cozy kindle

or is it “kindle cozy”? 

my words are getting so mixed up what with all the FREEZING weather we have been having.  today it is supposed to reach 19.  that is warm considering the other day our high was 3.

don’t believe me?

take a gander at my porch:

there is NOT A THING I can do about this situation.

not a single thing.

ice melt..

pffft.  three times a day.

I have even tried a hammer and a garden hoe.  that method helped the top step and the walkway, but not the bottom guy there.  merrill already has a home improvement project lined up for when there isn’t so much snow outside. 

two words: heat cable.

we already have it on the roof, but he’s going to put it in the rain gutter and the downspout.  this is where the problem lies frozen..

yes, my porch is a death trap, but that is not what I am really here to blog about.

onto the kindle cozy!!

lynnie-lou got a kindle fire for christmas (I am dropping hints like crazy as to what someone can get my for my birthday…) and the girl LOVES it.  she is our bookworm.  we also got her a case, which is awesome, but darn pinterest!  I saw the most darling kindle/tablet/nook/iPad cozys there and I HAD to make one.

I used amy tangerine digital papers from AC digitals, printing them off on inkjet fabric sheets.  I did the same thing for the embellishments I used, adding some heat and bond to the back making it just a smidge easier sewing those babies in place. 

I took the cute little corduroy button with the silhouette that looks amazingly like lynn, and using a button cover kit, covered a button to use as a fastener.

the construction was fairly easy.

first, I assembled the front pocket piece by ironing on my embellishments, and sewing where I wanted them sewn as well.  I stenciled the “L” using fabric tempered acrylic paint.  then I cut my pieces.  I cut 4 pieces of fabric, and one of thin batting, at 7 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches wide (big outer pocket pieces) and 2 pieces of fabric, and one of thing batting, at 7 1/2 x 8 3/4 (smaller outer pocket). 

I matched up my fabrics into the big pocket pieces and the outer pocket piece.  (I used the yellow chevron, green and white polka dot, blue sky with clouds, and the little paper dolls on grey.)  I then sewed, with the right sides of my fabric together, and a piece of batting on the bottom, just the top edge.  I pressed the seam open, and then flipped it right side out and pressed and then top stitched along the top edge so it would look pretty.  I stacked them with the outer pocket sitting the way I want it to, but had the main big pockets right sides together.  it is easier said than done, sewing down the sides and along the bottom, I had to adjust my tension and change my needle to a denim needle.

after they were all straight stitched, I overcast stitched the edges.  I kinda love an overcast stitch.

I marked the middle inside of the back piece and the middle front of the outer pocket.

I took a 2 and a half inch piece of elastic, looped it, and attached it to the inside of the back piece, letting the loop stick above the top of the piece.

I sewed a good few stitches to attach the button to the outside of the front pocket.

lynn loves it, and well, so do i!

if you love these patterns and embellishments as much as I do, click on the pictures to take you to the AC digitals store.

paper ball ornament

my dear friend linda (think: “in the making design”) had this pattern available to purchase once upon a time. 

(sniff..  sniff…)

so I had to make due, and figure one out with these papers, that I am, again, obsessed with!

 

so I started out, using my cricut and using some bad words, cutting 3 inch circles.  linda suggests starting with 2 inch guys, but I wanted a big guy.  so I went three inches.

you need 20 circles.  twenty.

after you have your circles all cut out, or punched, then you start to score.  the trick is to score an equilateral triangle, perfectly in the middle of the circle, with the three points touching the edges of the circle.

I would not/could not do this without my martha stewart scoring board. 

thank you george (he’s the voice in my iPhone, sometime I will tell you all of the funny things he’s done/said).

use your bone folder to make those creases SHARP.  this makes things easier later on.

now there are a few tricks to getting those darn equilateral triangles the right size for your circle guys.  you need your triangle to be about 1/2 inch smaller than your circle.  so my triangle for my 3 inch guy was 2 1/2 inches, but the triangle for my 2 inch circle was 1 3/4 inches.  see, no exact math, but wikipedia did help out, a lot.  and now I feel guilty about not donating to their cause…

linda had an awesome template that printed right out on her “be merry” papers, but like I said before,  that was once upon a time.  (why did she have to retire?  well, I really know why..  totally support and love your guts linda, just still a little sad.)

so I guess I will just make one…

 

(click on it to download.  you can adjust the opacity as needed to hide it better on your paper when you print.)

so now you have 20 cute little cut and scored circles…  or maybe 10?  why did I take that picture?

next step is to start gluing.  I like tombow mono multi liquid glue.  LOVE IT!!

start with five cut and scored circles for the top, and five more for the bottom.

you will glue them so the points all go to the middle.  it will look kinda like a lid.

(and eating white chocolate peppermint m&ms seems to help out too..)

do this for the top and bottom, and then set them aside.

you will take the remaining 10 cut and scored circles, and start gluing them to each other so it makes a band of sorts.

put glue on your tabs on one side of the band, and attach the top, then do the same for the bottom.

cute, right?

you can always add a bit or ribbon or string so you can hang them if desired.

many thanks to linda for her inspiration.

(xoxoxxooxxxx linda!!!)

I know I am not done making these.  pretty sure they will be filler everywhere around my house!

a little in love…

or maybe obsessed is the more appropriate word?

with this paper:

yes, “obsessed”.

I started this project LAST YEAR.  does that give you any indication as to what life is like here?  okay, okay, I kind of like to stick to working on projects in their proper season..  it just seems to work out better that way for me.  so I left it for, well, last week.

but it was just the thing to get me in the mood for christmas!

it all started, last year, when I decided to move around the furniture in the house.  this table was relocated from the entryway, to the end of our little hallway.  but above the table, smack in the middle of the wall, was a very ill-placed light switch. 

yes, that is what I call it.  now, I realize why the light switch is there, so a person, coming out of a bedroom door or the bathroom, would both be able to access it easily, but seriously?  right where it was?  I have two other switches to control these same lights, by the way.  so this one was going to get covered. 

I even googled:  “ill-placed light switch” and found some solutions, but this one hit me quicker. 

a gallery-wrapped canvas.  it’s deep enough to cover that light switch, but also serves a pretty fun purpose.

we have an everyday canvas with a line from a favorite song, but I wanted a fun one for Christmas.

I made one with this same movie quote last year, but decided quickly after I finished it (which was on the 23rd of december), that I hated it.  the font was all wrong.  the lettering slanted downward, slowly, and nobody else seemed to notice, until I pointed it out.  so this year, I re-painted it, and redid the lettering. 

I can admit, while cutting out the stencil with my cricut, I said a few bad words, but that situation will soon be remedied…

I WON A PORTRAIT!!!!!

ahem.

I love this quote…  I even bought a shirt that says it.

I had to have this little pennant banner draped across the top.

and loved it so much I added it to my latest favorite thrifty find, my $2 window.

(sidenote:  “logical lynnie” thinks my window is stupid.  she claims it was a waste of my money.  I think it’s dumb that they didn’t put my kitchen sink at a wall where there could be a window.  seriously, the things they should have consulted me on when they were building this house, even though it wasn’t mine, then.  I would much rather look out of a window than at a wall.  but “logical lynnie” says:  “mom, you are looking at a wall still…  you wasted $2.”)

and then the same pennant banner HAD to be added to my “joy to the world” art.

this frame has another everyday version.  the tidbit of a song lyric that goes here is from cat stevens.  “oooh baby, baby, it’s a wild world.”  I happen to love it.  no one else seems to really. 

(and by “no one”, I mean merrill.  so whatever.)

these trees got some imaginesce “i-top” brads, made with more of that darling paper, as ornaments.

and then there are the paper balls that I also happen to be overly obsessed with.  love my pinecones + glitter. 

(I have threatened my children with their very lives if they mess with these..)

can anybody guess what is in the white bowl there?

(that is all that I have been thinking/talking about on instagram, I swear it!!)

then, there’s my gordman’s globe, awesome find, and my “hooter” from scentsy.  I think he was july’s warmer of the month, I knew he had to come and live here as soon as I saw him.  isn’t he cute?

tutes for the paper balls and how I adorned my trees will be up soon!!

it’s that time.

what time, you ask?

time to get your advent on.

(among other things on my list.)

remember last year’s advent?

no?

whelp, here you go.

not to mention it was spotted and liked just a little bit.  I was featured at the crafty blogstalker.  (!!!!)

she has the perfect help for anyone planning on doing an advent for this all too fast approaching christmas season.  darling ideas there I tell you!!

a little halloween

this year for halloween we had a witch, princess jasmine, and “v” or a poodle skirt girl, depending on the venue/celebration.

it was quite wonderful to have merrill home this year for all the halloween fun, last year just wasn’t halloween without him!

we had a little early halloween fun at the family “trunk or treat”.  lynn and I both won prizes in the costume contest.  she was “v” that night, and I was a flapper girl, fulfilling all of merrill’s halloween dreams.

we carved pumpkins at the last minute.  don’t know how I forgot about those!!

life was a little hectic with the second hotel opening.  we spent a lot of our days and nights there getting it ready to open.  maybe that is how I forgot about the pumpkins.

halloween day I helped in the second grade, totally blew my budget on frosting for cookies, forget that I had to buy the cookies, napkins, and all the junk that is necessary for a child to frost a cookie.  that is what I get for putting that off till the last minute!

that night, we made the rounds.  the kids had fun, but didn’t stay out long.  I wonder if the day will ever come that they feel the need to stay out and go as far and as fast as possible to collect obscene amounts of candy. 

here’s a couple of cute and quick ideas for friends, neighbors, and teachers:

(click on the images for list of credits.)

now here’s to willpower and not eating my kids candy!

(whatever, you know I bought extra that I do not plan to hand out.)

a spooky six pack.

no, not my abs.

(silly.)

this:

pretty fun, right?

similar to the bottles I did for valentines a few years ago (but not really the same..  those were empties.), these have homemade labels that are spooky enough, but more fun than spooky.

I cut paper strips from my patterned paper that measured 8 1/2 x 3 1/2, and distressed them, first with an emery board, and then with some black ink.  I taped those on the bottles and then popped a label from nancie rowe janitz, distressed in the same way, on top of the taped-on strip.  I punched 1 inch circles out of the same papers, distressed again (I kinda like it that way.), and popped those on the bottle caps with a glue dot.  to finish off the bottles, I tied ric-rac or twill around the neck, cause it was cute.  the cardboard container was flattened and used as a template to trace onto more patterened paper that was cut to sixe, distressed (see, like it!), and glued onto the cardboard container. 

for a full list of digital supplies used, click on the pic!

the bonus to this cute, fun, halloween project:  I got to drink ibc rootbeer and crème soda (my second fav drink of all time) for the next few days. :)

me & my dad: mini album for the kiddos

so here’s the deal, I saw this on pinterest, loved the idea, and kind of ran, a little zig-zag crazy-like with the idea.

but I am in love with it!

(oh, yeah, merrill..  if you are reading this, stop.  close out the page.  go look at some funny stuff on “the chive” or something, okay?  seriously, get a snack or a drink.  don’t come back here.  k?  loveyoubye.)

you can never be too careful, you know?

so anyway..  it’s a mini album, mostly stuff the kiddos can do, filling out question & answer sheets, drawing pictures..  it’s fun.

unless you have two kiddos that take after their mom and are perfectionists.  that is slightly problematic.

there are eight 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 pages for each kiddo to fill out.

 

(here’s the download link for the printable pages.)

there are some pretty fun questions there!

we grabbed a bunch of supplies, like sharp pencils with good erasers, crayons and such.

for the cover, I used some chipboard that I cut down to 6 inches square.  I made a template to help me in punching all the holes too.  the inner pages are all 5 1/2 inches square.

I had to hunt down book rings (those things were harder to find than I thought..) to bind it all together.  ribbon and ric-rac tied to one ring helped to polish that off.

I used my cricut to cut out the circle and scallop shapes on the front (“storybook” cartridge) and the “street sign” font cartridge for the lettering.  I obviously cut the letters out in different sizes too.

I also pierced holes in the circle + scallop after I glued them together, but before I glued down my letters, and used a cross-stitch needle and some floss to stitch around the inside edge of the circle.

I made a pocket in the front, to slip in a little letter from myself too. 

I added dividers with a tab at the top of each to write each of my girls’ names on.

I also added a picture of each of them with their dad.

and they each drew a picture of them + dad":

lynnie’s:

ashley’s:

pey’s:

some other fun examples:

this was so sweet!!  I wrote what peyton told me to, she can handle her name ^^^ (see above) but the journaling needed a little help.  so just in case you cannot read the following:

“dad, I am thankful for so many things you do for me…  here are just a few:

he makes me lunch, he lets me visit him at work, dad took us to Disneyland and Lake Powell too.  I am thankful that he plays with me.  he does the “bed bounce”.  I am thankful that he goes to my primary class with me so I won’t be so sad.”

this one makes me giggle…

here’s the inside of the back cover:

and the very back:

I think he just might love it.  maybe not as much as I do, because I am kind of obsessed, but he’ll love it for sure!

so my very best friends for this project were:

paper trimmer, scissors, hole punch, crop-o-dile corner chomper (1/2 inch rounder), xyron sticker maker, paper piercer, needle, floss, twill ribbon, ric-rac, baker’s twine, small sharpie, 2 one inch book rings, stapler, and these digital supplies:

splendid fiins “foto frame” for the frames on the photos.

all echo park papers:

clouds

red + small white polkas

white + red polkas

turquoise + small polkas

larger turquoise polkas

red herringbone

turquoise squigglies

light turquoise pattern