Crafting!

I haven't crafted since long before our move. Part of me has missed it, but part of me was not ready to make the investment. Jon was out of town the other week for work, so to keep myself busy I set to work on crafts. Luckily, back when I was excited about crafts I would email ideas from other people's blogs to myself and save them in a craft file in my email so when I had time, but no ideas I could easily go find something I like. The planning did not fail! :) There was a handful of things that I was excited to make.

First of all, ever since we moved in (with the stark white walls) I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to change our bedding. I decided the colors and bought the fabric I wanted back in Aug/Sept. But I was waiting for the weather to be cold and dreary before I did the pillow project. I finished these in January.

My amazing friend Megan, gave me the clean, white, down comforter and 4 throw pillows to make the smaller decor pillows. I made the pillows cases for the 2 large square pillows (Ikea), and the teal and black ones next are walmart pillow cases. And the four smaller pillows are from Megan's. The green ones are just recovered. But the other 2, I made with batting from the other throw pillows.

I really love the clean, fresh, bright feel in the room. I am thinking about what to put on the walls. I have a print in mind...but the resolution isn't high enough for how big I want the pic to be. So I need to get that figured out.

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These are the things I made while Jon was gone. It helped that the Bunco theme that week was "arts and crafts" there was added pressure to finish quick. Although, I'm not sure they were loved as much as I love them :)

I am pretty good at copying crafts without a pattern. Although patterns are great! I saw a felt watch a couple years ago featured on Dana Made It. (She and another lady do a "Celebrate the Boy" month. Its easy to find cute girlie stuff, but not for boys. So they focus on boys only for a month. I LOVE it!)

So here is the watch I made. The boys love it and want one so bad. It was pretty easy and quick to make. I took the boys to the rec center to ride bikes for about 90 mins and I finished all the stitching. It was my first time really working with felt. I was surprised at how forgiving it was. It was also very cheap to make!

I also made this ruffle necklace, which honestly, I love. I found the tutorial on Ucreate. Its perfect to embellish a plain tee. (I don't even know if its in style anymore. Now that I live in a small mountain town and am home most of the time, I'm totally out of the loop of trends and style :) It was hard to give away. I think I'll make one for my sister too.

There were a couple failed attempts at inventing the flower before this one came together, but I am really happy how it turned out.

Then I felt like I should add something more to the bunco gift set, so I whipped this up while making and eating mac n cheese.

I made this next one for myself, it is a menu board. I got the idea from Little Birdie Secrets. My sweet friend, Hilary let me come over and use her cricut so I could have the vinyl lettering. In our family, we do a 2 week menu and try to only go to the store every 2 weeks. Often times, my menu is on the back of the grocery list or on some other random piece of paper that gets thrown away or lost, or I write it on the fridge and the boys erase it.  So I really needed something to keep track of it. Thinking of what to make for dinner is more often than not, my arch nemesis.

I'll put the first week on the left side and the second week on the right side.  (I couldn't find paper that I loved, and would not be too busy so I could see the writing. This paper is ok. But the beauty is I can change it whenever I want, for holidays or whatever I feel like!)

I really really enjoyed creating this week. I have missed it. It has added a lot to my joy and purpose. Now to find a balance where I can make sure to enjoy to necessary evils of life (ie dishes, laundry, etc.), and take the personal creative time I need :)