A few things that made me Happy!

I just have too many interests, plain and simple and blogging fell to the bottom of my list. I do still want to blog, but I will just have to get to it when I can! Here are a few things that have made me happy recently.

I love conference weekend, not just because of the great words we hear, but because my family is all together in one room for longer than we ever get to be any other time of the year. Saturday sessions are my personal favorite and this year the kids all chose to sit and really listen, they were angels. My sister Morgan and her son were with us for the am session and Hannah and Tanner Dockstader even joined us for a while too. I got to work on my digital scrapbooking and enjoy just sitting there with everyone, relaxing and listening to conference! And yes, those are jelly beans, in the morning.

For Valentine's Day I made a Love word art with my mother in law that I loved so much I decided to make a similar one for St. Patrick's Day. Tyler hates the word luck, but I persisted and this is what we ended up with. The wood is not what I really wanted but we had it, and after 3 or 4 broken scroll saw blades it finally got cut out. A little sanding and Martha Stewart glitter paint and I was happy. I know the picture stinks, sorry, I am just not a photog and I can't add anything more to my list of interests.
My Grandma, a very interesting lady in many, many ways is somehow still with us and says now that she finally feels back to her old self after her time spend on life support a few years ago. I love this woman. I wanted to spend some time visiting her during Spring Break and it just wasn't working out, so I just went and grabbed her from her house and made her join us in our regularly scheduled activities. It turned out perfect, I think she liked it much better than just us going over for a visit anyway.


Our final creations.
I saw these on pinterest and loved them. Why did I never think of dying the egg whites?
We get to have cousin Essien over a lot and the boys were all enjoying my one and only wii game, the best game ever, Just Dance 3. It makes me so happy to see them all dancing together, they are just too cute, I'm happy to share my game with them any time!

Pinterest...I don't just pin! #4

I'm getting a bit burnt out on blogging pinterest stuff. I'd rather be pinning or making my pins I guess! That being said, this may be my last pinterest pin, maybe not, we'll see.

This was the water marbling technique, I loved it, it also actually lasted longer than when I polish my nails the usual way! I watched a how to video which helped a ton. It is a pretty easy way to get a very cool look. Below was my first attempt, I learned a lot. The more polish you drop in, the closer your lines are and the darker they are. Notice my middle finger that looks a bit like candy corn? That one didn't have as much polish dropped in.

This is after I removed the tape and most of the polish from my skin.
My right hand, the ring finger was less polish and I swirled it around a bit more than the others.

Deep fried battered chicken, I think it was called sesame ginger chicken. I had to change the sauce recipe quite a bit to make use of what I actually had. It turned into a grapefruit ginger chicken. It was actually really good. It was hard to keep my oil at the right temp. I got it way to hot at one point and smoked up the whole house. Next time I may borrow a deep fryer, that would make things much easier.
Loved this one, we have very few Halloween decorations so this was great. We ran out of trash bags so I sent Micah to a neighbor where he got 2 black trash bags. We cut them into strips all the way to within 1 inch from the bottom of the bag, then cut the side open and along the bottom of the bag. Then we stretched each strip, if it tore, we tied the back on. I taped the bottom of the bag behind the front overhang on our porch. Viola! Witch curtains. They look so cool when they sway in the breeze.

Pinterest...I don't just pin! #3

Black Licorice Caramels for Tyler's birthday. Even if you don't like Black Licorice you might like these, they were SO good.

I changed up the same recipe and made Coconut Caramels. Again, yummy.
I'll be making these again.
I found a recipe for sugar cookies that are as good, if not better than Lofthouse cookies, you know, the kind you find in the plastic containers that are frosted based on whatever holiday is closest. Anyway, really, really good. We made them for Activity Days too. I made them for Tyler's birthday as well, initially. I didn't have any powdered sugar to make the frosting and it was Sunday, so the store wasn't an option and I found out by googling that you can make your own powdered sugar! It's much cheaper, I will be doing this from now on.

Pinterest...I don't just pin! #2

I'm trying to get these posts done kind of quickly but also be organized a bit. This post is all wall or hanging stuff, mostly wreaths which I'm obsessed with right now.

This is my twig wreath. Tyler didn't like it on the front door, well, he really didn't like it at all, but I moved it off the door. It was getting bumped a lot and I had to keep gluing twigs back on. Now it is tucked back away where it won't bug Ty or get bumped.

These fabric flowers or rosettes are my favorite. I just found a tutorial on making a stretch ring with them and am going to do that soon. I made these to adorn my burlap wreath.
This is the wreath I did a class on for Super Saturday.
I did not see this on Pinterest but I bet it's on there somewhere. When I went to Utah my sisters in law taught me how to make it, it's just Lima Beans glued on a foam wreath form then spray painted. Easy.
These flowers I made with an old sweater of mine that I accidentally shrunk, a lot. You cut a circle, spiral cut the circle and roll from the inside out.
These are canvases my friend Kendra gave me that I stapled fabric onto, that is all over Pinterest.
Here is the back of my paper rosette wreath, the 97 cent pipe insulation that you can get 2 wreath forms out of. My friend Christie just bought some for my class though and it's gone up to a dollar something, still cheaper than the foam forms at the craft store.
I made this wreath for my mom for Christmas and I added some scrapbook paper to match her colors.
This is the first one I made, just book pages. I made it on a wicker form from dollar tree.

Pinterest...I don't just pin! #1

I am in LOVE with Pinterest! I am now never without ideas, ever. I am going to do another blog series, this time featuring the stuff I have done from Pinterest. I'm not sure I finished my "This summer..." series, so I might throw in a few of those here and there!

So, I'm starting with my least fun projects. I tried the glass cutting and wasn't very successful with it. I had my parents save some wine and liquor bottles for me. In this first pic is a whiskey bottle, I tried to cut it in several different places and it just wouldn't. Too thick? I have no idea.

This wine bottle was the first one I was able to cut. It would have been an awesome shape too...but it cracked, sniff, sniff. If I could do it successfully it would be fun to make a bunch of drinking glasses from wine bottles.
This Maker's Mark bottle cut, surprisingly. It chipped on one side but I sanded it and got it smooth, painted it orange and turned the chip to the back and it's ok.
This Bogle Vinyards bottle would absolutely not cut at all.
Close up of the one I kept.
Another bottle project, painting them white, easy peasy, worked perfectly.

So, the cutting method. Wrap string (I used yarn) around the area you want to cut, tie it off, slide it off the bottle, soak it with polish remover, slide it back on, light it on fire and turn bottle while string is on fire, submerge in cold water and snap it. There are videos and picture tutorials available online if you google it. If anyone has some beer or soda bottles or other cool bottles they want to donate to me I'd like to try this again.

And the new student body V.P. is...

Micah Laing!

By some wonderful fluke he ran unopposed. I guess all the other kids thought there was no way they could beat him, jk. It was a huge blessing though. I think this will be really good for him. He gets to do the announcements every morning. Yesterday he did the flag solute, birthdays and a school reminder that they are all super heroes (I think that is their theme this year). His brothers said he did a good job, I wish I could have heard him. He also told me that he can't go anywhere without people saying things like, "Hey V.P.!"

On another topic, Micah has been paying attention to my obsession with Pinterest and wants in on the fun. He came up with this idea and asked me to post it and pin it...

Here is what you do. Get some googly eyes and some everyday school supplies and a pipe cleaner. Glue on the googly eyes, cut the pipe cleaner to your preferred arm, leg or eyebrow length and glue those on. We used hot glue because it adheres and dries quickly but you could really use any glue, maybe even the glue from your soon to be new "friend"! I thought this was a bad idea but all three boys played with them for awhile, what do I know?