Got Crafty last week…

We have been pretty busy and traveling so much that I have not been able to do a lot of the stuff I normally used to do for a long time now. This past week, we were able to be home with NO plans, NO agenda, Nothing but just do what we wanted to… which included the regular home schooling, which we do whether at home or on the road, but without the pressure of doing that along with everything else the girls do with their acting. This also allowed us to do a lot of the things we love doing, just don’t seem to have the time for lately. I even got to bake! 🙂

In the past week… aside from home school, the girls each re-organized their rooms, we cleaned out around the house and the garage and went through stuff for give-away. We managed to have enough to drop off a few bags and boxes (and even furniture) to our local donation spots a few times during the week. My youngest, who loves to cook, got to make some fudge with daddy while I helped her sister with homework one evening.  And, the oldest, got to get crafty and make a “pom-pom” puppy with daddy while I spent time with the youngest on the following evening.

We managed to clean out the coat closet, and re-purpose it as an “indoor doggie-house” for our puppies. I’m terribly allergic of our lab, but when the weather starts to cool down, we bring her in the house every night so she won’t be outside in her dog house. She has arthritis. Anyway, now that we have the indoor doggie-house for the dogs, it will at least contain them a bit and it will make the season a bit more comfortable for me… and the dogs.  I’m glad I can say the dogs LOVE it!

I was also able to finish spray painting some wine bottles I got from my sister (I loved shapes of the bottles when I saw them), and after looking for the turquoise taper candles in about 5 different stores around town, I finally found them! I also found a great little tea pot lamp at a thrift store ($3!!!), and I just needed to get a shade.  I found a cute set of creamer and sugar containers for my collection of tea pot sets and accessories… for when the girls and I have our tea parties. 🙂

Then I found an entertainment unit that was the PERFECT size for me to convert it to my new coffee station… it was $40 at the thrift store! It is still a work in progress project, as I’m not done with what I want to do with it, but I’m excited about what I was able to do over the weekend. It got a coat of white pain and I will finish the lacquer and turquoise details that will eventually go on it… to match the dinning table I had previously painted.

I also got an amazing deal on dining chairs! The dining table we have I got from Craigslist when we were stationed in San Diego. I got it for $25, including chairs that we no longer have because they were not in good shape at all. Eventually, we went through some other chairs, and lately we had actually been using some fold out chairs. I had been waiting for the right opportunity to get some new ones. This weekend was it! I was able to get 10 (yes, TEN!) dinning table chairs from a hotel, which had remodeled, for a grand total of $70. The table has leaflets and can sit up to 12 people if extended. I figured I can keep 6 of the chairs at the table on a regular basis and have the other 4 available for gatherings. I started painting the chairs white and will eventually also re-upholster the cushions. (I will be sowing some seat covers for the cushions in the meantime.)

To wrap up the week, on Saturday, we even managed to catch a movie with our girls… go to church on Sunday morning, make some crepes for the first time, and then my husband took the girl park for a bit in the evening… giving me a few minutes to myself!

What an amazing week it was! I have completely enjoyed being at home and just getting to do stuff around here with the 3 most important people in the world to me. 🙂

I can’t wait to see what we’ll be able to do this coming week! I’m feeling amazing… and I pray all of you are ready for a great week as well. 🙂

 

Family First Friday Mission: Oct. 11, 2013

Craft for the week of March 25 to 31, 2012

This coming week will be very tricky again. We will be traveling again, which means towing all sorts of craft materials with us and trying to keep up when we can. Here is what we have planned… there are some “simpler” crafts Monday-Thursday… I feel pretty confident that we can work on those on the road, if we have time. Since I preplanned the month and some of our travels were not scheduled that far in advance, the activity on the schedule for Sunday may or may not happen and we’ll have to come back to it later. I also decided to leave that Friday and Saturday open… being the last two days of the month I figured that if we had fallen behind on one of the crafts, these two days would come in handy! Good thinking.  There are some crafts we have not been able to go back to (for example, doing the “mosaic table”… we have not been home long enough to work on that this month and I don’t want to do it and it not be done right or it be messy because we’re rushing just to get it done.

Anyway, this is what is on the schedule:

• Sunday-March 25: Canvas Painting. We have the canvases, brushes, paint and we’re ready… BUT we’ll be on the road all day. I am debating whether or not to even pack this stuff up or just determine to wait till we get back since now and not even worry about it.
• Monday-March 26: Half Heart Flowers Art… this is a very cute activity, and I’ll post pics on the blog’s FB page for you to see. This one is also simple and doesn’t require me to pack up a whole lot. I use paint chips to do these, but construction paper works well. The idea is to cut out hearts out of either the chip (I just like all the colors), construction or cardstock, etc. Then you fold them down the middle… and you glue one half of the heart down (leaving the other half sticking up.)  You want to start gluing the hearts to where the tips are going to “meet” in the middle and that will guide you and bring out the “flower shape”. You (and the kids) can complete the flower and then make more and draw or create something from there… whether it’s adding or drawing steams and a vase or something else… it’s a neat, fun, fairly inexpensive, and let’s the kids get creative in making the flowers.
• Tuesday-March 27: decorating wooden plaques. I found some really cool looking tea pot wooden plaques and since the girls and I love having tea parties and such, I decided it would be cool to get some and just paint and decorate them. There are a lot of shapes you can find in wooden plaques and kids can make everything from bedroom door signs to decorating plaques. If they paint and glue glitter or colorful jewel stones (my girls sort of like the bling)… it’ll be a fun project for them.
• Wednesday-March 28: Making sock puppets: We’ve done this before and since always seem to be loosing matches for socks and have a bunch of mismatched socks, we can use some and make a fun time out without it being a very expensive activity.
• Thursday-March 29: Making photo puzzles. This is pretty simple. We will be printing some personal photos on cardstock paper. I think for us, we will then glue them onto some thicker cardboard to make it more sturdy. We will then cut them up in random shapes and the girls can have fun putting them back together again. The girls like personalized crafts….specially when they get to use photos of daddy! 🙂
• Friday and Saturday-March 30-31: These two days I left open to catch up for crafts we were not able to work on during the month.

This is pretty much going to wrap up the crafting month and my girls have loved being able to do so many of these crafts. I hope some of you have worked on some along with us.. whether it’s some of the crafts posted here or your own! If you worked on some crafts, make sure you have a pic ready and post it Monday or Tuesday, March 26-27, for the blog’s FB page crafting contest. More information on the prize and contest will be posted tomorrow. Can’t wait to see what crafts you all have worked on! 🙂