Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Furniture re-make

I know I haven't been very busy here on my blog, but I have been busy. :0)

My daughter has furniture in her room that belonged to my great-grandmother. It wasn't some beautiful furniture that left any fear of messing up the original finish. As a matter of fact, it had mis-matched fronts on the drawers which leads me to believe that maybe as things fell apart, two pieces were blended into one to make do.

So, I've painted a primer coat of white on everything. Then I painted the front of all of the drawers with brown chalk board paint. (She loves that!)

I had bought some drawer pulls but then decided that I just didn't really like them.

Of course, I didn't decide that until after I had filled in the holes from the original pulls and sanded everything down. Then (much later) when I decided I didn't like it, I had Dax come drill out all the holes I had filled in. LOL Figures, right?

Anyway, I had seen somewhere where they had just used fabric strips for the drawer pulls so that's what I did. I like the way it turned out and fortunately Abigail likes them too.


I also used some of the fabric to recover the chair at her desk. It's just a cheap little chair, but it's serving it's purpose right now. :0)

Now, I just need to order the paint and paint the desk and dresser. Oh, and she has a big wicker chair that needs to be painted too. It's starting to come together nicely and she's so happy with it that she's actually keeping her room clean so that she can enjoy it. Win-Winn!!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Recycled crayons

Well, first things first.

Since I only had one entry for the My Memory Suites give away, Libbie is our winner. Congratulations!! You're going to have a lot of fun with this software. It's addicting.


I had seen a picture of this, but didn't have any of the instructions to go with it, so I was just winging it.

I dug out our tub of old crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc. The girls and I pulled out most of the old and broken crayons, peeled the paper off, and broke them into small pieces.


I had bought two different silicone molds at Target in the dollar section (although they were more than a dollar  lol) to use. One was a gingerbread man and the other a Christmas tree.


I decided that I wanted my recycled crayons to be thick so that they wouldn't break easily with little hands trying to color with them. So we filled the molds to the top.

We had to refill that little yellow bowl several times to get all the molds full.

I put them in a preheated oven at 225F. I really don't know how long they were in there because I got started cleaning the dinner dishes and forgot about them. lol I remembered when we were able to smell the wax.

This is how they looked when they came out.

The wax mixed together a little more when I was taking them out just from the movement.

And here's the final products.


I'm happy with the way they turned out. I had to make a second batch because my girls took off with most of the first one. I'm going to send one of each shape along with a Christmas coloring book to my nieces and nephew.

Some things I learned.....

The cheap crayons are easier to peel.

But, some of the cheap crayons won't melt well. There were a few green crayons that didn't melt no matter how long I left them in there.

A shorter melting time would probably keep the colors from mixing together quite so much.

The smaller the crayon gets, the harder it is to break.

It was a fun project for the kids and I to do together and now I've used up almost all of the old, yucky, broken crayons.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

How about a give away?

Have you tried My Memories, yet?


It's scrapbook software that you down load to your own computer. There are all kinds possibilities with this software.


I tried it out and in just a few minutes was able to put together a banner for my blog.



The only thing I came up with were the pictures and the layout. All of the other elements are part of the My Memories Suite package.

There are standard layouts that you can start with, or you can start with a blank page and build it any way you want.

Pretty cute stuff, huh?

I don't even do scrap booking and I'm pretty in love with this program. Just think of all the things you could do. You can design your own Christmas cards, make personalized cards for any occasion, postcards, bookmarks, business cards, and on and on. Any of those things can be totally and completely your design and you can do it so easily.

And seriously, I've only pointed out a few ideas for things to print onto paper. You can put it all together and have your own album printed professionally, or a calendar made (great holiday gift giving!!) But, they also have options for putting things together as a movie, burning dvd's, and even an option that says 'iPod ready' (haven't tried that yet, but I am curious.)

I swear I'm getting giddy with all of the new ideas that are popping into my head as I type this. I'm so far behind on all the other things I've got going on, the last thing I need is another distraction, but I'm going to have to spend some more time playing with this.







So, the folks at My Memories have been kind enough to let me give away one of their My Memories Suite packages. How great is that? Now one of you can have as much fun as me putting together all kinds of things.

Leave me a comment telling me your favorite layout  between  now and midnight November 14th and I'll draw a winner on November 15th. How much easier can it get?

If you get over there and decide that you can't wait for the drawing, or don't want to take your chances with not winning you can visit My Memories and use the code STMMS18654 in the coupon code for $10 off of the scrap booking software AND $10 off in the My Memories Store. An awesome deal either way you look at it!!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

New to Old

I can't believe how quickly time passes. I feel like we're busy about 20 hours a day every day......even though I know that's not true. The kids' activities keep us so busy and I've gotten sick once again. I really think it all came on because of the stress brought on for me in having a parent, teacher, principal, counselor conference at the school. I don't do conflict and confrontation well so this was a huge stressor for me.


Anyway, the kids are studying the Salem Witch Trial at school and have a project due. Two of them are making diaries and two of them are making photo albums.


Soooooo, I spent the weekend making copy paper look old and worn.

I first tried using tea but that really didn't make things stained enough. So I decided to go with coffee. I was going to use regular brew coffee but then decided to go with instant coffee so that I could darken it easily and to my liking.

Here's what I came out with.


I put the coffee into a 13X9 pan and just ran the paper through it. Then I put it on cookie sheets and dried it in the oven which was set at 200 F.  They kids were thrilled with it and that's really all that matters. Right?