Quote for the Day

"Don't exchange what you want MOST for what you want at the moment."

Wish I would have thought of this one, but I read it somewhere and took a picture of it. Don't know who to give credit to, sorry! I think this is my new all time favorite quote!

One More Bag Creation

As I've admitted before, I'm a bag-aholic!! I'm checking on a 12 step program for this addiction!! Love creating and using reusable shopping bags. I have so many it is hard to count because they are everywhere and I forget where they are "stored"! (And by stored I mean I've put them somewhere and now I have no idea where they are!) Here is my latest creation, started with a 12"x18" canvas bag - BORING!!! With the help of my tons of material scraps, I added embellishments to spruce it up a little. Just kept making fabric flowers and hot gluing them onto the bag until it was all covered.

Hard to see some of the flowers, so here are a couple upclose. The black ones are difficult to see, but they are constructed like the purple one shown here.

Some are made with ribbon and some are from material scraps.

The gold one is from some type of wire mesh, not sure where I found this stuff!

The one with red and yellow is scraps from an old bed sheet. I used it for many projects, including one where I made a throw pillow! Stay tuned for details about that project. This is a sample of how I did the yellow/red stripes. Started with strip of bed sheet, added the stripes with a Sharpie marker and rolled it into a flower.

Probably more information than you ever thought you'd need, but there it is - my latest reusable shopping bag!

Thanks for looking and have a great day,

Cathy

My 1st Try at a Flag Cake

The flag cake was so cute, I had to try it myself. I used 2 boxes of white cake mix to make the entire cake. Started with white cake so I could add the red, white and blue food coloring.

Made cakes exactly according to Glory's instructions -
1 blue cake, with the center cut out
2- 8" red cakes
1- 8" white cake
She has great directions on her site, check it out there.

I embellished with an exploding firework on top of my creation, but the colors are very bright. Note to self - use LOTS more food coloring next time!


Here is the inside of the cake. Turned out pretty nice! It was a big hit at our 4th of July celebration. Kids liked it.

Thanks for looking, and have a great day.
Cathy

LOVE this July 4th Cake!

How awesome is this!?!?! What a great idea from Glory at Glorious Treats. Such a clever idea.
When I saw it I just wanted to say Ohhhhhh and Ahhhhh!! Check out the instructions and try your own Independence Day cake.

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Cathy

End of Year Teacher Gifts

June crept up on me and it was so late in getting my teacher gifts together there wasn't enough time to create something cute! I went to me back-up plan! While walking through the Dollar Tree I saw some FUN things that I thought would make a great teacher gift. Started with the styrofoam cooler, then after walking around there were so many items that would be great as summer "things"!

Summer means July 4th to me! So I found some great Independence Day things that I would enjoy getting! The little red flip-flop looking thing is a nail kit (had a nail clipper, nail file and 2 other things but can't remember what they were!).

Finally the wrapping up was the most difficult part! Had to make 4 of these gifts, so carrying them into school was so funny! On the way into the building I dropped one, and broke the side of another one. GASP! With a litte extra glue, everything was good as new!

They were a big hit! Everyone LOVED them.

Have a great day!
Thanks for looking,

Cathy

Quote for the Day

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

~~ Helen Keller

Sweat Shirt Shopping Bag

I'm a self admitted Bag Lady!! On a recent visit to my favorite store, Wal-Mart, I found this Halloween-ish sweat shirt for only $1.00!! WOW, of course I thought "What can I make with this?!!??". Of course, ANOTHER reusable shopping bag! My daughter asked, "Why do you keep making more, you have so many already?!! " Sadly I had no good response for her!

But as you can see it was only $1.00! Couldn't pass it up! I thought it was kinda cute too.

To keep with the red striped socks I thought it would be cute to have red handles. Found an old pair of my son's red sweat pants that would be perfect. Could cut them up in strips and braid to create handles.

A close up of the handles.

After cutting off the sleeves, had to trim the neckline to make it an even edge. That was the easy part! Next I sewed up the bottom edge of the "bag". So far so good.

I looked throuh my stash of remnents from JoAnn Fabrics to find a good color for the lining. Black was an easy choice.

Also added red buttons on the bottom corners so the lining would stay in place and add another small detail.

Taaa-Daaaaaa the completed project!! I have yet another reusable shopping bag!!!

Thanks so much for looking!

Have a great day.

Cathy

2011 Teacher Appreciation Gifts

This year's teacher appreciation gifts were a "plan B"!! In the last couple of years I created etched plates that THANK the teachers for all their hard work. However, when this year rolled around I couldn't get my Cricut working correctly and had to resort to my stamp collection. After ruining one plate because I tried to use a stamp with words. Didn't make the connection that the words needed to be reversed and I couldn't figure out a quick way to stamp in reverse! Had to go with stamps with just pictures on them. This is the stack of 20 completed plates for my kids' teachers. Total there are 5 teachers - 4 plates for each.

I used the Stampin Up Cheers to You set to make these. First the martini plate - shaken not stirred!

A yummy strawberry daquari! Careful of a brain freeze! OOoooohhh!

Cheers with champagne!

Finally an ice cold beer! My favorite!

Thanks for looking, and have a great day,

Cathy

Quote for the Day

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.

-- Elizabeth Bibesco

Quote for the Day

It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right.

-- Unknown

Too Cute Umbrella Wreath

How adorable is this wreath!! Makes me think of a Jimmy Buffet concert - "cheeseburger in paradise... salt, salt, salt..."
Wish I would have thought of this beauty, thanks to Camilla at Family Chic for sharing this one. Check out her stuff there, so cute.
Thanks for looking,
Have a great day
Cathy

"Springy" Teacher Frames

I've had this itching feeling for the past couple of weeks that I should do something for my kids' teachers for Easter. I know that I can't assume (everyone knows what happens when you assume something!) that everyone celebrates Easter so we decided that it will be a "Springy" gift! My idea was to use some Easter-y stuff that I had on hand and create something they could use. Of course my hot glue gun would be involved! Love that thing! I used my idea from a previous post, from Valentines Day. And, another frame here. The project started with a couple bags of $.50 bags of jelly beans,

a couple packages of peeps,

and a raw $1.00 frame.

My kids painted the frames for their teachers and I chose yellow (my favorite color) for my frame. Then just hot glued the accessories on. Easy peasy! They turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself!

Total cost for each frame - less than $1.50!!

Thanks for looking.

Have a great day,

Cathy

One Pair of $3 Pants - 3 Projects

OMG!, I can't believe it is April already!!! I've been so lazy in posting to my blog. Unfortunately life has become extremely busy for me here and the first thing to go is my creative outlet! I miss it so much! Sorry for letting this go by the wayside. Recently, I found a pair of $3.00 courdoray boys pants that had a hole in them....immediately I knew there were going to be some craft projects for these poor tattered pants. Unfortunately I didn't think ahead when creating these projects. From the 2 pant legs I made these cup holders. It was pretty easy, just had to cut off the legs and sew up the bottoms. Buttons were added on the sides to make the bottoms flat. Finally I used old belts as the straps. Too cute. I love them because I added quilting inside of each to help keep beverages hot or cold. There is enough room in each one to use a blue "feezey thing" to help keep drinks cold. a>

This is a quick shot of the inside of each cup holder. The sunflower has quilting under the cotton material. This was the first one I completed. There isn't any additional material to cover the quilting - BORING!! :-) After visiting JoAnn Fabrics and fishing through their remnits bin I found the cute sunflower material. Thought that would look a little "happier" than just the blue quilting (which was also from the remnits bin at Joann's!).

My second project was to take the top part of the pants and make a reusable shopping bag. This was pretty easy to do also. I wish I had taken pictures of each step, but I'm not that good at recording each step - I promise to work on that! I started by cutting off the legs and sewing up the bottom of the bag. Used a hot glue gun to prevent the zipper from coming down, and to flatten down the flap of material in front of it.

Finally, I found some old belts to use as straps! That is my favorite part! Had to use bottons to help keep straps sewn on the bag. This was harder than I thought! Turned out pretty cute though.

This is an upclose view of the buttons holding the straps on, had to use one on the inside and one on the outside of each strap. A quick view of inside of the bag, used striped material to go along with the stripes from the courdory. I thought is was kinda cute! You can see the "security" buttons on the inside here. Overall it is pretty cute, and I love using it at a store! When checking out the cashier always comments on the bag. Thanks for looking! Have a good day. Cathy

Quote for the Day

It's hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you've earned.

~ Frank Howard Clark

Baby laughing at Torn Paper.

How cute is this little baby giggling at his Dad tearing a rejection letter!?!? Check out this QT pie having a great time.
Made my day watching him giggle.




Enjoy!