Word Trains

The little buddy has had a lot of fun playing with these word trains I've just posted in the shop. So much fun, in fact, that I didn't even finish cutting them out before he was stealing them away. Right now we're working on spelling his name (nope, it's not John). It seems to be working, he can recognize it now and knows what letter it starts with. Progress! Get your own set here. Small Christmas gifts for friends anyone? Thanksgiving distractions?

what are little boys made of?

This is what I found when doing laundry . . . I knew he had a few holey socks. But I didn't realize how many! oh I love the little buddy!

Ta-Da! my mom cave

My little crafty space has been needing a cleaning for awhile now. But, it's finally clean, and all I want to do is go sit in my room and stare at it. Too bad I don't have time!

My favorite thing about the mobile I made from Craft Paper Scissors, by Patricia Zapata of A Little Hut, is the little orange seed beads under each white flower. I love looking up at it!

One of my favorite paintings. I love the brightness and the tulips. I painted it while I was still in college and had that sort of time.

my 12x12 scrapbooking open stock paper. I like to arrange it by color because usually I'm looking for a specific color. I use it for all sorts of crafts, but especially making cards since I don't really scrapbook.

These drawers I've organized using the bottoms of gallon milk jugs. They've worked perfectly and it was a good way to recycle them. Plus, they were free!

I always think it would be fun to display my ribbon out in the open, but I can't find a good way I like that's still easy to use them. Especially when I need to take one with me somewhere. For now, the drawer will do.


Anyway, there it is, obviously I could use a chair and a lamp. . . of course you know my first preference, but it's always a work in progress!

FF-Fall Memory Game and other tid bits

You guys have had some really great ideas so far for freebie fridays, and I'm definitely going to use some of them. If you haven't yet entered my first giveaway, you can find it here. It ends next Friday, November 5th.

So, for today I've put together a little Turkey Day game to keep you, or the kids, busy while you wait for food :) But, for those of you who may not celebrate Thanksgiving, I've tried to stick kind of close to fall themes. You can download it here. (It's mainly dark brown, but it would print well in black and white if you don't want to use color).

 The three year old buddy and I had fun playing it last night. He did fine for awhile but the 18 matches may have been a little much for his attention span. He was pretty excited about me pulling out the pennies though. He grabbed a hand full and said, "money, money, money" mimicking Ham on Toy Story. I had a good laugh. So if you're playing with preschoolers, I might recommend playing the opposite way: start blank and have them find the matching images and cover them with tokens. That seemed to work better for the buddy.

In other news, I've finally cleaned up my crafting space enough to dare show it to you! But, for your enjoyment, here is the "before" aka. regular look, I'll post the "after" on Monday. (and by "after" I mean the clean, spruced up, want-everyone-to-think-it-always-looks-this-good version).

I promise I didn't make it look worse than normal. I honestly went in and just took a picture. It's terrible, I know.

Halloween Crafts: Last Installment (probably)

Alrighty, here are a few more fun Halloween crafts the buddy and I have been up to.

SPIDER HANDS:

These were a lot of fun, but quick. His favorite part was probably the googly eyes. He LOVES googly eyes.

I found the idea at blessedmommyblessedwife. You can find her fun idea here.  

PIPE CLEANER SPIDERS:
We can't get enough of the spiders. This one would have been better if I hadn't used the hot glue gun. They're weren't too many things the buddy could do because most of it involved the hot glue gun. Next time we  will just be patient and wait for normal glue to dry :) He has had a blast playing with them after we were done though. This one I didn't use a tutorial for, I just made it up as we went. 
 

Q-TIP SKELETONS

The buddy had the most fun drawing the face with markers on this one. And surprisingly he didn't want to use googly eyes (must have known skeletons don't have eyes!) This time we used elmers glue! Find the fun link to do this at Andiland here.

Sneak Peek: Camera

Sunsets are my favorite, but with all the trees here and kids who go to bed early I rarely get to see one. I 've got to document it!

So I thought it would be fun to do a couple little "sneak peeks" into stuff I use. I always love reading about that on other people's blogs and so I thought I would share as well. I don't have a nice DSLR camera, although I would LOVE one (hint hint hunny). For now I use a Cannon PowerShot SX100 (which are actually on sale this week at Target-at least in Ohio-no I'm not getting paid to say that, I just have a little addiction to checking their weekly sales). Anyway, I really like it for a point and shoot. It's an upper end point and shoot, or was 3 years ago when we bought it, and it has a few nice features like macro. It works, that's most important, eh?

what are you going to be on Halloween Night?

Here are the costumes in the works. Any guesses? I still have a little black skirt to sew up.

Unfortunately the hunny and I aren't feeling the creative juices ourselves. So for the now the plan is not to dress up. Sad I know.