Ribbon and Button Flower Arrangement

These flowers are made from ribbon, buttons and a few beads!  I love the way it turned out!  I found the tutorial on how to make the ribbon flowers over at Hope Studios where the writer there has over a hundred tutorials on all kinds of things.  You will have lots of  fun over there, I promise! 

I improvised on some of my flowers, but that is the beauty of these kinds of crafts.  You can make it personal and add or takeaway what you want.  As for the holder, it's just a wooden planter I bought at Michaels over a year ago for a dollar.  I had painted it red because my room colors used to be black, white and red.  Now the colors in my room are black, white and that blue color on the walls.  So I covered up my red paint with 3 layers of white acryllic paint.  I hot glued 2 styrofoam squares together and then hotglued some moss on the outside of  my square.  It popped right into the container and wherever there were blank spots I just pushed more moss through the holes.  Then I pushed my flowers down in where I wanted them!  So easy and quick.  The ribbon flowers take the most time but it does depend on if you hotglue everything or sew most of it.  I did half and half.  Hotgluing is really the way to go in my opinion. 

It gives my room a little extra something special and I am enjoying looking at them whenever I go to my dresser.  Have fun and make something for yourself that you can enjoy!

Small Town Livin'

I love the feel of my new town.  There are some great franchise stores and restaurants but then there are some great local places too.  We found this awesome place on Friday night to get icecream and other frozen treats.  It's called Gardner's and you can go through the drive-thru or sit out front at a table and enjoy your treat.  They play great oldies music, which the boys enjoyed bopping around and dancing to.  Everyone liked their treat but we will definitely be going back to try many of their others! 

Chocolate soft serve was Caleb's choice. 

Not really a surprise there, he loves his chocolate. 

I guess he comes by it naturally.

Josh got a strawberry gelato...it was good.  He shared a bite with me!

Simon and Dad shared a straweberry gelato also. 

 I'm not sure who ate more.  Probably Simon.

My New Jewlery Holder

When we moved I threw away my jewlery box because it was falling apart.  Plus everything was always a mess in there and I could never really see everything I had.  I don't have a ton of jewlery so I knew there had to be some kind of solution for my little treasure trove other than throwing it  all in a jewlery box.  After looking around online a bit, I found this tutorial at My Blonde Ambitions. She make all kinds of jewlery and other fun stuff.

**This is the one from the tutorial**

I followed her tutorial and I went to Michaels for my wooden plaque but since then I have found them cheaper at WalMart.  So shop around and look for a good price because I could have saved almost $5! The whole thing only cost me $10 which is still a good deal.

So I really didn't do anything different than what her tutorial says other than not making a bar for my rings (I only have 3) and than I used Mod Podge gloss instead of matte. I did 2 coats of acryllic paint and 2 coats of Mod Podge. I will say that the bubbles in the paper really frustrated me and I tried to get them all out but there were some left.  I've since learned that there is a tool called a bryer that really helps with those bubbles.  You can learn about that tool and enter a giveaway to earn one over at Somewhat Simple.  She will announce the winner Monday so hurry on over to enter! 

I also learned that I should have measured where my holes were going to go by using the edge of the wood to line up my ruler.  Not the paper that I put down.  My paper was a bit crooked and so now my dowels are a bit crooked.  Not too bad though.  The next time I make one it will be much easier and I will know what to do.  I am going to be making several of these for Christmas presents!  So excited.  Here is my finished project!  I'm soooooo loving it!

Member One Boot Camp Week #3

I took off last week to rest my shoulder that I had hurt the week before.  I was able to get some walking done during the week and of course over the weekend when we took the trip to Natural Bridge.  My shoulder feels better and so my goal was to work hard during this past week but that didn't happen. 

It has been raining a lot.  I was able to walk a little on Monday and then on Wednesday I was able to do a good wog for 25 minutes. Then I came back to the house to do some lunges.  I slid on the deck and fell on my left knee.  Yeah, It hurt and there is a good bruise there now.  Anyway, it put a damper on anymore exercise for the day.

Today I hiked with the boys at our "Mountain" Park.  It was the first day for the whole week that the sun shined all day!  The hills out there are murder and I'm always huffing and puffing by the time we get through.  Today was no exception and Josh was right there with me as he had chose to ride his bike.  He still rides with training wheels and this was the first time he has ever had to face hills.  He was a trooper though. 

So over all for this week there was no good quality exercising going on.  I hope this next week will be better.  I am going to have to be diligent in setting my 6:30am alarm and draggin' my booty out of bed!

Pop Top Bracelet

Here is a craft that would be excellent for a teenager to do.  As far as materials go you just need to save your pop tops and then buy you some fun ribbon to use.  I have been wanting to make one of these for awhile and finally got around to doing it.  I think I have been bitten by the crafting bug because I can't stop wanting to make things.  Anyway, I think the bracelet turned out pretty cute!  The tutorial I used made it so easy and you can find it HERE.