Door Hanger

I have taken a break from crafting since Josiah has been born, but was getting the itch to craft again! Luckily we had a wedding coming up which gave me the perfect excuse to create something! This past weekend we had the privilege of going to a dear friend’s wedding located here in Chico. We really enjoyed the time as many family and friends were here in town. Since the gift has been given I hope this doesn't ruin their surprise, ha!

I had made a door hanger for our house a while ago and thought it would be fun to make as a gift. I thought I would show all the steps I used to create the edging that I like on my blocks and how I made the hanger.

First, I cut 2 lengths of 1 x 4 wood. I cut a 14" and 12" piece.

Then, I laid them out on newspaper and sprayed them with an off white spray paint.

Here is the spray paint that I used...

Here are my pieces painted and drying.

I then took my handy-dandy electric sander and sanded all the edges. I did no sanding before hand with the rough cuts. This really can save some time and is not needed until after the painting is done.

This is what my pieces look like after they are sanded. I like to round out all the edges, but the most important thing to do is to make sure you expose the wood around the edges in order for the next step to work.

I then take a dark walnut stain, like this one...

Take some of the stain and rub it around the edges of the blocks (where the exposed wood is) with a rag and let sit for a bit. Wipe off the excess stain and it should look like this.

I am making a couple of these, so only 2 are used per door hanger. Like the pacifier in the picture?

I then took my Silhouette and printed their names and the Welcome sign. I placed the letters on the blocks and centered them.

I then took these screw eyes and measured on the tops of the blocks to screw them in. I placed the top 2 screws 2" in from each side and the bottom ones 4" in from each side. Before I screwed them in, I pre-drilled my holes with my cordless drill. I think these are super handy to have inside the house by the way :).

I then screwed in the eyes and tied them together with some ribbon and viola, I am done! I made some rosettes with fabric that I hot glued together and put on the sign which I will cover in another post.

Thanks for reading!

Big Sister, Little Brother shirts

It has been a while since I have posted, 2 weeks - yikes! I have good reason. We were able to go to my little brother's graduation from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo last weekend (my alma mater as well :) and celebrate with him. It was well worth the trek and it was a fun time with lots of family. Also, for all of my brother's friends who have since started checking the blog, congrats. Hope all your crafting is going well!

I have been saving this blog post hoping that my sweet children would be ever so compliant to allow me to take one measly picture of them. Being the dolls that they are, I never got one picture with them all wearing their shirts. Alas, I have not even attempted to get one of them all together as they have been sick or teething and I knew a picture would not go over so well :( So, instead of having one with them all in it, here are some pictures of them all on the table together. I was happy to have the girls wear these shirts to meet their new brother at the hospital, at least I got some use out of it!

To make these shirts I used the same heat transfer material and my Silhouette that I talked about in my previous posts about shirts. I wanted to incorporate a design that showed the 3 kids that I have, hence the elephants. I was really happy with how they turned out and added a bow on the first two elephant's ear's to show they are girls.


Here is Brooklynn's...
Sienna's shirt...

Here they all are with Josiah's showing on the end.


I was actually able to get a really cute picture of Josiah in his shirt taken by Jenee Harvey and am happy to have at least one good photo with him in it!

Isn't he cute!

To my little bro, congrats! We are all proud of you and look forward to seeing how God works and moves you as you follow Him!

Cupcake Toppers

I know that summer is supposed to be upon us, but here in Chico the rain has not stopped!!! On one of the rare days that it was clear we planned to have a preschool party to celebrate the end of the year. My job was to make some kind of dessert, of which I had cupcakes in mind! I was going to make mini cupcakes, but could not find a pan, therefore I resorted to premade mini brownies! I still wanted to make my cupcake toppers, so decided mini brownies would do. This year we went through the whole alphabet during preschool, so I thought cute letters would be an appropriate topper.

First I took letters on word and colored them all. I picked the same font for my letters, but I could think of many fun things to do with different kinds of fonts. I printed them out on Avery Label stickers. I like using these since each sticker layout is preprogramed in Word to fit the label sheets. I made two of every letter and then attached them to a toothpick.

I cut these out in squares (some of which were not very even) but there are definitely lots of shapes that could be cut out for the stickers!

I then put them in the brownies (mini cupcakes would have been cuter!) and had a very festive dessert. I loved how quick and easy these were and will love to use this idea for many different parties. Really, the ideas are endless.




One last shot with my little preschooler and all the cupcakes! Enjoy!