Ashley - hand held I-Spy

     It's hard to describe what I mean lol Melody's speech therapist let Melody borrow this little handmade pouch another mother hand made and she took clear beads and then hid little things in the beads. So when the kids play with it you tell them to find certain objects by searching in it. That's why I call it a hand held I-Spy. The one on the left is the one I made and the one on the right is the one that we were given to borrow. The beads inside I used were a little bigger because Melody got frustrated searching so it's a little easier for her with bigger beads. I also put more things in there jsut to keep her attention. Be carefu if you make one just because if you over pack it it will be too hard for the little one to search.

Ashley - Quiet Book part 1

     So I am getting ready for the long journey home to see my family back in Oregon! I'm so excited to see Alisha and the kids along with my mom, dad, grandparents, and friends. But getting to Oregon is a long flight. It's almost 7 hours flying and that doesn't include the one or two layovers I have along with that. And now that I have a little girl that is two she needs some form of entertainment. That's when I started poking around pinterest and found the quiet book and I instantly fell in love lol. So I pinned some templates and then got to work!

This is my first page.

You can find a template on this awesome lady's website http://jocelynandjason.blogspot.com/2011/11/mr-potato-head-quiet-book-pages-10-11.html This was super simple. I made a couple little changes to it, the little pouch she made to hold all the pieces was cute but I wanted to make something where Melody could see what she was grabbing so I used vinyl. And the only other different thing I did was I just used white thread from everything instead of changing out all the time. Its hard to find bobbins  for my maachine lol so I didn't have the extras to load all the different colors. When I make the front cover and the next pages I will put an interfacing between the pages to keep them sturdy. Turned out pretty awesome right?

Ashley - Monsters Inc. Easter Eggs

Hi there! I have been seeing that you guys have been loving the Minnie Mouse eggs from last year so I thought I would start on ideas for this year. Melody is IN LOVE with Monsters Inc. so that's where I got the inspiration. It's a bit hard finding Easter eggs in January is a little hard lol so this is all I could find (dollar tree) and I figured I could give it try and try to get the designs off the eggs I wanted to use so I took some Q-tips and some acetone based ail polish remover and guess what... it worked! 

Once I was done cleaning the eggs up I set up my work station. for this project you will need:

blue and black paint

purple, white, and black felt scraps

glue gun

white yarn

scissors

paper hole savers (for notebook paper)

and toothpicks

The first egg I started on was the Boo egg :) first of all the nice part about these eggs I found was they have holes in the top part of the egg to stick the tooth picks into. This will come in handy later.

I first made the mop for the top of her costume. I made a little yarn pom for the top. Just take a length of yarn, and wrap it around your fingers, then you will take the rings off your fingers and tie them together in the middle. Then you will cut the loops on both sides and have your mop :) Here's pictures if my crazy wording didn't help lol. 

Now that you have your mop take your glue gun and glue it to your egg. After your finished with that you can place and stick your toothpicks. And the final touch is to take your black and white felt scraps and and cut out the lamp/ eyeballs and glue them to your work :) And there is your first egg. 

For Mike all I did was take a hole punch saver and line it up to the holes on the top of the egg and place it. Then I took a little blue paint and painted the inside of the hole punch saver and made it look like an eye. The final touch was I broke off the ends of a tooth pick and glued them in for Mike's little horns. 

And then last but not least for Sulley. At first I was just going to paint his spots on but as you can tell after painting Mike's eyes you have to pile that paint on. So what I did was I just took some felt that I had that was the right color, cut out blob shapes and glued them on. It turned out well I think :)

And that's it! Here are the finished products in the little backdrop I made for them lol. 

This project was quick and easy, give it a try! 

Ashley - Minnie mouse wall art

     Hey everyone! I hope you had a very happy holidays! I have been working on getting my little girls bathroom all set up for her. We are starting with introducing her to the potty so I want to make her bathroom a little more hers and make it somewhere that makes her want to go use that potty lol. So one of the few projects that I have been planning to do was find a form of wall art to put in there. Then I remembered Melody received a duplicate set of Minnie mouse puzzles at Christmas time.

     So instead of returning them or letting them just sit and get no use I decided to use those as my wall art so Melody could still enjoy them and they would get some use :) So I rounded up my supplies.

Supplies:
1 20 X 30 foam board
Black paint
Staple gun
7/8 in. molding
and I used my glue gun too

     So first off I got my loving husband to cut the molding for me, I have a hard enough time cutting my own fabric haha so I asked him to handle that one. While Ben was cutting I got to work cutting the foam board. Just take your time and be sure to measure twice, cut once ;)

Next came the painting. Now these puzzles aren't made with the most precision ever so when we were fitting the molding we notice little gaps where the puzzle warped a little so what I did was I painted the edges of the foam board as well as the molding so if the puzzles and the molding didn't meet absolutely perfectly then it would be no big deal because the white wouldn't show through.

     Once these were painted and dried I just decided to hot glue everything because well I couldn't find my wood glue haha. First I hot glued down the actual puzzle to the foam board.

     After that was taken care of, one by one I fit the molding pieces and then glued them down. When I was certain the glue was cool and everything was secure I took the time to touch up any little spots I missed painting. Finally for the last step instead of buying hangers what we did was we just put a couple staples in the back and cut a little of the foam board away by the staples. It's easy, quick, and you save money buying special little hangers. These are very light so there is real risk of it coming apart.

     And there you have it, your ready to hang up your brand new wall art and brighten up any space! 

     Here is a little sneak peek of the bathroom but my big project isn't done yet so you will just have to wait until I get finished to see the whole finished product. But while you wait I want to show you the other puzzle that we have done this with. This hangs in our dining room and you have seen pictures of it but you probably didn't recognize it. 

     See? A puzzle my husband and I finished and didn't want to put away :) Enjoy everyone!!!