Holiday Gift Extravaganza: GiFTS FoR HiM (Updated)

Sorry for the late start. To start of the Holiday Gift Extravaganza we will start with a list of homemade gift ideas for that guy in your life!!!

**Click on the picture to go to the website with the tutorial.**

Golf Club Cozy

These are made from old sweaters! Great for the gold enthusiast.

Suitcase Handle

This would be a great way for your guy to find his suitcases on family or business trips. Just use a more masculine fabric!

Puzzle Blocks

Have a guy who works in an office? These puzzle blocks would be great and you could use family pictures so then he can display his family at the same time he could have something to fiddle with while on a phone call!

Electronics Cozy

What guys doesn’t have electronics that could use a little extra protection. You can easily adapt this tutorial to a guys by using more masculine fabric.

A Tie

Not too exciting but here’s a tutorial for making a tie. You could probably recycle and old silk dress shirt.

Personalized Rubik’s Cube

This would be great for any guy who is into rubik’s cubes. It’s not necessarily one to be played with but you could put family pictures on it like the picture or you could use your guys favorite sports team logos or mascots to decorate the cube!

Custom T-Shirts

Using masking tape or freezer paper you could design your man a shirt.

Marshmallow Gun

Since the one in the picture doesn’t have instructions I will adjust these instructions to make the one in the picture!

Wrench Casing

Does he need a way to carry his tools around. Here’s an idea and could be adapted to screw drivers too!

Whistle Lanyard

Do this in his favorite sports team or if he’s a coach use the school’s colors!

Custom Notepads

This is a great project for the kids to do for dad!

Journal

**Don’t forget to leave a comment today so you can be entered into the giveaway! **

See this post here for more information about the giveaway.

DiNNeR FoR FouR

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We are spending Thanksgiving this year at home.  I had fun trying to create a fun and special looking table!

I am so Thankful for all of you that follow my blog.  For the support and inspiration I get from you to keep this blog going!  Thank You!

Wooden Block projects

I got together with some of my friends and we did a craft with wooden blocks for thanksgiving we got the idea from here.

I had some blocks leftover and my husband wanted to do a project and we came up with this tree:

We painted the blocks ( sizes range from 2 1/2” to 3 1/2”). Then we laid the blocks down on the table and printed out a tree outline from the computer, laid it over all the blocks and painted the tree outline onto the blocks. Then I used a stencil to add the star to the top (this required a lot of coats to cover up the green).

I cut out the vinyl letters using my Cricut and a program called Sure Cuts A Lot that allows me to cut using all the fonts on my computer.

As I was looking at it I thought it needed a little sparkle to it and since I didn’t have any super fine glitter I decided to use my bronzing powder and then use a clear gloss spray over the top to keep it on. It worked out great! Just a little shimmer.

I then used the two lonely blocks to make a snowman from which my inspiration came from these cute little S’mores snowmen.

Here he is with his crocheted hat and scarf!!!

The top block is 2 1/2” x 2 1/2” and the bottom block is 3'” x 2 1/2”. I painted the block white and then glued them together. I then went along the edges with a gold stamp pad:

I hand panted on his eyes and buttons and for his mouth I used the tip of the handle of a small paintbrush to make the circles. I used a 1/4” dowel for his nose and I just sanded at one end for a little while to get it to make the point like a carrot and then used a sharpie to make the lines. Then I sprayed it with a clear gloss spray paint.

It was fun to do these projects with my husband!

I had a question about where I purchased the blocks for my snowman and tree, I bought a 2.5" x 1.5" x 8' board at Home Depot and then my neighbor cut them to size. You could also have the associates at Home Depot cut them for you too. It was less than $2 for the board.

Holiday Gift Extravaganza Week and Giveaway

I have really got to get to work on my Christmas gifts. I’m planning on doing all homemade gifts for everyone. I’ve got a pretty good start but need to get more focused. To help me gear up I will be posting November 30th through December 4th all of the gift ideas I have in my “Christmas Gift Ideas” bookmark. So mark your calendars and gear up for a whole bunch of ideas to come.

To top it off I will be doing a giveaway of one of my Stocking Kits (the regular size).

Here’s how to play:

For your first entry just come and visit every day and leave a comment. (5 possible entries)

For another entry become a follower and those of you who are already a follower you can do this one too. Just leave another comment saying that you are a follower. (1 time entry)

For a third entry post about my Extravaganza and giveaway on your blog and provide a link back to this post. If you don’t have a blog tell 10 of your family or friends about it on facebook, by e-mail, or however you want. After doing this come back and leave a comment saying that you spread the word. (1 time entry)

** Sorry this giveaway is limited to US Residents only.

***Comments on this post are not included in the contest. Only the comments left in the posts from November 30th to December 4th qualify.

****Giveaway will end at 9pm (MST) on December 4th and winner will be announced on December 5th. Winner will have until Monday December 7th at 8pm (MST) to e-mail me at kraftymum03(at)gmail(dot)com to claim prize or a new winner will be chosen.

Krafty Moments Monday and Blog Makeover!!

I am so thrilled about my blog makeover!  I won the makeover from Jen~A~Roo Blogs and I think she did an awesome job.  She was such a sweetheart and so willing to work with my craziness!  I am showcasing her talents as my Krafty Moment Showoff!!!

Now head on over to Jen~A~Roo Blogs and check out her free backgrounds and headers and see what services she has to offer, but don’t forget to come back and link up your Krafty Moments. 

You are awesome Jen and thank you a ton!!!

 

Don’t forget to grab a button to show that you are participating in Krafty Moments Monday!!!

Train Table

My 2 year old son loves to destroy the train track on his train table almost as fast as I can build it.  Well this was frustrating me and my 4 year old daughter.  I decided I wanted to mount the track down to the table, but I didn’t want to ruin the originally table top, so I made a new top for my kids’ train table.

BEFORE:                                                   AFTER:     

 

I went and purchased a large piece of particle board and had it cut to size.  Then I spray painted the entire board brown and after it was dry I laid out the train tracks and took a picture of the table.  Then I printed the picture off and drew the streets and parks in on the paper first. 

When I got it how I liked it I then went to town painting everything on  while the train tracks were still on the board.  I then took the tracks off and applied several coats of varnish.  After the varnish dried, I nailed the track down or glued where nails weren’t possible.  The trees, benches, and buildings are not glued or nailed down.

   

Now, when my kids are old enough to build their own train track, I’ll just remove the little nails from the tracks and the new table top and they can play with the original one again.

ouR THaNKFuL TRee

Yes, we have already set up our Christmas Tree.  However I did it as a part of an idea to get us all more focused on what we are thankful for.  The idea is we pull off one leaf and write what we are thankful for on it and tape it to our Thankful wall.  The goal is to have all the leaves off by the day after Thanksgiving so we can make it into a Christmas Tree.  The kids are loving it. 

 

Wash mit turned baby toy...

I would like you to meet my new friends…….

……..Catty and Leafy (my cute little neighbor kids helped me name them). They are the perfect companions for any baby!!!

The Leafy makes a crunchy noise.

and Catty rattles.

Here’s how I made them:

Go find one of these wish mitts in the Auto Washing or Home Cleaning part of a store.

Turn it inside out like this

Then remove the elastic band around the opening. Then cut down the center so that you can make sure the little stringy things lay to the inside when you sew up the side seam. So after cutting up the center now sew that up the side that you just cut but when you get towards the top you will want to curve around the top over to the other side making it look like a half circle.

Turn it inside out and stuff it full of batting. To make it rattle you will need a small plastic container (the small little bead containers about the size of a quarter work great) and some rocks and put it in about halfway.

Then stitch the opening closed.

I just did embroidery for the face and also cut about 12 of the little stringy things off the front to make the area where I put his face.

Now for the leaf. I cut 5 – 6 inch squares of a green flannel. I stacked them up and added between the 4th and 5th squares a cleaned out snack size chip bag (I only added one but I think 2 would probably make more noise).

Then I just sewed across all 5 layers together using the making your own chenille instructions. The only change was that I made the stitches as curvy lines and the distance between stitches around 1/2” to 3/4”.

Then I printed off a picture of a maple leaf so it was almost as big as my square and used it as my pattern to cut the leaf out. After cutting the leaf out I then went around the edges about 1/8” from the edge to keep the edges together. Then on the side with the 4 layers I cut down the center between each line making sure to only cut the top 3 layers. This give it the fuzzy look. I then used embroidery to create his face.

Sorry I don’t have a ton of pictures, I was going to make a second one and be more diligent at taking pictures but when I lost I was a little bummed out and didn’t get around to making another one. If have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me by leaving a comment on my blog or by e-mailing me at: kraftymum03 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thank you to those who voted for me last round.

Tutorial Poll

I'm doing a poll to see what would be the best method to do my tutorials. I'm thinking about doing them as videos and wanted to get input from my viewers. Please do the poll on the right-hand side ---------->

If you choose "Other" please leave a comment explaining what your preference is.

Thanks!!!

Pom Pom Turkey

All you need is a large pom-pom, one medium pom-pom, orange pipe cleaner (chenille stem), orange mini pom-pom, wiggly eyes, 3 feathers, and hot glue.

Glue the medium pom-pom onto the large pom-pom.  Then glue the wiggly eyes and the mini pom-pom on the medium pom-pom.  Then glue the 3 feathers to the backside of the large pom-pom.

Take about a 4 inch strip of pipecleaner and fold it to make three toes for the feet.  Now glue the feet onto the bottom of the large pom-pom.  A fun and quick little craft the kids can help with to dress up your Thanksgiving Table or you could even use these for place holders just have the piece of paper with the guest’s name rest on the feathers.

Dry Erase worksheets

I made my own Dry Erase Worksheets so my daughter can learn to write her letters.

They have the Upper Case Letters on one side and the Lower Case Letters on the other side.

All I did was open a new document in a program called Gimp but you can use Photoshop or something similar.  I made it 8.5 x 11 in size.  Then I used digital scrapbook papers (star one) or papers I had that I scanned into my computer (flower one) as the border.  I went on the internet and did a google search for the letter worksheets and pasted the picture in the center. 

I printed the picture onto white cardstock paper.  Then I used Glossy Laminating Sheets to cover them.   You don’t have to use dry-erase markers as I found the Crayola Washable Markers worked great too.

 

I’m going to make another set but put her name on it.