Very Merry Christmas Cards

On Thanksgiving Day, we had my brother take our family picture for Christmas cards.  We were already dressed up and the recent snowfall was perfect timing.  Here are some of the "keepers."

 I chose the last two photos for the Christmas card.  I used PicMonkey to edit the photos and uploaded them to Shutterfly for the cards.

 And what to do with all the cards we receive?  I have been corralling them in this vintage log planter I found at an antique store.

It also houses some vintage caroling booklets and tea bags.

And here are some photos I took at my mom's house for her Christmas cards.  She decided to capture some shots of her Christmas-y vignettes.

And again, I edited them with PicMonkey to make them resemble postcards.

Sharing with Simple As That

Homemade Ninja Turtle Costume

My son knew right away that he wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for Halloween this year.  So I immediately started to brainstorm how to make that costume.  I was so happy with how last year's piñata costume came out that I knew I wanted to make a homemade costume again.  Here's how it turned out.

Raphael!

And here's a quick breakdown:

And know that garden tools can be TMNT weapons too :)

Hiiii-yaaa!

Linking up with Friday Favs Party at Nap Time Crafters

Valentine's Day for Boys

My son is OBSESSED with dinosaurs.  So it was a done deal when I came across this DIY valentine on Pinterest:

Here is my version:

I used stationary cards that I already had and traced a clipart image of a cute dinosaur onto construction paper.  A few Brach's heart candies are the dino's spikes.

Here's the inside...complete with my son's "signature."

Here he is working hard :)  Isn't he cute??

Just be careful that they don't try to pick the candies off :)

Have a DINO-MITE Valentine's Day!

DIY Advent Calendar

I want to share with you a project my mom worked on last week.  I'm sure a lot of you have seen the Evergreen Tree fabric from Ikea.

There have been several blogs that have done different things with it.

Normally, the fabric is just $6.99/yd (which is awesome already) but we were lucky enough to find it on sale for $3.99/yd.  Crazy!

My mom's idea was to add 24 buttons to various spots on the tree.

This would allow for little ornaments to be hung.

And here is the entire tree "decorated" with felt ornaments.

I think my  mom found all these ornaments at JoAnn Fabrics.

She will be giving this tree as a gift to a friend's grandkids as their Advent calendar.  Cute, huh?

Joining Metamorphosis Mondays with Between Naps on the Porch

Fall Pinterest Challenge: Pinata Costume

I'm joining Sherry and Katie on the Fall Pinterest challenge.

I saw this pinata costume on Pinterest this summer and knew immediately that I had to make it for my son.

And here is what I came up with.

The hat is made out of foam sheets and hot glue.

I just hot glued 4 pieces together as the hat base.

And I added some elastic string as the chin strap.

The outside is covered in rows of felt that I later cut into fringe.

Same thing with the ears: foam sheets that were rolled into cone shapes.

Hot glue those to the base of the hat.  (If I had to do it over, I'd make the ears smaller.  Theses are too big and make the hat top-heavy.)

I found a large footy pajama set at Goodwill (only $2!!) and used that as my costume base.  I bought it 2 sizes bigger to accommodate for layered clothing underneath.

I sewed rows of felt to the entire outfit and tried to work around the zipper.  I hot glued the rows of felt to the sleeves since they were too small to fit into the sewing machine.

And here's the finished product!

iPhone photos from Friday night trick-or-treating