My computer is working, for now. But strangely enough, without a screen to stare at all day I was actually productive. I sewed not one, but TWO separate articles of clothing for Caroline – one of which I’ve had bookmarked since before she was even born. All that productivity gave me a raging migraine though (or maybe it was detoxing from a weekend full of cupcakes) so today I’m just going to bask in the glory of yesterday’s projects.

First, I hung up this play thet I made for the kids and it’s their new favorite hide out:

I got the idea here, the embroidery hoop at Joann’s and 4 packs of sheer curtains from Target.

Then I sewed this out of some fabric I bought for $2 a yard:

The tutorial is from my friend Jill at Baby Rabies and even though it’s really simple I suspect I messed up the finishing around the armholes.

Caroline was too busy eating cheese to notice it wasn’t perfect though, and I am too in love with the print to care.

And finally, I whipped up a little circle skirt:

I used Chelsey’s tutorial here (with inspiration by Dana Made It). This was my least successful sewing project, but only because I misjudged Caroline’s waist measurement. I swear I measured it at least 4 times but forgot that even though her BELLY is 20 inches around, she wears her clothes lower, where she’s only 18 inches around. Throw in my last-minute modification to hide the elastic instead of having it exposed and this skirt is definitely too big. Eh, nothing a safety pin can’t fix now and it will fit for a long time to come.

It turns out I’m NOT terrible with my sewing machine if I practice often enough. My new plan is to sew something at least once a month so I don’t lose the little skill I’ve gained. FABRIC STORE, HERE I COME.

I can’t take credit for this super-cute robot birthday party. My friend Erin did 99% of the work, but she had some great ideas I wanted to share. Her 3 year old is totally obsessed with robots, especially Wall-E and the Iron Giant, so this really was a perfect theme for him (and basically every other 3 year old). Who doesn’t like robots?! It was simple and very DIY, but still full of fun.

 Erin had the party at her mom’s, because she has this gorgeous patio and a big yard for the robots kids to run around.

My contribution to the party: A Happy Birthday banner. I downloaded free robot fonts from dafont.com and printed the letters on scrapbooking paper (it comes in that size).

For activities, Erin had a Robot Work Station with balls, tubs and those grabby robot arms from Target:

Fun fact: those robots across the bottom actually say “Reid” in one of the fonts I downloaded

The grabbers were a HUGE hit with the kids.

She also had a bean bag toss to “feed” the robots energy:

But my favorite activity was the make your own robot station:

Those are just paper bags spray painted silver with a paper plate glued to the front (for a “dial”) and holes cut for head and arms. The kids decorated with peel and stick foam shapes and robot shaped crayons.

And here are the robots in action:

Besides the very active robots, we had some robots guarding everything from the front door to the food:

Erin says she got these at Michael’s

Erin didn’t really have a theme for the food besides “stuff kids and grown ups will eat”, but I made her a few signs to tie it together with the party:

That’s beef, chicken and beans & rice for a burrito assembly line

All the toppings

That’s Reid’s “say cheese!” face

And all the kids went home with goodie bags that contained robot crayons, robot painting pages, robot stickers and a robot eraser.

Thank you Erin, Mitch and Reid for sharing your special day with us!

This is an easy tutorial for robot shaped crayons only because we were having a robot-themed birthday. It’s really for any kind of shaped crayons – the possibilities are endless. All you need is a few boxes of regular crayons, a silicone mold and an oven.

Step 1: Peel all the wrappers off the crayons. It’s tedious, but put on a movie, grab a glass of wine and get to work.

Step 2: Break the crayons into pieces. For the 1 inch molds we broke each crayon into 3 or 4 pieces.

Step 3: Put broken pieces directly into the silicone mold.

Step 4: Put the mold in an oven or toaster oven set at 350 degrees for approximately 5-7 minutes, or until the wax has melted.

Step 5: Carefully transfer the mold to a shallow dish filled with ice water. Once the wax cools and hardens, pop out the crayons and repeat!

Lots of colors! Erin made a whole rainbow – each kid got at least 8 crayons.

Tips:

• We were looking for a way to melt the wax to pour into the molds when I suggested just melting the wax IN the mold. It worked perfectly, and all the details on the crayons showed up really well.
• This is the silicone robot mold we used for the crayons. It’s technically for chocolate, but any silicone mold would work for crayons.
• Wax DOES burn, so keep an eye on your crayons and don’t try to rush them by turning the oven up too high.
• If you set your mold on a piece of tin foil (see below) the foil cools almost instantly and it’s easy to transfer to the cold water without tipping or sloshing the wax.
• We only filled the molds about half way – it kept the crayons easy for little hands to grab.

Crayons in action!

Robot birthday post coming soon!

Oh hai, want to see where I live? I’m wicked nosy when it comes to houses (I became a real estate agent for a while pretty much just so I could see the insides of more homes) and I figure some of you guys are too. I was going to make this a linky hop party but I’m not organized enough to get one set up – but if you have a home or room tour (old or new) PLEASE leave me a link in the comments!!

I lot has changed since my last home tour in April 2010, and although I’ve documented most of our renovations step by step I thought it would be fun to show you the whole house at once. (Although the original tour has a lot more good pictures of my collections and furniture.) I’ll try to include links to the updates so you can see some of the “before” type pictures, or check out my Home & Garden category for a whole roundup. For the record, I’d like to state that although I love my house I am not an interior designer, professional painter, a home photographer or even a very good DIY-er so don’t judge me too harshly, OK?

Tiny bit of history: the house was built in 1913 by Mr. Church, who ran a funeral home here in town. His funeral home business actually still exists, and is just a couple streets over. My house is turning 100 next year and I think I’m going to throw it a birthday party.

Our property goes from that hedge on the left to the driveway on the right, although technically the lines fall closer to half-way through the house on the left and 3 feet into our yard on the right. I suspect we’ll have to have a survey done if (when) we sell.

Front steps

Flowers

More Flowers

Front door

This is going to be a REALLY long, REALLY picture heavy post, so if you’re on the home page you can click though to see the rest… (more…)

This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Elmer’s #gluenglitter #collectivebias #CBias but I came up with the idea and did all the work, so you can direct all your adoration to me in the comments.

One of my absolute least favorite questions in the entire world is “What’s for dinner?” For the first 5 years of my marriage the answer was almost always “I don’t know, what do you WANT for dinner?” – and then we spent 30 minutes saying “No, YOU pick” and “No it’s YOUR turn”. Honestly, sometimes we still play that game all night. Most of the time we end up having popcorn and throwing Goldfish at the kids. (more…)