Favourite Finds Friday

No crafting happened around here this week unfortunately (apart from the kids making crayon hearts for their valentine's for school).  Busy earlier and A has come down with a horrible cold Wednesday and I am fighting it off.  Nothing much happening except domino rally and lego building.  I need to drag the poor kid out to buy some chicken pieces so I can make a big pot of soup (and try out that recipe from last week's list).

So, in no particular order, here are my favourites from this week:

This link from Young House Life where kids describe what they think would make a cool house.  Cute and funny.

I just signed up for their $5 iPhone photography course starting on March 1. 

If you have received your copy of the latest Country Living, this huge cross stitch sampler is featured in a home on the front cover.  I love it!  It is 1 metre across.

I have quite the thing for bunnies and I adore this hook from Anthropologie.  They have a fox too.  I saw this on the lovely blog, My Old Country House when she redid a bathroom and used it there.

These pretty papers are available through Toffee Magazine for $2.50 for an instant download.

These bowls come from Country Road Homewares, a store in Australia.  They have this shape they call Bistro bowls and they bring out new patterns every year.  They have other matching items as well like mugs and my sister has a lovely growing collection of them in different patterns.  I bought two of these in pink (stowing them very gently in our luggage for our return trip) and have been happily using them since.  They just brighten up my morning a bit.  :)

This is a holiday rental in Cornwall.  I have always wanted to visit England and, if I go, I want to stay here!  So lovely and it is right on the shoreline.  I found this through the Hooked on Houses blog.  Be warned if you visit her blog, you will be hooked too!

Hope you are all well and happy weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day

Well, I am squeaking this post in by the skin of my teeth...  Busy week, sick kids, blah blah.  Anyway, on to the photo.  My sister and her family visited us from Australia last September/October and, on one of our outings, we spent some time on the banks of Lake Superior in Duluth (we all loved it btw!).  It is a very rocky/pebbly shore and I had the great idea that we could all look for heart shaped rocks as I had seen a number of them on other people's blogs awhile ago.  We did find a few but my sister also found this lovely little heart eroded into a big rock.  So I will leave you with that and save my 'bah humbug' anti-Valentine rant for another day.... :)

Cabin fever 2013 - pinch pots

My favourite side effect of winter is the kids' renewed interest in doing crafts together.  They tend to avoid it in the summer when they can be outside all the time and I miss doing these things with them.  Recently at school A made little 'pinch pots'.  A regular 1st grade item apparently.  For those of you without little ones to tell you, a pinch pot is just a clay pot molded by hand from a blob of aforementioned clay.  You can get them quite smooth if you keep a little bowl of water close by and dip your finger in.  Decorate however you like (I have a big jar of random beads and another of sequins that have been our decorations of choice).  I am guessing you can paint them once dry but I kind of like the natural colour.  The school one was painted and kiln fired (yellow! so cute).  I bought a big bucket of Crayola's air dry clay from Target (the kids' art and crafts projects section) and ours dry in front of the fireplace.  I am not sure what we are going to do with them all (be warned relatives back in Australia with birthdays looming...) but we have quite a row of them on our dining room windowsill.  I love that this is such an easy craft to set up as well.  Just grab the bucket of clay and a few embellishments and pull out your chunk of clay to work on.  I think I need to buy more clay.

Favourite Finds Friday

I wasn't kidding about my love of alliteration the other day (I am sure I have mentioned it many times actually....).

To finish up the week I am just going to share a few random things I came across this week that I enjoyed.

I just bought this great 'Hogsmeade Retro Travel' poster from Poster Revolution.  E is a huge Harry Potter fan and this poster is only $4.80 today (don't know for how long).

I am going to try out Smitten Kitchen's chicken noodle soup recipe - it looks fantastic.  I should try more of her recipes as they all look wonderful.

This image comes from a wonderful blog that you have probably already heard of, Posie Gets Cozy.  Alicia writes so beautifully and creates the most heart achingly gorgeous things.  But I just love this photo of some vintage wallpaper swatches.  That yellow one has me drooling.

Loving these cool eco friendly binders from Naked Binder.

Isn't this adorable?  I love this little woven heart valentine from Mini-eco in the UK.

Last but not least, I love this free printable colouring page from Gerbera Designs - it comes blank and you colour it in however you like (obviously...).  I am going to do one for each of the kids.

What have you discovered this week?  Do you overuse the word 'love' in your descriptions of things??  Feel free to share in the comments!

(disclaimer: none of these links/opinions are sponsored or affiliated in any way, none of these websites or people probably even know who I am - these are just my personal opinions of things I have come across in my internet browsing travels this week)

Thrift Store Thursday

Look at this lovely lady I picked up the other day.  She is a brass bell.  I haven't found much info online about her but the cheapest I saw it sold was on Etsy for $17.  So I am counting my $4 pickup a bargain.  I am very discerning about what I buy at thrift stores now - I bought too much when I first got to the US and discovered these fabulous places close by me - and often leave with nothing.  But I just love this and I couldn't leave her there.  I don't even like anything gold normally.  How about you?  Picked up anything fab lately?

Receipts running rampant....

That post title makes no sense but I have an unrelenting love of alliteration and try to fit it in anywhere.  In the spirit of the usual New Year goal of getting more organised, I did a little makeover of my receipts folder.  Living the dream over here, let me tell you, and yes I am just going to ignore the fact that my last post was still a Merry Christmas one....  ah, things have been busy.  We went for a visit back to Australia for 3 weeks and I don't like to post about it online beforehand, for security reasons, but that was a welcome break from the cold up here in Minnesota.  After that we had school camp to get ready for, hubster travelling for work, everyone but me coming down with the flu, the start of gymnastics meet season, yada yada yada.  You all know how it goes.  Another thing that has been getting in the way of me posting has been the difficulty I have found in finding a spot to photograph my projects adequately in this house.  This has been an ongoing source of frustration but I have just rigged up something that seems to be working.  I will post about that another day so you can feel free to copy my amateurish ways...ha!

Ok, well on to this makeover I mentioned.  I have had this receipts folder for umpteen years and it irritates me.  Always has.  You know how sometimes it is the little things that just get under your skin?  Well, ridiculous as this is, this little folder which I use quite regularly just hasn't been functioning great and it is a source of minor, but present, irritation so I decided to just do something about it to bring some pretty functionality into a mundane task of my life.

You can tell how old it is by the red Dymo tape label on it - yeah baby.  Those things are probably collectible now.

First things first, I really didn't like the flap so I cut it off as close to the hard cardboard shell as I could.

Then I chose a cute patterned scrapbook paper to glue to the outside covers, measured the exact width and made it a little longer (top to bottom) so I could fold it over on the inside for a neat finish.

I used Mod Podge but you could use any glue you have to hand (a glue stick would work fine).  Spread your glue on quickly and....

press it onto the side.

Here is that little bit of overhang.  I used a regular glue stick along the edge and folded it over to the inside.  Just held it for a few seconds and it stuck fine.

The inside was still looking like a hot mess thanks to my oh so beautiful sticky notes stuck over printed labels so I wanted to make this look a little nicer too.

I grabbed another piece of scrapbooking paper and cut off a strip that I thought would be wide enough to cover up the printed lettering on each little flap.

Then cut them into little rectangles, folded them in half......

slapped a bit of glue on it.....

and added it to each flap in the three sections.  This looks fiddly but I just eyeballed everything and it went really quickly.  I may or may not have made sure each piece of paper was lining up the same pattern of lines...

Then I got out my trusty label maker and added labels that I will actually use.

This little folder lives on a shelf above my computer so I added a label to the end by poking a hole through on the side and tying this little hanging tag on there.  I bought some cheapo letter stamps at the Target dollar section a little while ago for the kids and used it here.  I am claiming a quirky charm to it rather than admitting my stamping effort looks a little wonky.

I might make an elastic band to go around it if I find it needs it but it doesn't usually get full enough to warrant anything like that.

So, there you have it.  A quick and easy little office update which I am sure will make me smile just a little bit every time I use it and, really, who doesn't need more little smiles in their life? :)

Merry Christmas!

Hello there!  Yes, I am still alive and kicking over here.  Wow, didn't quite mean to take that much of a break but there you go, life happens.  Between some residual health issues and the constant round of school, kids' activities, having to feed people and so on, the time just slipped away.  Honestly, that is going to be my one New Year's resolution - slow.life.down.  There must be a way that doesn't involve going to live in a remote cabin in the woods and removing yourself from civilisation (as tempting as that sounds some days!).  Humour me, tell me there is.....

Well, I am just dropping in to show a couple of quick Christmassy projects I did around here and then I won't be back until the New Year.  I hope you are all having a wonderful, wonderful holiday season - no matter how fast it ran up on us all.

My first quickie decorating project involved this awesome thrift store find - this beautiful apothecary jar for a mere $12.  I have managed to find a reasonable number of small ones in thrift stores but I am in love with this larger beauty.  Miss E and I very quickly and simply decorated it with epsom salts in the bottom for snow, a little miniature tree I had picked up at Michael's awhile ago (with just this sort of project in mind) and a couple of Schleich animals from the kids' collection.  Then I tied a little snowflake patterned ribbon to the top knobby thing.  A white and silver glitter pompom may have made its way in there too. :)

I have this sitting on the little bookcase I use for our very small front entrance next to one of my blue mason jars with some sticks decorated with glittery little birds and shiny and glittery stars.  Last year I tried to wind tiny little battery operated lights onto these branches and they were a royal pain and they didn't look that great except at night when they were lit (plus they went through batteries like nobodies business) so, obviously, I didn't use them this year again.  I prefer them without anyway and am glad that A didn't remember them because that boy sure does like a string of lights!

One other touch I did was to take my boy scout troop fundraising wreath (say that 3 times fast) with the big red bow and just changed out the bow so it didn't clash with my orange front door.  Yes, I painted our front door orange.  With our landlady's blessing.  She is awesome like that and I am glad because it makes me ridiculously happy every time I drive home and see it welcoming me.  Now I just need to paint those little red bells on the pinecones.... or not.  Probably won't get done if I'm honest. :)  The bow is big enough to distract from that anyway, right?  Plus, who cares???  We aren't talking about heart transplants here.

Lastly I had a go at some chalkboard art on the kids' easel which sits in the corner of our dining room (I googled chalkboard message images and found this one but cannot find the link now).  I have taken to drawing and writing seasonal messages on it.  I love looking over from the kitchen to the dining room and seeing the pretty words (which look better from a distance - you can't notice the mistakes then!).  Not sure what quote I will put up for the New Year.  Got any favourites?  Please share!

 Anyway, those are a few of my simple little touches around our home.  Simple little touches are all I can manage this year but I kind of like it like that.

So I will sign off for 2012 now and see you in 2013 (barring any disasters on the 21st...)!  :)

DIY Felt Tablet Sleeve

I was lucky enough to get a tablet as a gift this last Christmas and, after a while without any protection save the odd magazine, it was in danger of getting a bit beat up in my bag.  I was looking around at cases and kept on seeing all these lovely really thick felt tablet cases (sleeves?) around that I liked but I didn't want to spend the money they usually sell for.  They are generally made of really thick wool felt which is beautiful but is quite expensive to buy for the home crafter (3 sheets can be around $18 and up).  So, I decided to make mine out of 29 cent craft felt sheets instead which happen to be just the right size.  Yay, I love a bargain solution!

You will need:

4 sheets of craft felt

Sharp scissors

Sewing machine

Ten minutes of your life

1. Line up 2 craft sheets on top of each other and stitch a straight line across the top leaving a small border.  Do the same with your second 2 sheets.  These individually stitched sides provide the opening when the other sides are all stitched together.

2. This shows your two sets.  Don't worry too much about lining them up perfectly as felt sheets are rarely exactly the same size.

3. Lay one stitched set on top of the other set in your chosen colour combination and pin the heck out of it so it doesn't skew too much when you sew it all together.

4. Stitch around the outside 3 seams and not the top one where you have already stitched obviously.  I used generous seams because my Asus tablet is smaller than an iPad.  I think with smaller seams the iPad would still fit (someone try this out and let me know!).

5. Use your sharp scissors to trim off the seams all around and give you a nice clean edge.  That's it, you are done!

For another one I made, I used pinking shears for a more decorative edge. 

On this one, I chose yellow for one side...

and grey for the other.  Going with the whole colour blocking trend right now.  I am so hip... ;-)

I really like the colour effect on the trimmed sides and the double thickness on each side makes it nice and sturdy.  Best of all, because it is so cheap and quick to make, if I want a different colour combination it is no hassle.