Pinning it Down~ Rainbow Unicorns

Well this week's Pinning it Down post is Birthday related again! Bunny's Party is this week and things are in full swing! Yesterday I made the cake topper for her birthday cake! I have pinned some amazingly sweet unicorn cakes. All of them have 6 amazing rainbow layers (we will be doing that with my sister in law on Friday) and they all have amazing little unicorns on the top of them! Some of the bithdays that have really inspired me are This green one here, and this blue one here. Well we have to have a unicorn on the top of the cake for the Unicorn birthday party! So I was off to Etsy to see what I could find. Well everything was a wee bit more then I was would be able to swing. Then I found the sweetest unfinished wooden unicorns here. They were the perfect size, the perfect price, and they really cute! I ordered quite a few of them, since the kids will paint them at Bunny's Party. I however painted the ones for the cake! I used basic white acrylic paint for the body, different rainbow colored acrylic paint for the mane and tail, and glitter to put over the colors!!!! Here is how they turned out.

 

I really think that Bunny is going to love them! I am going to coat them heavily with clear coat so that the glitter doesn't come off as badly in the cake. These are still a surprise for Bunny. I am so excited to see what she thinks!

This post has been linked up to Pinning it Down. This linky party was made for all of us out there trying to make the habit of doing things off our our Pintrest Boards! I hope you stop by there and see all the fun that people are having! Maybe you'll be inspired to join us! Happy Crafting!

Who doesnt want to be a unicorn?

Well the party planning continues! Yesterday my sister came over and we made unicorn party hats for the kids! This idea was one that found on Pintrest and I love the idea. However, everyone who made these, had used regular sized party hats, opened them up, and rolled them smaller and taped them back together. But I really thought that this would be so hard to keep them together. Tape never seems to stay when you need it to! ;) So I was scouring my basement for birthday idea, when I came upon those cone shape cups that are used in those big water coolers. Well....I was super excited! They were the right size, the right shape, and already made!!!! All I needed to do was punch some holes in the side and put some ribbon on them to hold them on the kids heads! They looked cute, but needed some pizazz. So I used a little acrylic paint to paint a swirl around them! Here are some pictures of them all ready to go!

Aren't they cute? I think that the kids are going to love them! Bunny does, and since its her Birthday I guess that's all the matters! :) Happy Crafting! 

Save Those Pictures!

I have been a scrapbooker forever! My Grandma took me a scrapbook class when I was 14 and I have been scrapbooking since! I love the papers and the textures, I love saving the memories so that they last forever, and more then anything else I love watching people relive our fun as they look through an album! I was able to keep up after my dearest first daughter was born, but after my second came along, getting out stacks of paper, piles of embellishments, and all the pictures printed pictures was just too much. (Especially since the little booger ate anything she could get her hands on!). Then I discovered digital scrapbooking! It was like a beacon of hope in the dark tunnel of pictures and memories that were piling up. Ok that is a little overly dramatic, but you see what I'm saying! I LOVE digital scrapbooking. Everything is in one place, you can do more with the pictures, the options for artwork and embellishments is endless, and its all around the best option for me! However, the biggest draw back is printing the pages off! :) I have three years of beautifully done pages waiting to be printed. Well we got a coupon for a free photo book from Shutterfly and I took advantage of it. Pup (who is two) had almost no printed pictures of herself and always was trying to find them in the older scrapbooks of Bunny. Poor kid. So her baby book was first priority! So I used Shutterfly to make a book and it turned out pretty well. It does crop off the edges (so some of the embellishments were cut off) but it worked. And best of all Pup has been carrying it around with such pride and joy! Her face when she looked through it the first time was priceless! I loved it and it really lit a fire under me to try and get some more printed. I have always done 12x 12 pages, but the free album was 8x8, and this was such a great size (plus its less expensive)! So now with a bunch of coupons that Shutterfly keeps sending me, I have been able to get another one! I am happy to report that my first year of digital scrapbooking is almost all printed off! It was so fun to look back at what we did and what the girls were like. I really cant recommend having pictures out more! I cant wait for the album to come in. I have REALLY improved my scrapbooking skills since I started, but the pages in this album aren't too bad. ;) Here are a few of my favorites from the album!



Like I said, they are simple (an am better and changing things in the program now) but they are detailed at the same time! The program that I use is Creative Memories. I like alot of their artwork and I like that the program is simple ti use. You can also get your album printed through them and it will eliminate all that page cropping that I mentioned! I really love it! So I hope that you all take the time to remember and relish the good times you have! God blesses us with so much and its a shame if we forget it! Happy Memories!

Pinning It Down~ Rainbow Birthday

There are a couple of amazing bloggers out there who have had the idea of a century!!!! You know that I (and everyone else out there) is obsessed with Pintrest! There are a million ideas out there and they are all wonderful ones! So we saved them on pin boards that we name and categorize so we can find them easily and at a minutes notice! :) However....sometimes that's all we do! I know that I post so many things that I know I will never do. But Sarah over at Amongst Lovely Things and Pam over at Everyday Snapshots have put together a plan to help us DO some of them! Each week they are hosting a linky party called Pinning It Down. To play you need to make or do something from a pin board, blog a bit about it, and link up over at their blog! It a simple and fun way to get rolling on some projects that I really want to do! So....here is my first ever Pinning It Down post.

This week I am making things off of my Birthday Pin Board. Bunny will be turning 6 here in a week and a half and I am hard at working trying to plan a Pintrest worthy party, while at the same time keep my budget from going broke! ;)  She chose a theme of Rainbows and Unicorns. So today I made some recycled glitter crayons as party favors, and some rainbow clouds to hang at her party! I started with the clouds. This idea came from an idea I pinned here. It was fairly simple. I cut out some cloud shapes out of white felt (I cut two of each). I then used some blue rick rack I had on hand to to make three tails off of each cloud. Then i sewed the could pieces together! Next,  I cut out six circle of each color, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. These I glued to the rick rack tails in rainbow order! That's it! They are all ready to hang up on party day!

Aren't they cute? I love them! They add some much color without looking tacky and cheap. Yet they only cost a wee bit in felt! I love Pintrest!

My next project is something that i have been planning on doing for a long while. I had a million old crayons that were piling up, so I planned to recycled them. I had peeled them ( I soaked them in hot water for a few seconds and they just unrolled out of the wrappers!)  Then I found a great silicone pan that is tiny ginger bread men. I like that it was so small and easy for kids to use as crayons. So off to Pintrest to find the directions! That is when I found some heart shaped ones that glittered here! This amazing blogger used glitter in the pan before she melted them! How cool is that! I needed to try it! So I did. I made a batch of rainbow ones in individual colors, and then I made some mixed rainbow ones! They turned out so well and I think that the kids will love them! Here is how they turned out!

Aren't they cool? These are awesome party favors! No sugar, original, and too cute!

So that is my Pinning It Down this week! Next week I'm sure will have more of the rainbow theme! If you want to see other regular people working hard on making their craft dreams come true, stop on by Everyday Snapshots, or Amongst Lovely Things! Don't forget you can follow my boards on Pintrest (there is a link to do that on my right hand side bar)! Happy Pinning Everyone!!!!!!

PS I will be trying to post more of my crafty posts on this blog. I have plans for helping Pup and Bunny re-do their rooms a bit, and I really would like to share other fun I do! This space is a bit more my "all about the girls" blog, and the other one is more about me! :)

No I'm not a perfect mommy!

I read a post the other day that really hit me as something that needs to be talked about .This post {which you should read here if you have a moment} was all about how homeschooling your kids cannot guarantee that they will be amazing, kind, perfect adults. They will make their own choices, follow their own paths, and live their own lives. Now we all know this, but sometimes its easy to get caught up in that idea that says, since we put so much love and energy into our kids, we can change how they turn out. WE cant. I was homeschooled all through my school years and I know quite a few homeschoolers that i met over the years. Now I don't know many of them personally, but if Facebook is anything to go by, they are no better or worse the most other people. On one hand this busts the whole socialization myth :) on the other it means we cant predetermine how our kids will turn out. This is something that I never want to hide from. Now this sounds rather depressing, but instead it filled me hope. I am not a perfect mommy. I love my kids like crazy and I do so much for them, but I am not always the most intentional parent and I yell. I hate these things about myself and I think that I am for sure ruining them. Here I am working so hard to prepare their environment so that they can learn and grow and reach everything they are meant to be, yet I yell and I don't take as much time as I should to be with them. Ugh. I want to be better. I want to make sure that I do everything I can to give my kids a happy life, but I cant control them. So all I can do is my best. My best to love them, to give them a peaceful home, and to guild their hearts to God. Yet it still guarantees nothing.
So what it boils down to is planting seeds. The bible tells us about the sower who sows seeds all over and how some of them fall on the ground, some on the path, some in the rich dirt. I know that Jesus is the sower,but we are his workers here in our home. So we are called by him to sow seeds. Seeds of Love, seeds of beauty, seeds of peace,  seeds of grace, seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness, seeds, and seeds of joy. However, sowing those seeds requires that we give them time. Everyone knows that a gardener doesn't just throw seeds down to get a good crop, he needs to water, weed, and carefully tend the ground in order to get the best results. Just so with our kids. We need to give them time. They need our careful tending when they are young, and they still need tending even as they grow! Our little plants grow fast, but there are still moments where they need us. Sometimes they need more care then at other time. If the sun is beating down on them relentlessly, then they may need water from us more then at others. Sometimes the weeds crop up and try to choke them out, and they need us to help them overcome. And sometime they are doing just fine and need to be left alone! This require so much observation on our end. Sometimes when kids ask us something really odd, there is something they are thinking about and they want us to talk with them. Sometimes they need a hug. Sometimes they want to be alone. Now I know my little kiddos are still really small, but I can already see the wisdom of letting them be when they need to be alone, and of letting them talk when they need to talk. Now just because I know doesn't mean I am always good at it. I tend to listen, while I'm on the computer, I tend to hug, but only at bed time, I want spend time with them, but I cant wait till they are all in bed! So what do I do to change? I apologize. I am not a perfect mommy, but then no one is.  We all have faults and so do our kids. We are all on a journey together and I hope that we can continue on that way!
I hope that this makes sence. It is alot of thoughts that have been swirling about in my head and I wanted to get them out! :) Thanks for stopping by and sharing thses thoughts with me! Happy Schooling!

Child-like Enjoyment

" Indeed, not every age can receive every aspect of the Christian reality and, in our estimation, early childhood is the time of serene enjoyment of God. We have already mentioned the aspect of enjoyment in the religious fact; we believe that it is afforded too little attention in general, and particularly in relation to the religious initiation of children." ~ Sofia Cavalletti, The Religious Potential of the Child

I have been reading this book for my training in the Catechises of the Good Shepherd and this passage really came to my attention. Enjoyment....it seems that it so often alludes me {especially when me depression creeps up}. I want enjoyment. I want to be serene and happy and at peace with God. I have been blessed as of late to witness the prayers and thoughts of children and they are amazing! They are never sorry {at the ages of 3-6 they haven't gotten to the age of reason} and they thank him for everything! Their prayers are happy and positive and full of overwhelming thoughts that they cant even put into words! In fact they have a hard time finding the words to say what they are thinking. Do your prayers sound like that? Mine don't. They are full of sorrow, of exhaustion, of petition, with a few thanks thrown in for good measure. Prayer should be a happy time. When a child is spending time with a parent they are happy no matter what is going on. They have mom's attention and they are happy, even if things are really bad around them. When we come in contact with God we should have that too. In fact he wants us to be happy to talk to him! He wants us to enjoy our time with him even if its a brief time in the middle of everything else that is stressful. Enjoying God is not something that is talked much about, but I think that it is just as important as feeling sorrow over our wrongs and empathizing with others. If you are in a relationship that you don't enjoy then it will die and that happens so quickly.
So how to change that? For me I think that just reading the Bible. Not trying to gain huge inspiration, but just to read and spend time with God and enjoy that will be a big start. Children, when they discover something, have this look of amazed wonder on their face that is so beautiful! Its starts with realization, and blossoms into the biggest smile and look of wonder as they connect the dots of what they have learned. I have those moments sometimes when I read something or see something that makes all the things going on make sense. All of a sudden it dawns and you can see the bigger picture! If I take the time to read the Bible maybe it will allow me to have more moments of discovery where I see what is going on in my life as part of the bigger picture that God has.To not just see the hard days {where the dinner is awful, the kids didn't nap, the house is in shambles, I am crying} as the only part of my life. But to see them as God does. To see them as a child does, just another day to learn something, try something, and move on. Children don't seek discovery, they absorb it as it comes. I don't need to be a bible scholar to have beautiful moments of enlightenment! Thank God for that! I just need to wait for God's timing and be joyful until the time is right! Wait for God to show me what I need to see! I just need to seek time of enjoyment with him!
 So I think that we need to "become like little children" and enjoy our time with God. We need to revel in the joy that he brings and to rediscover the passion of discovery in small and big blessings! And sometimes that means waiting with happy anticipation {like a kid at Christmas}! I praise the Lord for the chance to see for myself the faith of a child. It is simple, beautiful, and happy! Thank you Lord for these moments to see into small souls and be humbled by it.

Sparkles of Grace!!!!!

Today I read a blog post by Elizabeth Foss at In the Heart of My Home. She was pondering how her life reflects God's love and she said something that really stuck with my:

"What is my translation of the Bible as it is lived out in my own home and at the ballet studio and on the soccer sidelines and here in my small corner of cyberspace? Is it Christ? Is that obvious? Can you catch it? Does the way I live toss Christ high into the air in a million sparkling pieces of grace so that they fall about me everywhere and on everyone to be caught, even sometimes unawares?"

Does the way I live toss Christ high in the air in a million sparkling pieces of grace so that they fall about my everywhere and on everyone to be caught, even sometimes unawares? WOW! What a powerful question to ask. I love the imagery of sparkles in the air! Does my life look like that? Am I leaving sparkles everywhere for everyone?
I starting thinking about bits of glitter, you know that kind that we use on our kids crafts, that stuff goes everywhere! I mean, tiny dots of glitter on a paper can leave glitter in every room of the house! Awful for cleaning, but it is a great image of how we want our love to be. Do my bits of love and care spread about even when I only have a little bit? I would like to think so. I would like to think that each little thing I do can bring joy for more then just the moment it happens! It seems that having project time for my girls allows them to fell closer to me and they seem to be happier. Sparkles! I think that my husband feels better and more relaxed when I take the time to rub his feet. Sparkles. its the small bits that add up to big love! Think about the Gosple stories of Jesus, he did little thing. He heals the child, tells stories with friends, feeds hungry people. Not huge things that change the whole world at once, but small things that matter to real people in their daily life. He cares about all the things that are important to us, and most of the time those are small things! :) Just like glitter is small and get into everything, our actions can be small and make a diffence! It is a thought to ponder as I head into a new week.

What will I do this week to spread sparkles of Christ to those around me?