Happy Easter!

Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter!

Cupcake Saturday!

It's time for another Cupcake Saturday! I know, I know. We've been doing a really bad job of keeping our blog updated lately. Hopefully, with spring break this week, we will be able to do a better job of posting our projects. But since today is Saturday, here are our Easter cupcakes.

 These cute little chicks will brighten up any Easter dinner table, and they're really easy to make, too! They are topped with yellow-dyed coconut with chocolate chip eyes. The beaks are Starburst, flattened and cut into triangles, stuck into the cupcakes. They can be made with any flavor you'd like, which is great.

We dressed the table up by putting the cupcakes into a wreath form that had been wrapped in fuzzy green yarn, and then plastic eggs placed around. I think it makes a really cute table decoration.

Thanks for stopping by!

Easter Decor

Today's project is one of those "let me catch up on past seasons of tv shows" projects. It's a little time consuming, but definitely worth it!

We usually use Styrofoam wreath forms, but for this one, used a wire form. And about 3 rolls of tulle. We cut the tulle at 6 inches and knotted them around three of the rings on the form. You probably don't need to use that much, but I like the really full look. We then used some coordinating ribbon on the last ring. Finally, we knotted ribbon through the eggs and tied them around. It doesn't look like it in the picture, but it is one extra-poofy wreath. It takes up about half of our front door!

Thanks for stopping by!

Create with 8

Today's project was made for Joann's "Create with 8" challenge. The job was to use eight products from the list. We used a frame, cork tiles, ribbon, wood letter, glitter, paint, scrapbook paper, and a scrapbook embellishment.

It's a perfect little holder to put the recipe cards we are going to use, and to keep track of what's for dinner. We like to make a menu for the month, and cook ahead. So now, after doing the prep work, we have some place to keep notes.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Spring!

Hello everyone! We hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. Now it's all down-hill to the weekend, which is always good. Today also happened to be the first day of spring, which is always exciting! Now that we've experienced our first full year here, we've noticed that there really isn't much difference between fall, winter, and spring. It pretty much rains any time of the year (but not all the time!) Every once in a while, the sun will pop out, even if it is raining. Kind of like today, which was the inspiration for this post:

This is our 'First Day of Spring' card. I spent the work day, staring out the window, seeing it pour at the same time as the sun is shining brightly. It was the kind of day that defines spring. When I came home, I wanted to throw together a quick card, so I came up with this. I had some help with the layout, from Mojo Monday's Sketch Challenge this week. My other inspiration came from a saying I saw that I thought fit the theme. Unfortunately, my camera died before I could get a picture of the inside of the card. The inside says, "Count the rainbows, not the rain storms". It's pretty much how we get through the rainy season here!
Thanks so much for stopping by tonight! Have a wonderful Friday Eve!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope everyone is feeling the luck of the Irish today! And wearing green to celebrate being Irish (at least for today.) The good thing about actually being Irish is that you don't have to pretend today. So to show off some of that Irish pride, we have a banner to show you.

(Sorry about the crowded, mismatched mantle...)

Here are some close up pictures of the different pieces. The horseshoe is the u in "lucky." I love the sparkly green paper! I think it makes the banner shine.

 The pot of gold (again, sparkly of course) and the Irish flag rainbow,

We entered this into the Luck O' the Irish Challenge at Fantabulous Cricut
Thanks for stopping by!

Sending Some Luck

Happy Sunday! We hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend, apart from losing an hour of sleep this morning. I actually woke up to my alarm this morning, only to find out it was actually an hour later. It was a bit of a bummer. Oh well.
Getting on with today's project. We have a St. Patrick's Day card to share with you today.

How cute is she?! It's a perfect little card for a lucky little girl. We decided to go with a green and pink design for this card (it is known that pink is the new black- it goes with everything!) And a card isn't complete without some glitter and a good luck charm! The final touch was some stitching around the edges.
It's been a while since we put our projects into challenges. We've been busy with everything else, but we made some time to enter this one. It's helpful that a bunch of challenges are now St. Patrick's Day-related.
     * Mojo Monday- Sketch Challenge 283
     * Stuck on U Sketches- Shamrock Die Cut Challenge
     * MyPaperCraftingWorld- Irish Eyes are Smiling Challenge
Thanks so much for stopping by! Now it's time to spend the day making some more bags!! Story of our lives!!

Cupcake Saturday!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far! It is starting to feel like spring out here. Some flowers are popping up, the sun is out, and it's 50 degrees! Like the sign on the way to work says, "We need winter to appreciate spring."

I know we missed Cupcake Saturday last weekend. We were quite busy making wedding invitations for a customer, and didn't get to do much else. But we do have another cupcake to share with you today.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day next weekend, we made these fantastic Chocolate Irish Cream cupcakes. They are chocolate cake, filled with a chocolate Irish Cream mousse, and topped with Irish Cream buttercream. Nothing like a drink in cupcake form! The mousse is regular jello pudding made with the cream instead of milk.

I thought that the buttercream would be too much if it was totally covered, so we made some shamrocks to decorate them with instead of a giant blob of frosting. At least they were supposed to be shamrocks...

We'd also like to throw a Happy Birthday shout-out to our brother who turns 32 today!! Not that he'll see this anyway, so I can say that he sure is getting old!

Thanks for stopping by!

Oh Snap!

Today's post is a birthday card for our brother who is turning 32 tomorrow! Man time flies! He is getting old, that's for sure.

We weren't quite sure what to write on the inside, since crab sounds so close to that other bathroom word. We didn't want to offend him or anything, but figured the crab on the front makes crab-tastic sound ok. But then again, you can always make a crab-tastic card for someone who has been feeling kind of down and needs a pick-me-up.

(It's ok. He won't see this before he gets it anyway. I don't think he even knows we have a blog!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Kindle Cover DIY Tutorial

I'm really excited to share today's post with you. Here's the tutorial for the kindle cover that I made. It is very picture-heavy, but it is so much easier to see what's going on in pictures versus in words. I would say the whole project cost less than $5, which is so much better than the $20+ you could spend, and it's totally customizable. After figuring out the first one, I would say it took less than 20 minutes as well. It takes longer than that to look through all the online and in-store options!

Here's what you need:
- A composition notebook or other hard-cover book  (The sturdier it is, the better. I found a pretty sturdy one at Walmart for under $2. The black and white ones aren't super, but they'll still work.)
- Fabric scrap choices-
*one at least the dimensions on your notebook, plus 2-3 inches for folding over
*a strip in a coordinating pattern, optional
*flannel, fleece, or batting, optional, but gives it a little more sturdiness and padding
-1/8" elastic
- hot glue gun/sticks (I like it because it's so easy to work with. I went through about 7 or 8 sticks per cover.)
- cardboard scraps (at least the size of your kindle or reader)
- iron, optional
-scissors
-pencil or pen
-ruler
-your Kindle or tablet for measurements

Step One:
Remove pages from book. Just snip the strings.

Step Two:
Lay out your fabric to covering the outside of the notebook. This is why I said the iron is optional. As you can see, the fabric was very wrinkly, but if you pull it tight enough around the book, you won't be able to tell! Glue the fabric to the outside, pulling as tight as possible. Make sure that the fabric is wrong side up.Don't be afraid to use a lot of glue! You don't want it to be saggy. Turn it over and glue the fabric to the inside of the notebook.

Step Three:
Fold down any extra fabric you have. This part reminds me of the beginning of the school year when we would have to cover our books (before the stretchy book covers they have now) and we would use brown paper bags. I glued the corners down onto the fabric, to make the folding all of it down easier.

 

I used a lot more fabric than was probably necessary, but this way you don't have to worry about covering up as much of the notebook as you would if the outside fabric was cut shorter. I hope that makes sense! After folding and covering the book, we have that space to hide. Using the coordiinating fabric, cut a strip to your desired width. It has to be at least twice as long as the book plus some, so it will go all the way around. I attached it with the hot glue again (stick # 4 maybe?)

Put the notebook to the side. We'll come back to it.

Step Four:

Now we are going to start working on the home for the Kindle. Take your cardboard and cut to slightly bigger than your Kindle measurements. I would give measurements, but they are all different sizes... Cover the cardboard with your batting and fabric. Again, I used hot glue for this step as well. Pull the fabrics nice and tight so it doesn't sag.

Before (the back of the cardboard before fabric) and after (the front with the Kindle on it.) The extra space around it will make adding the elastic easier.

Step Five:
This is the hardest part of the project: marking where to put the holes for the elastic. Knowing that the holes should actually be underneath the Kindle so it can be nice and snug, I marked my holes 3/4" in from each side, and at a diagonal. I tried to show my measurements, but like I said, since they are all different sizes, it may be different for you.

Poke holes through all of the layers to thread the elastic through. I needed to use scissors and my cricut poker, but whatever works best for you! After getting the holes in, thread the elastic, about 4 inch pieces,  through your holes, with the ends at the back. Glue them down nice and tight so they don't move or loosen up. It's okay if it looks ugly, since it won't show anyway.

What it looks like with the elastics in place.

Step Six:

Take the whole middle piece, and using LOTS of glue, glue it into the notebook. This will cover any gaps you may have between all of the layers. To cover any gaps you may have on hte other side, you can glue in another piece of cardboard or coordinating paper.

 

 Now the main part is all done. If you want to, add a ribbon under that outside "binding" strip to tie it closed.

Here are all three of the covers I made (one for each of us and mom.) They can be held in either orientation, and since it's just a pretty-fied notebook, they don't take up any more room than that!

Now it's your turn! Let me know if you've made one and I'd love to share it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Not a Cupcake...

I know it's Saturday, but we unfortunately do not have a Cupcake Saturday to share with you today. We have been very busy around here, making wedding invitations for a customer. She chose a Tiffany blue and silver combination, which I love and think it will look awesome for her big day. And it sure will be big, since we have to make well over 100 invitations!

I hope she loves them too!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Note of Thanks

Happy Friday! We hope everyone has had a good week and now looking forward to the weekend. Let's just say, Friday couldn't come soon enough this week.
So, the other day we received a note in our mailbox, saying we had a package waiting for us up in the office. We had no idea who it was from, so we kind of let it sit up there for a few days (and because we don't head up that way too often.) Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised when we opened the package and got an awesome scarf from our aunt:

The other is in shades of blue- she knows us so well! Between the two of us, we got so many compliments on them. We love them and wish we knew how to do it. (Can't say we weren't trying to figure it out!) Today's project is a thank you card we made for her:

She is an avid (and amazing) sewer and knitter, so we decided to make her card with a quilt design. We chose the colors because they were bright and cheery. We also added some embossing to make it look a bit more quilted and finished off with some stitching around the two main pieces. I hope she likes it!
Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy the weekend!