"Life is Better in Flip Flops" Decor Sign

Ah... flip flops. One of the things I look forward to the most out here in Canada when the warm weather comes! Back when I lived in California I could pretty much wear them all year long! But... here in Canada, .. ya, not so much. So I really wear the heck out of my flip flops during the few short warm months we have! 

To further express my love for flip flops I made a cute little sign to decorate my living room. Yes, I painted another piece of scrap wood! If you didn't see the first one I made a couple weeks ago, you can see it here. 

This time I took photos while I crafted this one. So I thought I'd do another tutorial cause, well, let's be honest, tutorials are so much more exciting when there are photos to go along with the instructions.

I first sanded all the edges, corners, and the top surface real smooth. With a sponge brush, I painted the top and sides with a layer of watered down brown acrylic craft paint and a drop of black craft paint mixed with that to make a darker shade of brown. Then I wanted to give it some sort of aged or sanded sketchy look, so I watered down (not too much) some white craft paint and did two to three coats of that. I like how the dark shows through the white a little bit. Looks kind of beachy like... which is perfect for this quote! 

Okay, now some photos! 

I free handed the words on my last wooden sign, but this time I created a Word document, making sure to size everything to fit. I got my ideas for the layout from searching that quote on Pinterest. 

Flipping the printed paper over, I rubbed a piece of chalk all over where the words were placed on the other side. Because my board was painted with white, I used a bolder/brighter color.

After making sure all the backs of the words are covered in chalk, I flipped my piece of paper back over, placing it where I wanted it on the board, the words now facing up. I used some painter's tape to keep it in place. 

Now you are ready to trace all the words! 

Just grab a pen and trace and outline all of the letters.

Once you're done tracing and you remove the paper, you get this! 

Chalk lines on your board that are now ready to be filled in with paint! Super easy and neato trick for transferring words or shapes onto something for painting!

I found all my skinny little paint brushes at the dollar store! They work great! 

And now I have an adorable new summer decor sign! 

The perfect craft for a lazy Saturday afternoon. I actually find these painting projects very relaxing. 

The mustard yellow is a little hard to see until you come closer. But it looks great in the photos! And at least it will make me happy since I sit near this spot often!

Hmmm.. I have one more piece of scrap wood.. what should I paint next?!

First Comes Love, then Comes Marriage, then Comes...

B . A . B . Y ! ! ! 

YEP! YEP! YEP! 

Our little family is growing!

I am now in my 13th week, but last week's photo is the latest one I've taken. 

I had my first prenatal appointment and we were able to hear the baby's heartbeat! That was quite a moment! Hubby and I were so happy, we couldn't stop smiling! What an amazing thing, to be able to hear proof of a little LIFE growing inside of you. So emotional!

Sunday, Mother's Day, we announced the news to our church. What a perfect day, right? We didn't plan it that way either. We just wanted to wait until after our first doctor appointment to tell people (other than close family, who already knew) and that just happened to be the next Sunday. Our pastor had all the mom's stand during church, to give them a little something special. He said to me, "Since we believe that life begins at conception, you stand up too, Jessica."  : ) 

Finally I am starting to feel more myself after having constant morning sickness for 6 weeks. I've lost weight due to not being able to eat much at all and not being able to keep foods down. All I could do was lay around on the couch or in bed all day long. Poor Hubby was preparing his own lunches during his half hour breaks and dinners as well. The sight, smell, and thoughts of food would send my stomach whirling! Of course Hubby was perfect about it all. He was doing all the dishes and taking care of everything for me. Constantly running to the grocery store whenever I had a thought of something I might be able to eat and keep down. There was one really bad week where I couldn't get out of bed at all. Water wasn't even staying down! I was feeling pretty dehydrated and got a little nervous. But after that week it eased a tiny bit. I learned that bananas were the ONLY thing that would calm my stomach. So after I figured that out, I never went anywhere without a banana and always kept one on my nightstand for late night nausea and a bite to start the morning. Not saltines, like most everyone suggests. Those would totally gross me out and make me throw up. I haven't eaten a saltine cracker since week 5. Yuck! Morning sickness has eased up a lot now, but there are still occasional nausea spells. Right now I'm finding evenings are not so lovely, or when I got without eating something for too long I get sick. My appetite is still not completely back, and eating is still mostly a chore. I try what I can, or what doesn't completely make me want to puke at the thought.

Ew.. at the moment I'm feeling my first bout of heartburn I think.. ouch..

My craft room is now under construction! .. Saying goodbye to my little craft room, which was usually messy and unorganized! But I'm going through everything in there and organizing or throwing out things. Wow, what a chore this is! I rearranged our master bedroom walk-in closet and made room to store all my crafting supplies. I'll save all those details for another post when I'm done with that department! But I'm eager and excited to clear the room out and begin making a baby room! I've pinned LOTS of ideas on my Pinterest "Oh Baby!" board and hoping to be able to work some of those fun ideas into the room!

Well, so there's our happy news!

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. 

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 

Wonderful are your woks; my soul knows it very well. 

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." 

Psalm 139:13-16

Old Plant Stand Made Pretty

Last winter I picked up this old neat looking plant stand from someone's trash pile at the end of their driveway. .. I seem to like trash finds, don't I? 

Since the warm weather has finally graced us with its presence, I decided I felt like giving it a makeover! So out of the storage closet it came! 

I brushed it up a bit with a little scrubber to get some little bits of gunk left behind from when I gave it a bath in my tub after bringing it home. Then gave it a quick wipe down with some bathroom cleaning wipes.

Spray painting can be a challenge when living in an apartment, so I went for some acrylic craft paint.. plus it's cheaper! The color on the bottle says Aqua, but the photo totally doesn't show its true color. It has more of a greenish tint.. I can't describe it very well really. But it's very vibrant and not as dull as the photo shows. I hate that! But atleast I can see it's true beauty when I look at it in person!

It's so nice to sit out on my balcony and work on a project on a nice sunny day!

And here's my new plant stand!

.. Don't laugh at my poor droopy little plant. I've had it since our first year of being married and it's kind of always been a mopey little plant.

I think I like it inside.. not sure still.. 

And I think I'd like to get a pretty new pot to fit inside.. white, maybe?

Refreshing little update :) 

Hand Painted Wooden Sign Decor

HELLO HELLO! My goodness, it's been ages since I've hung out at my blog! The last time I blogged was in December! I miss the days when I used to blog about everything I did.. I've gotten a bit lazy I guess. Well guess what?! I was feeling crafty last weekend and went browsing through my Decor board on Pinterest to see if there was anything pretty I could make. I found this pretty hand painted wooden sign that I'd pinned forever ago and decided since I had a piece of scrap wood I'd give it a try! 

And here it is!

Didn't it turn out lovely?!

I decided to put it up on a small wall to the side of our couch, right next to the balcony doors. I was never sure about what to put in that spot, or if I should put anything there at all.. in case it looked too crowed with having my photo wall above my couch. But that's where I put it up! Along with a cutie little vintage bicycle decor piece that I got from my Grampa (I begged him for it), who got it from my mom a few years ago haha! I always wanted to put the little bicycle up somewhere but I'm just not creative when it comes to adding wall decor in an attractive way. I take waaaaay too long thinking about stuff first, and then I just get tired thinking so I forget about it!

  

I think it looks GREAT! I'm in love with it! And I can't stop looking at it whenever I come into my living room. It makes me smile and say, "Awwwee..."

As difficult as it was to get a hold of my husband's attention while he was grossly and intensely watching his favorite hockey team play in the playoffs, I was able to get him to hang my new decorations up on commercial breaks! ...

Check out those sunburns!

Now, I didn't take any photos during the creation, because I didn't think about blogging! But it was pretty easy. First, to get the stained look, I watered down some brown acrylic craft paint with water and covered the board a couple of times till it was a shade I liked. When dry, I began on the words. I drew my words on a piece of paper while looking at the pinned inspiration photo for a guide. I did "Love" first and when I had it all drawn up how I wanted it, I took a piece of chalk and rubbed the back of the paper all over where the word was. Then I gently placed the paper where I wanted it on the piece of wood, with the chalked side facing down onto the wood. Taking a pen, I traced over the letters. When I lifted the paper off, the word was drawn onto the wood with the chalk!! Super easy for transferring! So then I just filled it all in with craft paint! (I'm in love with that color these days!) And I just repeated that same process with the rest of the words on the sign. The rest was a little tougher for me though, because I can't seem to write nicely.. After that was all finished and dried I covered the whole board with a clear varathane finish. That's it! 

Feels nice to share something on my blog again! : )

Christmas Caramel Popcorn

Want a super yummy treat to make for your Christmas Eve or Christmas day get-together? This caramel popcorn is UH-mazing!! I promise! I made a huuuge bowl of it for our church Christmas party and came home with an empty bowl! I found the recipe on Baked Perfection. 

So what you need to do first is pop a whole bunch of popcorn. Instead of popping the microwave bagged popcorn like Risa did, I just did it on the stovetop in a ginormous pot!

If you have popcorn kernels, the directions will be on the bag. But you will pour a little bit of oil in the pot, maybe about 1/4 of a cup. Turn the stove on to about medium low. Then you put ONE kernel inside, close the lid and wait to hear it pop. Then you'll know the oil is hot enough to pour in the rest of your kernels. You'll only want one layer of kernels in the pot, so pour them in till the whole bottom pan is filled of one layer- no kernels on top of each other. Then you just shake the pop around a little here and there. It makes lots of noise banging around. :) But I LOVE hearing the sound of the popcorn popping!

After it's all popped, I split it between 3 of my sprayed glass baking dishes. 

Then you move onto making the caramel! Here's what you'll need for that:

3/4 cup of butter

1 1/2 cups of brown sugar

1/4 + 1/8 cups of light corn syrup

1/4 + 1/8 teaspoons of baking soda

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

red and green food coloring

Start by heating your butter, brown sugar, and corn syrup in a medium sized pot. Stir, making sure to get all the clumps out. Bring it to a boil and keep stirring. Then let it boil for about 5 minutes. I let it sit without stirring too much. After 5 minutes, remove it from the heat and immediately add the baking soda and vanilla. The baking soda kind of changes the color and makes the caramel look a little puffier.. maybe that was just my eyes.. 

Now we want to split the caramel 3 ways. So first I pour 1/3 of the caramel over one dish of popcorn (just eyeball/guesstimate what 1/3 is). Then I pour another 1/3 of the caramel into another pot and added green food coloring, then pour it over a dish of popcorn, then I added red to the remaining caramel left in the other pot. I actually had my Hubby's help because I was stressing about the caramel setting too quickly before I could get all of it done! So I actually reheated the last bit of caramel again to get it pour-able again. As hubby was reheating and stirring, and I was stirring and coating the other dishes of popcorn. When the caramel cooled a bit, I put down my spatula and just used my hands to incorporate the caramel all over the popcorn. 

When all the popcorn is coated with caramel it gets baked in a 250* preheated oven.

Set the timer for 15 minutes.

When the timer is done, stir the popcorn around. 

Set the timer for another 15 minutes. 

Then stir the popcorn again. 

Then set the timer for the last 15 minutes. 

Now it's done! 

Taste your homemade caramel popcorn and freak out because it's so great and you'll never buy caramel popcorn at the the store ever again! ... Atleast, that's what I did! 

I made another batch just for Hubby and me later that week since we didn't get much of it at the church party! .. I just didn't add the food coloring step.

Enjoy and have a Merry Christmas!

Crochet: Simple Statement Ornaments

Here's a simple and easy crochet project I pinned onto my Christmas board a few months ago. I found the idea on a blog called Goodknits. She crocheted around these circular objects called cabone rings. I've never attempted or even thought about crocheting around objects like this before. I wasn't planning on making them, until I found some old curtain clip rings {6 to be exact} while I was cleaning out my craft room last weekend.

I just took out all of the screws and got to work creating pretty new ornaments for our tree.

They were pretty easy for the most part. Basically single crocheting around the ring, filling it up (took 45 single crochets), and then lots of chaining and more single crochets to form the little loops. But you can just go check out the instructions for yourself on Goodknits.

I think they turned out cuuuute!

I didn't have any wire ornament hooks so I just made my own with some wire I had. Paper clips would also work for making ornament hooks.

OooOOOooOoOhh... presents under the tree already!?! ;)

Crochet Coffee Cozies

I recently discovered the fun of making crochet coffee cozies.. and now I can't stop! 

I'm absolutely IN-LOVE with these bow cozies! They are so fun to make!

I pretty much made up my own pattern that works for me. At first, crocheting in the round (or circle) was a bit confusing.. I'd tried it before when I first started crocheting but gave up. Now I think I've got it down. 

I made some other styled cozies as well.. 

Embellishing them is the best part!

No burned fingers for me! 

I've added a few to my Etsy shop, and I've posted more of them on my facebook page as well! 

They'd make perfect little Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers, maybe along with a gift card to a coffee shop!