This week has been such a relief for me. After we got back from vacation, i had a TON of work to do. Not only in the house with laundry, unpacking, etc etc (which took almost an entire week), but i had notes due for work & they are only due once a month. It is crummy when all the craziness overlaps & the past two weeks were the lucky weeks i guess. We had all that plus i've opened up 2 new referrals for work, continued to work my 2 days, went to a mother's day tea, a staff meeting, made gifts for teacher appreciation week, and end of year teacher gifts also since Eli just finished up his preschool year. Can we say CRAZY?
So this week i have finally been able to sit back & breathe a sigh of relief. Whew! And how did i celebrate? By crafting, of course. Not because i HAD to though , but because i wanted to (it really does make a difference! I check in on blogs almost every day to see if anything new strikes my fancy & this week i came across several things.
Yesterday, while Eli napped, i finally gave freezer paper stenciling a try. I had the paper for months but was nervous to give it a try. But i found a video tutorial online which helped give me the confidence to try it. It is
HERE if you want to watch it. This is what i did....
I drew a robot onto freezer paper, shiny side down. Then i used an exacto knife to cut out the "innards". I placed the stencil on an old stained shirt of Eli's & then ironed it. It set very quickly.
Then i took regular acrylic paint & painted the shirt. I could have bought fabric paint, but i didn't want to go buy anything for this project & i knew from first hand (unfortunate) experience, that acrylic paint doesn't wash out! lol!
Once i peeled off the stencil, i had a cute little robot waiting for me!
Here is Eli, getting his first look at the shirt. He said... "That's MY robot??"
Of course, i didn't want to throw out those "innard" pieces either. So i took the same blue shirt like Eli's, but this time it was Jackson's stained blue shirt & i ironed on those pieces- to make a "mask" so to speak.
Then i poured bleach into a bottle & took the shirt outside to spray.
After literally SECONDS, it was bleached out, so i took it back inside & rinsed. Then i had this.... CUTE!
Next time i will dilute the bleach for a less dramatic effect, but for my first try, i was pleased. And so was Jackson! The bleach soaked through the legs that were ironed on, but oh, well.. it was supossed to be abstract!
Yesterday, just after our morning snack, i realized that i forgot all about the "floater" teacher in Eli's classroom! Ooops! So, quickly, Eli & I threw together a necklace for her. They are made of washers, paper, modge podge & diamond glaze. Once they dried, we strung some cording around them & Voila! We went ahead & gave one to his regular teacher with her box we made too!
Then last night when i was searching the same blog from the tee shirt idea above, i found
this idea which was a DUH! moment for me, & i knew i could do it. Soooo, i did it today... Here is my "non-camisole" made from a tee shirt bottom, cut off about 3 inches from the bottom, then sewed up the side at the right width to make it snug around me.
Now it is a tube top that mocks a camisole without all that hot layering in the summer! Voila!
When i was at JoAnn's today browsing, i also came across some really cute belting with turtles on it.
I immediately thought of Eli! He doesn't have a belt but Jackson does & i thought he would like a belt. Since it was only 2.29 a yard, i went ahead & bought an entire yard because i wasn't sure how wide his waist was. I sewed the belting to D-rings & check him out....
Okay, last project, to post about, i promise! This has been a marathon post! But, at this same blog i discovered yesterday (which has already been bookmarked b/c i love it so much), i found
these cute cuffs for boys. Oh, my- this has "Jackson" written all over it! He's really into wearing those silly bandz & will even take my hair ties to wear on his wrists. So i knew he needed this. PLUS, i gave Randy a pair of pants for Christmas that had a canvas belt on it & he doesn't like those belts. Score! I dug it out of his closet & got to cutting/sewing.
I managed to finally figure out the snaps (they were a pain) and then i used embroidery thread to make the red dashes along the edges. Then i used iron on stars.
Sooooo cute! He is tickled, too, let me tell you!
He is #9 and on team Marlins.
This is a program through the YMCA so it brought back a lot of memories to hear them call the kids into "assembly" before the practices started. (Randy & I met working at the YMCA in 1999). They started out practicing throwing back & forth with each other (a stark contrast to throwing back & forth with mom & dad who can a) throw the ball and b) catch the ball!) It takes a bit more skill to catch a ball being thrown to you by a fellow 6 year old. 
Then they got to hit! Jackson hit the ball the first time it was pitched to him. I wasn't expecting that so i missed getting a picture of it! But i did take his picture once he was on first base.... (and daddy filled in as first base coach too!)
