bow ties and pom poms

how cute would this be to make for wee lil Jarrrr! handmade bow ties! Instructions here!

And I'm loving these pom poms!

If/when we have a party this summer let's make these awesome babies!

XOX

When we were in AZ, my mom saw a cute little craft and wanted to do it, which she in turn helped me and my SIL do as well!

 here's what we came up with!

 We bought the letters (about 8 inch tall paper mached ones) from Joann's with %40 off coupons (did you know you can use an internet coupon and newspaper coupon in the same transaction there? AND the newspaper one can be from a different craft store?! Yeah, talk about awesome. So with Captain Sammy as my shopping buddy, we only had to make one trip to Joanns instead of multiple. Yay :)

We then modge podged the front with some cute Valentinesy scrapbook paper, added some random embellishments that we found in my moms craft supply, added felt to the back and painted the sides a color we wanted! Bam! DONE! Actually it took a lot longer than it sounds with making the paper and felt the exact size and trying to make it perfectly cute with the embellishments, but it was still super fun to do :)

(the back with felt)

 (the sides with paint, they're about an inch thick and you can see some of my embellishments were thick so don't be scared:)

 the final product!

shiver me kimber's on the left.

shiver me kimber's mum's in middle.

shiver me kimbers SIL on right (she did a different version).

 some of the process with my niece helping

look at them wee pirate spawns grow!

look at this cute little "growth chart"

i think this is a great idea for us bc most likely we'll be moving around for years and years eh?!

and it's easy to move and reuse!

the link has tutorial on how she made it.

but of course we can always take short cuts in making it less "crafty" aka a time consuming project :)

random inspiration

dear kimcam:

we need to get down and use some good ol' elbow grease in our lives

a before and after from here

my favorite quilting blog,

go to the bottom of the page to see pics of all her finished projects- so cute and original!

another mmmm!!!!
if you've watched julie and julia, they eat something like this in the beginning and i've ALWAYS wanted to make it!
click here for the recipe!

and last but not least for a pirateness in us!
sticks for a pirate patch and arrgh sign :)