Family Traditions

it's me again....hope you aren't getting too sick of me posting

Christmas time is a time where I feel family traditions come out. My nephew recently had to do a school project on a family tradition and the only thing my sister could really think of was Christmas Family Traditions. By the way he ended up doing a report on getting Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve like a lot of families do. I think family traditions are an important part of what makes this holiday so great.

I decided to start a new family tradition. 

I stole got the idea from my good friend Rachel...(hi Rach)

What it is, is The Best Christmas House Lights Award

We went around looking at people's displays of  Christmas Lights 

We decided on a few that we thought were pretty good and 

then voted amongst those which one we like the best and gave them an award

Here is our Winner

 and here is the award we left for them
(in case you were wondering I just whipped up this little award in Picnik)

We had fun doing this and plan to do it again next year.

But next time we will head to a different part of town because the part that we drove 

around last night didn't seem to have too many wonderful and exciting light displays.

Do you have any fun family traditions you do??

2x4 Snowman

When I first ran across these on Pinterest I thought "hey those are cute and look pretty simple to make"

Well they were simple to make but when you decide to make 12 of them it becomes a little overwhelming

I followed instructions from THIS GREAT TUTORIAL from Under My Umbrella

I think hers turned out cuter than mine....oh well!

Hope the people I give them to like them.

I want to give a big  SHOUT OUT to my wonderful hubby who cut and sanded 

all the wood for me in the freezing cold.

I've got lots of wood left over and have plans to make something Valentine's Day-ish out of it!!

Starlite Wreath

I have not been in a crafty mood lets say for the last 3 months or so but when I saw THIS cute wreath on Pinterst I decided that that was going to be my Christmas Wreath this year.

Here is how mine turned out....not too shabby, huh???

I am not good at writing tutorials (I always forget to take pictures as I go along...oops) so if you would like to make one click HERE and it will take to the site I used.

I did however shellac mine because when I walked into the room and found my 4 year old licking it I just knew that it needed to be shellaced or else it would probably end up being a sticky mess.

It's super easy...if I can do it anyone can!!!

Baby Food Jar Christmas Tree

There he is my 5 yr old.  He ate what used to be in these jars.

 My husband's grandma has one of these and when I first got married (7 1/2 yrs ago)  I thought I should make one.  So when I had my first child (5 yrs ago) I saved all my jars. 

So I stored them of course year after year.  But we are moving after Christmas this year and I thought I have to do this now or just chuck the jars.  So here it is.

 I cleaned the jars and then hot glued some silver ribbon I had on hand around each jar.  

Then I glued them all together.  It was quite an adventure.

Then I filled them with this.

My husband's Grandma gave it to me from when she did hers so it is probably from 1970.
I cut is about 6 in long and shoved it in the jars.

Then I filled the jars with green lights.  Grandma's is filled with multi color lights.  But I had green on hand.

Then I got crazy with the ric-rac.  Have fun and hope you enjoy!

Merry CHRISTmas!!!

Happy Holidays!

HEY! IT'S HOLIDAY TIME!!

Sorry it's been so long since I have put a post on. We started our Texas Twister fairs the first of April, and finished the middle of October. A twister is a drink we make with fresh squeezed oranges, lemons, and limes in our family's secret base. It's so fun, but a lot of work. We took two weeks off to take a cruise to Alaska and LOVED it. We only had one or two other weekends that we didn't have a fair, but were so tired we barely had time to prepare for the next fairs. I felt bad about leaving all the work to my daughters, (especially Juli) but didn't have a choice or the energy. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things. I'm having lots of fun with my sewing machine again. So many cute things, but so little time to do them all!! Here are a few of the things I've been doing. Hope you enjoy them.

Sewing/Embroidery

This will be a cute pillow for a bed. Sorry it's not
ironed! I was in Oregon and in a hurry to get the
pillow front and quilt block to the buyer.













This is the Mt. Timpanogos L.D.S. Temple in
American Fork, Utah. It will either be a quilt
block for the middle of a quilt, or a pillow.

I love Thanksgiving! Especially when it can be spent with family! 

It's fun to have things around the house to remind you to "Count Your Blessings". 

We have so much to be thankful for, it should take the whole season to think of them all. 

It's fun to have towels for every event, season or month.

Here are a few I could have made.

It almost seems like Thanksgiving get left out because all the retailers are excited to get Christmas merchandise out, but we don't have to forget it. Here's another towel to get people in the mood. I will be doing sets of towels for months, seasons, and holidays, so these will be included in one or more of the sets.

Placecards/Invitations

I found a cute idea in a woman's magazine that I just had to try. If you live in a place that has large oak trees, you will have much bigger & cuter acorns. I went up the canyon to Maple Grove and picked up several acorns. Our trees are small, so the acorns were small. If the cap still has the nut attached, just twist the nut and it will come right out. Several of the ones I found were doubles (attached at the top), so I made balls for both sides. I started by cutting circles out of minkee or some other fuzzy fabric. As you can see, my circles are not perfect because I didn't use a pattern. It really didn't matter in the end.

Stitch around the circle with thread, put a cotton ball in the middle, pull the thread tight to make a ball, stitch through the top until it's secure, and then tie it off. Since my acorn caps were pretty small, I had to cut the cotton ball in 4ths so the ball was the right size for the acorn cap. If you live where there are BIG acorns, you'll have to make bigger circles with bigger cotton so they fit nicely. We just have small oak trees, so hence, small acorn caps.

















After stitching around the edges, adding the cotton ball, pulling it tight and knotting it, I used my handy glue gun to fill the cap half full of glue and then stuffed the gathered end into the cap & hold! They turn out really cute. The only other thing I would do is spray the acorn cap with shiny craft spray to make them glossy. My spray was way up on garage shelves with the Christmas stuff, & I didn't go to the trouble of searching for it.















Here are a couple of ideas for their use: Party invitation or a way to let people know where they are sitting at a dinner. I'm sure you can think of others.







Thanks for reading our blog!! Hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving! See you soon!! Mother Hen--Barbara

Birthday Book

Hello there!!
Today I want to share a gift I made for Mother Hen last month for her birthday.  As some of you know, Mother Hen travels a lot.  And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT!  She travels all over the country selling Texas Twisters at fairs, normally every weekend from June to October. So when it comes to kids and grandkids birthdays, she has to send cards for most of them.  More than once I've gotten a call from Mother Hen, asking what birthdays were coming up for the next couple weeks.  I really don't mind telling her, but I decided I could come up with something cute to help her keep track of the birthdays.
So I made her a birthday book!  What is a birthday book, you ask?  Well, here ya go!  Prepare for picture overload!

I'm sorry I don't have any before pictures, but I basically took an old photo album that I had, recovered it, and re bound it.  I was initially going to keep the same binding that the photo album had, but after decorating each of the pages, the book was too big.  So I punched holes in each page, attached eyelets, and bound it with fishing wire.  Not my first choice for binding, but it worked!

For the pages, I cut a piece of cardstock to the size of the cover. Then I used another piece of cardstock, cut it an inch shorter, and folded the edges over the back, making a pocket in the front on the right side.  For the left side, I just printed out a calendar for each month, wrote on the birthdays, and glued it on, which covered the folded edges from the pocket side (did that make sense??).

I wanted to have a pocket for each month so she could keep birthday cards in it.  I made a few of the birthday cards, and then bought the rest.  So not only does she have a calendar that she can take with her, but she has birthday cards ready for an entire year!  All she has to do is fill them out and mail them!  I also did the calendar this way so she can write in birthdays when needed.  Our last birthday calendars were missing quite a few grandkids that hadn't been around when the calendar was made. 

So here's how I decorated the pages for each month.  I owe a huge thanks to my awesome sister Jacki for helping me do some of the pages.  I'm pretty sure this would have ended up as a Christmas present for Mother Hen if Jacki hadn't helped me! :)  On the right side of each page, you can see I attached ribbon.  I was trying to figure out how to print on ribbon so I could type the month on each ribbon, but it just didn't happen.  So I just picked ribbon that coordinated with each page.

I finished off the book by adding some ribbon to tie it closed.  It was bound with fishing wire, but the ribbon helped keep it together.

I love how it turned out, and I know Mother Hen really appreciates it!  So what do you think? 
Thanks for reading!!
-Juli-

Linking to these great parties!

Angry Birds Pumpkin

Happy Halloween!!      (...almost)

Every year, the bank that I work at has a pumpkin carving contest.  I've never been good at carving pumpkins, so I always 'decorate' my pumpkins.  Last year I made my pumpkin into a mummy, and the year before that it was a witch, complete with hair and a hat.  This year I wanted to do something fun and unique, but I also wanted to do something that the kids would recognize so they would vote for my pumpkin. :)  And what kid doesn't love Angry Birds?!?  Heck, what adult doesn't love Angry Birds?!  So here's what I came up with!

What do you think?  I was originally going to do the red bird but I didn't have red paint.  I had plenty of green paint, so I went with the pig.  Then I saw the queen pig, and decided the crown would be the perfect addition!  Do you want to see how I made the eyes, nose, and crown?

Of course, I started by painting the pumpkin green.  I only did two coats, and it seemed to be enough.

Then I started making the accessories while the paint dried.  For the eyes, I cut two big circles out of white felt.  Then I hand stitched around the outside edge of the circle.

I finished the eye by pulling the two ends of thread together, putting a bit of stuffing in the pocket, and tying a knot with the thread. Then I just cut little circles from black felt to make the eyeballs.

Next is the snout. For this, I just cut the shape that I wanted out of felt, then cut strips of felt for the side of the nose.

I put the side and snout together, and hand stitched them together.  This would have been much easier if my sewing machine wasn't broken, but oh well! Last, I did the same as I did with the eyes, and stitched around the edge of the strips of felt that were attached to the snout.  Then I gathered the two pieces of thread together, put some stuffing in it, and tied a knot.  I cut two different sized ovals from black felt, and hot glued them to the front of the snout.

I did the same thing for the ears.  Cut out the shape, stitch two together, turn inside out, fill with stuffing, and glue black felt to the front.  Easy peasy! :)

The crown was really simple. I took a piece of felt, folded it in half, and cut the triangle shapes off the top.  Then I glued all the sides together, cut blue felt circles, and glued the gems and circles to the crown.  Then I just glued the sides of the crown together.

 The only thing I didn't show was the eyebrows, because all I did was cut the shapes out of black felt, and hot glued them to the pumpkin.  I used hot glue to attach the eyes, nose, and ears.  If kids will be touching it, you might want to use pins to attach them.  The glue holds ok, but if anyone pulls on it, the pieces will come right off.

 So there you have it!!  What do you think?  My kids absolutely loved it, and I had so much fun making it!  Thanks so much for reading!!
Juli