollars.
Now, I am redoing the other old boards for my craft room 🙂 I’ll post on those when they are done!
So I recently made these really adorable and easy shirts for my girls. They are made to look like a piece of notebook paper and remind me of school, so with school just beginning for the year and office supplies everywhere for sale… well you get where my motivation to create these came from.
Here is a quick and simple tutorial for making them:
1. First you need a white T-shirt (I got the girl’s shirts a while back at Hobby Lobby when they did the 50% off shirts so they cost 1.50 each. You will also need blue and red paint (fabric paint or acrylic with fabric paint additive), a paint brush, poster board to put inside the shirt so the paint doesn’t leak to the back and wide masking tape.
2. Next, take the masking tape and tape off the shirt where you want your blue lines to be. I found that the extra wide masking tape was perfect for the size of space I wanted between the blue lines. I also just let the tape go over the edges and stick to the table to hold the shirt in place as I painted.
3. Paint between the tape with the blue paint and let dry.
4. Remove the tape.
5. Tape again where you want the red line to go vertically.
6. Paint red between the tape.
7. Let this dry and the next part is optional, I had a black paint pen and let Katie help me write her name “at the top of the sheet of paper” 🙂 I wrote it and she helped guide my hand, so its not perfect but its personal and that’s what counts for me. She loved helping and when it was Bella’s turn she loved it too.
8. Remove the tape from the red line and when everything is dry remove the poster board from the T-shirt and you’re all done!
Of course Bella wanted one too 🙂
Thanks for visiting my blog! Hope you enjoyed the post 🙂 Happy crafting!
1. Anytime I was super sick growing up my Dad would give me warm sprite (that he stirred up until not a drop of carbonation was left) and (usually stale) saltine crackers and tell me, “Just take small sips and nibble slowly on the crackers”
2. One of my best friends in high school would bring me an apple juice any time I was sick or sad.
3. I’ll do just about anything NOT to throw up…. seriously
4. I’ve suffered through many injuries just to avoid a Dr. (or to not sit out of a sport) such as I broke my ankle in High School (during track season) and my parents had no clue until in college when it was broken again and they saw the healed break that the Dr pointed out in my X-ray (that didn’t go over well with my mom)
5. I’m a stay-with-me-I-feel-terrible type of sick person…. some people are my opposite, hide in a room and want everyone to go away till they feel better…. which are you?
6. As a mom I have realized I am terrible at cleaning the kids up after they throw up… I almost always start gagging a bit, but I always mom-up and force myself to take care of them anyway (amazing what being a mom does to a person)
7. As a wife I’ve learned that my husband loves to tell his favorite throwing up stories as if they were badges of honor and I’ve found I’m never impressed by them… just grossed out.
8. Even as I approach 30 I still call my mom and need to hear , “I wish I were there to take care of you”
9. I do not like to take pills, and always drink an entire glass of water with them… long story
10. Hardest reality of being sick lately.. mom’s don’t get sick days…
So this year Katie asked me for a Rapunzel party… at first I was a bit overwhelmed since we have been watching this movie all summer and its pretty amazing. I knew she would want all kinds of details from the movie. So I started by asking her which parts of the movie were important to her for her party. She was quick to answer! A tower cake, a tower in the house, floating lanterns, banners, and a Rapunzel dress and hair… tall orders and small budget. So I wrote it all down and did some looking through my craft stuff.
Banners: I found purple card stock and cut it in half and found a sun stencil at Walmart for 1 dollar and I had gold paint. So I stenciled suns on the card stock which I cut in half and hot glued to a ribbon every other horizontally and vertically to mimic the movie banners from the scene in the city. I made two rows of 6 each, I saw that you could buy some online 6 per row for 12.99 each row, I made them for 1 dollar for two rows. They may not have looked as professional but Katie loved them and that’s what counts.
here's a close up of the banners I made
Flower wall: Katie loves the theme of flowers everywhere throughout the movie so I decided to make a flower wall that says happy 4th birthday Katie. I had lots of old tissue paper that I kept from past gifts (I know its strange, and I don’t care… I use it and it saves us lots of money on tissue and my silly crafts like this one) . So I gathered lots of pink, purple and green and twisted and taped and came up with a flowery wall with vines and wrote Happy 4th Birthday Katie in curly lettering on some paper and taped it up to the wall also. Soooo, this was the result… not gorgeous but cute and she loved the girliness of it.
Katie next to her flowery walla closer look
Floating Lights: Now this was one I had no idea what to do and then just two days before her party I remembered in a box downstairs in our wedding stuff was the round paper lanterns from our wedding reception! I went and found three of the white ones and got the cords and light bulbs that would fit and with my tall hubby’s help got them hung in the living room where her party was to take place. When we turned them on they were just ok, so I remembered from the movie they were more cylindrical and different colors of purple, yellow and orange. So back to the tissue paper (see, useful to keep 🙂 ) I taped purple, yellow and orange tissue to the lanterns and…. the glow they gave off was magical to Katie! Again not professional or perfect but Katie loved it and that’s my goal.
these are Katie's floating lanterns she loved 🙂a better shot of the tissue paper covering the lanterns
Rapunzel Dress and Hair: Ok so this one we got some big help from Eric’s Mom and Dad. They sent Katie a gift card for Toys R Us and she immediately wanted a Rapunzel dress and got it with gift card left over still! Thanks Grammie and Grampie…. she adores it and wears it all the time! Now, the hair. That is one of my crafty free ideas… I went through all of my scrap fabrics looking for shades of gold. I found three fabrics with gold colors, one was shiny gold satin and the other two were goldish tulle. Each was just a thin long strip of fabric so I decided to braid them and then braid into her hair. I’m glad two were just tulle because the braid is long but not heavy at all. She pointed out that Rapunzel in the movie when her hair was braided there were lots of flowers in it. So I went to her bow drawer and pulled out about 8 flower bows that I’ve made her and randomly put them throughout the braid. She loved it and wanted to wear it everywhere, she even wore her outfit and braid the next day to church since I let them all wear whatever they want on their actual birthday. 🙂 Again not a professional wig like they sell in stores (20-40 dollars each) but it was free and she loved it!
The whole braida close up of the braid
Tower in our house: I needed to cover the cords from the lanterns anyway so I found some blue fabric and tacked it up to the wall and put a strip of silver satin I found up on the blue for a tower “in the sky”. I also crumpled some white tissue paper (useful!) and taped it to the blue sky fabric as clouds. I found some purple tissue paper and folded it into a triangle for the top of the tower and when I stepped back to check out my work, Katie said, “where am I in my tower?!” Well I had to remedy this fast so I went and got one of her school pics not in a frame and taped it to the tower. She then said, “Where is all my long golden hair?” OK, I ran down to my craft room and searched for something to make her hair long and come off the tower… I found some gold satin ribbon I’d gotten for 10 cents at a garage sale a long time ago. It was perfect, I tacked it behind her pic and trailed it out of the tower and spelled her name next to the tower with it. Her final critique was, “Its perfect mommy!” This made my heart smile 🙂 Again not professional wall art but my four year old to be loved it!
Katie in front of her "tower"
Tower cake: Ok so as for the tower cake, I tried and failed and finally succeeded… I knew this would be a tough cake but I tried to do it the day of the party. My biggest mistake. I have seen towers online done with rice krispie treats, so I assumed I could do this also. Well I tried it and when I put icing on it the tower just kept sliding downward and I learned that to do this properly I needed to let the rice krispie treats dry in tower shape for a few days so that the marshmallow isn’t so soft and holds shape better. So plan B, I also saw an non-edible option of taking a paper towel roll and covering it in icing. So I went with it a few hours before the party and was desperate. The base is a large strawberry cake (Katie asked for Strawberry and chocolate) covered in a chocolate fudge icing and then covered in fondant. I placed the tower on it and then positioned the characters we got her as a gift. Next I decided that I wanted to spell out her name in fondant “hair”. My immediate thought was to find the kid’s play dough press that makes the play dough into long thin strips. Then I decided I had to have something similar that was only used for food. I found my garlic press and it worked great! My sweet husband even offered some muscle for the cause 🙂 So I wrapped the fondant “hair” around the entire cake and then spelled Katie’s 4 with it. I also made small purple fondant flowers and shimmer dusted them and placed them all over the tower and cake. She went nuts over the cake. It was ok, not my best but cute.
tower cake from the topA farther away pic, sorta blurry...a better up close shotcandles lit!she was super excited!
So here are a few more pics from her party and afterwards. I did buy a plastic Rapunzel table cloth, plates and napkins from Walmart, so after everything cake, food and all her party cost less than 30 dollars. So even with a low budget Katie got a Rapunzel party that she still talks about two weeks later 🙂 I spend a lot of time and effort on my kids and that’s just the way I like it. I want her to always know she is loved, I hope this is just one little memory among many that remind her of my love.
just sitting at her table waiting for her party 🙂 so sweet...ready to open presents 🙂happy about a piggy book!she got an adorable Rapunzel build a bear
So she loved her party and felt like a princess! Goal acheived 🙂 She got many more wonderful gifts but we got so into the party we didn’t get all the pictures we wanted. That always seems to happen! Maybe we need to ask someone to come that barely knows us and can focus on picture taking so we have the pics later but can be focused on the party 🙂 I love my brand new 4 year old! She is so vibrant, artsy, happy, sweet and loving. I’m blessed beyond what I deserve to be her momma.
My Crazy Blessed Life! 