4th of July Fun

It's hard to be motivated to celebrate a predominately outside holiday in the middle of July in Phoenix, but we tried to pretend like it wasn't 109 degrees outside and enjoy it with much gusto!  Our celebration was pretty low-key, but it was perfect and just what we needed.

I had seen this tutorial on A Beautiful Mess and wanted to try it out with my Nikon J2. It was super fun! I only wish that I had thought ahead of time of some cooler patterns to do because when the time came I felt myself a little stunted for inspiration.

According to the tutorial, you slow your shutter speed to a 10 second exposure. After wrestling with my camera manual for a time longer than I am going to admit to you, I finally got the hang of it. You definitely need a chair or tripod to steady the camera other wise it turns into a blurry mess. Unless you have strongman arms then I am super impressed.

Here are some smoke bombs, just because it feels right. Who doesn't love a good smoke bomb?

I also made this strawberry poke cake.  I was a little hesitant about this, apparently it's a big thing and I have never heard of it.  It was pretty tasty! I didn't hate it. Sorry for the poorly lit picture.

What did you all do to celebrate July 4th?

Mother's Day with a "Treat"

Mother's Day is right around the corner (as in tomorrow, if you haven't thought about it you should probably hop to it).

Treat Greetings is a company through Shutterfly that really is a showstopper when it comes to cards.  I was so impressed with the great quality of the paper that the cards are made from and the variety of the designs and styles to choose from.

Even the shipping envelope is cute for crying out loud.

They have so many options to change and personalize any card that you choose and that's what makes this company so creative and versatile. Not to mention that they also have super cute digital card options which I intend to use for my parent volunteer at the end of the year!

I loved that you could add a little picture to the back of the card. I added a picture of my mother in law's "grand babies" aka our dogs.

To go with this wonderful card, I decided to craft my mother in law some burlap banners. She just moved into a house and no one likes blank walls.  She saw this online and asked me to replicate it with some leftover burlap that she had.

In order to take up more wall space I decided to make three separate "signs" rather than a banner.

This was the final product.

What you will need to make these are:

• 1/4 inch copper pipes (3)
• 1/4 inch copper pipe caps (6)
• Jute twine (found at Walmart in the home improvement section) and colored yarn
• Chalkboard spray paint
• Heavy card stock
• Tacky glue
• Hot glue gun
• Burlap

First I used a shape to trace onto the heavy card stock and then cut them out. I just used some leftover card stock that I had in a color that I probably would never use again. Might as well recycle while gifting! :)

Spray the paper with the chalkboard spray paint.  It took me a few coats to get even coverage.

While that's drying, braid the twisted jute twine and the yarn together.  You don't have to add the colored yarn, but I thought it would be a nice pop of color since burlap is just so beige.

My braids ended up being around 24 inches (2 feet) long each and that seemed to be good length with extra room to spare.  You may need to glue the caps on to the copper pipes because mine were pretty loose.

Next step, cut a round rectangle out of another piece of card stock to use as a template to trace onto the burlap.  Make sure you make it a little taller than you would want normally so that you have an inch or so extra fabric to wrap around the copper pipes with the hot glue later.

Once those are cut out you can start gluing them to the copper pipes.  This was kind of hard to photograph but just glue as you wrap the burlap around until it feels secure. I only wrapped it around once and it felt fine and sturdy. If you scroll through the next four pictures really fast it might feel like a moving picture show! :)

Did you enjoy that??? ;)

Tie on your braids into knots on to the ends of the copper pipes. I didn't glue my knots down because I liked the option to slide the knots wherever you would want them. Cut away the excess braid.

Now you can glue on those spray painted card stock papers.

Just use a thin layer of that tacky glue and it will be perfect.

And voila! You have some beautiful hand crafted copper chalk board signs just begging to be hung up on your wall.

Chihuahua photo bomb.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there! You all are incredible and I admire all of your hard work, patience, and unwavering love for your children! I hope you are given a day full of love and pampering that you so deserve. :)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! We are getting ready to celebrate all day long with our family and friends.  Since George's parents are divorced, we often have two different celebrations every holiday. My parents live in Texas otherwise we would be having three today! That's a whole lotta food (not that I'm complaining...).

I was in charge of desserts for the first stop on our Easter food bonanza. Here's what I made...

Frozen Key Lime Pie - find the recipe here. My limes look a little gross since they have been in the freezer. I will probably replace those with fresh limes when we leave.

Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes - find the recipe here. I used a German Chocolate cake box mix for the actual cake part because I made homemade caramel sauce. I had to cut myself a break somewhere! I hope Martha Stewart doesn't read this.

I hope everyone has a fabulous day filled with love and happiness!

Cute Teacher Gift

I am so lucky to teach in a wonderful community where the parents are very supportive and generous.  I have worked at a Title 1 school for many years previously, so I know how good I have it; trust me! My teaching partner got the cutest gift at the beginning of the year and of course I am just now getting around to share it (impressive, I know).

**Sorry in advance for the blurry phone photos.**

My teacher friend was gifted with this at the beginning of the year.  It's definitely was bought like this, but you could always take any glass jar, hot glue it to a cheap candlestick holder from a thrift store, spray paint it, and add a knob. Super easy! It came with candy, kind of basic, but just wait until you see what the parent does from holiday to holiday.

Every holiday, the parent sends in themed candy, a ribbon, and another decorative item to hang from the jar.  The ribbon and decorative item (if included) gets tied on the knob at the top and the candy goes in the jar.

On Halloween, she got this cute ribbon, the "EEK" sign, and Halloween candy (not pictured because, yeah, I am sure you can assume what happened with that...)

On Valentine's Day, she got these M&M's to put into her jar along with the heart ribbon.

What is so cool about this is that it really keep you guessing for what you will get every holiday and is very versatile.  This candy jar always looks so cute on display in my friend's classroom.  What do you think? I was hoping to do this over the summer and oomph it up a little and post about it. We'll see if that actually gets accomplished! Haha! Have a wonderful weekend!

Student Valentines

Don't you just love Valentine's Day?

I always struggle every year on what to make for my students. I want to do something cute, but don't want to spend a lot of money and definitely not a lot of time because let's face it; they just want to eat candy, they don't really care about cutesy stuff at that point.

I wanted to do something different since I didn't want to add to the candy chaos that will not doubt ensue come February 14th.  I was browsing around Target when it hit me! Enter: Angie's Popcorn.

Target sells these little snack packs that make perfect Valentines for teachers or parents that don't want to doll out high fructose corn syrup to their cute little nuggets.

I don't think I will be a huge fan of the "vanilla cupcake" flavor, but it's a good thing they aren't for me. :) It was either this or the Tutti Fruity flavor.

Instead of using the pre written on method of personalizing my bags, I decided to go a more crafty route.

I created printable labels (see below for the freebie) that I just tied on to the bags. I think this project took me about an hour (or at least two episodes of Pioneer Woman, however you choose to view time).

I printed the labels on printer paper, but I would've used card stock if I had some handy. I used my paper trimmer to cut the hearts out.

I just hole-punched two holes into the top of the single serving bags and the papers careful not to break the seal.

I then used baker's twine (I found mine at Target in the dollar section) to tie the paper onto each bag.

I love how they turned out; super cute and easy! I decided to put the label on the back just because I thought the front of the popcorn bag was really cute and I wanted it to be displayed and not covered.

OK so now repeat these steps one billion times, haha!

Click the picture below to download the labels if you are interested in creating these for your students.

Don't forget to add a little note on your loot if you don't want your husband to eat it, haha!

I hope you all are able to use this! Enjoy!