Hurry Up and Wait.

Hurry up and wait. This is seriously the motto of my life right now. I officially submitted all of the my requirements to become a licensed foster parent today. I can not express how excited I am! Now we just wait for our Foster Care Specialist to get our home study written and we will be licensed! I know a couple of people who are or have been foster parents and they've gotten their first placements within a few weeks of getting licensed. On one hand, I can not believe that we are potentially within a few weeks of filling our spare bedroom (which we have dubbed 'The Foster Room'). On the other hand, I'm thinking, "Call Me Already!" I'm more than ready for this.
I've been having dreams of a sweet toddler boy clinging to my shoulder. I can never remember his name, just that he needs me and I love him. Maybe it's my mind trying to prepare me for this exciting journey. It kinda reminded me of the vivid dreams you have when you're pregnant.
Aaah! I'm just so excited. I hate waiting. Now that everything on my end is all done, I'm ready for a placement.
In the mean time, I'll just be decorating the room and buying toys. Lol. Since we decided to accept children 4 and under, I've collected a nice little assortment of toys to fill the room. And I even made this cute little sign to hang in their room. I was trying my hand at some ombre style painting. I have a long way to go, but it still looks cute. I painted the dots with the eraser end of a pencil and cut the words out with my Cricut. Isn't it totally adorable?

Thanks for checking out my blog. Come back soon, I can't wait to share this journey with you.

Minion Birthday Gifts and Cupcakes

This post is long over due. Back in August my nephew Tater turned 7. And he was really into minions, those little cuties from Despicable Me. He said he wanted me to make him minion cupcakes and I thought it would be fun for him and I to make them together. When I asked him what he wanted for a gift, he said a minion jacket. What?! Where am I going to find one of those? He says, "You can make one." Simple as that. Naturally all sorts of alarms went off in my mind. I can't make one, and it actually turn out nice. No way, no how! So I said, "Sure Buddy, if that's what you want, you got it!" Then I freaked out forever. I googled so many pictures trying to find one that I could copy. I found a good one and I set out with my fabric and Heat-n-Bond, on a mission to create a minion jacket for my little pal. For the record, I bought the jacket, a plain black hoodie from Wal-Mart. I basically just made a giant minion iron on patch. And since that actually turned out nice, I got a little cocky and made him a bottle with some vinyl and a Dollar Tree bottle.

This is Tater decorating the cupcakes. As you can see, we thought it would be cool to color our batter to match the minions too.

So here's what we did:

1. We baked our cupcakes.

2. We frosted them with blue icing and set them aside.

3. Tater cut the twinkies in half.

4. I put dots of frosting on for eyes and Tater stuck white Smarties on them. (I'm sure he only ate about a pound of smarties while sorting out the white ones)

5.Tater put long chocolate sprinkles on the top for the hair.

6. I used gray and black frosting to finish the eyes and goggles.

7. Tater placed one Twinkie half minion head on each frosted cupcake.

 

And this is our finished product. Aren't they adorable? No, they don't look like they came from a posh bakery. They look like a 7 year old got to have a blast with his favoite aunt making cupcakes. They were absolutely PERFECT!

 

Turned out pretty good, huh?

 

How to make your own:

What you need: Heat-n-Bond Ultra, yellow fabric,blue fabric (I used old jeans), scraps of black,brown, white and gray fabric, 2 buttons, hot glue gun

1. Prepare fabric according to Heat-n-Bond instructions.

2. Draw complete outline of minion (hands,gloves, shoes included) on paper to make a stencil. (I had to do mine freehand but I would recommend tracing a copy if you can.)

3. Trace the complete outine of minion on yellow fabric and cut out.

4. Trace and cut out the overalls, gloves, boots, each layer of the eyeball, goggles, mouth and the pocket of the overalls.

5. Iron the yellow outline on your jacket.

6. Iron on the pants, gloves, boots, goggles strap and mouth.

7. Iron on the white of the eye and the jeans pocket.

8. Iron on the brown of the eye and the gray ring of the goggles.

9. Iron on the pupil (black dot in the eye).

10. Hot glue 2 little buttons on the minion's overalls.

11. Enjoy your creation!

 

   

I think this last minute idea was absolutely perfect. And he really loved it, too.

 

You can make one too!



Here's what you need:

Cheap yellow bottle or cup, adhesive vinyl (black, white, gray, brown), something to cut with e.g. scissors I cheated and used my Cricut.

1. Cut black strip about 1 inch wide and long enough to wrap around your bottle/cup.

2. Adhere strip to bottle.

3. Cut 2.5 inch white circle, 1 inch brown circle, .75 inch black circle

4. Cut 2.75 inch O ring shape

5. Adhere black circle on to brown circle, then brown circle on white circle. Now you have an eyeball!

6. Adhere eyeball to bottle on top of strap.

7. Adhere the gray ring to the eyeball.

8. Cut a mouth and adhere it under the eye.

9. Fill it with your favorite beverage and Enjoy!

 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed my minion projects. Come back soon.



 

Candy Bouquet for Boys

Yesterday was my sweet little nephew, J's 7th birthday. I don't see him very much. Mostly just at holidays. He's my brother's son and I don't see him much either. I usually go through J's mom to see him. Anyway, J's Mom invited us to his birthday party and I really had no clue what to get him. So I made him a candy bouquet. I was a little worried that bouquets seems so girly, but I think I BOYed it up pretty good. Yes, BOYed is a word, even if I just made it up. Besides, what 7 year old doesn't love a cup full of candy? I just hope he doesn't have any food allergies...

 

Here's how you can make your own candy bouquet.

1. I bought Laffy Taffy, Smarties, M&Ms, and Cookies and Cream Hershey bars. Then I bought a yo-yo, 2 little planes and 2 Hotwheels cars. One of the Hotwheels cars looks almost just like J's dad's car.
2. I taped all of the candy and little toys onto cake pops sticks. Well, Banana and I did.
3. I put a little bit of newspaper in the bottom of one half of the super cute Disney Planes cup. Only half because I wanted the back pieces to stick up higher.
4. I put all the sticks in the cup.

 TA-DA!

The finished product! 

 

This is the car that looks like J's Dads. 

 

Who else likes to give candy gifts? This is my 3rd candy gift this year. I made candy cakes for my bro-in-law and my 14 year old nephew back in April and May. Not sure I blogged about those yet. Maybe I will soon... Leave me a comment and tell me about your candy gifts.

 

Banana's Kindy Rest Mat

As you know, my Banana started Kindergarten this year. I'm not sure how it is where you live but here, it's all day. Ugh. I know, right? Anyway, after lunch they have a 30 minute rest time. They all have to bring in a large towel to lay on. So naturally I wanted to put her name on it in a cute way. When I did Monkey's towel, 2 years ago, I used my YUDU. Yep, another Provocraft item. But this time, I was out of time and feeling to lazy exhausted to fool with all that. So I grabbed my folder of stencils and some fabric markers and sat down to work at the dining room table. Of course since I chose to work at the dining room table, privacy was out of the question. I had intended to just put her name on and maybe one image. But Banana could not be satisfied with one image. She really wasn't happy with 3 images but I had to cut her off. This is what we came up with. (Sorry, I had to cover up her name)

The butterfly was all her! 

And I think the fabric markers worked really well.

I think she likes it, don't you?

Coffee Anyone?

I got my craft room organized again and I'm am having a blast playing with my Cricut Expression. Not going to lie. I've missed it terribly. And I have recently acquired 3 new cartridges one of which is  Outdoor Man. Hubby is a total outdoorsy man. Hunting, fishing and the like. This is exactly what this cartridge is all about. So naturally I couldn't wait to use the cartridge to make something for my hubby.
I picked up this little travel coffee mug for a buck (get it, haha), at my local grocery store. I had vinyl on hand that I bought at Joann Fabrics. (I'm not sure if you all know this or not but Joann's sells adhesive vinyl by the 12"x24" sheet for only $2.99.) I cut out the scope image at 2 3/4 inches and the Born to Hunt image at 2 1/4 inches.
Hubby absolutely loves his new mug!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you come back soon!

Who Doesn't Love Catching Bugs?

Catching bugs is a summer staple at my house. between my son and daughter and nieces and nephews probably everybody that has entered our yard has ended up in a jar. Since the kids enjoy catching bugs so much and there was a box full of empty half pint jelly jar sitting on my freezer, I decided to make them on their own bug catching jar.
I used my Cricut Expression and some sheets of adhesive vinyl that I picked up at Joann Fabrics, and created each one a personalized bug jar.  I cut each child's name out using the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge using the end caps feature. I cut a centipede off of the Dinosaur Tracks cartridge.

YeeHaw! Cowgirl Boots For under $1!

Yep. I'm totally serious! Sort of. My little Banana is a total tomboy. And she loves her cowgirl boots. Unfortunately hers are getting a little small. Really? Right now? When I have 2 birthdays coming up and 3 picture days to pay for. The last thing I need is to buy is yet another pair of shoes. Don't get me wrong, I love buying shoes. When I don't have anything else to buy. So... I found some of Monkey's old boots that are just her size and girlified them. Yep. Girlified is a word. Ha. Anyway. All you need is a glue gun, some dollar store bling, a piece of ribbon and some old boots.

Here are the steps:
1. Pick out the blings you want.
2. Dot some glue where you want your bling.
3. Quickly apply bling (i chose stars) before glue dries.
4. Glue a pretty little bow on the back.
TaDa! CowGIRL boots for under $1!