Tucker's Party; Pt 2 - Birthday Stats Chalkboard

Anyone with kids and an Etsy/Pinterest/Jane addiction has probably seen them. Birthday stats chalkboard images are huge right now!

Like this one on Etsy.

Their adorableness alone makes them worth the price tag however, after buying the digital image then paying to have it printed out, that price tag can start getting a little steep. And if you are working on a small party budget, that’s no bueno.

I really wanted one for Tucker’s party. But every time I saw one for sale I thought to myself “I could easily make that!”

A good friend of mine's daughters birthday is only a week before Tucker's and she made one for her party. It was really cute! Just as cute as the digital image ones I had seen. At that point I was sold!

DIY Birthday Stats Chalkboard

What You’ll Need:

Black Poster Board

Paint Pens

Ruler

Simple as that! I found the hard, foam type boards at the Dollar Tree. That's what I wanted originally but they were like 8 bucks at the craft stores. Of course I didn't find them though until after I already bought my regular poster board. Sad faces.

The paint pens will be the most expensive part of this project. Even paying full price for them you are looking at a less than $10 project. However I highly suggest downloading the Michaels or JoAnns app on your phone. There is always a 30% - 50% off coupon available.

Another good thing is that the sky is the limit for this project! There is really no wrong way to do it.

Here's What I Did:

1. Created a border around poster board. Not a necessity but I liked how it looked.

2. Drew out the munchkins name at the top. This should be pretty big and the focal point of your poster board. They are the star after all! (If you don’t like your handwriting, you could always splurge for some stencils to make it look a little more polished)

3. Created the categories (you can add as many as you like) and wrote them out in different sections of the poster board:

• Age

• Things I Love

• I Can Say

• Inches

• Weight

• Birthday

• Favorite Book

• Favorite TV Show

• Favorite Toys

• Favorite Foods

• # of Teeth

4. Filled in the information for the categories (I would suggest writing these out on a piece of paper first just so you know how much you are needing to fit within each section. I didn't do this and wish I did.)

5. Added cute little borders around some of the categories and information

6. Used the ruler to draw straight lines between some of the categories

That's it! Very simple and cute project. Mine didn't turn out perfect due to poor planning and a limited amount time to work on it, but I still loved it!

If you make one, please share. I would love to see.
:)

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Tucker's Party; Pt 1 - DIY Ribbon Wreath

Our little munchkin turned one about a month ago. Talk about bittersweet. It’s wonderful to have a happy, healthy, growing baby but is it so much to ask for him to slow down on that growing part just a little bit!? He already won’t sit still long enough for me to cuddle him and that makes for one very sad momma!

We decided to have one big party at our new house. Naturally we were then tasked to come up with a theme. The theme we decided on was …

Dr. Seuss!

Ok, maybe I decided on that one and Kev was just like…whatevs.

I adore Dr. Seuss though! And Tucker is too little to tell me what kind of party he wanted, so I figured I better take advantage of that while I can. Ha.

I knew from the start I would probably be making most of his decorations. There isn't much in stores for Dr. Seuss parties and I really hate ordering stuff online. Mainly because of shipping (the hubs wont let me get an Amazon Prime membership, trust me I tried!) and I’m just not the most patient person in the world.

At all.

I want it here and I want it now.

In the end I did make most of the decorations. And I got so many compliments; I thought why not do a few tutorials?

DIY Ribbon Wreath

What you’ll need:

Wreath form

1-2 spools of 1.5 inch ribbon

6-7 spools of ribbon in assorted width and colors (This is a give or take. It takes a lot, however it also depends on how big you plan on making your loops.)

Twine or Jute

Monogram letter (I got mine at Michaels for $2)

Small eye hook

Hot glue gun and sticks

Scissors

Optional

Acrylic craft paint (I needed this because my letter wasn't initially the color I wanted it to be)

Pins (If you would rather pin all the loops instead of hot gluing them to the wreath form)

(I highly suggest checking at the dollar store and Wal-Mart first before going to a craft store. I have found the same exact items for wayyy cheaper at these places and then want to kick myself)

I have to apologize ahead of time because I didn't take pictures of this as I went. So I will try to be as descriptive as possible in the steps!

Step 1: If you are going to paint your monogram letter, it would be best to do this first. I just laid out a piece of newspaper, grabbed a paintbrush, some white acrylic craft paint and went to town. I ended up having to do about 3 coats to fully cover the black but it wasn't that big of a deal. It dries quickly. I didn't even worry about the back of the letter, but you can paint that as well if you would like.

Step 2: Grab your wreath form and one of your 1.5 inch ribbon spools. Hot glue one end of your ribbon to the wreath, doesn't matter where, and start wrapping the ribbon around the wreath form, hot gluing it in place as you go.

What isn't shown in the finished picture is that I actually used 2 different ribbons for wrapping the wreath. I started with some very cheap red ribbon that I already had on hand. Problem was, in the end I didn't have enough of it to wrap the entire wreath with. I had a dilemma on my hands. I surely wasn't going to buy MORE, so I decided to finish wrapping the wreath with some red and white striped ribbon thinking “Who cares? No one’s going to see it.”

In the end I loved the look and decided to keep that section visible as shown in the picture. I love when a DIY fail ultimately turns into a major win!

Step 3: Once the wreath is fully wrapped and glued in place, the cutting begins! I've already warned that I’m not the most patient person so there was no way I was going to cut 7 spools of ribbon in one sitting. Ick. In the end I cut about 10 strips of each spool at a time. How long you cut the strips is a matter of preference. I cut mine at 1.5 - 2 inches long and I thought that made the perfect little loops.

Step 4: Take each strip and fold it into a circle with the ends overlapping. If you are going to use pins, you can just push the pin through the overlapped ribbon and then push the pin directly into the wreath. If you are going to use hot glue, then you will want to place a dab of glue at the end of a strip of ribbon then form it into a circle and press the ends together to bond. From there you can put a dab of hot glue on the wreath and then press your ribbon loop to it.

I tried a couple of different methods, but this worked best for me and created perfect loops once attached to the wreath

Step 5: Start by lining the outer and inner rims of the wreath with your ribbon loops. This trick made this project a little easier. As you place them around the rim, make sure that the open side of the loops are facing towards you so that you can see through them when looking at the wreath from the front. Also, if you are going to leave a portion ribbon free like I did mine, make sure to not place any ribbon on the top quarter of the wreath.

Step 6: From there you will just need to fill in all of the space between the 2 rims with your ribbon loops. I did this by placing ribbon in random spots, starting with my thickest ribbon first. Once it was mainly filled in, I went in with my thinner ribbon and filled in the remaining small gaps.

Step 7: To hang your wreath, you will want to cut a long piece of the ribbon of your choice. I didn't get the measurement of mine but it just needs to be long enough for you to tie the ends in a bow. Pull one end through the wreath hole (at the top of the wreath) and line the ends of the ribbon up so that its even. You can then add a dab of hot glue to the wreath and attach the ribbon so that it doesn't slide around. (If that sounds confusing, please take a look at the picture at the end of this post to get a little better idea of what I'm talking about)

Step 8: To attach your monogram letter, screw a small eye hook into the top of the letter. Then take a small piece of jute or twine and thread it through the eye hook, knotting it at the end. Hot glue the knot to the top inner rim of the wreath.

Step 9: I added a bow to mine to finish it off. The tutorial I used to do this is here. Once I finished the bow I just hot glued it to the wreath.

And then you're done!

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{Make It!} Simple & Pretty Grocery Bag Saver

I am an organizing freak. That’s just one of those things about me that will never change. The hubs thinks I’m nuts because I literally have anxiety attacks when everything is a mess. You've heard of Bridezilla? Well I’m Cleanzilla. I can’t help it! I just hate clutter with a passion.

That’s not to say that my house is perfect, clean and organized. It’s not by a long shot.  

I mean, a. I have a one year old who literally wobbles around behind me pulling out everything I just meticulously cleaned and put away and b. We only moved in our new house about a month and a half ago and nothing really seems to have found a “home” yet

I finally decided I just couldn't take it anymore, so now I’m determined to slowly get my whole house organized! 

First up was our pantry. It was a hot mess, put nicely. I’ll share more on how I organized ours in a later post but working on this task brought a major issue to light. 

That issue would be the massive blob also known as grocery bags from shopping trips past. There were about a million of them and no amount of stuffing and shoving was making them take up less room or look prettier. If you save yours as well then I'm betting you understand my pain. 

So I put my thinking cap on, grabbed a few things I had around the house and this was the outcome...

 So here's what you'll need:

Scissors

Double Sided Tape

An Empty Lysol Wipe Container

Pretty Wrapping Paper 

(I got mine 2 for 5.99 at Hallmark. That's still expensive for my taste but they were just so pretty!)

Clear Laminate Paper

Grocery Bags (Of course!)

First up, you'll want to strip the Lysol wipe container of the label (I didn't worry about stripping the container of the glue and that ended up helping me out later on). 

Next, spread out your wrapping paper and place your Lysol wipe container in one of the corners.

  

Roll the container over, along with one end of the wrapping paper, and place a small mark on the wrapping paper where the two ends meet. 

You'll also want to place a mark at the desired height. You can measure the height of the Lysol wipe container to get it perfect, I just estimated it. 

After that you can cut the paper in line with the marks you placed. The wrapping paper I used had printed lines on the back and that made it so much easier to get it cut straight!

I would also highly recommend that at this point you use the piece of wrapping paper you just cut as a guide to cut your piece of clear laminate as well. 

To attach the paper to the container, I used the line shown below as a guide to make sure it was positioned straight. 

Once it was in the position that I wanted I placed a couple of small pieces of double sided tape on the paper and container, wrapped the rest of the paper around, and pressed lightly to join the edges. 

At this point I slacked a little with the pictures, mainly because it's not easy trying to position clear laminate with just one hand! 

The laminate I used is here,  and you just follow the same steps that are outlined above. This step is important because you don't want your wrapping paper to tear in the future!

Now for stocking your new dispenser. 

I'd like to say that you can just stuff as many bags as you want in there and you're done, but nope! The lazy part of me tried. It didn't work. 

You'll want to lay about 13-15 grocery bags (for a small container, you can use more if you have a bigger one) on a flat surface with the handles overlapping.

Fold the handle of the first bag upwards, this will be your starting point once they are placed in the container

Then you just start rolling, making sure to tuck the handles of all the bags in as you go. You might have some issues with air in the bags. Don't worry I did too. Just continue to push down on the bags to get the majority of it out. 

As a side note here, don't roll them up too tight. I made that mistake the first time and had to redo this! 

When you are done it'll look like this. 

Then you just pop this in your container, pull the handle through the opening in the top, and you're done!

I absolutely love this little container! It only took about 10 minutes in all and it's so pretty I can just leave it out on the counter as eye candy. 

I plan on making another small one so that I can have one for each bathroom (I use grocery bags in my trash cans). So much more convenient than walking to the kitchen every time I need to change out the bag!

As soon as I can get my hands on one of the bigger containers I plan on making one for the kitchen as well to hold the majority of our bags. 

So much awesomeness in one little project. 

I'd love to hear about how yours works out for you if you decide to make one. Enjoy!

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A Blog is Born

Hello!

So here I am writing my first ever blog post and I'll tell you what...it's intimidating! As a new blogger I find myself asking "What can be said that hasn't been said a million times before?"

My reasons for creating this blog are simple though. I love to write and I love to create things. I have been reading blogs for years and having my own has always been something I really felt I would enjoy. So this year I finally decided why not?

It's really the perfect time. My husband and I just bought our first home and I see it as a blank slate. I have so many ideas and there are so many things I want to do to with those ideas so it's the perfect creative outlet for me! I can't say my husband shares my same...er...enthusiasm in all this, but he puts up with me anyways. :)

I plan on documenting our journey here and sharing thoughts, ideas, tutorials and anything else I find myself interested in along the way. I hope you'll stick around and thanks for stopping by!

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