Stamped Wood Ornaments!

So this year for my ornament party I have decided to do something along the same lines as my natural christmas wreath.  I love the look of the cut circles of wood especially with the bark still on the wood. 

 

I had wanted to make some reindeer ornaments that were made out of wood so an idea was born. I decided to try stamping onto the wood and it turned out darling! 

I thought about drilling a hole in the top to loop a ribbon through but the wood is still soft and I didn't want to crack it.  So, I just glued a ribbon on and added a bow made from the same ribbon.  Here is the finished project!  I especially love how the brown ink of the stamp almost makes it look like it could have been burned into the wood.

 

Hope you have a great time decorating your Christmas tree and have a Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

Christmas Advent!

So there are sooo many cute ideas in the blogging world doing a Christmas advent so I decided to make one too.  Mine is really simple.  Did I say simple??? 

I used some No. 1 coin envelopes from the local Staples and some number stickers.  The stickers I used were from Oriental Trading Co. and they had them on clearance 2 sheets/ $5.00.  Not the best deal but they are cute and with the colors, I did not feel that I needed any other decoration. 

First, take your coin envelopes and put the sticker on them.

Second, put the slips of paper with the Christmas activities into the coresponding envelopes.  (This was the hardest part, I had to look onto pinterest for some ideas.  Who knew that 24 activities would be so hard to come up with?)

Third, drape a piece of ribbon or yarn across the place you want the advent to hang.

Fourth, take your clothespins and attach the envelopes to the ribbon.

Done!  Did I say simple yet??  This ended up costing me around $15.00 ($5 for stickers, $6 for envelopes, and $4 for the clothespins.)

I am looking forward to doing the activities with my kids and I can save these envelopes and re-fill them for next year!

Enjoy!

Paper Christmas Stars!

I found this post on pinterest the other day and had to try these.  Check it out the stars that I made and this tutorial for a fun, fast way to make some cute Paper Stars!

The larger stars were made using paper that was 6" x 6" and the smaller stars are made using paper that was 4" x 4".

Here is the tutorial: Paper star ornaments

Enjoy your crafting!

Recycled/ Natural Christmas Wreath!

It has been a while since I have posted.  I have to be honest and let you know that my creative juice has been empty and it is finally starting to fill up again.  I am in love with the natural materials that you see around being used for various things and I wanted to make something using natural wood.  So when my husband and I were out in the mountains cutting some firewood - I snagged a perfect sized branch for me to use.  This was an easy craft and I hope you enjoy it.

 

So I started with a log about 2 inches in diameter and using my husband's chop saw I cut this log into slices about 1/2 inch thick. 

 

 

I then laid the pieces out to a rough circle. 

 

I then started to glue.  I tried some wood glue but it took too long to dry and my husband said that the wood was still pretty green so it would take forever.  Second, I tried my hot glue gun - my go-to tool and started gluing like crazy.  That worked but I had to re-inforce it on the back with some popsicle sticks to help hold it. 
Last, I put a ribbon on it - with hot glue, of course, and put my coke 3D stars on the wreath.  I found a tutorial for the stars at: Recycled drink can stars - In the tutorial she painted them but since I LOVE my coke and on one of them there is the cute polar bear, I left them the way they are.  Besides they are red so it is already festive.  Here is another photo of the finished wreath. 

 

I love how this wreath turned out and the best part is I used some old soda cans and wood that we harvested for our firewood so it didn't cost me anything.  Let me know what you think!

 







Sight word help

If any of you have a kindergartner in your mist than you are having to quiz them on sight words.  My little girl is smart but she gets bored with just quizzing her on them and then she guesses - wrong usually.  So I went to the Internet for inspiration.  I found a color by sight word on a website and I thought that would be perfect because she loves to color.  The problem was you had to buy it and I am too cheap to buy it when I can make one myself.  (Is anyone else like that?)  So I have created these two sheets - one with a color by sight word and the other page is a sight word graph.  They color the butterfly according to the sight word color chart and they count how many times the sight word is in the box and graph it by coloring in the boxes. 

My husband said that it was awesome and that I needed to share it so here I am. ;)  who better to share it with than my blog readers.  Hope you enjoy it and you can inspire your child to practice their sight words too. 

Sight Word Worksheets

 

 Enjoy!

 

Halloween Wreath!

I am loving the fact that Halloween is just around the corner.  I have to say that this is my favorite holiday to decorate for.  I have always been the kind of person who would love to watch scary movies and scare myself silly.  One of my memories as a child is my twin sister hiding under my bed and waiting till I came to go to bed.  She would then grab my ankles and I would scream like a little girl and we would laugh like crazy.  I loved to follow her up the stairs because she hated to leave the basement with the dark behind her.  It makes her run faster when you would hit the stairs next to her feet.  To this day, her kids say that she runs upstairs.

To the craft portion of this post ;) - I had some extra grapevine around and decided to make a halloween wreath with it.  So I made a circle wreath using the grapevine and then found some halloween colors of ribbon and tulle and added those to the wreath.  Then I had this darling little frame that I found in the $1 bins at Target (gotta love those bins) and added a Trick or Treat sticker to it.  Then just hot glued the frame to the wreath and Voila!  The Halloween wreath is born!   Hope you enjoy the craft and enjoy your frights as much as I do.

   

Giveaway winner - take two!

So the winner of the set of 3 Candy Corn did not e-mail me her address so I went ahead and picked another winner!  So Congratulations to Yvette!  Don't worry - I know where you live so I will bring them over to you!  Thanks once again for following my blog and your comments.  I hope to have a new post soon.  I have a couple of projects in the works right now and just need to finish them. 

Winner to giveaway!

So, I am sitting in a hotel in Wyoming with my four kids watching SpongeBob and I remembered that I needed to draw a winner for the giveaway!  So my son got to pick the winner. 

Congratulations Claire!  You win the set of three Candy Corns!  I hope you enjoy them.  I will need you to e-mail me your address so I can send them your way.  If you do not send me your e-mail by next Friday, I will pick another winner.

Thanks everyone for your comments and for following my blog!

Candy Corn Giveaway!

So sorry, the summer has gotten away with me and with my husband doing a second job in lawn care I haven't had too much free time!  I am actually looking forward to school being back in session so my kids and I can have more routines and time away from each other.  My kids were really getting sick of me. ;) 
I mentioned in my last post that if I got to 25 followers I would have a giveaway and we have 28 followers right now!  So thanks for those of you that follow me. 
As for the prize for the giveaway- it is my favorite time of the year (fall) and I remember last year the success of my post for 2x4 Candy Corn.  For his giveaway I have decided to give a set of 3 of the 2x4 Candy Corns away! 

Here is how you win!  I will draw a name on September 7th.  So have your name put in by September 6th.  Here is how you can get your name entered into the drawing:

1. Be a follower of the blog
2. Like Craftyblondechick on facebook
3. Leave a comment on this post about what your favorite season is and why

That is a total of 3 times you can get your name in the drawing and with the amount of followers - that is some pretty good odds.  Hope you enjoy my blog and I get to put your name in the drawing.

Bracelets and Rings!

These week has been crazy just with trying to keep kids entertained, house clean, etc.  Sometimes I think that summer is more work for moms even though we are not helping with homework, shuttling kids to school, and all that.  No, Summer is just full of baseball games, carnivals, "Mom, I'm bored!", and all of the kids (including the neighbors' kids) asking for a snack or popsicle.  So this week I am going to post what fun things I found time to make that have been on my to do list in pinterest for a while now. 

First, I have been loving the bracelets on pinterest and have quite a few earmarked and only made two.  I made this bracelet:

I used the idea from this bracelet but used suede lace instead of the twine she mentions in her tutorial.

Bolt Bracelet- DIY

Second, I made this bracelet -

I made it using this bracelet as my inspiration and a few beads from a tophatter auction.

hemp-pearl-bracelet

My last craft to show off is the bended spoon ring.  I had a old baby spoon that had a cute heart on the handle and I thought that it would make a cute ring.  It was easier than I thought to make and I admit that I am going to go to the thrift stores to find more spoons to use and make more.

I found the instructions on this website:



bended spoon rings

Hope you have enjoyed your week and found some time to craft too!



Summer fun part 3 - Cupcakes & Father's day!

This week me and the kids decided to try out a new recipe that I have been dying to make for some time.  It was some Root Beer cupcakes!  Don't they sound great?  So we made them and needless to say the kids scarfed them down and they didn't even wait for them to be frosted.  In fact, they asked after trying one that I not frost them.  Here is the link to the recipe:

Root beer cupcakes!



Next, we needed to figure out what to do for Father's day because usually I will make a card or t-shirt with my children's hand prints but this year I wanted to do something different.  This year I made them fill out these sheets about their father and I am going to put them together in a large card with a personal "toolbox".  This toolbox will contain some things that my husband can't do without.  (Mainly- duct tape, super glue, bungee cords, sunflower seeds, etc.).  Here is the link for the father's day information sheet I used:



Father's day printable

The kids had fun answering the questionnaire and they really really enjoyed those cupcakes.  I hope you can find some time to do something with your kids this summer too.





Fun black & white cards!

I have been doing some cards lately because I sell them at a booth in Signs and Wonders store in Spanish Fork, Utah.  They are something that I sell a fair amount of so I needed to replenish my stock.  I saw some cute cards using everyday items as a word play and decided to use that as my inspiration.  So these cards were born: 

Here are some close-ups of each card:

I found the graphics on a website for free graphics and used my word processing program to make the sentiment. 

On this card, I made the flower using strips on paper that were 1/4" wide and 3 1/2" long.  Using some glue dots, I folded them over and stuck it in the middle and then held them all together using a brad. 

Here is the last card - isn't it darling???

Have fun crafting!

Summer fun part 2 -Motivation for Kids to Read, Write!

Sorry for not posting this yesterday.  We went on another picnic this time with their Dad so we really didn't do a craft this week.  So this week, I am writing about trying to get your kids to retain some of their reading and writing skills this summer.  I found this idea for a Reading Bingo

Reading Bingo

and when I mentioned it to my 7 year-old he loved it.  So, then my 5 year-old girl pestered me with questions about what she got to do for her Bingo.  Since she is going to be going to kindergarten, she doesn't know how to read and in her preschool they focus on writing her name and letters.  So I decided to make a bingo card for her where she needs to write her name or letters.  Here is a photo of the image I made for her.

If you are interested in downloading a copy of this document you are more than welcome.  I was unable to convert it to a PDF without it messing up the letters in the middle.  It would black them out.  So I have it in a Word document file just e-mail me and I can e-mail it back to you.  I can already tell you that my 7 year-old has crossed off one square and my 5 year-old girl is jumping at the chance.

 

Summer Fun Part 1 - Pizza, Park, and Bubbles!

So- today was the first day of my summer fun with the kids.  As I mentioned before in the last post, I am planning on doing something with my kids each Thursday to show them that you can have fun even without the big vacation.  I decided to go a little low-key with the celebration this day because of my lack of energy with coming down with my annual summer cold.  So, here is what we did for a total cost of  $6.00 (plus tax).

Cheese Pizza -thanks to Little Caesars Hot and Ready Pizza.
Park time - always a favorite of mine since it is free and for the kids because well, who doesn't love swings and slides?

Then we came home and made bubble pictures.  I found a three pack of bubbles at the dollar store and used some food coloring and little cups to mix the colors.  The kids then had fun on the front porch making the pictures.  Here are some pictures of the buggers - minus the baby (18 mos) because he wanted to play in the colored water more than anything and it doesn't come out easy.  Also, as you can see in the pictures, the water ends up mainly on the porch so that is why we did it outside.  My kids are notorious for spilling anything liquid.

I got this idea for the bubble pictures here :

Bubble Prints! 

I don't think ours turned out as well as the ones on her website but the kids loved making them.  I think it was a great day with the kids and they will have some good memories without spending a lot. 
Enjoy your summer!

Summer Fun!

So, first off - sorry for the MIA this last couple of months.  I have been having issues with the desire and the creativeness to make anything.  I mean anything.  Just ask my poor husband and children who have had to eat cold cereal for dinner far too many times.  I decided yesterday that I have to make myself do something so here I am!  I wanted to write this post to introduce you to what I am going to plan for the summer. 

I have always wanted to be a 'fun' mom and since we are short on funds this year I wanted my kids to still enjoy their summer.  So each week I will be working with them on a craft or planning a fun fieldtrip for their summer pleasure.  Then I might hear "I am bored" less and more of "I am so excited".  So starting on Thursday, May 31 - I will be posting what we are doing.  Hopefully, you will get some ideas from this and comment on a few of your own.  I am also going to be doing a give-away when I reach 25 followers.  We are only one away so as soon as I get 25 I will let you know what the give-away is.  Hope you have a great summer and I will post next Thursday with the summer fun idea!

Keep crafting away!

Spring Wreath!

Some of you followers may recognize the base of this wreath since it is the same as the base of the winter wonderland wreath in a past post.  I used an old frame and added some grapevine wreath to form the round wreath in the center. 

Since this is the same then I will not bore you with the details of the construction of the base of the wreath.  So onto the next step! 

I found a cute little clipart of a chick that used circles and I knew that I had a circle of wood so I decided to put this cute little chick on the spring wreath.  Here is a picture of the items used for the chick!

There is one googly eye, one chipboard heart for the beak and a chipboard scalloped circle for the wing.  The legs were made using some twigs I had left over from making the grapevine wreath.  I painted it a sunny yellow and then hot glued the legs and the other parts on.  Here is a close up of the chick on the wreath.

Last step to the wreath was to put a white tulle bow and a twine bow on the top. 

I love how simple and cute it is.  Hope you enjoy this craft too.