Felt Food Breakfast!
Hi Everyone, Here is a project I did for me niece a few weeks ago! Its pretty self explanatory. Get some felt, use embroidery floss to sew them together and stuff with stuffing! 
Oh…and on the eggs I used a cotton ball inside the yolk. Happy Felting!
Custom Farm-Style Bench
Just over a year ago, my husband and I built a farm-style table. If you haven’t seen our table, check it out at Farm-Style Table. Since that time, we have struggled finding the perfect chairs to fit our table, and have actually gone through a few sets trying to get it right. But, from the beginning we knew we wanted to have bench to go with it. We could just imagine our little nephews and nieces (and someday our kids) sitting up to our table sitting side by side on our awesome bench! It only took us a year to get around to making it, but here it is. As you can see from the pics below, my husband was a little more devoted to the picture taking early on in the process. As with any project, I think he just wanted to be done by the end (hence the lack of pictures). We hope you enjoy our bench as much as we do!
The wood was relatively inexpensive, I think we spent about $12 on the wood for this project. The real trick is trying to find straight pieces.
One of the assembled legs. The structure has to be completely solid, what with all the kid activity that this bench is going to be seeing!
Our finished bench up to our table! Well, almost finished. We really contemplated whether we should paint or stain our bench. . . we ended up staining as you can see below.
We love our new custom bench and have already used it for a family gathering! Super easy project and it is exactly what we wanted.
Speaking of custom made, check out our friends at Schumacher Homes, America’s largest custom homebuilder! Visit their site at www.schumacherhomes.com for custom floor plans today.
Bored in Utah? Go to the Riverwoods!
Meet my fiance- Curtis
Need somewhere fun to go on a date? Go to the Riverwoods in Provo. They have done some remodeling recently and it is the perfect place to grab a bite to eat, walk around, window shop, and most weekends they have live music!
If you do go to the Riverwoods you HAVE to make sure you stop by Blickenstaff’s. This place can provide some fun and entertainment for any age, gender, nationality, you name it! They have everything from children’s toys to fun family games.
I’m not sure what this contraption is but it looks awesome!
Who doesn’t love a large man sized gumball machine??
The best part about this place? Their candy selection!
They have everything you would want in a bulk selection, plus M&M’s in every color imaginable! (M&M’s not in picture, sorry!)
They also have a ton of old fashioned retro candy. Very exciting for the older folks eh? A little blast from the past for the parents as well as an adventure for little tots. I’m not advertising Blickenstaff’s, but I’m a fan of the store and think it’s a fun, family-friendly place that is worth checking out.
What’s your favorite candy out there right now?
My Mom is and always will be obsessed with these
Random, I know. They’re actually pretty tasty though!
Giveaway Winner and Cute Necklaces
Congrats to ALLIE WAITE! You won $50 credit to CampusBooksRentals.com!! (I will email you the promo code.)
While I am talking about giveaways… you should enter in “The Morning Letters” Giveaway for a FREE NECKLACE to her Etsy shop. The necklaces are darling!
My favorite is the Natalie Necklace.
Cute girl, cute necklace.
Giveaway for College Go-ers – Textbooks!
For all you college-goers out there… we have a special giveaway for you. CampusBookRentals.com have offered one of our readers a $50 gift code off any book rental!!
Let me tell you more. I never rented text books in college, but I wish I would have known about this. You can save 40-90% renting books online. This company offers free shipping BOTH ways, you can highlight the books, and they also donate money to Operation Smile with each textbook rented. Check out their website to learn more: http://www.campusbookrentals.com/
To enter in the contest, leave a comment on this blog post telling us what you did for Valentine’s Day. Your odds are pretty good, so enter today! The contest ends Feb 23, and I will announce the winner on Feb 24.
CampusBookRentals.com FAQ’s:
Dry Erase Desk Featured
Remember last week when our lamp was featured on Remodelaholic?!
Well, believe it or not, we got featured AGAIN today!! WAHOO!!!!
They featured our Dry Erase Painted Desk! Hop on over to Remodelaholic to see our desk!!
Featured on Remodelaholic
We are very excited because we were featured on Remodelaholic today!
They featured an old tutorial we did on a lamp… Found here.
Happy Weekend!
Owl Hat
Alright so I am not going to give you the pattern for crocheting this hat…since it is the exact same one in this post and I am too lazy to type it all out again. But I thought I would just post this to give you another idea on how to get creative with this hat pattern. Here is what it looks like:
In order to make the ear flaps on the sides just crochet about ten more stitches, then 8 in the next row, then six in the next until you get down to 2 stitches in the last row. Knot and tie off. Get six long strands of yarn and loop it through the last stitch and braid it. Cut off the extras. Then do the other ear flap. To do the white eyes, Just do a circle like you started the hat with…but stop before it turns into a hat! ha ha. Then for the ears and the beak…to be honest…I just made this up and probably couldn’t replicate it. Just go with it man…just go with it. For the eye lashes I simply took some grey yarn and weaved it in and out of the holes of the eyes until it looked right. Then I tied it off and sewed the eye on!
Sorry this is so vague. If you have any specific questions let me know in the comments bar. I pretty much just made it up as I went but if you have questions let me know and I would be happy to walk you through it!
Christmas Wreath
So for some reason I always get sick of decorating for Christmas about two weeks before it actually comes and then I get excited about it again after its over. Don’t know why! But this year I thought I would use up some of my old Christmas ornaments (most of them took a beating when my one year old realized they make good baseballs). Why not repurpose them! This craft is really simple and is only a few steps. When I started making it I thought of that quote from the movie “The Elf” when Christmas is over and then Santa says, “Well we have had a very successful year.” (All the elves cheer) “Now its time to start preparations for NEXT year!” (And the elves cheer again.) I felt the same way the elves did. Lets start preparing for next year!
Ok so here are the supplies you will need:
1. An old wire clothes hanger, old (or new…or clearanced Christmas ornaments of all sizes), and a hot glue gun. PS. I had two packs of 24 ornaments and a pack of six large ones and I barely had enough. So only do this craft if you REALLY want to get rid of your ornaments.
First things first, take your hanger apart and bend it with your hands (if you are buff) or some needle nose pliers to make it into a circle shape but leave the top hook so you can use that to hang it later.
Next gather your ornaments and hot glue all the tops to the ornament its self. I literally mean break off the top hook part that is loosely screwed onto the ornament and hot glue it in place…just to be safe. Do ALL of your ornaments before you start stringing them onto your wire. If you don’t use all the ornaments you glue then you will just have some really strong ornaments to use for next years tree. Just trust me. It takes forever if you glue one and then string it and then glue the next one.
Then start stringing. At first the ornaments just looked like a big mess and it didn’t seem like this would be a pretty wreath after all and so I got discouraged and started hot glueing them to each other so they would stay where I wanted them. BIG MISTAKE. The ornaments will fall into place the more you put on (and you can play with them more later) and the hot glue does NOT come off the ornaments once its on. Just a warning.
Halfway through stringing mine looked like this:
When all the ornaments are on, reconnect your two wire ends by twisting them back up. You can even add a bow (if you want) to finish it off. Here is what mine looks like. I can’t wait to use it next year! (Elves cheer)
*Can you see the baby cricket on my door?
Grandkids board for Grandma
Well I made this little board for my mother in law for Christmas and thought it would be fun to share my adventure with you. As you remember, my parents had a kitchen make over when they moved into their new house and my dad was getting rid of a bunch of cabinet doors. So me, being the oh so crafty one, thought it would be fun to take a few for some projects. Boy was that a mistake. I started out by sanding down the boards:
Funny story: So I was in our garage sanding away and my husband was in the yard working and once I started sanding I realized there was a layer of paint under the original dark brown color. I yelled, “Hey honey! There is brown underneath this brown!” He yells back, “Oh…bummer!” I keep sanding and minding my own business and then I get a little more done and then I yell, “Hey honey! There is pink underneath this brown!” He yells back, “Oh bummer!” A little while later I yell, “MAN! There is white underneath this pink!”…Well you can guess the rest of it…there were about 8 layers of paint and stain on top of the original wood of the cabinet. I literally sanded for three days straight on this one board. Good times.
Once I got all the paint off…well…most of it, it looked like this:
Next I went to the hardware store and got some chalk board paint. The only thing they carried was the chalk board paint in a spray and it was about six dollars so I went with it. I actually ended up doing 6-7 coats of it, just to be on the safe side because it didn’t seem very thick. I think next time I do it I will probably just buy the actual paint and hand paint it on instead of using the spray. But it still worked just fine! Then when it was all dry I taped it off so I could paint the edges. I used the same color that I used on my door table since I already had the stuff and I love that color.
Then I put a clear coat on the outside and took off the newspaper to reveal this bad boy:
Then I had my dear husband help me put some hangy things on the back so she could put it on the wall and he also screwed in two screws on either side of the board. Then I got some beading wire (it was about a dollar or so at Walmart) and printed off some pics of my kids. (I know…they are model like). I also thought it would be cute to attach the pictures with some of those darling little clothes pins but all they had at Walmart were the plain brown ones so I got them and spray painted them white. Here is the final product!
I was going to write “Grandkids make life Grand” on the board in chalk but I have awful handwriting so I decided just to leave it blank in the end. Wrap it up with a little box of chalk and you got yourself a pretty darn good present for Grandma!
