Teacher gifts

After so many years of giving teachers gifts for Christmas, I decided to give them what they need for class. They spend so much of their own money to make their classes incredible for the children that it was fun to help stock the classroom and make it colorful at the same time! Is it as pretty as a beautiful bagged gift basket of lotions and chocolates? No, but we can make it cute anyway! We made these supply boxes for Dallin and Bradley's teachers. Dallin has a female teacher this year and Bradley has a male. This box is for Bradley's teacher Mr. Cutler. Walmart only had one floss container but I got everything for his teacher. I found all of this stuff at Walmart and the Dollar Tree. The larger openings my hubby made for me. He used a box cutter to cut out the divider between 2 to make room for larger items. I am sooo loving this! Items in rows: Top row: Band-aids and large magnetic clips, binder clips, and hand sanatizer 2nd row: tiny stapler, clips, and pushpins 3rd row: more push pins, clips, paper clips 4th row: colored staples, safety pins in several sizes, pencil sharpener, tiny clothes pins (simply because they were cute *Ü*) and more binder clips. The empty boxes are for gum, candies and treats that match of course!! I thought I would tie a blue and green bow on top of male one, but for the female teacher I think I might modge podge paper to the top of the lid and put her name on it. Not sure yet!! Merry Christmas!

My scrap/sewing/crafting space

I have a place I can go and get away from normality of life. This is decorated like no other place in my house and I absolutely LOVE it! I get to go in and lock the door and put on a chic flick and play. I actually do have some toys in my room that I have collected over the years. These toys are ones I had as a child, wanted as a child or would have loved as a child if they were available when I was a child. When we have girls over, we get out SOME of my toys from my scrap room. Some are not to be played with. Enjoy! This is what I conjured up in my brain and I love it! This is when it was just done, but now it is almost full.

Fun way to sew pillowcases

I came across this video tutorial on an easy way to make pillowcases. Yes, pillowcases are already fairly easy, but this is fun too. Like magic! Thanks to Missouri Quilt Co for the great idea!

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Crop for a Cure to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association

This year will be the 5th annual Crop for a Cure for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. My scrap group has gone to this wonderful event since the first event. K-Linn has done a wonderful job making this event a lot of fun for those that attend. This year after talking to K-Linn about the crop, she was expressing concern for the amount of donations that they had lined up. Donations are key in this event! There were so many scrapbooking companies that had previously donated quite a bit of products that went out of business this last year. The donations are used for raffle items and silent auctions to raise money for the MDA. I thought about what I could do to help her with something to raffle off and thought I would make a quilt. I had some beautiful fabric (Hobby Lobby) I had bought and had no project planned for it. I would use that. The pattern I used for it was from one of my very favorite blogs called "Moda Bakeshop" called "I'm Blushing" by Natalia Bonner from Heber City, UT. Here is the quilt top before sending off to be quilted. My Mother in Law did an amazing job of quilting it for me. I never imagined that she would do something so time consuming, but it is absolutely amazing! Here is a close up of the different patterns that Carole used. She did one on the squares, a different one on the white sashing and then the flowers Here is the back My Aunt Judy offered to do the binding for me as I would ruin the whole thing! I can't wait to have it done and ready for the MDA crop. I hope it will bring in a good amount of money for MDA! I am no good at spacing pictures out. It won't do what I want it to! grr!

Valentine crayons

Every year for Valentine's for school classes I usually end up buying store bought Valentines because I am in a hurry. I make my own cards for heavens sakes and I can't find time to make their cards for their classes? Sadly I don't. This year I started early with a little help from Artco and my sister. Artco is a wedding invitation printing company. There is an office in Rexburg Idaho and they sell paper and envelopes by the pound. Yea, it is soooo cheap! Thanks to Patrese and her great idea to use some tiny 3"x3" spiral bound notebooks for Valentines for her girls, I had to copy her! They were 5¢ a piece and they were perfect colors for valentines. I thought we could find some valentine pencils to go with them and decorate the front of the notebook. I was blog hopping when I found this post We have been saving broken crayons since Dallin started school and brought home a box of broken crayons from Kindergarten. Every year the kids bring home their supplies, and the crayons go in a certain rubbermaid for later. I was at IKEA and ran across ice cube trays that were heart shaped. PERFECT!!! We will use them for the molds. They are silicone type plastic and will pop right out. Today I started peeling all of the crayons and was a little overwhelmed at the amount of crayons we had! I rallied the troops and their pocket knives. This container was all the way full when we started. We used pocket knives to cut longways down the crayon wrapper to cut it open and Tate and Tyson peeled the wrappers off easily. I thought we could take a few handfuls and melt them in tin bowls on the grill and then pour them into the molds with the colors all swirled together, but still slightly separate to make different colors when you color. Well, we were wrong! The colors all melted together and made this brown color. Paul and I thought we would just pour them into the hearts and the kids could have them to color with. When we popped them out, they looked like heart shaped chocolates! So cute! We got our mini muffin tins and broke up crayon pieces into the tins like the blog did except we melted them on the grill. We were able to make these a little more colorful for Tyson's preschool class. I was afraid the little kids would try and eat the chocolate looking ones. For the colored crayons I Made a note that says "Have a COLORFUL Valentine's Day" and the chocolate heart looking crayons have a this poem on their note: Chocolate is tasty, Chocolate is yummy, But this Chocolate is not to be put in your tummy! This Chocolate is waxy, and looks really yummy, but please don't eat it, or you will feel crummy! HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! All in all these took a long time but it was fun to spend the day with the kids doing something together. Gotta love those kids! Hope you all have a Happy Valentines Day!

Giveaway on a cute cute blog!

I came across this darling blog today and she is having a giveaway of this cute Melissa and Doug cookie set. Log onto her site and see what to do to win it! Contest ends Feb 7th, 2010. Go to ENJOY life ENJOY now

Valentines Quilt

I needed an excuse to make another quilt and this time I wanted to keep it! I thought I could make a small quilt for each holiday for the back of the couch. I started with Valentines Day because it was the next holiday. I fell in love with the Moda "candy kisses" fabric line from last year after finding a charm pack I followed the idea of a quilt on Moda Bake Shop that is for using charm packs. I made my own pattern This was the first quilt I have ever quilted on my machine. I started by dropping the feed dogs, but I didn't get very consistent stitches, so I put them back up and just started! It was fun to do even though it wasn't turning out perfect. I love it though! This is the back. Here is a close-up of the stitching on the back I am excited to find something to make a st. patricks day quilt. Weird I know, but why not?

Christmas quilts

I can finally post pictures of the projects that have been taking alot of my time. I made 3 good sized pieced quilts for gifts this year. I made my Mom and Dad each one. My Moms I used a Moda honey bun in the prints form the Aviary line. There are light greens, blues and pinks. I didn't follow a pattern just sewed all of the pieces from the honey bun together end to end in a strip. I then started sewing them together long ways till I had my width. It was time consuming but alot of fun! I got to use a professional long armed machine to quilt all of the quilts. My new Mother in Law Carole has the machine. When we went to Cheyenne for Thanksgiving, we spent time quilting the 3 quilts. I did them all myself and had a ball!!! This is what the machine looks like although it wasn't computerized. The stand and rollers with the machine take up a whole bedroom! I did a rose pattern in Mom's. My Dad's I used a Moda jelly roll in dark tones. I followed a pattern in a book called "stacked coins". It was also fun and so easy with the strips already cut for you. I have a hard time picking fabric out unless it is in a "line" all together because I am so color anal when it comes to fabric or paper. So it is so easy to have someone else put the fabrics together and they are amazing! The pattern we quilted on Dad's was a wave. It turned out to be my favorite. I love the dark colors. The 3rd quilt was for my very good friend Lonni. She has been such a great friend and confidant to me and wanted her to know how much she means to me. She has been through some rough times lately and I thought she could use something special for herself. I drew out the pattern and went for it! The fabric I used was bright pink, green and white. I got the fabric from Quilts Ect. I don't know what the lines name is... When we quilted Lonni's I wanted to try my hand at free hand quilting on the machine. So Carole showed me a loopy type pattern to freehand. As I was quilting it, I noticed that the loops looked like a cursive L for Lonni. I was thrilled! So at the bottom of the quilt, we sewed "Lonni" into the quilt. It was so cool! I had so much fun making these that I want to make small quilts for the couch for the different holidays. I have a Moda turnover (triangles) in the fabric line of Figgy Pudding that will be my Christmas quilt for the couch, but it will wait to be for next year. For Valentines Day I have a Moda "Candy Kisses" charm pack. I think this will be my first to work on and hopefully get it done for this year!

Felt Food and Tea Set

I started making felt food for my niece for Christmas last year. I started making some for Tate this year because I finally talked Paul into letting me get a kitchen for him. As I was making his food, I made double of everything to sell at a boutique. Knowing that if the boutique didn't go well, I would use them for Christmas gifts. Here is the whole set: Well, the boutique flopped so I thought I would put them on our local classifieds to see if I could get some extra money. The next day I got a request to make a tea set for a lady for her daughter for Christmas. I started it last week and finished it today. It was fun! Here is the whole set: Teapot, teacups, saucers,tray, lemons, tea bag, sugar cube and napkins.