Burlap Wreath

I have seen some very cute spring time wreath's around blog-land and thought I'd try my own!  Though I'll probably keep this wreath up year round...(until I make another one, that is!! hehe). :)

Here are some cute one's I've seen:

Fingerprints on the Fridge

Tatertots and Jello

Making the World Cuter

I had found these wreath forms at a garage sale, 3 for $1.50, but you can find them at any craft store (Goodwill and other thrift stores usually have them too!).

I bought a yard of white burlap from Jo-Ann's ($2.99 yd plus you can usually get it 40% off with a coupon).
The rest of the rest of the materials I already had:
Glue gun
White flannel cotton fabric
Wooden Letter (.48 from Wal-Mart)
Mod Podge
Brown Paper Packaging
White Sewing Pins
Nail File

I started out with cutting my burlap into strips about 2-3 inches wide...as you can see I just kind of cut all willy-nilly. :) I wanted it to be "organic" looking so I wanted the edges to be frayed. 

Once my strips were cut (I think I ultimately used about 7-8 strips...and had plenty of my burlap left over for another project.), I started by pinning one edge of the burlap to the wreath with the white sewing pins, to make it stay in place.  I didn't really want to use my hot glue gun because I wanted to be able to remove it easily if I want to change it in the future.  I found that the pins held it really well and were hardly noticeable on the white burlap.  Also - I made sure to pin on the backside of the wreath just to make sure you couldn't see them.

Then, just wrap the burlap strips around and around the wreath.  At each end of one strip and beginning of the other strip, I just overlapped a little and used more pins.  Sometimes I trimmed a bit of the end of the strip to make sure that the new strip lined up with it at the backside of the wreath (again, to hide the pins).

Once my wreath was wrapped, I started Mod Podging my little A.  The letter was painted white when I bought it, so thankfully that was one less step for me to do!  I cut out a square of my brown paper packaging (post office mailing paper, which I buy from Dollar Tree) and traced the A on it.  I cut out the A from the paper, applied Mod Podge to my letter and pressed the paper to the wood firmly.  I smoothed out the couple of bubbles to make sure it lay flat.  I used the same Mod Podge technique as I did for my letter here.

While I let my letter dry between layers of Mod Podge, I decided to make some cute little rosettes to adorn the corner (is there a corner on a wreath?? Probably not, but that's what I wanted.) on my wreath.  I pulled out a bit of my white flannel cotton fabric and cut it into strips about 1 inch wide by 10 inches long.  I held one edge of the fabric in one hand and kind of rubbed/pulled along the length of it with the other hand to fray the sides.  I twisted the fabric and started rolling it around itself, while using my hot glue gun to hold the rosette in place.  The trick with these is to not pull too tightly when you twist it because you don't want the "perfect" look.  You want it to be frayed and uneven. I promise. :)  I made 6 of these in different sizes (different length = different size!).

Side note: I burned my fingers badly at this point (stupid...don't touch hot glue.  It's hot.  And I think I put the project aside for a couple days...I had bad memories that I had to deal with first... ;) )

After the rosettes were dried, I arranged them in the left-hand bottom "corner" of my wreath and hot glued them to the burlap.  And then I walked away. 

Two days later...

When I picked it up again, everything was good and dry and I needed to put it all together. I hot glued a strip of burlap around the wreath and to the back of the A, and then hot glued another strip of burlap to the top of the wreath in a loop.  Once dried, I hung it on our front door!  DONE! :)  

 

I love it.  Skyler doesn't like things on our door because they swing when the door opens (learned this at Christmas-time), but he only made one comment about "ugh, another thing on our door" the first day, and it's been hanging for more than a week now... :)  So I think I'm in the clear!

Happy Spring! (And almost Summer!!!)

Love, K

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Backpacking Marion Lake

75 degrees the whole weekend.  At least that's what it was forecasted to be.  So we planned for a quick, last minute backpacking trip with our friend Brad.  I'd never been backpacking before.  I mean, I love camping.  Really love it - but I'm used to the kind where you have your nice tent, blow up mattress, sheets and comforters, 2 burner cookstove, regular sized pots and pans, 5-day cooler...You know, comfortable camping. :) (But still not in an RV!!! Not till I'm at least 50...)

Skyler said this was an easy one to try as my first backpacking experience, because it was "an easy one mile walk-in".....This was so not true.  It was at least 2 miles, up hill, through snow, part of the trail a very narrow 10-12 inches with a giant snow bank on one side and a drop-off of boulders on the other side, and did I mention UPhill?? I whined more than I should have, because it really wasn't so bad...Just wasn't the easy walk in as I was expecting...
When we got there at sunset, we came to this:

(Three Finger Jack)

And I was pleased. :)  It was worth it. "We're not there quite yet!" Skyler declared...Hmm, how much better than this could it get?? This looks like a nice place to camp to me!! We started around the lake and came to a hillside with probably at least 150 ft incline of LARGE boulders.  Skyler, jokester that he is, said we were climbing to the top to camp up there...But he wasn't joking.  I put on my brave face and started up (climbing boulders is NOT an easy thing to do with a pack...let me tell you.).  I scraped my legs, gnashed open my knuckle, tweaked my knee, huffed and puffed...and made it up half way.  I stopped and rested.  Skyler and Brad continued up as I hollered "I can't go any further, Skyler Anderson.  I am NOT going to the top!"  At least 10 more minutes of hollering and declaring that NO freaking way was I going all the way up there, only to hike up and down 4-5 more times during the duration of our camping trip. (I'm a very determined girl.  If I want to do something, I will do it until it's impossible to do.  If I don't want to do something, I will not do it.  Call me stubborn, but I prefer determined.)  Either way, I stood my ground (err, 75 ft high boulder-ed footing) and let them know I would NOT be climbing up there and they better come back down and find a campsite at the lake with me.... :)

 See the perch up at the VERY top?? That's where they wanted me to climb to..
And now for some better perspective...

See Brad?  The little white blob in the middle? Brad was 1/2 way up and this was zoomed way in from the bottom...Just to give you an idea of how big this "hill" actually was.  Each boulder was practically 5'2'' which happens to equal my height! :)

 

So they did come down after I whined enough... :)  And we set up camp about 10 ft away from the lake...It was lovely. :) We had gorgeous views of Three Finger Jack.  There were about 3 other camps set up along the lake where we were, so the next day we packed up and hiked around the lake a little further, until we got to the day-use only peninsula.  We climbed up to the top, where we had a view of Mt. Jefferson on one side of us and Three Finger Jack on the other, and Marion Lake surrounding us.  It was truly a beautiful place.  We fished:

We built fires:

(I built this fire by myself while the girls boys slept in)

Skyler & Brad hiked up to the top of the boulder hill...and took some beautiful pictures:

(Mt. Jefferson)

All in all, it was a fun camping trip and pretty good first backpacking experience...Hopefully the boys will still want to go with little whimpy girl again next time. :)

Love, K

Garage Sale-ing Saturday

Saturday morning I was awakened toooooo early by my Kitty (5 am-ish).  And, like always, I couldn't fall back asleep because the sun had started to rise and it was starting to get lighter out.  My bedroom window faces the sunrise and is only about 2 feet away from my face...So once the sun starts rising, so do I.  I love it and I hate it. (But I love it more.  I will not complain about getting to watch the sun rise over the beautiful mountains and fir trees every morning!!)

So I quietly crawled out of bed so as to not awake Skyler and went out to the living room.  I knew it would be a beautiful day and thought I'd do some garage sale-ing!  I searched craigslist for some listings, jotted down the addresses and times and numbered the order of where to go first.  I left by 7:30 - the sun was fully awake now and it was GLORIOUS outside!  Spent a BEAUTIFUL morning wandering sales.  Some were good and some I drove by and decided "nah".  I went to my first estate sale!! Wow. Crazy.  It started at 9 and I arrived at 8:50...and there were already 15 others there.  By 9, there were THIRTY of us out there, waiting to go in! (I know, because I counted as each arrived...hehe).  The doors were opened and we all filed in...all 30 of us.  Into a tiny house barely bigger than my two bedroom apartment...which has had a max of 17 people in it at one time.  I did find a few goodies, but mostly was disappointed with what seemed like overpriced items.  Oh, and maybe because this person had collected wall decor masks, glass figurines, ugly Christmas decor and random other stuff that didn't even get a second glance....

But, overall I was pleased with my day! These are some of my goodies:

Birdcage from Estate Sale - $2

Outside light $4 (got an idea for this one...)

Lamp & Shade $6 (shade will get a make over soon)

3 Wreath Forms $1.50

I started working on some of these re-do's on Sat afternoon.  Can't wait to finish working on them. :)
I love garage sales.
Love, K

Sweet Baby Ethan

Natural Birth. Love the idea. Hope one day to experience it. :) Natural birth at home? Wow. Even cooler.  So much respect for women who can do that.  My cousin Justin's lovely wife Deidre just did this a few weeks ago for a super adorable baby boy, Ethan.  I was so happy for them that they finally got their precious little baby!

Because I've been learning more about sewing since receiving my awesome machine from Skyler for my bday in January, I decided I must make something for them. :)

Remember the little pillow forms I got from Ikea?  Yep, I decided to make them a pillow for Ethan.  Since I also have a slight obsession with remnants, I had already picked up a few coordinating colors in a heavy fabric (I don't even know what it's called....I'm so lame.  I need to learn more about fabrics and sewing in general.) that I figured would be perfect for a little pillow. 

Here it is:

I just zig zag stitched around the cloud, airplane and his name.  I have no idea what theme they have going or if they have a theme for him....but I just think little airplane's are so adorable for little boys...so I had to. :)

Congrats Justin & Deidre on beautiful baby boy Ethan! :) Love you guys.

(Photo taken from Deidre's FB...hope she doesn't mind! He's just TOO precious!)

Love, K

Tile Coasters for Mother's Day

Earlier this month, this blog was posted by Little Birdie Secrets (one of my fave blogs), and I immediately really wanted to make them!

Since Mother's Day is this Sunday, I decided to make them for my mom and my mother in law.  They turned out so cute and Skyler even really likes them, so I might just have to make some more for myself too. :)

This is what you need:

• StazOn ink
• Stamp
• Sealer (either Matte or Gloss)
• Sticky Felt Pads for the bottom
• Tiles

I got my tiles from Lowe's.  They're the 4x4 Agora Almond bath tiles and are only like .37 each or something like that.  I decided on the Fleur d' lis because its just so classy and I definitely can use the stamp on other projects, and I got brown StazOn ink because I liked the earth tones of the agora almond tiles and the brown together.  (StazOn ink is awesome, by the way.  It's made to stamp on just about all surfaces, not just paper!)

Just stamp your tiles and let them dry (I let mine dry for about an hour to make sure they were really dry).

Take these outside then (or definitely at least have a door or window open for air flow) and spray them with the clear sealer.  This will help the stamp stay on even better.  Do 2-3 light coats of the spray and make sure not to do a really thick layer.  Hold the spray about 10 inches above the tile.  They tiles will look really wet once they are sprayed.  Let them dry completely between layers. 

Then put the little sticky felt pads on the bottom corners to prevent scratching your counters/tables.

Just stack them all, tie ribbon around and make a bow! I'm sure I'll come up with something else to give to my dear mothers also, but these were just too cute and I really wanted to make them. :D

Pin It

Ok, off to go work on some sewing projects finally! (Like my pillows for my couch!  I keep talking about them and haven't yet gotten around to doing them...boo.)

Bye friends, and thanks for taking the time to read my blogs. Means a lot. :)
Love, K

L is for Lion, Leo, Lincoln.

My sister-in-law Chelsea is having a baby boy and is due August 1st.  I've been slowly getting things together for both a baby shower for her and I really want to bless her with a large basket of baby goodies (homemade, as much as I can).

This one was a simple and inexpensive one and I just couldn't resist.

I was on a mission for a basic wooden plaque for a name sign for my nephew Kaiden and I found one at the Dollar Tree.  I decided to pick up two at the time and I'm glad I did.  I had also picked up a pack of super cute wooden jungle animals from the Dollar Tree.  (Chelsea is going with a jungle theme for baby boy Lincoln.).

A few days later, while browsing at Wal-Mart, I found a plain wooden letter "L" on sale for only $.98.  I didn't have any plans really for the extra plaque or wooden animals but when I saw the "L", I decided to pull them all together.  Chelsea had previously told me she loves lions for Lincoln because he will be a Leo when he's born (she's really into astrological signs).

So this is what I did:

I primed the plaque with white paint and then used a green paint to paint the face of the plaque.  For the "L", I painted the sides white but left the front bare.  I used the same technique that I had learned for the Mod Podge children's hangers and traced the "L" on some zebra patterned paper, cut it out, and attached the paper to the "L"with a thin layer of Mod Podge between the two.  Once it was dried, I trimmed off any excess and took a nail file to file the edges against the wood. (I buy a huge pack of like 30 nail files at the Dollar Tree for my craft projects).  This sort of makes the two "become one" and makes the paper more flush with the wood.  Then I do two more layers of Mod Podge over top of the paper and along the sides of the letter.

When both the "L" and the plaque face were dried, I used my trusty glue gun to adhere the letter and the lion to the plaque.  I took a bit of green ribbon that I had and glued it to the back of the plaque.

And it's finished:

 Simple and cute.  I hope she likes it. :)