Meet Miss Molly Monkey

This is another late post of a Christmas gift.

Molly Monkey

I got the free pattern, here!

I had all the felt, fabric and ribbon already...

And my niece LOVED her when she opened her present.

Jumbo Clothes Pin Mail Sorter

I saw this tutorial over at Make it and Love it and I had to try something similar for our mail.

Mail that needs to go out always gets forgotten. Things that require action get overlooked, etc.

No more.

This is what I bought. The rest of the stuff, I had.

I used:

Jumbo clothes pins (3) from Hobby Lobby

School glue (and water) for Mod Podge

Sponge brushes

Paint for the board

The board

An Exacto knife

and scrapbook paper.

I had this grand idea to paint the board cream with black and red accents. Then, to go through and paint cream again and 'antique' the edges and see the black and red.

Well, as you can see here. The light edges just didn't look right and the red and black 'highlights' I added were just bad. eww. Anyway. This is while the Mod Podge was drying.

To get the paper on, I painted the clips or board with the glue/water mixture. I laid the clips down on the paper, cut the paper off with an Exacto knife and then Mod Podged the top of each of them. For the board, I had to piece together two pieces of paper, but it worked in about the same way.

After the Mod Podge was dry, I went back and painted the edges of the board black. I also ran a few strokes across the paper for effect. :)

And because Ashley is SO smart, I copied her and added ribbon and buttons. The clips really needed them and it looks great! I can't wait for hubs to get home and figure out how to hang it in my office!

Mini-Men!

So, I work at Hobby Lobby, right? And I see these little wood people all the time.

I recommend them to people too.

No one buys them.

I intend to change that.

Meet Mini-Men.

Using some flannel I had (hoping it frays less than other alternative fabrics), I made capes for these little figures.

From the left you have, Pirate Guy, Belt Buckle Man, Elephant Wearer, and Mr. Mask No Cape.

(I dunno! I was just messing around. Testing. If you will.)

This is my lady version.

Sending her to my niece.

I used sharpie for the men's eyes, and colored pencil for the lady.

All the glueing was done with hot glue. I guess we'll see how they hold up.

Farm Themed Carnival Party

This post is WAY overdue, but here it is none the less.

Jakey's Birthday was a big success.

I wanted Jake's birthday party to be a big deal, but not cost very much and I accomplished that!

These cakes were made by my friend, Kelli, who is just awesome!

I had to share Jake's birthday breakfast.

Before turning one, Jake was really into farm animal noises.

Any time you opened a book with farm animals and made the corresponding noises, he would giggle. We took that love and ran with it.

Mr. Pancake Piggy

He approved.

I made this shirt by simply using double sided interfacing to place the one (That I drew and cut by hand) on the shirt. The I stitched around it with contrasting thread. He wore it on his actual birthday, not party day... but I had to share.

Oh, and one more thing before we move on. I don't have any food pictures and if you are wanting to throw a giant, farm-themed, min-carnival extravaganza for your own little one, but then decide against it because you don't have a clue what to serve at a shin-dig such as this.... I would be really sad. So, this is what we did. Our motto: Keep it simple, keep it cheap.

Hot dogs, chips, lemonade and apple slices.

(And, I asked my family members to bring some of those things!)

Pheew. That was close. Crisis averted.

Okay, moving on to actual party festivities.

The location. Does it get any better?

Here is the paper mache cow that my hubs made. (It really was all him, don't let him tell you otherwise!)

At the party.

This cow had a hole where utters would be and we milked it by filling rubb

er gloves with water, poking holes in the fingers and hanging them in the open cavity. The kids loved it!

Another station was the Saddle Photo Op.

We borrowed the saddle and bought some hay for it to sit on.

Then, again, with borrowed cowboy gear, and had the kids dress up and their parent's took pictures.

I made this banner. And, it can be used again and again.

All it is is stiffened felt cut into pendants. Then I glued on the letters.

To string them together, I used some double fold bias tape.

There you have it!

This fishing game was made of wood we had in our garage. Hubs cut it into three sections and put on some hinges. I called upon my more artistic friend, Melinda, to paint me some fishies and there you go.

Well, actually, we put paper clips on little candies and prizes. Then, the kids had a fishing pole with a magnet on the end. The magnet attracted the paper clips so that they could retrieve their prizes!

This petting zoo was my baby.

I learned how to make 3D animal patterns and I was off!

I worked on these animals for about 2 months before the party.

See!? The kids loved the cow.

This is my nephew milking it. :)

For signs, I bought pre-cut poster board to save time.

Then, I printed online images representing each station.

I had Melinda color them during movie night (or SYTYCD or something)

Then we taped them to dowel.

At the party, each of these signs were put into a small hay bail (I bought at Hobby Lobby).

These are the treat bags we gave out. I would love to take credit, but my friend, Tiffany, is all to blame. I knew I had brown paper sacks (free!) to use, and I bought the ribbon (like 3$ total), but other than that, I gave her the stuff and let her go at it! This is what she came up with as far as presentation.

The stuff in it?:

Bubbles

Homemade coloring book with online free images

and each family got an i-spy bean bag made by my Aunt. They had farm animal buttons in them.

Thanks to all my awesome friends and even awesome-er hubby. I couldn't have pulled it off without you! Not in a million years!

Christmas Gifts 2009

Feeling super creative and a bit off my rocker this Christmas, I decided to go homemade.

3 sock monkeys for 3 nephews

A tote for the niece that reads... a lot.

(A tutorial is coming, since I patterned it after my own thoughts and it was sew easy!)

And, Black Apple Dolls, for the youngest nieces.

I do have two other gifts to share, but the memory card they are on are in the camera that when to the camera doctor. :( Soon. I hope. Anyway, I can't wait for other gift giving opportunities so that I can make more fun stuff!