Who Am I?

If you have been reading this blog, you know a little bit about me.  You know I like to sew.  You know that I like to cook.  You probably have figured out that I like to save a penny when I can!  You also know that I like to craft and love DIY projects!  You may have figured out I have two little boys.  But really, who am I?

I am a young mom of two adorable boys.  You will probably never see their faces square on and never know their real names.  There are too many scary people lurking to put my children 'out there.'  But I will tell you this!  Mr. A is two, nearly three years old!  Wow!  Where has the time gone!  He is my oldest and seriously the smartest 2 year old I know!  He will talk your ear off and is perfectly capable of repeating everything he hears back to you, perfectly, and then precede to ask you questions until he understands EVERYTHING.  He is a sweetheart who loves to give hugs and kisses!  He loves to play with his brother, Mr. C.  Mr. C is one year old and a spitfire!  He crawls everywhere but doesn't want to walk alone yet... close, but not yet...  He climbs all over everything and has an opinion!  Both boys love spending time together and were actually quite excited when we recently put them in the same bedroom!

I am married to an amazing man who treats me wonderfully!  Sure we don't always agree on everything, but no one does!  He is studying Physics and if all goes according to plan we will hang out in what has got to be the hottest place on earth (ok, not really, but it is currently 109... which is down from 118 last week...), Arizona, for four more years and he will have his PhD.  I then hope to move to more mountainous country!  He is just as smart as you would think he is, even though he doesn't always know it.  He is my ridiculously handsome nerd who also loves fishing, ham radio, camping, and playing with our family!  Family is super important to him, which makes him that much more attractive!

I am a stay-at-home-mom and PROUD of it!  I wouldn't want to be anywhere else!  Sure there are days when I wish there was some way to quantify what I do, but those smiles and slobbery kisses from my two boys, and giant hugs from my husband at the end of a long day, make it all worth it!  I studied History and Geography at BYU, where I met my husband.  I am certified to teach 6-12, most social sciences.  I love to read, sew, cook, garden, play with my kids, blog, camp, hike, and be with my family!  Ask my husband, I am blunt.  I will tell it how it is (or at least how I think it is).  So you can be rest assured you will always know where I stand in this crazy world!

We were married in the Manti, Utah temple in August 2011.  Best day of my life!  I am soooo excited to spend the rest of my life, and eternity, with him!  Our first son came just over a year later, and our second just under two years after that!  I can't imagine life without all three of my boys!

Click Here!

We are all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!  And I am extremely proud of it!!!!  If that makes you want to close this page right now and never come back to my blog, I am extremely sad to hear that.  I hope that you will stay and see that we, Mormons as we are often called, are very nice people.  But we are just that, PEOPLE.  We all have thoughts, feelings, and yes, we are sometimes blindly opinionated.  But we are also a generally happy, loving people!  Come learn more about us!  Or, click on the button on the right that says "I Believe" to learn a little bit more about me and my beliefs.

I hope this helps you understand better who I am and why I do, what I do!  Feel free to ask me questions, I will answer as best I feel I can. :)

Patriotic Wreath!

July 4th is coming up and I'm excited!  There are lots of reasons to be excited, family gatherings is definitely one of them!  We have a lot of family coming into town because my husband's brother is coming home from his church mission a few days later!  (More on that to come)  So this last year we moved into a house from an apartment, so I finally have room to decorate for the seasons!  So here is my patriotic-4th of July wreath!

First, oh how I would love to paint my door a fun color!  Like Teal or Purple or Red or Yellow!  But Alas, HOA rules say probably not happening...

Anyway, first I needed a wreath form of the foam variety.  However, getting to the craft store to get one is sometimes a struggle with Mr. A and Mr. C so I improvised and it actually worked quite well!

Enter lime-green pool noodle!  This is just a plain ol' dollar store pool noodle and a little bit of duct tape!

UPDATE: The pool noodle is actually not a great option... turns out it sags from the weight of the felt, and alas, by the end of July I had an oval wreath instead of a circle wreath...  Take the time and $5 bucks and go buy one!  (so I don't really know exactly how much it will cost, but I do know they have them at Hobby Lobby and I do know that you can get a %40 coupon online or on their app always so that is a great place to start!)

Next, a quarter yard of Red and White felt and about 3/4 a yard of Blue.  

Cut the felt into 2-ish inch squares.  Really it doesn't need to be exact, but I do suggest making all of them pretty close to the same size, otherwise you will have high and low points on your wreath.

You will also need a box of the cheap, flat head, pins.  They run about $3 a box and I used most of a box.

I divided my wreath form into 12 even sections, 7 for red and white stripes and the other 5 for blue.  

Choose a color to start from and fold a square of felt in half diagonally,

Then in half diagonally again.  It doesn't have to be perfect by any means, in fact most of mine weren't because I liked the variety it added to the wreath!

Then put a pin through the point of the triangle and stick it on your wreath form!

Now do it again, and again, and again....  I worked on it for several evenings while my husband was doing homework after the boys had gone to bed.  This is one of those couple-of-movies kind of project.

 

As you go along fluff and separate the felt, if you don't you will end up needing a lot more felt to cover your wreath!

Once you are all done with the felt use some silver wire and wrap it around a marker to make the spring for the stars.  My stars are felt with glitter glue and hot glue to make them a little more stiff.  You could also use glitter felt or cardstock to make the stars.  Glue or otherwise attach the stars to the wire springs and stick them into the blue portion of the wreath.  I used five stars, but you can use however many you want.  I do suggest an odd number of stars.

In all this wreath cost me about $7-$8!  Not bad if you ask me!

In the end you get this!

Happy Independence Day!!!

Patriotic Bunting!

You probably remember the Summer Bunting I made recently

and you probably remember the red and blue stars and wondered, where is that bunting?  Well here it is! 

I also added the blue-striped ribbon between the flags and took off one of the flags (seven instead of eight), but really it depends on how far you are hoping to go with your bunting!

 

 Go HERE to see how to make this awesome bunting!!

 Happy Holidays!!!

Broken Chair to Sewing Chair Extraordinaire!

So, ever since.... well, ever since we got married, my sewing machine has generally found it's home on my desk, though a chair... lets just say I generally have had to go find one any time I want to do a project.  So I have been on the look out for a chair for some time.  My biggest struggle hasn't been in finding chairs, there are a lot of chairs in this world, but in finding a chair that is narrow enough to slide under my desk and also not too much $$$.  Then I found this beauty:

Just $2 at my favorite thrift store!  I have a thing for old chairs... side note, I have another random old chair that I sometimes would use for sewing, but doesn't fit under my desk that I love!  So this one had one glaring problem:

One giant hole in the caning (caning is a method of weaving chair seats and other furniture).  Since I really wanted this chair for sitting on, this wouldn't do.  However! I figured I could probably do something to fix the hole and make the chair sit-able!  After some research, this is what I decided to do. 

First: Remove all the old caning from the chair.  Not too hard, I just cut most of the middle out then un-threaded the rest.  The hardest part is that this stuff is prickly!

Cleaning up my mess

Next I cleaned the chair real good.  It was dusty and smelled a bit like cat... I got it second-hand after all!

Next with some help from Mr. A.....

I cut a bunch of long strips of fabric, 2 inches wide and probably 45 long (? I just did the width of the fabric, but it was a random bit out of my stash...)

Then we started connecting them to the chair.  So the chair had holes all the way around the opening for the caning, so all I did was use a small crochet hook to help me pull the fabric through, then tied a basic knot.  I will deal with the ends later. :)

Eventually I had a strip in each hole going one direction, like so:

Then I started the same process from the other side, but weaving in the strips as I went along. 

Now I thought I took pictures of this step, but I can't seem to find them...

Lastly I used the crochet hook to weave in all the ends from tying the strips on.

Tada!  It fits under my desk!

No more hole!  I've used the chair several times recently and seems to be holding up just fine!  Love it! 

ps. my totally awesome desk only cost me $1!!!  One of my favorite things is that the middle drawer on each side is the perfect size for patterns!  Score one for me!

Summer Decorations: Bunting!

So our current home has a fireplace... but it's Arizona, so I don't really think we'll use it much... somehow...  but with it comes a mantle, which has been lots of fun to decorate!  I decided I wanted to make a summer bunting with burlap to hang across this summer.

First, I bought a half-yard of burlap at Walmart:

Second, I drew up my pattern.  I made a triangle then cut the ends off the top so I could fold it over the string with out fabric poking out the side:

I then cut sixteen flags, eight for each of two buntings:

Then I drew my stencil.  First I found a star and flower I liked online, then I traced them onto poster board and cur out the insides to make my stencil.  I cut the whole flower, then the inside circle separate.

I set up a station to stencil my flags.  I did four blue stars, then four red stars, then all the yellow flowers, finally all of the brown flower centers.

I used basic, 50cent, acrylic paints and a paint bush made from a sponge clipped with a clothes pin, a surprisingly useful brush!

I tied some string between my kitchen chairs and clipped each flag up to dry.

Then, in a moment of weakness I went to bed and left my paints on the counter....

The next morning Mr. A helped me put them away.... but not after first trying to open the bottle of blue by himself.

I didn't take a picture of this step, but I used clear school glue and went around the edges of each flag to give it some stability and to minimize fraying.  It is burlap after all!

Next I folded down the top of each flag and sewed it down.  You could also use hot glue... I just wanted to make sure it wasn't going anywhere!

Yikes!  We're almost there!

Finally, I tied some jute/twine onto my trusty crochet hook and threaded the string through each flag.

Then I hung the bunting up to enjoy!

I love it!  So cheery!  Stay tuned for the patriotic version!

DIY Non-Slip Rug!

So the only way from our house to our backyard is through the living room-sliding door.  Well that and our master bedroom sliding door.  So we have a lot of traffic through that door.  Now the other thing you have to know about us is that we recently (10 months ago) moved into our house, and the previous owners 1. had a thing for bushes, 2. had a thing with rock landscaping (seriously, I don't get it...) and 3. had let the yard go.  As such we have spent the last 10 months uprooting bushes, more aloe vera plants than I knew could grow in such a space, sifting rock out of the dirt (yuck!), the list goes on.  This makes for a lot of dirt in and out.  This combined with the fact that as it warms up (105 degrees today...) we have been playing in the water, means dust and water through the door!  So, I bought this rug.  $1 at the Dollar store!

But this rug spent more time looking like this than working like a rug...

So I made it into a non-slip rug!  Wahoo!  Basically I just made this lovely diamond-design with my trusty hot-glue gun all over the bottom of the rug.  Worked like a charm!

It still slides around a little bit (especially if the floor is dusty), but it doesn't crumple anymore, and it pretty much stays where I want it to be!  Win for this Mommy!

UPDATE: I just washed this in the washing machine (I did NOT dry it in the dryer, the spin cycle was enough... plus, it was 112 degrees today... all I have to do is stick it outside for 10 minutes and it's dry!) And it washed up great!  The glue is all still on the rug and it sticks great again! (I also mopped so all the fine dust that was letting it slip is gone!)