Old Book Wreath

I just had to share what my friend Kimberly made....

Isn't it such a great idea!  Here are her instructions:

 ......it's an old book, you make paper cones out of it and glue it on a metal frame, I made my own out of hangers....

.....I took two hangers and gorilla glued other pieces of hanger on them then used some floral wire for stability ( it's all about what's in the house:).......

.....I had an old fiction book that I was sure I'd never read again.....

And I just love where Kimberly ended up hanging it......her gallery wall.....

Kim....thanks so much for sharing with us!  I'd love to try a gallery wall in my living room and this would be a great piece to start with!

Now I'd love to have Kimberly share with us how she made her silhouettes!

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Mean People...

I don't understand mean people....I understand grumpy people....frustrated people.....annoyed people.....grouchy people and even rude people....but mean people...the kind that just vomit all over your day.....not so much.....


I had a woman approach me....an irrate woman approach me today because she was mad at my husband....my husband who is a volunteer coach for her son's sports team.....

......my husband wasn't even at the game today.....he tooks 150 youth into the city of Philly to serve, but due to him not calling her about a time change.....they missed most of the game......

I can completely understand her frustration.....I can completely understand her annoyance......but I'm not so sure that I understand the getting mad at the spectating wife part......

In a way, I am used to this.....or I should say I was used to this......because, you see, my husband is a pastor......so for many years in our ministry, people felt entitled to tell us exactly---how----they---felt!

I've always tried to keep distance between my husband and his job......if he would misplace a registration or get back from a trip late.....I would really try to direct annoyance and frustration to him....afterall....it's his job, not mine....there's really nothing that I can do about the bus coming back 45 minutes late from the water park.....chances are I was nursing an infant, dealing with a toddler or doing 3 loads of laundry....I was definitely not holding up the bus or even near the waterpark!

I guess that since we moved back to PA and he has a job at an AWESOME place, I've been a little out-of-practice dealing with mean people....so today was a complete shock to me....

As I tried to explain to this Mom that I (had no idea who she even was!) didn't know what she was talking about......that maybe she could talk to the person in charge of the program.......that I'm really sorry, but I just couldn't help her.....I was in no way prepared for her final, venemous blow....."You are just as rude as your husband!" she spit....

Wow....at the moment adrenline soared through my veins.....the injustice!  But my ever-overappeasing-please-keep-the-peace nature went after her..."Ma-am" as I reached out to touch her arm.....truly I just wanted to explain to her that I am not able to do anything about this situation....

At this point....it nearly got violent....if she hadn't had a kid on her hip, I'm pretty sure that she would have decked me.....and I'm not sure what I would have done.....I've never been hit by or hit anyone, but at the moment, my body was shaking all over.....from the adrenline rush...from the injustice....and from the humiliation of her screaming, "Don't touch me!" over and over again....

At that point I did what any good mom would do.....I went..... and tattled....I got the director and said that he had a psycho mom in the corner of the gym that needed some attending to......

I took a deep breath....gathered my children.....and went to the car...... but I think that what truly shocked me more was my response when I got into my car.....I was amazed by the depth of mean-ness that was in me! 

The things that I wanted to say back to her to hurt her....I wanted to inflict the same humiliation that she inflicted on me......did she not know that we spent the beginning of this very week in the hospital with my precious boy while he was stuggling to breath?  Did she not know that I have no access to hubby's email at work to even get her a game schedule? 

The sin monster......it just rages in all of us.....I want to think that I'm different from her, but I'm not.....if given the opportunity....(and I could be guarenteed a clean shot!)....I would have hit her back and spoken VERY mean words to her...I was M*A*D!!

The book of James talks about our mouths....He says in chapter 3, "Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."

Yep----I felt that today.....I was just waiting for my son to come over from the wrap-up of the game and planning to bolt out to the music store to grab books for one of my students and suddenly....flames!  I could give a BIG "amen" to that one James!

But James goes on to say..... "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be."

Uh-oh....that one is hitting me in the heart because my thoughts weren't at all pleasing about this women and may have included an eensy weensy bit of cursing (in my head, don't tell my husband!) about her.....all while praise music is flowing through my car speakers.....

Ugh....I'm no better than her....sin rages in me, too.....my tongue can be just as mean and hurtful as hers....and it counts even if it's in my head!

There's just no way around the sin problem.....I can't fix it....I can't change it....I can't stop it....it exists in me......that's why I so desperately need something outside of me to fix it!

Today, I just wanted someone to step in...hold out an arm and say to this Mom...."Stop...you're wrong!"  I wanted an advocate....a defender.....

Actually, I already have one...and His name is Jesus....except that He stands beside me and says.....Yes, Nikki...there is a problem, but these things are wrong in you, too, and I will be the one to take care of it.....

........in place of you.....

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House of Smiths Paper Roses Idea...

Shelley at House of Smiths has some wonderful ideas for what to do with paper roses.....her roses are made of crepe paper...

(Here's my confession....I went to the store wanting to imitate her idea, but confused crepe paper with tissue paper......sometimes our mistakes can be creative inspiration! LOL)

She made these...

And turned them into these...

Her complete Tutorial can be found HERE.

She also did this....



I love the wreath that she put on the block of wood...or maybe it's canvas....The Dollar Tree sells styrofoam balls, so I may try to make some rose balls to fill my yarn ball holder!

So if your fingers aren't too badly burned from my Valentine Rose Wreath, then you can try some of Shelley's ideas, too!

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Valentine Rose Wreath Tutorial

Update:  Scroll to the bottom for some "smaller" projects if you like the wreath, but don't have the time or patience to complete something that large!

Well....I've got to be honest and inform you that this does take some time!  I thought that I would never stop burning my fingers on pink tissue roses....but it's SO worth it!

Here is all that you need to make the wreath:

The square is just a piece of foam from The Dollar Tree and I bought 2 packs of tissue paper for $1.00 at The Dollar General.....I already had glue sticks so I didn't include them in the cost.....which was only $3.00!!!

I had my handy husband help cut the square for the wreath frame....



Honestly.....you can just use a normal ruler, but he got out his "manly" tools.....I used a utility knife to make the actual cuts....(well, he actually did....he doesn't like how I do it!...something about the knife cutting towards me and putting it into my leg???)

The dimensions:  
It is 4.5 inches thick and the opening is 10.5 inches....so the total width and length is about 20 x 20 inches......I was working with a scrap piece of foam board so that's why mine ended up this size.....make yours whatever sizeyou want!

The tissue paper had been folded in the packet so I just cut 2 strips for every fold line.....my strips were probably about 2 inches in width and however long the tissue paper was.....wider strips seemed to make prettier roses....

Now.....for the hard part!  I'm going to do my best to make something abstract like rolling a rose be as simple as I can......now realize...I am just a "creative copycat".....I am not uniquely artistic....so if  I  figured this out then you can too!!

(Sorry the carpet is in focus and NOT the tissue paper.....grr!)

Roll a tight center......a good center makes for a good rose....I made about 2 tight, complete turns and then put a dot of glue....

Once I had the tight center, I made ONE twist.....

...and I put a dot of glue......(Note:  This is not like making twisted fabric flowers....you do not twist as much.)

Then......I would go about half way around without twisting and put a dot of glue....

Continue this pattern of twisting and wrapping it.......

If you look closely at the picture you can see when I twisted the tissue paper strip and when I just rolled it...

The easy part is that you  just glue it to the foam board.....although.....you want to be prepared to have about a MILLION glue strings!  I'm not sure if it was The Dollar Store glue or the nature of the craft......but there were zillions of strings!



I've thought that the roses would look pretty with some white pearls randomly glued to them, too.....but snow and sick kids have kept me from the craft store....



I'd love to hear what you think, so if you have time....please leave me a comment! 

Smaller Rosette Projects:

Paper Rosette Frame---uses cardstock and took about 20 minutes!
Rosette Canvas Art----took all of 20-30 minutes to make the 10 or so rosettes needed.
Rosette Ball idea---Shelley from the House of Smith's did these....again, similar idea but a shorter amount of time!

I'm linking up with:

 

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Finally....My Valentine Wreath

It.....is....completed!!!

Are you ready for this.....total cost $3.00!!!! 

A complete tutorial can be found HERE!

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Easy Bake Oven knock-off recipes

My daughter got an EasyBake oven for Christmas.....first we bought the oven and then we realized how expensive those little packets of cake mix were......Grrr!

As we were mixing our one and only sample of cake mix that was included in the box, I started thinking....there has got to be someone out there who has made a knock-off recipe....and there was!!

HERE is the site!!  Brownies....cookies...cakes!  Wonderful money-saving recipes! 

Here's how we made the chocolate cake....

Measure 1 cup of sugar.....



Add 3 Tablespoons of unsweeted cocoa powder....

Add 1 1/2 cups of flour....

1 teaspoon baking soda...

and 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Using a pastry knife (or 2 knives), cut in 1/3 cup of vegetable shortening....

Hmmm.....I am thinking that I must have used 2 forks to cut in the shortening.....and I wonder why my baked goods don't always taste so good.....

Your mixture should be evenly mixed at this point.....I then measured about 1/3 cup of the mixture into baggies.....The recipe calls for making 11 bags, but I think that I only filled 9....hmmmm.....not sure how that happened!  Store for up to 12 weeks.

To make a cake:


Add 4 tsp. of water to 1 bag of mix....

Put into preheated EasyBake oven and bake for 8-10 minutes.  (Be sure to grease and flour your pan or you get a BIG mess...not speaking from experience or anything!)

It works....the finished product was devoured too quickly to take a picture! 

Important note......I wouldn't fill the cake pan quite so high.....it came up over the pan and it's not easy to clean the inside of an EasyBake oven....Grr!!!

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Oh my...oh my...oh my....

Okay....so my heart is fluttering because Sarah at Thrifty Decor Chick actually picked my blog to feature with a bunch of other Newbies!!!!  Aaaaahhhh!  She is totally my decorating hero!!

I'm sitting here watching my stats graph go C*R*A*Z*Y!!! 

THANK YOU for visiting!!  Thank you for all of your kind words and comments! 

I hope that you find something inspiring, fun, creative, and inexpensive to do on my blog!.....and I hope that I "see" you again!

Thanks for stopping by!
Nicole

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Cute Grandparent Idea for Valentine's Day

Christina at The Tattered Tag posted an adorable idea for Valentine's Day.  My husband's mom loves to get handmade gifts.  This is a great idea for Grandparents! (Sorry, Mom, you read my blog so I'll have to do something else for you!)

It's a handprint from each of her kids!  Her tutorial for how to make it can be found HERE.  Super-easy, quick and inexpensive!  I love it!

I even see it with cute fabric twisted flowers like I put on my Bulletin Board....in a cute red Valentine print with little pearls hot-glued in the center of the flowers!  Oh...if it wasn't snowing I'd go get some material right now!

Check out her site The Tattered Tag!  She has a lot of fun ideas!

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Ruffled Shower Curtain Tutorial

So I am trying desperately to get my bathroom re-do finished....and for the most part it is done.  I just need to finish trim around the mirror and hang 2 shelves....you can see a "sneak peek" of the new colors here:

I wanted to share with you how I made the shower curtain.  I've seen these ruffles all over the decorating blogs and I've felt very intimidated to try them....I'm not a really big sew-er....and I just wasn't finding a really clear tutorial.....but I loved them!

Well, I stopped in our local Goodwill and I found a king-sized white sheet trimed in blue lace....perfect for a shower curtain in my newly remodeled bathroom....and for the whopping of price of $2.50 PLUS 25% off I felt like I could try this.....I mean, if I messed up, I was only out two bucks!

The first thing that I did was spread the whole sheet out on the floor.....I took my tape measure and measured my existing shower curtain.  It was about 72 inches x 72 inches....(I accidentally shrunk it...who knew that shower curtains are dry clean only!!)

I took my measurements and cut extra to make it long enough and wide enough to hem.

Measuring where I wanted the ruffles to go took some trial and error......I finally took my tape measure and measured down 8 inches, 15 inches and 22 inches. 

 I would move from right to left and put a pin in each mark so that I eventually had a straight line of pins across an 8 inch mark, a 15 inch mark and a 22 inch mark.  (This photo already has ruffles because it took me a few attempts....and rows of crooked ruffles.... to figure out how to do this!)


To make the actual ruffles:

I used a hem-measurer-thingy....but you can just use a ruler.....I went along and measured and ironed a two inch fold.

I cut along the unfolded line.....

I opened it and cut along the fold.....

I now had two rows of fabric strips 2 inches wide....

I took the two ends of the fabric strips and sewed them together to make one giant fabric strip 2 inches wide.

Then I just sewed down the middle of the fabric strip....I would fold some fabric forward and then backward.....for a girl who likes order and patterns it drove me crazy to make a random pattern of folds.....I kept wondering if I was repeating the back fold too much....

Truly....it was complete random-ness....just folding and bending the fabric...

And the finished product......

I LOVE it! 

Total cost: $2.00!!!  Now it took me hours of sewing....partly because I have an old  machine and I am terrible at adjusting thread tension which means that for every 12 inches of sewing, my thread would break...grr!......but the payoff for a custom and adorable (and cheap!) shower curtain was well worth it!

I'll try to get those shelves hung soon so that you can see the amazing transformation!

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