Today I will wear

Like I said last week I have been working on the chaos behind our door, last week I took care of the coat rack.  This week I had an idea, this is when everyone in my family groans, and the mornings in our bedroom are just as much chaos as the mess that was behind our door.  My daughters get dressed in there, my son is coming in asking me questions while I’m getting the girls ready, my husband comes home in the middle of all this and starts talking about his day, night.  I needed something that would make this time easier and smoother.  I have been trying for a while to get my daughter to pick out her clothes the night before so that we can avoid the whole “no you are not wearing that, go find something else”, followed by the “but why not mommy” conversation that is repeated a few times and last about twenty minutes.  She would never do it though.  My youngest daughter likes to get ready with her older sister and is starting to pick up on all these wonderful little conversations I have with the older one.  So I decided that they needed something for the clothes they picked out that we agreed on.  It needed to be in our room and it had to be something fun so they would want to do this.

I found a pin on Pinterest one day that had a framed hook on the wall and an outfit hanging on it.  That inspired me to come up with these wood signs, they hang under the coat rack behind our door and cut out at least 15 minutes of arguing in the morning. *happy mommy dance*

Lola’s had a gash in the wood.  I thought this would add lots of character and wouldn’t affect the look, that was the plan.  I didn’t realize that the words hit the gash until it was too late.

Bless all who enter

We are doing yet another makeover to our bedroom.  We have taken out all the shelves that we built last year, they will be sadly missed, and have purchased new bookshelves and two new desks.  We had a very lengthy debate on painting.  I was for it but hubby reminded me that our youngest is in the coloring on everything but paper phase.  So I agreed that it would be better to wait.  So please remember that the next few weeks as I show you before and after pics of certain parts of my bedroom/craft area.

For the first couple things I forgot the before pics, I apologize that you didn’t get to see the chaos that hung behind my door but trust me you should be grateful!  The “before” that hung behind our door was just pure chaos!  I had a small coat rack, or should I say a little strip of wood with hooks, on the wall behind the door that had my purse, coats jackets, belts, umbrellas, hubby’s walking stick, and pretty much anything that would stay.  Then on the back of the door was 4, what started off as four but now only two I believe, command hooks that was supposed to hold the girls hooded towels they love so much, they now have a new home on the country bath towel rack in the bathroom, and my hubby’s hats.  But like I said before in the fresh towels post so much hung that the door barely opened.  And once when I was coming in from the store I pushed the door open and it came back and hit me in the face, and with a load of laundry the same thing may have happened once, well let’s just say that I’m sick of it happening.

So I finally made a bigger coat rack and went through what we had hanging on it and decided that half of what we had didn’t need to be there.  I wanted to put a saying on it but wanted to be able to use it somewhere else in the future so I decided on “bless all who enter”.    It now looks so much better and is so much more functional!

Grandkids make life grand

Well I wouldn’t know.  I hope it is awhile before I am a grandparent but every grandparent I know seems to love the title.

I was able to photograph one of the Christmas presents I made a couple weeks ago.  It was hanging all nice and lovely in its new home.

My friend was wanting to make something for her father-in-law for his birthday and she was going back and forth over this and a couple of other things.  She ended up deciding on one of the other things but I really liked this idea.

At my husband’s grandparents house we all draw names at Christmas time.  The idea is you only buy for that person and everyone gets a gift.  The reality is the mom/wife gets to purchase the gifts for everyone in her family and then the hubby/kids get the credit.  *sigh* the joys of motherhood!!   Someone in our family ended up getting my hubby’s aunt, I don’t know her very well but I do know she is totally in love with her two grandchildren (and one on the way).  I couldn’t think of anything to give her and then this idea popped into my head and I knew it would be perfect for her.

 

 

And when I went over to drop some clothes for her granddaughter, that my daughter had grown out of, I seen it hanging up.  She really likes it and that makes me so happy.

Winner #2’s order

When I had the drawing winner number two was so excited! She loved the glasses so much that she even ordered this sign. She collects Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. Her guest room is decorated with them with special made pillows for the bed. She told me she had been wanting something on the walls for a while but couldn’t find anything she liked. She wanted something that would go with the pillows which said “Raggedy Treasures” and she loved the font on her glasses. I did some playing around with her requests and came up with this. She instantly fell in love and I think I have a new loyal customer!

Winner #1

As I told you last week, I held a drawing for my Facebook page.  After drawing the winner, I decided that I would draw four.  I wanted to share in the joy I was feeling that my page had a 100 likes!!  The next few weeks I will be doing short post of what the winners wanted.  I am getting orders coming in and staying busy so I want to make sure I am giving those orders their required attention.

The first winner had her choice of what she wanted, she chose the sign.  After talking to her and designing everything we are both pleased with the results!  An outhouse sign

I love that she is so happy with it!  And since she is in the process of moving into a new home, some new business may have come out of all this!

There’s no crying in…

I have officially done it! I decided that I need to do what I can to help my family out financially and since I did so well right before Christmas I decided to try crafting full time. I’m keeping busy with a two to three orders a week, I think that is pretty good since I just started this.
I decided to make my personal card page on Facebook my business page. My personal card page only had like 20 likes on it (dedicated friends and family), I knew to make this work I was going to have to get myself out there more.
So I decided to do a drawing. Once I hit 100 likes I would draw a winner. Big step since I needed 80 more likes! It took weeks and I was starting to feel like a nag begging everyone to share and like my page. But then I hit about 75 likes and I was getting excited! This was actually working. Orders were starting to come in and people were telling their friends about me. I think the greatest thing was when a new customer said “I just love how you are a mom too and you understand” this was after we had to cut 2 phone calls short after screaming fighting kids in the background wouldn’t cooperate. Surprisingly it wasn’t my kids, but I have been there many times and understood. So finally after the kids were all in bed we had phone call #3 and got all the details of her ordered figured out. I when I delivered her ordered she was so excited and happy with it. I love to see that on peoples face, and to know I made it happen is a better high then any of the drugs out there. Actually I wouldn’t know I’m just guessing.
But anyway I’m getting way off topic.
It was a slow start with the likes.  But I was up to around 80 when my niece finally liked my page and found out about the drawing.  I would say she must have been living under a rock but she was just really busy with the state basketball tournament. But once my niece got on board there was no stopping her, it was like she was on the court and all business!  Within an hour she had 10 friends like my page!! And within days the page hit 100!!!

She was doing all this in hopes of my fixing the drawing to where she was a winner.  I got this from her constant, “I better win Aunt Stac” lines she dropping.  I wanted this to be fair though but she was such a big help that she needed something.  So I told her since she was such a big help that I would make her something special.

She is the sporty one; volleyball, basketball, softball, and baseball are all her sports.  She is very competitive and I love watching her attitude completely change once she hits that court or field.

I saw this as a shirt on Pinterest and right away I knew I had to make a sign for my niece!  Not because it is a famous line in a movie that she loves, but because I can seriously see her saying this to someone.

I wish I had a picture of her face once I gave it to her.  Priceless!

Bathroom Rules

I have been seeing so many of the “bathroom rules” signs lately.  I think they are really cute but none had the sayings that really fit our bathroom.  Since I made a towel rack for our bathroom I decided that I would just make our own bathroom rules sign.  There were lots of little sayings from other signs I seen that I liked, they never seemed to be on the same sign though.  And another problem I was running into was that I was using a scrap piece of wood and only had a 12 x 9 area to work with.  I wanted to remind my girls to wipe their butts, flush the potty and wash their hands.  But for the adults and guest I wanted it not to so instructive.  Since I had limited space anyway I thought the best way to that that was to simply put “wipe, flush, wash”, I wanted this to be the main focus so I put it right in the middle.   One thing that drives me crazy about our bathroom is that I seem to be the only one that sees the empty toilet paper roll and hand soap bottle, I must be the only one who knows where they are stored because no one ever does this.  And I had two rules that mainly pertain to my teenage son; if it stinks, spray it and put the seat down.  Does anyone else just hate going to the bathroom after your teenage son?   And with seven people using one bathroom “be neat and tidy” just seems to be a must for a rule.

We had no hand towel holder, apparently when my husband and his brother were young it somehow got ripped off the wall and never was replaced.  It’s still a mystery of who did it and they still blame each other.  But the hand towel just gets thrown on the sink, sometimes in the sink which causes for a useless hand towel.  The bath towel rack gave me an idea, turn the rules sign into a hand towel rack.  So for the last rule I added “hang up your towel” as a reminder to hang up the hand towel.   And to be polite I added a thank you at the bottom of the sign.

After a couple weeks of being up no one refills it if it’s empty still.  But the other rules seem to be helping…a little.

Fresh Towels

Living with my husband’s parents has it challenges. For instance, his brother lives her also. Right before Christmas his girlfriend moved in also. The bathroom situation is the toughest challenge. There are seven people that use one bathroom, his parents have their own. Towels get washed pretty much daily but we have so many that the hooded towels the girls love always seem to get lost. I added some command hooks to the back of our bedroom door to hang them their but we also have a coat rack there and with all the things hanging on it and then the towels on the door when it’s open has caused our door to only be able to open about three fourths of the way. Not a problem until you are coming in from the store and you have your hands full and the door pretty well comes back and hits you in the face. Yes it has happened to me once, or a few times. I keep saying that I’m going to make another coat rack that is longer and maybe even two so that one is hanging higher and one lower. It hasn’t happened yet but that idea gave me a possible solution for the towels for the bathroom. A towel rack!

Right before our family came in from New York for Christmas my mother-in-law repainted and wallpapered our bathroom. She’s one of those that has to constantly be doing something, so the hunting/deer theme is out and the country bath theme is in. So I searched for country bath things online and what I found I didn’t really like. A lot of it was signs with old time prices of bath houses, which was fine but I didn’t really need all the prices of hot water, soap, and extras. I took the concept though and made a “Country Bath, fresh towels 50 cents” sign. I might be priced a little high on my fresh towels for the old bath house days, but it sounds reasonable for these days.  I added the stars with my original plan of the hooks going in the middle of those, one hook for each child. But when I gave it to my hubby to put the hooks on he put them lower and added two more hooks. I think it looks awesome though. Sometimes it’s the little unexpected changes that help something. I really love this and it seems to be a hit with everyone, the hooks always have towels on them.

Scrap wood signs

I have been sick for the past week.  I think I have the flu 😦  .  I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow morning so hopefully she will give me something to make me feel better.

There was an afternoon when I thought I was feeling better.  I thought I was getting over this, but then I woke up the next day and felt horrible again.  But in that brief afternoon the kids and I started cleaning up the basement.  I found some 1 x 2 wood that had been cut for something that never seemed to happen.  The ones that was all the same length I put together to make a bigger sign sometime.  But there were two left.  I decided I would make single signs out of those.

The first one I made a dark blue painted layer.  I then cut out the saying on my silhouette and put it on that and then did a white layer and peeled up the letters.  And because I love distressing so much, I just couldn’t help myself so I distressed it a little so that the blue underneath would show through just a little.

My cousin is a LPN, she spent her whole life working hard and is so close to getting her RN license.  It really shocked me when she fell in love with a farmer, and loves farm life.  She’s always been one of those “city girls” growing up.  Her life now consists of raising her three children, chickens, cows, horses, and a pretty big vegetable garden in the summer.  She gets just as excited telling stories of how many eggs her chickens laid as she does about some trauma patient that came in the ER with a limb barely hanging on.  I’m not much for her nursing stories so I would pick the egg laying chicken stories any day!  She was my inspiration for this sign, and it will probably end up being a gift for her because it just screams her name to me.

I did the same PVPP (paint, vinyl, paint peel) method on this one.  But on the top coat I didn’t brush on all the way, I made sure I got the letters good but wanted that old worn look.  Once the top coat was on I took a damp cloth and rubbed the paint away in some spots, I had to be careful because this takes off quite a bit of paint.  So I had to rub softly to get the effect I was going for.  In others I wanted a softer rubbed off look so I did the same thing with dry cloth.  I really like the black and cream colors of this sign.  My husband then drilled two holes for me and I added a piece of twine so she can hang it.  I have to admit I’m pretty in love with this sign but I think she will love it even more.

Sorry it’s been so long!

So once again it has been forever since I have posted.  I have been thinking about a post for days, trying to figure out just what to post.  The holidays are so busy, and on top of it I have had sick children.  I hate winter!

So this post is not going to be about just one thing I have been working on.  It is going to be more of a catch up on what I have been up too.  Not everything I have been doing I have taken photos of but I try to get photos of everything.

Okay so first things first, my daughters Peppa Pig birthday party.  It turned out so great!  She had so much fun with her friends.  The tutu’s and cupcakes are my best friend’s creations, she is very talented!  I made the shirt, boots, and bottles for them to use.  I also made bottles for my teenage nieces and nephews who came to the party but I was so behind on my schedule that I forgot to photo those.  They didn’t get Peppa Pig, each got an image that showcased either there personality or something they love as well as their names.  They all loved them!  My daughter’s friends did not want to leave so operation Peppa Pig birthday party-Success!

Then it was onto Christmas.  I made Santa’s cookies plates and Santa’s milk bottles.  I had a few people like the one I made for my kids so well that I was able to sell a few.  I spent a week and a half making and selling things right before Christmas, this gave me some extra cash to spend on my children so that was awesome!

Some of the gifts I made for Christmas I didn’t get photos of because I was working on them right up to the time we had the event.  I was literally making Christmas ornaments at my mom’s for my brother and sister’s families.  So they didn’t get photographed either.  But I will share what photos I did get.