Pinned it, done!

Made this cute felt tree after xmas but at least it will be ready for next year! ;)

Camera strap

I also made this camera strap!

A few accomplishments...

I love completing things! I'm not always so good at it and have way to many good ideas but here is one I finished! I ripped apart some wooden pallets and made acute potting shed for my back yard. I'm so excited!

Pinned it, Done it!

This next gift was for my sister-in-law. I really liked the color of the one I saw on Pinterest and I happened to have the same paint at home! I can't quite remember what size canvas I used but it was "big enough". :)  I painted three coats of paint onto the front and edges.

 I picked a cariety of fabrics from my stash and chose a few to be the main staple colors and then added other fabrics as the flower grew. I didn't trace the leaf shaes. They were all quickly cut as I needed them. They are also two or three different sizes. I cut and placed all the pieces.

 One by one I glued the underside and then glazed over the top with mod podge once it was in place. I painted over the entire thing including the sides around three times.

This is the finished product! I love it and it was so easy!

Pinned it, Done it!

I have finally begun doing things that I find on Pinterest. Unfortunately, they were Christmas presents and I couldn't very well post them before I had given them! So, here is my first one! Woohoo!

I saw this in the background of a picture and loved it at first sight. There wasn't any tutorial so I will share what I did...
I decided to use two 11x14in canvases. I chose colors that would match my parents house versus the cute colors I saw on Pinterest. I painted a few layers of brown paint and decided to stop at two coats because I like the fact that I could see different tones as well as brush strokes. It almost looked wood-like.

I was hesitant about painting letters onto it because I really didn't want it to look messy. I decided to use a textured paper and, at first, I printed on practice paper. I realized it would be easier to not see the lines of the letters when I was cutting if I printed the letters on the wrong side of the textured paper! So, my husband helped me figure out how to print the mirror image on the back side of my paper.

 I used really sharp scissors to cut out the letters. I decided on spacing and laid all the letters out. Then I carefully painted mod podge on the back of each letter and placed it back in it's place. I realized I had to quickly paint/glue over the top of the letter because they started to curl.

After everything was in it's place, I painted mod podge over teh entire thing. I painted three coats. On the right is the mod podge still wet and on the left it is dry. I used glossy mod podge this time but I think next time I will buy the matte finish. I was super happy with how they turned out!  Pinned it, Done it!

The biggest nose ever!

I thought I'd stick this on here. A while back a friends and I were trying to think of new games for a carnival. We wanted the kids to stick there hand in one hole and find slime and in another, find a prize. So I thought it would be hilarious to make a huge nose.

First, I found a large piece of partical board. On a huge piece of paper I created the shape of a nose by looking at those goofy glasses with the mustache. Then, I traced it onto the board. I used a saw and cut out the nostrils. Then, I took chicken wire and started forming a nose, stapling the wire on the lines I made on the wood. Here is the chicken wire all stapled on. A view from the front and from below because it's pretty funny.




I cut strips of newspaper and mixed good 'ol fashion flour and water together to create a paste. I paper machéd the whole thing three seperate times, allowing it to dry completely before adding the next layer. Then, I mixed paints creating a skin color and painted the nose. I also painted the board, made cardboard glasses, painted a mustache, and found fur for the eyebrows! Voilá! The greatest nose ever! Well, I guess that depends on what you consider a great nose...

Refinishing Project

Well, a while back I chose a new comforter for Aiden's bed once we knew we were moving to help give me direction on what I would ultimately do to his new room. I am one step closer to a beach room for him. He has had a loft bed for a while but with his small room I really want to make it lighter in color and washed white to look even more beachy. I do have the drawers to finish (and you can see the color comparison from the drawer fragments on the ladder picture.) I am super happy with the results! I will eventually paint his room but the living space is first on the list of things to paint. I will put up new window treatments and turn his loft into a cabana with hanging "walls." I won't try and explain. I'll just post pics once it's done, after the drawers. Stay tuned.

Here we are

Life has been a huge whirlwind. The everyday life mixed with a lot of visiting Ryan and Jess, hosting Andy and his family for a month plus bonus family members, photography, mission trip, more visiting with family and friends, camping with family, Emma's first summer camp, new pta duties, Faith Quest. The list goes on.... All those things are just things until you mix in a whirlwind of emotions with regards to Ryan's health, Jones' health, Jess and the entire families well being and mental state. Then just having all those places to be while laundry continues to pile, dinners have to be thought about and actually prepared... You get the picture. It's been a loaded three months. And now... Now, the kids have all started at new schools. Emma at her new middle school and the other kids at Wildwood Elementary next to our house. No more dropping off and picking up children. Emma rides the bus and the other two walk. But even now, as life seems simpler and the days have routine, the sun begins to disappear. What seems to have brightened my spirits as the birds chirped and the sunny crisp air wafted through the window is now dreary and dark. All of this is such a reminder that nothing is constant save for one. My hope in despair, my light in the darkness, my strength in the storm. I just don't get how people can go through life without the hope of life in Jesus. Life where communities care for each other. Life where the helpless are helped. Life full of mercy and love. Crappy things are going on all around me but I have to have hope that through each curveball, He will hold me and the hope is that others will see a redemption story lived out. Over and over and over. If we can't witness God's redemption and love story to us, the world, amidst all the crap thrown at us, then what is the point of being here? I really think that God's whole plan is to redeem us all, in the midst of our lives. Over and over and over. So, bring on the rest of September. Let's do this.

Projects

Amidst taking plenty of pictures of friends and family, I have also been working on some other fun things. The girls needed something more in their room so I did a painting to match their comforter. I also found an outdated queen headboard and repainted it for the girls' room (picture to be posted later). I'm still working on a painting for the living room that will be on hold for a little bit while we potentially move between now and Christmas! I also got the idea of making cute coffee cozies from my sis-in-law Jess and have been making them with my friend Tabitha to give to friends and teachers for Christmas. :) Assuming we do get to move I have plans on redoing our dining room table which I am very excited about! I will sand and restain the top with a dark stain and paint the rim and legs a yellowy/off white with the distressed look. I think I will also do the same to our living room side tables to bring a little flow between the rooms. They're small but I think it will work well with our leather couch. Anyways, just a bit of what I've been doing.

To live or not to live? I'm all over it!

I have been completely overwhelmed lately at my desire to be creative. I don't know if it's just that I'm in a better place emotionally or what but it's all I can think about. I have all these ideas that go through my head. I want to take pictures. I want to print and mount creatively all these different pictures on my walls. I want to paint all these different things in my head. I'm just bubbling at the seams. (Can you bubble at the seams?) Well, I can!

Anyways, the kids are just about to start school in a couple days and I am so excited for an empty house. I'm excited to have my quiet time at the beach by my house. I'm excited to exercise. I'm excited to only have one pick up time in the afternoon for the kids instead of three. I'm excited for my lunch time not to be interrupted by picking up Izzy from school. So much awaits me and I just want to be thorough and not leave things undone. I want to be able to focus all my energy and do things well. I want to unpack thoroughly and condense and repack the things we don't need right now in our smaller house. I want things on my walls. I'm just so excited about life. Whoopee!

Here are some of the things I've had printed to put up in our home. They're mounted on a special 3/4 in foam board. I've got another really cool one I'll post as well as pictures of our house. But you might have to wait a week or so. I do have to attend Faith Quest which I am also very excited about! Maybe I'm really back to blogging now. Only my posting will tell!

Wolfe Family Sneak Peak

Ellie

I am going to surprise Ellie's mom with pictures of her as my parting gift because I won't be watching her after May ends. I haven't decided exactly which ones are my favs or what I'm going to give her exactly so you'll have to give me your input!

The bane of my existence lately...

Why, oh, why, did I have two children 2 years and 3 days apart? I tell you, it has been ridiculous this year! For those of you with children, even though we try and remind our children that "life isn't always fair" do we not try to have a sense of balance when it comes to being fair? You count every jelly bean that goes into the Easter eggs because they WILL count them. And you don't do something special with one without plans to do something equally as special with the others, right? Well, these last four weeks have been a whirling dervish of balance and counterbalance.

Our conversations began with ideas of what they might want to do for their birthdays. For some reason I sometimes want to think of extra special ideas that we haven't done before but then I also realize that some of the "special" ideas cost more, the more children you invite... So I say, "Izzy, would you like to see if your very best friend, Ella, could come up around your birthday and you could go to the tea room and paint some pottery?" And she says that she would like to do that for her birthday! Great! A plan. :) Well, it just so happened that Aaron was going to come up two weeks before her birthday, so Ella came and we did the tea room thing while the big kids were at school. I brought my camera, took plenty of pictures... One special "party" down ! Right?

Then, Aiden decides that he would like to go to a movie with Aaron and Ben for his birthday! Okay! Easy enough. But, as it turned out, it wasn't feasible for Aaron to go to the movie on that trip so Aiden switched his idea and decided he wanted his Uncle Andy to go with them instead of Aaron. Awesome. No problem. Well, when push came to shove time got away from us and Andy didn't get to go to the movie. During this time, Emma, has felt left out because every body else in the family got to participate in a "party" thing except her. Aiden kindly offered for her to come along. So, the day after Andy went home, Ben purchased tickets and was planning to take the kids to the movie right after school. Then, Izzy says in a tearful squeally voice, "I'm the only kid who doesn't get to go to the movies?!" So Ben makes an executive decision that it will be a special trip with dad to the movies and he will do something else with Aiden for his birthday. (Let me remind you that it is one week and four days before Aiden's birthday still...) They have a great time and Ben and Aiden still have to plan something else.

Izzy gets stuck on the fact that Aiden gets to go to the movie (original plan) AND something else! Aiden tries to explain that it was NOT for his birthday because SHE came! Yikes... Somewhere else in all this Izzy says, "Mom, we need to send out invitations to my friends!" "For what", I say. "For a party!" :0 "You already had your party with Ella! That's what you chose to do!" (squeely voice)"I don't get to have anyone over for a party?!" WHAT? What just happened? All of a sudden it is getting closer to the day when she is going to turn 6 and her "party" has been nullified! I think I went numb.

As the actual birth days approached, we decided that we would be celebrating Aiden's birth (opening presents) on Monday (not Tuesday) because we also got invited to have dinner with friends and I left the decision up to Aiden since it was his special day. He was very excited to have his birthday dinner at their house so we brought the cake! Good times. On Monday, he had cub scouts, so he rushed through opening his presents after we ate dinner and totally forgot to use the camera. Ben snapped some with his iphone. At our friends, I totally forgot about bringing a camera, also! Our friends took some for us but I don't have them yet.

For Izzy's birth day we decided to have her special dinner AND presents on Thursday (not Friday). I asked her if she would like us to invite our neighbors over for dinner, her friend, and she thinks that that is a great idea! It's fun, I take plenty of pictures...

Finally after many lofty ideas of train rides and tons of fun, Ben and Aiden played glow-in-the-dark putt-putt golf and video games at the mall. They had a great time. No pics...

All in all, their birthdays were rather anticlimactic and I apparently have a favorite child of whom I take pictures of and one that I do not... And I cannot communicate all the unfairness that was expressed as some had birthday money to spend at all different times while everyone else looked on, suffering. And when some would buy candy and the others had to look on in envy, but then I buy some for the others to make it a fun evening , or whatever, and the one who used their money says, "That's not fair. I had to spend my money!" So I buy theirs... I am sick and tired of mediocre birthdays and trying to live a fair life. Shoot me! (But just with a bb gun, in the arm, or something.)

Here are pictures of one of my children... Please, let it be over....

Teeth

We have teeth coming out our ears these days. Well, our mouths really. And not my mouth, or Ben's, our kids'! Izzy lost one of her top front teeth this week. Her last loose tooth she allowed me to pull out but she didn't get to a point this time when she thought it was wiggly enough yet. Obviously when it came out as she ate her cereal she realized it was indeed time to come out! It was kind of gross a few days ago when she asked me if there were nuts in our bread. She said she kept crunching! I told her no and she said, "Oh, it must have just been my tooth!" Yikes. If your tooth folds into your mouth and you can bite it, it's time to come out! It also looked so awkward when she would talk because it would totally get in the way. Her lip stuck out just a little and she would pause sometimes in the middle of a sentence to adjust her protruding tooth! Everyone offered to yank it out and she would say, "Nope, it's not quite ready!" We've got one more front tooth left and it is just a little wiggly. Hopefully it won't hang on as long as it's little buddy did.

When you were a kid did you brush your teeth well? I'll be blunt and say that I remember feeling that slimy, clean feeling only after getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist! I think it is hard to train your children how to brush their teeth well! Even if you've got the habit down of specific times when they brush their teeth, there is no guarantee that when they open their mouths for a teeth check that they will look much different than when they went in? "What have you been doing in there this whole time?!" I ask daily, it seems. Then I take my turn at removing the grime that has built up in that single day. How can I explain how to focus on a certain region before moving to the next? Aiden's teeth brushing is like a tornado. The brush spins and scrubs and only touches down, like, every other tooth. His hand moves furiously but it darts from one side to the other in a matter of seconds leaving small clean patches in it's path. It's like a tooth brush with ADHD. Whatever the heck went on in that mouth accomplished extremely little! We also take turns with Izzy still but thankfully Emma manages to come out with squeaky clean teeth. It took 9 years or so, but we have accomplished something! Thank you, Jesus! I hope we keep all our teeth! (At least the ones we're suppose to!)

Our Valentine's Day

We had a great Valentine's Day! We stayed after church and had a little snack and social hour with our own version of the Newlywed game that was fun for everyone. Once we got home we decided to get the house picked up as quickly as we could so we could have time to go to the movies together before it was time to make our special Valentine's dinner. We saw The Tooth Fairy and it was cute and fun and a special thing to do together.

Back in the days when we lived in Sidney we decided to make our Valentine's Day a family event. With children, it just doesn't seem easy to do something just as a couple because all those without kids are freely going and celebrating their own special day, which leaves us with no babysitting. :) Why not just make it special for everyone?

This year, the kids went shopping with me and we chose to have fillet minion, pink mashed potatoes, pink applesauce, green beans and chocolate covered strawberries. We set our table with our fanciest and picked the appropriate flowers to go with all the sweet valentine's the kids made. And don't forget, lighting is everything and we are big into setting the mood. Any time we've dimmed the lights and lit the candles in the past the kids have attempted to give us the perfect restaurant title but they must have forgotten or are just getting older...

It was a fun day and a special way for us to celebrate how much we love each other!