Plum Jam

This time last year I was busy working on some future Christmas gifts.  One of them was plum jam.  I had made jam before, but never plum jam.  I had a ton of plums that were about to spoil and I needed to use them.  I had remembered from the movie Calendar Girls that they loved (in your best British accent) Plum Jam.  I figured why not give it a try.

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Various Teacher Gifts

Yesterday was the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week for my oldest son, Ryan.  I wanted the final gift to be a bit more.

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Monogrammed bag

I think everyone needs a personalized bag.  Teachers can't have enough bags for all the things they are working on.  For those of you who have been around awhile, you might remember the tutorial I did for these monogrammed totes, last year.

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Personalized Hand Sanitizer

A couple of weeks ago Shannon had a bunch of people over for a craft night.  It was a ton of fun to work on some teacher appreciation crafts with a group of ladies.  I think I might start that in the fall after my  move to Ohio.

One of the items that we made was a personalized hand sanitizer.  I've had this on my list to make for a long time, but just never got around to do it.  Thanks to Shannon, I got it made.

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Doll Carrier

My sister asked me to make one of her clients a doll carrier.  I have never made a doll carrier so I got on Pinterest to research.  There wasn't much to choose from, but the ones I did like led me to the book, Oliver + S Little Things to Sew:  20 Classic Accessories and Toys for Children.

Now for those of you who know me, I will attempt to sew anything.  Attempt is the key word.  I'm self-taught when it comes to sewing.  If something is too complicated, I won't try it.  Many times, if it is too complicated, I try my own way.  What was really nice about this pattern was it was both simple and I could still tweak it to be even easier!  The only change I had to make was using more velcro since I haven't taught myself how to make buttonholes yet.

If you want to try a new pattern to make for your little one or as a gift, this is a great one to try.  Here is the carrier I made for my sister's client.

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Name Blocks

Let's face it, most kids today have way more toys than they can play with. So, when invited to birthday parties, I try to ask parents if there's something their child could use, that I can create.

Recently, one of our friends, celebrated her fourth birthday.  I knew her room was being transformed from Winnie the Pooh to Disney Princesses, for her big day.

I asked her mom if there was anything special she'd like for her new room. Her mom suggested name blocks. I got my husband to cut a 4x4 post, in squares. I painted the squares, mod podged the sides, sanded to slightly distress, and applied vinyl letters I cut on my Silhouette. They made a wonderful, personalized gift and look great with her princess themed room.

Owl Tissue Box Cover

A friend of mine asked me to make an owl tissue box cover as a teacher gift for her.  I have never made a tissue box cover, but thankfully, I found a free pattern.  I wanted to model it off the owl purse that I make.

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Tooth Fairy Pillow Tutorial

My oldest son is almost 6 years old and he has lost three baby teeth so far!  Right before Christmas he was working on his first tooth with all expectations of the tooth fairy delivering big time!

I had seen all kinds of tooth fairy pillows and I thought it was an excellent idea.  I also wanted to make it easier on the poor tooth fairy!  Let me show you what I came up with!

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St. Patrick's Day Gifts for Around $1-A Tutorial

This is the St. Patrick's Day gift I'm giving and it costs about $1 to make!

I love to give special people, special gifts, on special days.  With St. Patrick's Day right around the corner, I've been looking around for great ideas.  I saw a couple I really liked:

http://www.ishareprintables.com/po-o-gold

http://thecraftingchicks.com/2011/02/little-gifts-for-st-patricks-day-free-downloads.html

The crafting chicks said they got their cute little buckets at the Dollar Tree.  So, off I went!  Well, our Dollar Tree didn't have those adorable little buckets. They did have these adorable terra cotta pots.  They were 3 for $1.  Score!

I painted the pots with black, enamel, acrylic, indoor/outdoor paint.

I painted them on the outside, top half first.

I painted the inside.

The paint dries quickly so in about 30 minutes, I was able to paint the rest of the outside of the pots.

I bought Twizzlers, rainbow colored twists.  I lined them up in a rainbow pattern and wrapped them in Saran Wrap.

I put the rainbow in the pot.

I found this bag of Easter grass at the dollar store too. 

I stuffed it in the pot.

I added as many Rolos as I could safely jam in there.

I put a the pot in a cellophane bag and tied it with a green ribbon.

I printed the free printable, from

http://www.ishareprintables.com/po-o-gold  and cut it out with Fiskars, majestic edged scissors.  I punched a hole in the top, threaded the ribbon through, and made a bow.  I LOVE it.

Cost breakdown:

12 pots-$4 (33 cents a pot)

black paint-$2 (I used less than half a thing so 7 cents a pot)

Easter grass-$1 (there was more than enough for 12 pots) (8 cents a pot)

Twizzlers-$1.50/bag x 3 bags (each bag makes 5 rainbows) (30 cents a pot)

Rolos-$3/bag (1 bag made 12 gifts) (25 cents a pot)

Cellophane bags-$2 for 50 bags (5 cents a pot)

Ribbon-$2 a spool (18 cents a pot)

That's about $1.26 a pot.  That's less than a greeting card and this is so much tastier!

I hope you're inspired!

Don't forget to enter our latest giveaway.  The Vintage Pearl is giving a lucky follower a $50 gift card to their store!  Click here for more information. http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2011/03/great-things-vintage-pearl-great.html

Ear warmer or Headwrap

I added a new project to my Christmas list this year.  It is a beautiful ear warmer.  I made one for my husband's cousin's wife, Lana (follow that one?).  She looked through my pattern book and said she would love one of those.  I actually made her two.  One was just a basic ear warmer and the other one was a new stitch for me, the basket-weave or waffle stitch.  I preferred the new stitch.  I liked it so much that I made my best friend, Laura, one for Christmas as well.

If you don't like hats but want something cute to keep you warm, an ear warmer is a great accessory.  (It is hard to write about this when it is 70 today in Georgia on February 2!)

Check the ear warmers out.

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Cowls

I have a new fascination and love for cowls.  The problem is I haven't had time to make myself one!  I pinned a bunch of cowls on Pinterest so that I could pick the right one that I wanted to make for myself.  Well, my sister saw them and pinned her order for me.  I don't mind.  Making money is better than making something for myself right now.  I also made one for a friend.

All three of these cowls, I made before Christmas. People, I am telling you I was a crocheting fool before Christmas.  Never will I do that again!  I like to enjoy crocheting not feel like I am in mass production mode.  I felt like I was the only worker in a sweat shop!  Whew!

No matter the stress, I love the cowls that I created.  I have included the links to the patterns that I used as well.

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Last Year's Valentine's Day Post is Full of Great Ideas

It's Valentine's Day! I hope you all are having a wonderful one.  What does this mean to us?  Well, we're almost done with pink, red, and hearts and we'll be moving on to rainbows, leprechauns, and pots of gold.

I LOVE traditions.  I have many.  I really don't have any Valentine's Day traditions though.  Any suggestions?

I definitely try to spend the day letting others know how grateful I am for them. So, let me start with our followers.  I am so grateful for you.  You give our crafting addictions a purpose.

Speaking of crafting and cooking... I have a few more Valentine's Day things to share with you before we move on to the next holiday.

Do you remember the birthday door mat tutorial I did? http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2011/01/happy-birthday-welcome-mat-tutorial.html Here's my Valentine's Day version.  We're conversation hearts.  I used regular acrylic paint on the mat and fabric paint to paint on our names.  I just free handed the hearts. Super easy and even cheaper.  This is one of those thirty minute crafts.  I LOVE quick crafting!

My friend Amy and I saw a great wreath on Oopsey Daisy http://oopsey-daisy.blogspot.com/2011/02/3-dimensional-heart-wreath.html.  We were inspired.  As always, when we copy craft, we take their thing and do our own thing to it.  So, instead of copying the entire wreath with the hearts, we did a partial cover. I'll be honest, there were three reasons we did this. First, we bought two stores out of hearts.  Secondly, that would have taken a lot more time.  Finally, we really liked the look of the satin ribbon on the wreath so we wanted ot show some of it.  This is my wreath above.

This is Amy's wreath.  Amy claims to be noncrafty.  She's a crafty chick in denial.  Her wreath is gorgeous.  Also, if I'm going to be completely honest.  She made all of my wreath too.  The only thing I did was arrange the hearts, hot glue them on, and get a huge blister to prove I used a hot glue gun! Thanks, Amy!

Here's my entry way with the wreath and doormat.

After crafting, I did some cooking. I made these amazing meringue cookies.  I got the recipe from http://www.thestoriesofa2z.com/2010/02/meringue-ice-cream-cone-valentines.html she made them into adorable ice cream cones.  I decided not to do that.  First, my kids don't eat the cones. Secondly, my kids don't eat cake, just icing, and thirdly, meringue cookies, even with M & Ms are pretty low fat.  I'm thinking that's a great dessert to make.  These are delicious.  I used 1T of freshly squeezed lemon juice.  The chocolate and lemon combination are surprisingly amazing.  I will make this recipe again and again.  YUM!

I also made these Martha Stewart cookies.  http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/chocolate-cookie-cutouts-love-bug-cookies The first time I made these cookies was for my daughter's first birthday party.  It was ladybug themed and I made the cute ladybug cookies.  Well, this cookie base is simply delicious... cocoa and cinnamon...so good.  So, I've made them a couple of times since.  These aren't decorated yet but pretty soon they'll have Royal Icing and a varitey of sprinkles. 

...GraciAnn decorated these!  Cute, huh?

Then there's the homemade card I made my husband.  I used red felt to make the rosettes. http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2011/02/valentines-day-celebrated-with-burlap.html Here's a tutorial for the rosettes I did on an earlier project.  It's simple, sweet, and special. I like it much better than any of the cards I looked at to buy.

Here's wishing you a lovely day on this Valentine's Day!

Holiday Gifts that I made

It is almost the end of January and I just getting around to sharing all the Christmas gifts I made for family and friends.

As some of you read, I decided at Thanksgiving to do a Handmade Christmas.  Take my advice, don't start as late as I did!  I actually think I will start soon on gifts for this next year so that I am not stressed making gifts versus enjoying the holiday season.

Surprisingly though, I got all the gifts finished, a few shortly after Christmas but who doesn't like a surprise gift!  Check out all the gifts I made.

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Wedding Gifts

My husband's cousin got married back in October and I made my favorite gifts for them.  I made them a Casserole Carrier and etched the casserole dishes.  I also got them a recipe binder and made a CD of all my recipes for them to have.  Let me show them to you.

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My Favorite Sign!

This is a sign I made for our friend Samy's 5th birthday. I varied the fonts and colors to really make a statement.  Samy's mom calls Samy, "Samy Sunshine".  (Samy's middle name is Rae, so she's a ray of sunshine, get it?)

When we reflect on things we create, we usually would make changes. The only thing I would change about this sign is using a much lighter stain when I distressed it.  The stain really took away some of the brightness, in the colors, I would have liked to keep.  Honestly though, I still love the sign and hope to make many more.

Holiday Teacher Gifts

I was hoping to share with you the teacher gifts I gave to Ryan's teacher before today, but my to do list this week was a bit overwhelming.  I decided to do a mostly handmade Christmas.  That wouldn't have been so daunting if I didn't have to finish them by December 17 and also do a bunch of crochet orders.  I have been working myself like a dog.  Thankfully, I plan to take a break close to Christmas and afterwards.  It will be much needed.

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Mittens

I tried something new again and this time it is making mittens.  A lady from church asked me to make a pair of mittens.  She had a friend who crochets that was making them, but couldn't figure out the pattern.  I gladly took on the challenge.  If you haven't figured me out yet, I love a challenge.

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Christmas Gifts

Here's a post I did from last year. I thought you may be able to use some of the gift ideas.  Speaking of gift ideas, I'd better get busy creating.  Christmas is less than two weeks away.  YIKES!!!!

'Tis the season to be busy.  Busy, I have been!  I have played nurse, baked, blogged, shopped, crafted, cooked, cleaned, decorated, wrapped, and played hostess for the past month!  My oldest daughter had her tonsils, adenoids, and a lymph node removed on December 9th.  She did wonderfully!  She's a tough one!  Anyway, that's where the nurse role came on.  The rest, just goes with Christmas.

Jill and I started this blog during the busiest time of the year!  This year was certainly no exception with the two weddings I went to, out of state, at the end of November. Then, the giveaways.  They sounded like a great idea at the time, and we had fun doing them, but wow... that was just another addition to our overflowing plates. No worries.  We've already begun thinking about our giveaways for next Christmas.  Woah... I guess I should let you in on a little secret.  The giveaways will continue throughout the year... just not on a daily basis.  We'll do our best though.  Giveaways are great fun.  I won four puzzles for my girls, on a blog, this Christmas!

Anyway, I wanted to share some of the Christmas gifts, I managed to make this year.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of them all.  Have I mentioned my sleep deprivation?  I am not at my sharpest without sleep. Hopefully, I'll get those folks to send me pics and post them later.

Some of my gifts were copy crafting!

I made a pair of these for my mom and myself.  Notice I made my snowman one block taller.  I liked him better this way!
 http://undermypolkadotumbrella.blogspot.com/2010/11/2x4-snowman.html

Copy crafting at it's best http://undermypolkadotumbrella.blogspot.com/2010/11/photobucket.html

For teacher's gifts I attached clothespins on the back for their gift cards.  Such a cute presentation!

I made 10 of these for friends. You would have thought I would have taken some pictures of the unwrapped gift!

Here's the first one I made for our family.
It's a HowDoesShe craft. http://www.howdoesshe.com/2x4-to-birthday-boardtutorial

Then there's the wreath I copied from Jill.  I added some bells and a ribbon and voila I have the perfect UK wreath for my brother in law, Jim: a huge UK fan. http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2010/12/sparkle-wreath-tutorial.html

Then, there are the coasters.  I made a set for my daughter's teachers, a set for my mom, and a set for my mother in law.  She's retired Navy so I made hers with great Navy scrapbook paper.  I just forgot to take a picture of them!  Grrr... Here's a tutorial Jill did on the coasters.  http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2010/12/gift-idea-inexpensive-coasters-tutorial.html

And then folks, I got creative on my own....

For my daughter's teachers' gifts I put a few handmade items together to come up with:

A tshirt, four kinds of homemade treats, and coasters, all in a decorated, reusable, plastic bin.

Stay tuned for a tutorial on these easy shirts.

We'll do an embellishing with vinyl tutorial soon!

Seven layer bars and Brickle cookies http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2010/12/cookie-swap-recipes-part-1.html and http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2010/12/cookie-swap-recipes-part-2.html

White candy bark and peppermint bark (recipes coming soon).

Then there were photo boards:

These things are so versatile and amazing.  Remember the "We Believe" one I did? http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2010/12/making-photo-board-tutorial.html

I made some changes and a variety of gifts!

Another present for my UK loving brother in law.  Skeeter is his dog.

The glare so takes away from the cuteness of this.  My father in law is retired Navy so I thought this would be a great place for him to put Navy memorabilia.

This one is for my Daddy.

This is for my brother.  My girls will tell you, he is the best Uncle Ever!  They're right!

Here's another "We Believe" for my friend, Amy.



Remember the "Grateful" subway art?

http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/2010/11/making-subway-art-tutorial-2.html

I made this for my sweet, sweet, Aunt Esther.

Then there's this calendar creation I came up with. (I'll do a tutorial soon...)

For my Mother-In-Law.  Notice the Navy paper on the date blocks?  She's retired Navy, so fitting.  Then, to keep with the patriotic theme, I did white and red stripes.  It looks "flag-y" to me.

My brother's.  I used the same paper on his numbers that I did on his "We Love Uncle Darren" board. Matchy Matchy!  I also did themed paper for each month. 

My Dad's is sideways.  I still haven't learned how to flip pictures, sorry.

This was a gift to my daughters, from my friend, Lesli.  She got the idea from HowDoesShe.  So cute!http://www.howdoesshe.com/bucket-o%E2%80%99-chalk

Here's the inside of the bucket!

This is the burlap pillow Lesli made me.  I LOVE the font she chose.  Too cute!

As you can see, it's been a busy time for all of us crafty gals.  There's still pictures of my handmade gifts, I didn't post, because I forgot to take them.   Still, I hope you're inspired to get your crafts on!