Crafts for kids

Last night I went to babysit for a family a block over. As I normally do, I brought some crafts. Last night we made socktopus (with out the eyes, because I forgot the felt ggrrr) and fabric wreaths. I do not have step by step instructions for you do to the fact that the kids made these and I do not take photos of anyone I babysit for. I waited til the kids we asleep to take the photo.




For the Wreath:

*You need a gold metal craft ring.
I found mine at Hobby Lobby in the leather section. I do know that Walmart carries them and I'm sure other craft stores do as
well. They come in many sizes
*Fabric 3-4 patterns- about 1/2 a yard each. cut into strips *you will need a lot of strips.

~Cut the fabric into strips that are about 2 in. wide and 4-6 inches tall. (I pre cut these at home)
It juts depends on how fluffy you want your wreath to be. You can see the shorter pieces were used on the wreath on the right
hand side where the longer pieces were used on the wreath to the left in the photo above)

~Next lay out all of your fabric in piles to make it easy to pull from and easy to stick to a pattern.

~Then you take one piece of fabric at a time and tie it to the ring, (we double knotted them) following the pattern. Fabric 1, Fabric 2, Fabric 3, Fabric 1....etc.

~ Make sure to tie them tight and squish them as close together as you can, so your wreath will look full.

~That's it. That's all there is too it.... Take a large piece of fabric and cut it into a long strip and use it to tie a loop around your wreath to hang it if you wish.



The Socktopus:
~To make 1

* 1 knee high sock in super fun colors.(if you wan longer legs, or 1 regular sock if you want short legs)
~I got mine at Target yesterday in the woman's section. They were on sale for $1.50 a pair

* Some fluffy stuffing (you'd use to stuff a plush)

* 2 rubberbands

What to do:

~Ok first tings first, take your sock and turn it inside out.

~next gather together just the toe of the sock (like you would a pony tail) and rubberband it as tight as you can.
*Adult may need to help with this depending on the age of the child.

~ Turn your sock back the correct way and begin filling with the stuffing. Stuff to heel. A*You're making the head.At this time you
can shape the head to be more oval or round.

~ Take you second rubberband and wrap it around the bottom of your head to keep the stuffing in place. Again make sure it's wrapped tightly and a grownup might need to assist.

~ Now you have the leg of the sock left. You are going to cut the leg in half. Then cut each half in half, and do it once more until
you have 8 legs.

~ From here you can cut felt or use buttons for the eyes, attaching them by sewing or hot gluing... we didn't because I forgot the felt pieces at home, BOOO! The kids didn't seem to mind.

~You're done, that's it! We had the BEST Socktopus wars after we were finished. Finally something the kids can toss around the house that won't hurt the house (stay away from the room with the decorative plates though) or each other.

SpermCheck Fertitlity

I was chosen to receive the SpermCheck Fertitlity product and share some information with you.

So before you're ready to make a baby, wouldn't it be nice to know that your hubby has enough little swimmers to get the job done? I know it is an issue for many couples when trying to conceive. Many times men may not want to go into the doctor to get is sperm count checked and it's understandable. Well there is a product that allows men to check this out in the privacy of their own home, called SpermCheck Fertitlity.

*I was so happy to be able to receive this product in the mail. When we start trying, this will help us to be aware of our chances.


The Facts:

*Each year 11 million couples will try and have a baby, but around 7 million of those couples will have fertitlity issues. Of those 7 million, 50% of the issue has to do with the male and most of them are mainly due to low sperm count.

*SpermCheck Fertitlity is the only FDA approved home check for men, that is as accurate as a lab and it's 98% accurate.

*The process takes about 10 minutes. It will indicate ifsperm count is "Normal" range (above 20 million sperm per milliliter, which is the accepted standard for normal sperm count.

Product Features:

~Like I said before it's:

* It's FDA approved
* 98% accurate
* It can be done in the privacy of your own home.
* It's fast and easy to use

~New info:

* It's retails for $39.99

You can buy this product right now at www.walgreens.com
It will be available in Walgreen stores nationwide in April 2012.
For mor information check out their website here: SpermCheck Fertitlity


If you'd like a chance to win this product here is all you have to do:

Subscribe/Follow to my blog and leave a comment letting me know you have done so.

Extra Entries:

Go to www.spermcheck.com and tell me something you've learned.
Share this giveaway on your blog and leave a comment below telling me you've done so.

*A winner will be picked Feb. 7th.

World's Easiest Banana Bread

Ok, so Pinterest, you all know how much I love my Pinterest. I found a great recipe for the World's Easiest Banana Bread! I was iffy about it but it turned out great and tastes really good too!

Here's the info:

Ingredients:


1 box of yellow cake mix
2 Eggs
3/4 ripe to over ripe bananas
Pam for Baking (to spray in the loaf pan)
Flour (to sprinkle in the pan after the Pam)
*and any toppings you'd like to add- I added walnuts
Loaf pan- 2 small ones or 1 large *I used 1 large pan because it's what I had in the kitchen*

Directions:

*Set oven to 350
*Mash bananas in a large bowl. I used my stand mixer for this (WAY EASIER)
*Add in all of the other ingredients (including your toppings)
*Spray the loaf pan(s) with with Pam
*Sprinkle flour in the loaf pan(s) - I just dumped some flour in the center of the pan and tilted the pan around until it was lightly covered.

*Pop it in the oven.
*If you are using two smaller loaf pans: 35-40 minutes.
*If you are using 1 large loaf pan (I did): 50 minutes


The loaf: (minus a slice.... quality control)



Here's the piece I sampled:

Babies

One of my VERY BEST FRIENDS, just announced on facebook that she's pregnant. I am so excited to be welcoming a new little life into the world this July. The sweetest thing I think, is that my friend and her little sweet pea, will share a birth month. YAY!

So as soon as I found out I went a shopping. So far I've gotten her a a subscription to Baby Talk Magazine, that I just told her about. I also got her a few outfits and accessories that I haven't sent her yet I'm going to send her a few things every month until she has her baby and then I'm creating a HUGE basket of goodies that I'm going to ship to her since she lives in another state and I know I would be able to throw or attend a baby shower for her.

I so wish I could throw her a baby shower. I was her Matron of Honor and threw her one of her 2 bridal showers. It was expensive to do on my own, but so worth it since the people in attendance could not make it to her second one (which was out of town). I have so many cute ideas for baby showers..... maybe next time we get a chance to hang out, I'll have a little mini just her and I baby shower. LOL

HAPPY BABY DAY! YAY!

Great deal websites

Ok so here are 2 of my great deal website you can sign up for. They NEVER flood your email inbox and you can earn cash back or get great products at a great discounted price!

Ebates.com
Get money back on purchases you were going to make anyway! It's an amazing thing. And they are almost always running a promotion for new members where you can get $5 or a free gift card after you make your first purchase.

Groupon:

This website is great discounts for restaurants, goods, getaways, and deal in your area, or areas you'll be traveling too. I have bought a lot of $20 of fare for $10 at restaurants. I've also got some GREAT discounts on fun activities for myself as well as for gifts.


Check them out, they are both free to join and you can delete your account whenever you want!

Happy Anniversary

Today, at about 4pm will mark the time day and time that my hubby and I said I do. We have been married 5 years, today. HOORAY! We have had a wonderful and crazy 5 years of moving right after we got marriend, to adopting two dogs, to moving out of state and everything inbetween. I am so grateful to have found someone to share my life with. We really do complete each other.

I am please to share with you some photos from our special day. Don't mind the order, I'm just going to upload them in one big bunch.

DIY Binder of Cuteness! (No Sewing)

Ok so I've been wanting to do this for a while. I saw a binder covered with fabric on a website this Summer and I loved them, but they were SO expensive (I'm talking $45-$50), and I wasn't about to pay that much even though they were SO CUTE. Well a few months ago I decided I wanted to attempt to make my own. So I went out to my local craft store, and Target picked up some fabric and ribbon and some hot glue sticks a binder, and some dividers and they'be been sitting on my bookshelf for months!

Ao today my creativeness FINALLY said, "LET'S MAKE THIS BINDER". Keep in mind here that I didn't have any directions or tutorial to go by. I just kind of made it up as I was going along. Here is what I did step by step to make it earlier today. I hope you really like it!

Items needed:
Binder
2 types of fabric
batting/felt padding
ribbon
Hot Glue
Hot Glue Gun


*Open binder flat and measure and cut felt to match the entire length of the binder and hot glue the edges down.
~It doesn't have to be cut perfectly at all. It won't ever be seen! I used some scraps I had left over from a Snuggle Monster.


*Next measure out your binder fabric by opening up your binder and placing in on top of the fabric. (I was measuring for two that's why you can see the colored fabric. If you just measure for one you'd see the back side of the fabric. Fold the fabric inside the binder so that you can see how far it will cover of the inside (and that it is covering close to the same amount on each side).


Remember to leave a little extra fabric on the top and bottom to fold over and glue. That way you won't see any of the white binder.


*After you have it to where you think you're going to love it, cut out the fabric.


*Next You are going to want to glue the extra fabric you left on the top and bottom of the binder all the way across.
OOPS, I didn't take a photo to go along with this, but you'll see where I did it in the photo that goes with the next step.

* After you've glued the top and bottom, you are going to fold over and glue the sides.
~You can see here where I folded over and glued the top and bottom first.


*Make sure you glue these ends down well so you won't get loose fabric on your binder anywhere.


*Now you'll see the area on either side of the silver bar that is not covered. You can still see the white binder. So you are going to take the second fabric you got and cut a piece about the size of the front cover of the binder (This size will also depend on what size binder you get).


*Fold the two ends into the middle of the fabric and cut down the middle.


*Now you have two pieces. Fold over the edges and glue. I used pins to help keep everything in place while I glued.


*After you glue both pieces, you are not going to glue them into your binder, and now the inside is done.


*Here's what the binder looks like so far.


*Now to decorate. At this point you can do whatever you want. Add buttons, more of fabric 2, ribbons, you name it. The possibilities are endless. Here's what I did.

I decided to use some of the left over fabric 2 and some ribbon I had picked up. I knew I wanted to layer the ribbon over it but wasn't sure where I wanted it to go. So I played around a bit.

Option 1:


Option 2:


Option 3:


UGH, I am never good at choosing, unless it's for something I know I don't want.


I finally chose option.......1.


Now for this all I did was fold and glue the fabric like I had done earlier I glued that down to the binder first and then I cut my ribbon. TO prevent my ribbon from having those frayed edges, I took a lighter to it. It almost melts the edges of the ribbon. That's a little tip-a-roo from me to you! So I glued the ribbon on top of fabric 2.

I had extra ribbon so I then took some and glued it to the spine of the binder as well.

Well there ya have it... the binder is done and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the way it turned out. Not bad from pulling the directions out of no where and just giving it a try!

Final product:







***I'm thinking about selling these from my Staceybug Creations Facebook page for $15-$20.... can't decide on the exact price.

Christmas Cards Book Stage 3

Stage 3: Decorate

**Please bare in mind that I do not have access to any of my scrapbooking supplies since they are sadly all in storage.

I took some left over sheets of scrapbooking paper I had that look a little Christmasy (from a present I had made for the holidays) and cut them down to the size of the clear sleeves. After that I centered the cards onto the paper and stuck them in. I decided I didn't want to add any embellishments due to the fact that many of the cards already have enough, and I wanted the cards to be the main focus.

(Please excuse the poor lighting in the photo. I don't know why I always decide to work on this in the evenings when there is no natural light shining through and the lights on my fan give everything a yellow glow. )
You can see one of my dogs Sammy in the corner!


If you read my earlier post about the binder clips... I used one of them here! They are the best things ever. I used it to label the side of my binder. I also took some scrap pieces of paper and slid them down the spine. It was NOT the easiest thing to do let me tell you. The big piece was very difficult to get in.



Now by this time I had hardly any paper left so, not wanting to leave the front cover blank, I threw together a little something to temporarily put in the front pocket. I'm going to HUNT for a small piece of cream paper to stick in the center to give the cover a title. Until then it remains blank.



At this point I'd say Christmas Card Book complete, except for the fact that I need to redo the front cover.
Went I can get into storage, I will take the rest of the Christmas Photo Cards I have from years past (that are in order from 2007-2010) and do the same thing with them as I did to these. When that happens I will also use the sticky divider tabs (that I talked about in an earlier post today) to divide the cards up by years.

Hope you enjoyed taking this little crafty adventure with me.

Keeping Things Organized

Ok, so there is this GREAT website seejanework.com and they have all kinds of great stuff to help you get organized. I wanted to share with you two products that I just received today (yes I ordered them).

The first one is called Clip-on Label Holders.

These little clips come in packages of 4 (black or white) for $10. I LOVE these. They work great on scrapbooking albums and binders that you may have stacked on a shelf. All you do is use the little white labels (or create a colored one of your own-which is what I'm going to do) and slide it on the spin of your binder. I created a label from a piece of paper I cut just to give you an example of what it might look like.

Don't mind the photo quality. I should have taken these photos with better lighting.
These photos show you what it looks like on the spine, from the side and how it clips into your binder.







Next:
I bought these SUPER CUTE and SUPER HANDY Sticky Tab Dividers.

They are so cute an colorful. These little guys come in handy for organizing binders for school, recipes, bills, a presentation... you name it. They just peel off and stick on. I'm in the midst to test them out to see how long they'll stay on without coming off. So far so good. They've been on a little notebook of mine that has been jumbled in my purse, sat on by one of my dogs, shoved in a drawer... don't you worry I'm not going easy on those little tabs.

Here's a photo of how they come when you order them.

Closed:


Open:

Organize your cleaning schedule.

Ok so, for the new year how many of your goals was to get organized when it comes to cleaning?


Groopdealz has a $6 Clean Mama Printable Cleaning Kit. You print it up and use it. I think I might laminate it after printing so if things need to change it will be a lot easier to make adjustments.

Click Below to check it out!
GROOPDEALZ

Christmas Cards Book Stage 2

Stage 2: Put the sleeves in the binder.

I ordered this cute little binder to put the sleeves in.



Now I need to go find some cute, and on sale Christmasy paper/stickers for Stage 3...

Christmas Cards Book Stage 1

So this Craft project is going to come to you in stages. You'll see it just as I am creating it.

I usually toss the regular cards but I always save (at least since I've been married) the photo cards. The bummer about saving them is they just sit in a pile and they never get looked at. So this year I've decided to do something about it. I am going to make a Christmas Card book and have divided sections for each year. I think it will be fun to look back over the years and see how our are friends and family have grown and changed over the years.

Stage 1:

Just get the photo cards in the sleeves so they don't get lost or dusty.


So what do you do with your Christmas Cards after the Holidays?

GroopDealz

Hey friends,

Ok I'm sure a lot of you know about this site already, but I want to mention it just incase you don't. It's GroopDealz.

This is an AWESOME site where vendors can display their goods at a discounted price for you to pick up! I've gotten so many lovely things from this site, hair bows for some sweet little girls I know, jewelry for myself and for gifts. They have great home decor vendors too!

The vendors can only list their items for a certain number of days, so if you see something you like you need to jump on it and buy one. They are adding new vendors all the time, so check back and buy often!

Here's the link one more time for GroopDealz!

2012 New Years Sale Haul

First off I'd like to say, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Can you believe it's 2012 already? WOW, time sure does fly when you are an adult. As a kid I remember it always being so slow...

Ok so for the past two days I've been hitting all of the the after Christmas/New Years sales and let me tell you my friends, the pickings are good. Here are a few things I picked up today!

BEST DEAL OF THE DAY:


Online at JC Pennys - if you have little ones, you NEED to buy this outdoor table/chair/umbrella set. My cousin shared this on her FB. It's on MAD sale for $15. After shipping it's only $22.some odd cents. However if you use the 15% off code listed, Y11NOVAP it will be cheaper. I didn't notice the code before I bought, LAME!

Forever 21:

Now, I'm going to be honest and say that I think a lot of the clothing at this store is really cheap and not worth buying. However, if you look you can find some nice items and the prices are right.

Sheer Yellow Sweater $13


These two tops, one is blue, and one is a whitish color were $13


I am a teacher so for $6.00 this cute little apple necklace was a must!


Disney Store:

So I miss the days at the Disney Store when they carried adult clothes (I don't miss the clothes then, but the a lot of what they put out now is CUTE). I walked in there on a whim, before I left the mall. I found this CUTE sweatshirt and it was only $20.... SCORE! I'm thinking it will be SO CUTE on Valentines day!



Victoria's Secret:

There Semi Annual Sale started today. So I walked in there and bought 5 pairs of undies (you don't need to see those right?) and this CUTE pair of Pink sweat pants. They are red though the camera doesn't really show it. I got these bad boys for $10.




I also got this Shimmer Body Powder in Amber Romance. (They had other scents too, I just happen to LOVE this one).


Bath and Body Works:

Ok so I went here a few days ago, but thought I'd save it for my haul post. I really didn't need anything from here, since I'm pretty stocked up on hand soap, but I did find a few goodies. I got a body wash for my hubbie that smells really good (75% off). I got some refills for our car air freshener (50% off) one more foaming hand soap and this hand lotion that smells really good and leaves your hands feeling silky smooth. I couldn't stop touching my hands after I put it on. It has the scent of vanilla bean noel but not super vanilla-y smelling.




Alright my friends, there are some amazing deals out there.... GO GET EM!