Spring Time Bulletin Board

 We all contribute in our own way. I may not be the most organized leader in our Young Women's Presidency at church, but I've got a heart that won't quit and can design a spring time bulletin board. 
smile emoticon (Pip helped paint the little wood birds and frames.)

A close up of my cute girly!  :)

Easter Dresses and Crafts

These are regular old white lights with cute flowers cut from cupcake wrappers around each light making a pretty flower.  It's been fun to make these with my kids, the sister missionaries, and the girls at church.

I saw this idea online and had to make them!  You put a candy in a balloon and blow it up.  Then I dangled the balloons on yarn from a broom stick balanced between the backs of two chairs.  I laid newspaper underneath it and made a paste of water and flower.  I dipped colored embroidery floss in the mixture and wrapped it around each balloon in different patterns and let them set up to dry for a few days.  Then, I popped each balloon and slid them out from under the strings.   It was a little tricky separating them from the candy and strings, but they still turned out fabulously.  :)  I sent them in packages to missionaries that have served in this area and used the rest for lunches and Easter decorations around the house.  

NOW ON TO THE EASTER DRESSES AND HAIRSTYLES!  :)

Here are my girls in their fun dresses.  I actually made my oldest's dress a month or two early.  My daughter in pink drew up the design she wanted and picked out the fabric she wanted and helped sew it.  So fun!  Pip wanted to use fabric from my stashes upstairs in my sewing room.  She loves going through the bins and draping herself in material making a complete mess whenever I'm working in there, so she knew just what fabric she wanted.  Here are some close ups...

I took these pics of Kenz a few weeks ago when I finished her dress. 

Here is how I did her hair today:

My mom sent beautiful vintage flowers from Victorian bonnets to add to our Easter fun.  I put these flowers in each girl's hair today.   Below is Kendyl's hair.  I'm always amazed with how thick and beautiful her hair is.  I'm lucky when I get to do anything with it.  She's more of a rough and tumble girl so Easter is a special treat for me.  :)

Here's her cute dress that she designed and helped sew. 

And here she is working away. :)

 Here's Pip's hair.  I was instructed (by her) to put the biggest flower I could in her hair. hahaha

And here is Pip's dress...  such a mischievous little fairy.  :)

After church we had a bunch of people over for dinner and egg hunts in the front and back yard.  It was a wonderful day.  It's so fun having traditions with such special holidays.

April Fools

My kids totally lucked out this year.  I was extra nice to them.  :)  Pip and I drew on these eggs and colored the milk pink.  I on the other hand wasn't so lucky.  These girls have been plotting for months.  I was pranked dozens of times.  My favorite was when the pranks backfired and got them.  Kenz had to keep changing her clothes because she'd set off her own traps. haha  She changed her jeans so many times that she ran out of clean jeans and had to wear a dress to school today! hahaha

Daddy LOVES!

It's easy to see who Penelope likes best. If Seth is home she is an extra appendage. I've been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss books with her lately and these pictures have inspired a little Dr. Seuss type poem in me:

"Every dad should have a Pip.
To hang on his leg and make him slip.
She'll help you shave your chin each day,
And give lots of loves to make you stay. 
At night she'll decorate your head,
And turn your lap into her bed.
A better friend you'll never find.
A little Pip is one of a kind!"

Another chart :) Health Habit Tracker Calendar

  

(Update- Jan 2023) I found out last year that a few people had taken this chart and were selling it on Etsy. That wasn't the purpose for it. I wrote the individuals and asked them to take it down and they wouldn't. I contacted Etsy and the easiest way to get them to take it down was to be selling it myself and report it as stolen art. So I put it up very cheap on there so you can still get it for almost free and Etsy removed it from the other stores. I hope you continue to enjoy using this and that you make wonderful leaps in your goals, progress, and dreams! If you would like to use a leap year version for 2024- that is in my Etsy shop as well. The different links are below.)

 Yup.  Another chart.  I know... it's how my brain and motivation work. :)   So, I love choosing goals (which makes my 13 year old daughter constantly roll her eyes at me.  Every January I freak out trying to just choose one goal for the year to focus on the most.  I just can't do it.   hahaha  

I had a brilliant idea!  I can just focus on one goal each month.  Then if I slip up one day, it's not big deal.  For some reason messing up on a goal that will change at the end of the month seems a lot less terrifying than messing up on a goal that I'm going to try to do the whole year.  I made this calendar in Photoshop and then printed it off and separated out the months into little boxes of the number of days of each month.  Everyday I can color in a little box.  It sounds sooo lame, but for some reason it really motivates me and gets me excited to color in a stupid little box.  At the end of the year this is going to to be a rainbow explosion of awesomeness hanging on the wall in my pantry and hopefully I'll have developed a few more cool hobbies, healthy habits, etc.   Besides, it'll stop me stewing through half the month trying to figure out what New Years Resolution I am going to choose- I get 12- just one at a time. :)   If you would like to print this off and have a fun year of growing more awesome along with me and my family then please follow this link to my etsy shop here where you can purchase it for CHEAP!  

https://thelostbutton.etsy.com

For those that like the original design from 10 years ago, I've digitized it in a way to keep the original design, but with cleaner lines and larger digital numbers. The file will hold both styles in case people like the hand drawn original better.  

I have also created a bundle package of the new digitized design and individual months to spotlight and color in. You can find it here in my Etsy shop.

It comes in 3 sizes (US Letter, A4, and A5) with individual motivational quotes for each month. The bundle also includes the one sheet calendar in 4 sizes (US Letter, A4, A5, and Poster 12"x18"). Go have a look! Like all my other trackers, it's in my shop and really cheap. 

Snowflakes=FUN!

Uuhmmm... yah, so I kinda like making snowflakes.  :) 

Christmas Reading Chart

On Sunday I had the idea to read the four gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) throughout the month of December as a way of keeping me focused on what Christmas is really about for me and draw closer to the Savior.   I began this week instead of waiting for December (I guess I was just too excited). :)  I figured out that if I wanted to pace myself, I needed to read about 6 pages a day to finish on Christmas Eve.  For anyone that wants to start after Thanksgiving they would need to read about 7 pages a day.

As I began reading in the mornings this last week I realized how much more special it would be to read it to my girls.  They like to get ready for school quickly and spend the rest of the morning reading, practicing instruments, animating, or drawing.  I let them know that they didn't have to participate, but if they wanted to listen I would be in the family room reading out loud and they could draw near me and listen.  It has been very special to begin this and I really look forward to the rest of the Christmas season starting our mornings in such a quiet, special way.

Because I'm such a dorky/goal-oriented/visual kind of gal I googled if there was any sort of chart to color in for reading the 4 gospels.  I couldn't find one, but I did find a chart of the entire New Testament with the Wise Men like above.  I brought it into photoshop and created my own chart inside it to be for just the four gospels and wrote "The Wise Still Seek Him" in the papyrus font.  I put it here so anyone could use it that would like to.

I hope you have a very Merry Season. :)

Winter Bulletin Board

Looks like my snowflake making skills came in handy when I made this bulletin board this week for the girls I teach in church ages 12-18.  I love them!  (I blacked out the middle section of the board for privacy sake)

Our Family Halloween Silhouettes

These are the little Halloween silhouettes I made of my family for Halloween this year.  I like them so much I think they will become a permanent decoration going up our staircase.  :)  I know, I'm so strange.  haha   I saw these lazer-cut wood decorations at a craft store and knew immediately what they would become.  I took profile photos of each member of my family and blacked it out in Photoshop.  I then found Halloween images I liked in Google and transposed them over our heads keeping our same profiles.  I printed those out, cut them and traced it onto black cardstock and cut that out.  I know there are more simple ways of doing this idea (ie. owning a Silhouette or Cricut machine), this is just the way my cheapness and brain worked it out to do it and I think they turned out quite charming. :) Happy Halloween!

So Much Halloween!

This year's costumes!  Makenzie helped sew her vampire dress.  Kendyl's costume is one that Makenzie used a few years ago (Wednesday from the Addam's Family).  Pip is the Ghost With A Black Eye (I sewed that ghost costume a few years ago for Kendyl).  If you don't know what that is a reference to I don't blame you. hahaha   It is Penelope's favorite story for us to tell.  She's been having us tell her it over and over since she was 2.  It's basically as story of a family who moves into a haunted house.  In the basement in the closet is a ghost with a black eye that scares everyone, except the very youngest little girl (whom we always have said was named Pip).  At the end the little girl scares the ghost by saying he better get out of there or she'll give him another black eye.  Pip always cheers at this part and jumps around. :)

Here's a close up of my creepy little ghost.  Her black eye makeup got rubbed off just before our little photo shoot because Penelope tripped and cried and rubbed it all off.  We were running late for a party so there was no time to reapply.  

Here's another one... a little less creepy... and a whole lot more cute.

Here's a lunch sack Seth drew one time of the story.  Pip kept this taped on her wall by her bed for years she loved this drawing so much.

Onto my even creeper Kendyl.  That girl knows how to get in character...

eek!

Here she is showing a more tender side- giving her little sissy a kiss. :) 

Last of all, Makenzie the vampire!

eek!  She gets into character too!

She did such a fabulous job on this dress.  She put hours into this sucker  (me too!)  It was worth it! :)

My favorite Halloween decoration this year is something my husband drew on one of our girl's lunch sacks.

IT'S FABULOUS!

It's of them in the same position as one of the stretching portraits in Disney's Haunted Mansion.

It is framed and in our music room.  :)

Happy Halloween!

The Great Colonial Day Trick!

Oh this girl!  My Kendyl Bendyl.  How could I get angry at that face you ask?  I'll tell you why... :)

 She's got the most amazing hair.  I love when she lets me do fun stuff with it.

For the past few months Kendyl has been so excited and working on a dress for her Colonial Day Celebration at her school.  We went to the store and I let her pick out what fabric and trims she wanted and she helped me cut it out and sew some of it.  As far as I knew everyone was just rounding up whatever they had or borrowing costumes for the celebration.  Kendyl was excited about the idea of designing and creating her own dress.  Well... the day before the Colonial Fair I got a note reminding the kids to dress up and it specifically said "plain, dull colors of browns, grays, blacks, and whites."  I asked Kendyl if she knew about that and she admitted that they had told them to use dull colors months ago, but she didn't want to tell me that because she wanted an amazing dress.  She even  told me that they had passed out costumes for the kids to borrow and that they had enough supplies that no one had to buy or sew anything, but she had told them that we would just make hers.  Whaaaaaa?  A little shocked, I asked why she didn't share this information with me and she replied that she doesn't mind being the only girl in bright pretty colors and that she will stand out like Cinderella and isn't that such a great idea?!  hahaha  OH THIS GIRL! 

So she had her marvelous Cinderella moment.  I've always wanted one of those. :) People followed her around all day and took pictures of her.  She couldn't have been happier.  I'm not sure her feet touched the floor as she glided through the hallways of her school that morning in a sea of dully colored costumes. haha  They did activities and games and even danced.  There wasn't an even ratio of boys to girls so she lucked out and danced with her best friend Claire. :)  It was fun and tiring by the end of the day as you can see in the last photo.

My Little Green Fairy

 We decided it was Penelope's turn for a costume since Kendyl got her Colonial dress and Makenzie got her Who costume. Pip declared she wanted to be a green fairy, to which I could think of nothing I wanted to sew more. I had fun following her around snapping pictures. Maybe I could create a cute top hat, feathery headband and she will be a perfect little floofy-leprechaun for Saint Patty's! See! I knew I could find a way to make it feel practical.... well more practical at least.