A photoshoot

I wanted to capture the kids with Carson while he is still new and so little so this is what we came up with today.

Giant Ruler Tutorial

This giant ruler has been on my list of "things to do" since I saw one in my sweet friend Jaimee's house in Kentucky.

Well, I finally "got her dun" 2 years later!

I invited my friend over... since crafting is ALWAYS funner with friends

and we got to work.

(btw- it is "more fun" to say "funner")

We started out with a 8in x 6ft piece of wood...

I white-washed mine but my friend Jamie left hers "all natural"... I don't know which I liked better in the end... I LOVE them both!
Jaimee (in Kentucky... we are talking about two different Jamie/ Jaimees here) lent me her ruler 2 years ago and I made a stencil with poster board (with the grid printed on it... much easier).

This picture shows how long we made the lines to break up each foot into half, quarter, etc.
Make sense?

We started with the 6inch mark since we are hanging the ruler 6 inches off the floor to make room for the base boards and used a black sharpie to fill in the lines on the stencil.

Then we put on the vinyl numbers.
But, something didn't look right...

Can YOU tell what we did wrong?
Of course you can!!

So silly, we originally put the numbers on upside-down!

No worries, we peeled off the vinyl and flipped them around.

We added our last names (also vinyl) and that was all there was to it!!

I can't wait to hang it up and start measuring my kiddos!

Courage Jar

I got this idea from my friend Kristine... who got it from our friend Amy. :)

I love to find great mothers and then pester them with questions about their parenting ideas and of course copy them!

I ain't no dummy.

I've been trying to encourage my kids to do things that challenge them and might even be a little scary. I feel like it is getting harder and harder for our kids to do what is right and often they stand out because of it and sometimes even get teased for it.

So this is our "courage jar".

When any of us (including Trevor and I) do anything courageous we get to decide how many fuzzies we think we deserve to put in the jar (up to 5 for each act).

It can be anything and is different for each of us.

For example Megan gave herself 3 fuzzies for talking to her friends about not gossiping about another girl.

Hallie gave herself 3 fuzzies for asking a boy to stop saying a bad word.

We all added some fuzzies for attending a county meeting to support a friend and express some of our concerns to the elected board.

Campbell got some fuzzies for working on some of his potty training goals (I'll leave it at that).

and so on...

When the jar is full (150 fuzzies) we are going either here or here for an over-nighter and a little family fun.

Anyway, it has been working great so I thought I'd pass the idea along.

Thanks Kristine and Amy.

Bandanna Dress and a belated Valentines

I bought bandannas ages ago for this project and finally got around to it.

Can't believe it took me so long because it really is as easy as she says it is!

I do have a few recommendations though: I added a little stitch over the ribbon right in the middle as to prevent my daughter from continually pulling the ribbon out of the pocket.

I also used a thinner ribbon (she used 1 1/2in my is 5/8 and 7/8), I found it much easier to keep tied.

Same pattern + $2.50 towels from Target + a little more ribbon=

Valentines Dress

too bad we were both too sick to make it to church for her to show it off:(

Ask and you shall receive

I am so glad you all liked my little Spool Dolls! I think they are so fun TOO!!

These are slightly different than the original ones I showed you. I used candle cups on these ones instead of the spools and painted the bodies with a design. For the previous shown dolls I painted the body and then Mod Podged paper on them.

Either way... Fun, Cute and Easy!

Here it goes:

As for the request to see all of the dolls, here they are!

There was 1 more head in the pkg than there was bodies, so I started a little African American doll but never finished it. That is the one you can see part of the head on a picture above. I used the end of the brush and did messy dots all over for the hair and it was looking really cute, I will have to finish it eventually.

Spool Dolls

I saw similar style dolls at a friends house and thought Avery needed some.

Heck, why not personalize them a little and make Jeff and I and the grandparents.

Should have done the lips a little darker... First time.

Kinda silly, Kinda fun!

Avery seems to like them... banging them on everything in sight that is:)