Fun with the kids, Chalk Super-heros

If you ever want to do something super fun with your kids, that is super easy- then I've got the activity for you!

It's this easy: Outline their bodies with chalk, have them tell you what super-powers they possess, add superpowers to the drawing, and let them color the chalk super heros in. Make sure to write out the super hero name and powers- and get a picture!

FUN!!!

Pincushion

I saw the most lovely pincushion on my Instagram feed. The french knots made me squeel in delight. I had to make one, like immediately.
Vanessa Christenson of V and Co. wrote this tutorial on French knots, it's the best one I've ever had to follow.

I cut out a four inch square piece of painters cloth canvas (It's what I had lying around). I used a disappearing ink pen to draw the design. I followed her instructions on the French knot and went to town making the knots. It uses a ton of thread! I was surprised at how much and how fast I went through thread.
After the hearts were finished, I sewed another square piece of canvas to the embroidered square, right sides together. I think I ended up making them about a 3 inch square. When sewing them together leave a 1 inch gap so you can turn it right side out. Fill with your favorite pin cushion filling. Lots of vetren sewers use crushed walnut shells... I had some poly pellets on hand, so I used those. But I wouldn't recommend it- they are too big and sometimes I have to shove the pin twice to get it into the pin cushion :-/. Then, hand stitch the one inch hole together.
I love it, and it makes me happy and makes my sewing table prettier!

Kendra's Green juice

So I've been trying to lose weight. My fitness pal has been the app I've been using on my phone to help me along. The first 5 pounds just came off no problem. Then for almost three weeks I just stayed at the same weight. Boo. So I decided to join the juicing craze to jump start some more weight loss.

I decided a ten day juice fast would be the ticket.

I've been using a Breville juicer. Borrowed it from my amazing mother in law. 

My plan was to drink juice for every meal and two juice snacks a day. I did pretty good, with occasional snitches of food off my 3 year olds plate at dinner. It's only fair. He drank some of every juice batch I made!

I found that for breakfast and snacks that I loved making straight-up fruit juice, delicious!! And it kept me on track to enjoy the juice so much. But for lunch and dinner, I always added veggies and herbs.

My list of must haves: oranges, limes, lemons, golden delicious apples, pears, strawberries, kale, cucumber, romaine, spinach, carrots, ginger, and mint.

This is my recipe for the green juice I liked the most:

Kendra's Green Juice

Golden delicious apple

Pear

Lime

Half a cucumber 

A stalk of kale

Handful of spinach

Two sprigs of sweet mint

One inch of fresh ginger

Wash, cut off stems and ends, juice!

I love all my juice with lots of ice.

Today is my last day and I've been able to shed 6 pounds. :-)

Strawberry Nora Quilt

My sweet friends Courtney and Andy had a baby girl in February. She was born 11 weeks early and was, as her mother put it "feisty". They named her Nora, which I just loved (that's my daughters name, I think it's a beautiful name!) She brought joy to her family for only a few short days and then passed on to be with God again. Courtney is one of the sweetest people I've ever met in my life. I was so heartbroken to hear of the passing of their daughter, Nora. I wanted to do something, anything to help them feel even the smallest amount of comfort. And then it came to me, a quilt! I had the perfect fabric I bought two years ago and saved for something special. This was that something.

I saw a picture on Instagram of a quilt I just loved and knew it was the perfect pattern. I couldn't find the pattern online so I made up my own version that was a little different, but it was the effect I wanted.

I finished the quilt off with a hand embroidered label. Sometimes there are no words to fix stuff and no way to make something better- so you create something, with love, and hope it brings a little peace and happiness.

Nora's cake

Overdue...
Nora's birthday cake. Super easy,  a ten inch round pan and an eight inch round pan. I used the eight inch pan to cut the semicircle in the larger cake so the 8 inch cake would fit nice and snug on the bigger cake. I did cut in half and fill the cakes before fitting them together. Then I frosted in white and decorated on top using a super small round tip for detail, a large round tip for the handle, and a star tip for the pink.

Headboard Redo

Here is a picture journal of a king sized headboard redo.

Ugly fabric, great shape. We marked the edge of the border with a marker then pulled it off with hammers. Keep the upholstery nails (not staples) that attached the boarder piece, save them for when we reattached the boarder.

The Marker mark is red- we put it there to make sure the staples went past that point.

We laid the upholstery weight fabric backed with batting over the  center, then stapled along the outside edge of the marker guide we drew. then, cut away the extra fabric.

We wrapped extra batting around the boarder because the fabric was gathered and we were too  smart/lazy to remove it... I wish I would have got a picture of how truly hideous the fabric was. we just wrapped it and put a few staples in to keep it in place.

Cuteness.

more cuteness

we stapled the fabric only to the inner curve of the boarder piece so we could wrap the rest of the fabric around to the back side of the headboard. Lift the fabric on the boarder gently and tack the boarder to the main headboard by using the nails we saved from when we removed the boarder.

We didn't have enough fabric for one continual piece around the boarder, so we covered it with three separate piece of fabric. Then we folded the fabric under and overlapped it at the corners. Pulling it tight and stapling it to the back.

Three hours later.

It needed a little something. So we added nailhead trim. Beautiful!

Jewelry hanger

This a a project I worked on with my mom last summer. Her jewelry was always in tangles in the jewelry box and she could never see all the pieces without digging around and making more of a tangled mess. 

To do this project you'll need:

large cork bulletin board

Fabric

Spray adhesive

Cup hooks

It's really quite easy. Align the fabric over the cork board and then use spray adhesive to attach it to the cork board. I cute the fabric just barely bigger (like 1/4 or 1/8 of an inch) than the inside edge of the frame. Then, I used a utility knife to shove the fabric into the crack between the edge of the frame and the edge of the cork.

Next, we laid out all the jewelry onto the surface and came up with a plan for the lay out of the hooks that would accomodate all the jewelry.

I used a marker and a ruler to evenly mark the spot where the hooks were going to be attached.

Last, we just screwed in the hooks by hand. Some took a little more elbow grease than others, but it was pretty easy once you broke through the fabric.

Then, we hung it up and put on the jewelry- super easy!

A little trick that might help when it's time to hang the jewelry, take a picture of the original layout of the jewelry when you are making the plan of where to put the hooks, that way if you forget how they were all suppose to fit, you have a frame of reference.