Happy Halloween!

We thought we would give you a little tour of past Halloween Costumes. Nicole dreams up some great ones each year and manages to get her husband involved too! I'm still laughing over him dressing as Norman Bate's mother.
Nicole is awesome at sewing these and at times ropes our mother (excellent seamstress) into helping. She "assisted" with the sleeping beauty outfit. Isn't it beautiful!?

This puppy costume is too cute! Nicole even made a personalized collar! I think she had strands of black fur all over her house for weeks! That black fur is so messy to work with!


This is my first attempt at sewing a costume. My son was obsessed with the Lego Knight series. I can't seem to remember the name of this particular knight.
Nicole put a lot of hours into this beauty. Her hubby even has the face down! What a hunk of burning love!
This one is particularly interesting.....hmmmmmm? Yes..she's a PREGNANT belly dancer!
Norman Bate's mother....I love it!!! So clever! Nicole's husband did not want his identity to be known?!

This is some type of Jedi? Is it Obi-Wan, Luke...don't know? The cape was the best, but I do wish I had a picture of all the costume work underneath. It was a big job, but worth it. I had used my serger for the very first time. It's sooooooo much easier!

This one takes the cake. The fabric was absolutely gorgeous on this one. Mom helped quite a bit on this too! The wig and make-up are great......and no she's not a Geisha, people kept asking that. According to her daughter.... "I'm a China Girl!"

Have you ever tried a Router!?

WE are by NO means trained in carpentry...we are SELF-taught! Nicole is pretty good with wood though. In the past few years she has slowly collected wood tools at pawn shops and hardware stores that have come in handy. She's had the router for a couple of years now and is just beginning to learn of the possibilities of what it can do! Today we routered the edge of a new project! Daaa dum dummmmmm.... That was meant for dramatic effect... Yes, I think this might be a hare-brained project but at least the top of it will look good, thanks to the router! Look at what it can do!

Does that look good or what! We ran into a little problem when the bit came loose but after tightening it up it was all fixable! So cool! I have to see if this turns out before I explain or post pictures of what we're up to....Stay Tuned!:)

I was blog searching the other day and found this cute sight where she was hand sewing cute pockets onto an advent calendar. It's another version of the Pottery Barn advent calendar, they sure make some cute ones! This tree was our attempt at copying last year's Pottery Barn Christmas Advent calendar.

Don't look too closely, with limited time and endless dreams we thought, hey why not? The gal from A Feathered Nest made her pockets so beautiful, and her hand stitching was perfect! I wish we had the patience and time to conquer that. Instead we used our favorite on hand adhesive "Tacky Glue". I love that stuff, can't get enough of it! Maybe this blog should be called "1001 Ways to use Tacky Glue"? Just a thought.... For our lack of master stitchery skills we made up with glitter glue! I don't think there's anything finer than a dab of glitter glue...who doesn't need a bit of sparkle in their lives? At least this time we learned our lesson on how tedious it is to manually cut out each little bit so we went down to our local craft store and used the die-cut machine to cut numbers, letters, and snowflakes. The rest Nicole hand-cut and created...or COPIED. From far away it looks pretty good if I do say so myself! Most of all, our kids LOVE LOVE LOVE them! And that's all that matters right? Now if I can just keep their little hands out of the pockets!:)And the best part, we made the whole thing for less than $10...beat that PB!

Halloween Advent Calendar

I love Pottery Barn....I look forward to getting the magazines and combing over everything! I can't afford to pay for anything in there and I get some sick thrill out of being able to copy their stuff!

Two years ago Nicole and I found their Halloween Advent calendar and said...we could totally make that. We spent many, many, many, hours hand cutting, printing number patterns from the computer (thanks Stephanie!), and gluing! It was worth it because it turned out so stinkin cute! Nicole added her cute touch to all the scary faces by free-hand cutting each one.

The next year, we decided to make the PB Christmas Calendar and heard through the grapevine that you can use die-cute machines to cut felt! Awesome! I went to the local scrapbook store and quickly cut numbers, letters, snowflakes and more! Neat trick!

Today, if I were to do it again I would use the Cricut machine! I'm not experienced with it yet, but from what I understand you can heat and bond material and cut out all sorts of goodies! It's just brilliant what they have now for crafting.

Ballard Designs Shelf Redo!

SO...I've been reading about all the fun and thrifty ideas Sarah at the thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com has, and this Ballard Design shelf copy wowed me! On her blog she told how to redo the shelves, including cutting, trim, and more. Below is the actual picture from Ballard Designs.

Here are mine. I took the magazine with the dimensions into Home Depot on a slow Saturday night and batted my helpless eyes at some nice men who explained to me which moulding was used to wrap the shelves. Then I found Brian the nice lumber guy who willingly cut everything to the correct dimensions!! That sure saved some work. I think it always interests them when women, especially women with strollers, kids and a lot of lumber come into their store!? Anyway, they were very nice and helpful!

I decided to get a huge piece of MDF 3/4" and have the men slice it up into 10" deep, 5ft, 4ft, and 3ft wide shelves. Again, copying the dimensions, because copying is what I do best! I probably could have used 1/2" MDF, or pre-cut boards, but I wanted extra MDF for some other projects. I then found the moulding and corbels.

Because of feeding this little guy for 7 months, I've had a lot of time to sit at the computer and find this wonderful world of DIY bloggers. I have a large list of all the projects I plan to do!

Now... I had all this cut wood and wasn't confident enough to put it together...so I took my crazy idea over to my sister Nicole, expert wood cutter. We are like Yin and Yang. Our brains think alike, but Nicole is much more capable than I, she being my older sister. She enables me and I depend on her to help me finish my projects!

Nicole helped me cut and miter the corners with her miter saw! It's all about good tools. You can really do anything! She then helped me glue and nail gun them together. Definitely need two sets of hands!

Up next is filling in the gaps. I used wood putty, or you can use caulking. After patiently waiting for it to dry, I sanded away.

I then used spray paint primer first, and finished with several coats of semi-gloss trim paint. If I were really doing it right I would have used a paint sprayer. I didn't want to harass my sister again, so I just bought cans of spray paint.

Now, this hanging part scares me. With four boys in the house, I was nervous that things would fall down. I carefully found all the studs in the wall and marked them, and then with blue tape marked where the shelves belong. I stared at and arranged them many, many, times.

I then used a level as I hung them. VERY important!! It actually wasn't too bad, and I believe they are in there solid with wood screws into the studs.


Not so bad, if I say so myself! If we can do it, you can too!