Optical Illusion

I saw this on Pinterest and wanted to try it. 

Click on the picture and it will take you to the site.

I collected my supplies, white paper, a sharpie, a ruler, and some markers.

I learned after a time or two to draw the lines starting near the corners first.

After I got one with the lines I just copied off a few more.

I know, cheating.

Follow her directions and you too can have works of art such as these:

(I could only round up the girls for this project.)

Mine

 Jane

 Katie Anne

Lucky!

Some people skip right from Valentine's Day decorations to Easter decorations but I think they are missing out!  I love the green!  The dollar store has some great stuff, but mostly I just had to make my own decorations...what do you think? 


I did get that subway art on pinterest.  I hate that ugly frame but had zero, zilch, nada energy last week thanks to a cold that zapped the desire to paint an ugly frame right out of me.  I have a queue of things needing spray painted so perhaps it will get done, eventually.

I didn't have any salt and pepper shakers for this holiday so used my silhouette machine and vinyl and white shakers from shopko to make some.  The kids were so excited.  Weird.

As with most holidays I pick up cute napkins after the fact for next year.  I thought these were funny, but could only see the front, thanks to the UPC sticker covering the back.  When I opened them up this  year, I about died laughing. 

 My friend who served her mission in Scotland said that 'true Scots' never have anything on under their kilts, so that makes this a truth, not just a funny!

Jane loves St. Patrick's day.  She claims she doesn't have to wear green because of how lucky she is already because we brought her home from the hospital on March 17th. 
It makes things more special for sure, but I'm still going to pinch her if she doesn't wear green. 
I'll have to post my outfit for that day.  Believe it when I say you won't be pinching ME!

S'more teacher ideas...

Because Jane graduates from Kindergarten on Wednesday I had a need to finally get the teacher gifts ready.  I am in LOVE with these awesome ginormous marshmallows so I decided to go big...
(P.S. I bought mine at Walmart pretty inexpensively, the graham crackers at Sam's Club, and the chocolate bars at Macey's, on sale of course.   You probably didn't need to know all that...)

Then, I saw this today on Creative Juices (AFTER I put my stuff together...) smaller but still very fun!

And speaking of the end of school, I took some pictures of my nephew who is graduating this year...

I just asked him who his girl friend was and got this cute smile.  He's a good kid.  I have another nephew graduating the same time, but no current picture of him.  He's cute too.  I love being an aunt!

With Permission...

My sister Stacy has been making the cutest little gifts.  I've been hearing about them, but hadn't seen one in real life until she gave Jane (lucky girl!)one for her birthday.  Check it out...

When we got home late the night she was given this she wanted to open and use it immediately!  I had to talk her into using it in her bath the next day when she could enjoy it!  Stacy says you can do really complicated bath salts or just mix epsom salt and coarse salt and use food coloring to get it the color you want. Anyway, not too hard to put together but the effect is pretty amazing!

Wacky Wednesday...

Last week the kids wanted a real Wacky Wednesday, not the kind where I haul all the laundry downstairs and we watch a movie while we fold the clothes.  So, Jack loaned me his book and kit he won in a "Beat the Teach" reading contest at school.  He won the science kit and another book on weird facts and we found out that some perfume is actually made with whale vomit.  Yup.  Makes you smell real purty.  Anyway, this science kit had some fun and easy things to do, including little packets for some of the experiments.  One packet had diaper dust in it.  After dumping it in a ziplock bag, you add water a little at a time and see just how much water a tablespoon of diaper dust can hold.  Let me tell ya, it kind of makes me feel bad for some of my really bad mommy days when their diapers hung down to their knees.  Sorry kids.

The other packet held GID powder.  I didn't know what GID meant until I read the experiment and just for your texting information, GID means Glow-In-the-Dark!  Nice!  So we made up the goo and slathered it all over our hands and ran in the closet, together, to wave our hands around and ooh and aah. 

The next one you can do without any little fancy packets.  Pour some milk in a rectangular dish, then put a drop of food coloring in the milk.  Put one drop of dishwashing liquid on top of the food coloring and the food coloring "SWIRLS AROUND MADLY".  (Direct quote from the book).  We thought it was so pretty, we took a picture of it. As you can see, we tried lots of colors and put them around the edges then they swirled around madly. 

This week was Wacky Wednesday all day in honor of Jane's 6th birthday.  She has talked about it almost since her last birthday so I felt just a teeny bit of pressure to make it fun.  We started with cold cereal, since she had requested breakfast for dinner we didn't have to do much this morning!  She was so excited to have Grandparent's Day at school today and got to wear her crown through the whole program.  Grandma and Grandpa Morrill brought her first present of the day, and she was thrilled to get a couple of fun cards in the mail. 

I put her presents out early to build a little anticipation and it worked...she was very excited!  After dinner breakfast we headed to the highschool for a stake talent show, but ditched out early for cake.  Thank you very much, I made that myself, and yes, it is very lopsided but who cares, eh!

So, there you have it, Wacky Wednesday.  And because I was feeling kind of wacky by the end of a long day, I made these...

because I could not find one thing with green on it for Jane to wear to school tomorrow so we made something very obvious to keep her from getting pinched!  Inspired by Pikadilly Charm, (mine are just barrettes).

A little more love...

I made a new kitchen table tray (picture frame with v-day paper inside) and of course needed some v-day salt & pepper shakers to put on it but I couldn't find any so I took these, found for $3 at Shopko,

Used my Silhouette and vinyl to turn them into these:

And I think they are kinda cute! 

For Wacky Wednesday last week we made cute yarn hearts from instructions found in the Family Fun Magazine.  Be warned if you try it that it is MESSY!  I thought that would be part of the appeal, but only Jane really liked the feel of the goo.  Katie Anne was willing to at least put the yarn I got gooey for her inside the cookie cutters, or in our case, pancake shapers.  I only had 3 hearts, so we traced a heart for Jeffrey then used the heart shape to later form his into a tighter heart.  Also, I added quite a bit more hot water to make it a little easier to use.  I also put them in the oven on 170 for just over an hour and they at least got stiff enough to handle.  Overnight they really hardened up.

 I planned to hang them in the window or from the chandelier, but they have stayed on the bookshelf since we made 'em...

What's old is new...

A long time ago, my dear friend Diane cross-stitched this little saying for me and framed it in a matching green frame.

And because I know that our warmth and joy will never end, I went ahead and put the cross-stitch in a special place, sanded the frame, and painted it red.  Then I added my own version of this to create this:

 

I liked having all the letters a different font so I just scrolled down and clicked and pretty much used whatever font I landed on.  For a basically free project...me likey.  I also love that darling little sock monkey ($3 at Walmart!) becuase he's kind of crooked and reminds me of my own that watches over me in my closet:

I made this little guy while I was on my mission (p-day fun!). I'm no seamstress, but I'm kind of proud of this little guy, especially because he's so reverent. 

Anyway, here's my little table scape for this month...

Whatever.  At least it's somethin'!

Little bit of this and that...

 Little bit of crafting...first I made these snow blocks.  They were originally a part of a relief society activity, and we had 6 blocks and were supposed to put the word 'thanks' on them.  Well, didn't get around to that so I made 5 blocks and used them for my winter scheme for January. 

 I liked them so much I turned them over and did a little Valentining on the other side.  Cute, easy, and fun, especially when Katie Anne arranges them and they are part snow, part valentine's.

I also made this heart using the old tissue paper method, only I used fabric.  I first got the idea here and followed the link to here.  I used foam poster board instead, and displayed it on its side in my front window along with a bunch of other froo-froo stuff.

Tonight I plan on making this:

Though I might change it up like this girl did.

And just because I like to help out my cousins and friends whenever I can, and because I told Chersten I would get these to her, here are some other great blogs...

LDS Craft Project
Pikadilly Charm
Five Real Moms
Craftiness Is Not Optional

And because I like other people's blogs (no IDEA who they are) here a a few more...
Creative Juices
Miss Crafty Pants
The Idea Room
Under My Umbrella

And now a little bit of that:

Two cute girls having fun and wanting me to capture the moment with my camera.  I took a fake one with my imaginary camera but it wasn't good enough for them! 

Wacky Wednesday...

Last night for Wacky Wednesday we made some fun fall placemats.  They probably won't last for years and years but I'd settle for a few weeks!  We used mod podge to adhere the leaves to the poster board (sold that size in packs of 10 at Walmart or you could cut your own (get 3 out of a regular sized poster board).  To help, I put the leaves under a bunch of heavy books after collecting them.  (Jane helped me with collecting some of them, others I stopped and helped myself to...).  Anyway, after we were all done I covered them in contact paper.  Because the leaves are bumpy, so is the contact paper so it's not perfect but still pretty fun!

Katie Anne put three on and then demanded new papers.  She used up plenty of glue and leaves on scratch paper!

 Jane turned all of hers into girls wearing dresses. 

Jeffrey turned all of his into pictures.  Can you find a bird, butterfly, tree, mouse, fish, and a car getting pulled over by a police officer?  If you can't, then enlarge the picture and see for yourself.

Jack was in the middle of a report due the next day so he did a quick job of it...He did like figuring out that he could glue down extra stems to make legs. 

Here's mine...just all the pretty leaves and some words of the season.

And here's John's, which I made.  I think you can figure out what it's depicting!

Happy Eating Everybody!

The most important part of Thanksgiving...

The Turkey!

I love the food at Thanksgiving, but setting the table is probably my favorite part. So, here are the place cards for this year. Because we are having lots of kids this year and John's side isn't too used to going around and saying 3 things they are thankful for (insert huge paranthetical thought here: we always had kernals of corn on our plate when I was growing up, usually 7 kernals, and we had to say something for each kernal. It's sort of been pared down to 3, but wouldn't it be cute to glue 3 little kernals of corn on the little colored strip of these place cards? But I won't because with all the kids I think they'd try to eat it! O.k. I'm done, remember where you were before these paranthesis started???) each place card has a letter of the alphabet inside and before dinner each person will say something they are thankful for, starting with that letter. I didn't peek at the letters when I made them, but I looked after. I got the letter "V". I already know what I'm going to say, but what are you thankful for that starts with V?

P.S. Carla...you could have your kids make these!

I just used scrapbook paper which I KNOW you have a ton of :)