The Big Reveal

I am finally getting around to writing about my room makeover. My Love and the boys went to the Father and son retreat that our church does and while he was gone I decided to makeover our room. I recruited my bear, my sis-n-law and my bro-n-law to help with painting and hardware stuff.

We have lived in this house for 8 years and never done anything with it.

I wish I would have taken some before and after pics but nope I forgot. Although I did find a few random pics that had our room in them.

This is what the room looked like when we first moved in.

And now this is our room! I love it and so does my love! 

The bedspread is handmade. I really wanted the Anthropologie rosette bedding but it was going to cost me around $400. Sooo I decided to make a mock bedspread. Mine? Well, it was a $56. Yes, I will brag about that. ;)

I didn't get a great shot of the curtains but aren't they so cute? I could find anything I liked but then I saw these table cloths at Target and fell in love with them. I know they would be perfect so I made them into curtains.

 I used the shams from my last bedspread and made some pillows from some fabric that I liked. The yellow pillow is actually an old place mat that I had but it matched the curtains perfectly that I decided to convert it into a pillow. I just made a flower for it and wa-la!

The frames are all frames I had or bought at a thrift store or given to me. I also found the letters at the craft store on clearance for $1! I love that our room is all about me and my love. Even the pictures are only us. Its our little romantic haven. No kids or kid pictures allowed. Okay they can come in our room but that's it. Hey, its the only room in the house thats just us. Thats fair right?

I bought some molding and my bro-n-law framed it for our bathroom mirror. My sis-n-law being the electrician that she is changed out our ugly 1982 light fixture.

I spray painted this stuff. I wanted to create some wall art so I just put some scrap paper in these frames.

I saw some cute Anthropoligie vases that I loved. They had flowers attached to them. I tried to recreate them with these thrift store vases. I saw an idea (on pinterest of course) of adding paint to clear vases. It worked great. I then just made a silk flower with silk and fire and glued it to the vase.

This is my favorite part of the room. I love this verse because it reminds me of my hubby. Its exactly how I feel about my love. He made a plaque for me so that I could put this verse in it. I love the way the plaque came out. It was a little smaller than I thought it was going to be so I just painted a frame around it. Perfect!

Lola painted our old lamps for me so that they would match our room.

And that's it! Finally it's done. Its so nice not having our room be the eye sore in our house anymore.

T-Ball Banner

I'm really new to all this T-Ball stuff. I found out very early on that each team was to make or buy a banner for their team. The banner would then be shown at Opening day where we would be competing with all the other banners.

 I didn't have a clue on what to do. And apparently when you google Team Banners well, not much comes up. I began freaking out a tiny bit. At first I didn't care about the competition. I just didn't want to embarrass our team. But after really starting to put a lot of thought into this I was really wanting to win.

And guess what?!? WE WON!! We were all so excited! We won $100 towards our team party. Awesome prize!

Here is the banner that I made.

Teacher Appreciation

I have tried to do something special for the teachers every year when teacher appreciation week comes. This year I decided to make each teacher their very own appreciation cake. This is what they ended up looking like.

I went to Nancy's Fancy's and bought some mini cake boxes

And added a tag that said "You take the Cake!" Each teacher really loved them and especially loved the yummy cake inside.  

The best part about this gift is that it only cost me $2.50 total for all 3! Now that's a deal!

Monster Jeans

I LOVE Pinterest. I am getting the best ideas from there. This being one of them. My sewing machine is not thin enough for me to sew Monkey's holes in his jeans. When I saw this idea I thought it was perfect. He loves all his new Monster Jeans!

Dr Suess Day

Anyone who's anybody has definitely heard of good ole Dr Seuss. The kids school always celebrates "Read Across America." The kids love it because it is an entire week of fun activities at school. On the last day the kids got to wear their pj's to school. I forgot to get a picture of them but it was really cute.

The night before I packed them a Dr Seuss lunch that I had seen online a few years ago but never ended up doing. This year I was determined to do it. I had to switch it up a little but it was pretty much the same idea.

This was the little note I made to put inside their lunches.

The lunch consisted of hard boiled eggs (dyed green), cubed ham, pink yogurt drink, blue jello, fish crackers and marshmallows. The kids all said they had so much fun with it.

Each class was to have a parent bring in cupcakes. I saw a similar idea on Pinterest and tried to make them with a little twist of my own.  

These things had some serious frosting on them.  

I had so much fun doing this for the kids. And to make it more special for me is that they LOVED me doing it for them :) 

Leprechaun Trap

Its that time of year again!

Monkey's class had to make some leprechaun traps for St Patricks day. The leprechaun's always seem to come out this time of year and make a mess in the classrooms.

Monkey was determined to catch one. We weren't sure what we were going to do but then we got this idea of a leprechaun falling into a shoe. Perfect! And most importantly, easy!

Monkey got to work. He went in the backyard and found the perfect sticks for the ladder.

He wanted a rainbow on his trap to lure the leprechaun in. We decided to make one come out of the shoe. He added some cotton balls and jewels and....

Ta-Da! A leprechaun trap!

Monkey's teacher had asked me for some ideas on what to do with the class. I found this one idea on Pinterest and thought it was perfect. The leprechaun left a note for the kids saying sorry for the all the mischief he had caused this week and left each child a "shiny lucky penny."

Umm....I went to 5 banks trying to find brand new pennies and apparently they don't have them? Weird, I know. So basically I had to shine all of them MYSELF!

Monkey loved his lucky penny.

Now back to the leprechaun traps. As we were working on Luke's, we all started laughing at the progression of the kids Kindergarten traps.

This was Lola's trap. We obviously had no idea what to do and when we brought it to school we noticed that apparently we were the only ones that had that problem. All the other traps were big and amazing. Poor girl. I still don't even know how this was suppose to catch a leprechaun.

Big Guy's trap got a better. We knew we had to really think about how the leprechaun was going to get trapped. The trap door on top was perfect! Big Guy made the ladder, rainbow and told me where to put the glue so he could place on the stones and felt where it needed to go.

And then there is Monkey's. See the progression.

This week Bear actually decided to make a new trap. A few years late but at least its to her liking now.

Thank goodness we never have to do this again!

Pokemon Birthday Party

This year when I asked Monkey what kind of birthday party he wanted I wasn't surprised when he told me he wanted a Pokemon Birthday Party. I went to work on the invitations right away. I wanted them to look like a Pokemon card.

Here was the end result. Here was the front of the invitations.

The back.

Next thing to work on was his birthday banner. I decided to make Pokeballs with Pikachu's. I like the way it turned out. 

As far as the decorations I went to the dollar store for some inspiration. That's the place that inspires me. Why? Because its cheap. Luckily I did get some ideas. I made pokeballs out of dollar store paper plates and felt. I also went online and printed up some pictures of some Pokemon characters. Then cut them out and hung them up.

The garland hanging from the fan was those plastic hockey balls with holes in them. I just covered them with colored duck tape and black electrical tape to make them look like more pokeballs.

This was suppose to be a Pikachu head. I went to Wal-mart and saw this big yellow ball. I thought if I added some stuff to it, it might actually resemble Pikachu. (the random Clifford was because Monkey was star student and got to take the class mascot home.)

These Pikachu heads were actually yellow eggs from the Easter section at the dollar store. I just added some ears, yellow confetti paper and drew a face on them. Perfect. The table scape was a big felt Pokeball.

The final tablescape.  

Monkey wanted a Pikachu cake and so that's what he got. This cake was 5 layers high. The ears were sugar ice cream cones and the arms and legs were Twinkies. The cheeks were red fruit rollups cut into circles. 

The present area.

More Pokeballs and a homemade felt Pikachu glued onto poster board for Monkey. He loved it.

As far as the games I found a great blog online that gave me the idea for the "Hunt for Pokeballs." I found some ping pong balls at the dollars and colored them red and black. Then we hid them around the house and the kid who found the most won the prize.

The next game was "Pass the Pikachu." The big Pikachu head was perfect for this. Although half way in we realized that we should probably take the ears off since they were almost poking kids eyes out. Other than that it was perfect.  

When it was time to leave, everyone got a party favor. Each favor had a homemade coloring book. I love making these. They are cheap and easy. Each guest also recieved pokemon cards. These can get expensive but I bought 100 used (but like new) cards for $9. Also each favor had a personalized Pokemon card that I made and had laminated for them. I asked each parent to email me a picture of their son/ daughter so I could personalize each card. I found this website online that allowed me to make these. Then I found another website that if I plugged in the child's name and favorite color in, it was give me their "Pokemon name" and bio. It was perfect. Here were my kids cards.

The favors.