Catching up and toy shopping

The end of the school year is rough when you're a band director. There's solo and ensemble contest, the concerts at the beginning of March, the concerts at the end of May, the trip to perform at Kings Island and then hang out in the park all day... There's barely enough time to spend with my husband and son, let alone blogging.

I'm pleased to announce, however, that Summer. Is. Here!

Already, I've gotten a few sewing projects finished with more ideas spinning in my head. I hemmed and elasticized the refashioned t-shirt shorts for my son. They turned out pretty big... 2T I'd say. He'll have to wear them next summer I guess. I also want to make little tool belts for each of the three boy cousins, as well as finish the one for Joel. I'm planning on appliqueing their names onto the fronts of the tool belts... won't that be cute?!

The reason I'm so driven all the sudden to sew these tool belts is because I found toys on clearance for half off at Dollar General!!! I went wild and bought about $30 worth of toys today (which would have cost me $60, of course). I bought four tool kits, one for each of the boys, for a whopping $2.50 apiece. I actually saw kiddie tool kits for 99c apiece at the Vanity Fair outlet the other day, but they were much smaller. The DG tool kits were pretty large. There's really no rush on this since the tool kits are for ages 3+, and these kiddos are currently aged 1 month - 18 months, but I like to shop ahead :) I also got Joel a large, yellow metal dumptruck for $6, a couple paint-your-own dinosaur kits for $2.50, and a shopping cart full of play food for $6. (Don't tell my husband but I think I'm going to go hit up some other DGs to see what clearance selection they have left!)

While I was out shopping, I also finally bought some countertop paint. After we painted our kitchen white, the beige countertops really stood out in a bad way. For $20, we got some rustoleum tan paint, and I began my transformation. It takes three days to dry; it's going to be difficult to not use the kitchen for the next three days, but it will be worth it!

So that's what I'm up to. What about you?

Cream of the Crap

This has absolutely nothing to do with sewing, crafting, or thrifting, but I felt compelled to tell you this :) First you must know that I teach seventh and eighth grade band. Yes, this is quite an age group! Well the other day I was saying something about band students being the cream of the crop, and one of my students must not have ever heard that expression before because she exclaimed, "Cream of the crap?! What?" I thought that was pretty funny. You never know what's going to come out of their mouths!

In other news, all this talk about cream is making me hungry...

Thrifted Baby Fashion Show II

I can't help it. It's been almost a month since my last thrifted baby fashion show. I had so much fun doing the first one, so you know I just had to have a sequel!

Winnie the Pooh Bowling shirt, which I love, love, love!

All tuckered out wearing his $1 garage sale PJs

Blue dress shirt and tie. I like how he chews on the gate, don't you?

You can barely see the pants, but they're thrifted too!

This is actually two different items. The long sleeves are part of a onesie that I thrifted on a separate occasion from the short sleeved basketball shirt.

And because this is my new favorite outfit, here's another shot!
This one includes some thrifted jeans too :)

Great Lakes! Yay for Lake Erie! (And my favorite pair of thrifted jeans)
My mother-in-law says he looks great in orange. Don't you agree?!

A fire truck shirt-- hubby was obsessed with fire trucks when he was little.

An Oshkosh airplane sweatshirt

One of my favorite sweatshirts. He looks like such a little man in this one :)

Thanks for drooling over my thrifting finds photos of my son with me!

A Cemetery and Pork Chop Side Burns

May I just say that My Trendy Tykes, you're the best :) There's always cool things to do over at her blog. The other day she posted about Mama Kat's writing assignments. I can't get the link to open but maybe you'll have better luck.

Anyway, the assignment is to find a February photo from a previous year and tell a story about it. Wheee! Here we go!

So if you didn't already think I'm a freak...

Here's my random February photo. It was taken back in 2007. My husband and I had just met about two weeks before, and we were already taking our first over night trip. Well, us and two of his buddies. We were going on a cemetery hunting adventure down in southern Ohio, to find this tombstone. This is the grave of Elizabeth Linn McMillen, my great-great-great-great-great grandmother. She passed away in 1832 and is buried in the Old Burying Ground, Greenfield, Ohio. I love that her tombstone says "Hirs was a sudden call. No farewell given." I wonder what she passed away from. So sad. I hope she did not suffer. I know fire was one of the leading killers of women back in the day because their dresses would catch fire while cooking :( You can't see it in this photo, but her husband, who died in 1843, is buried next to her. His crypt is all busted up.

The super cool part is that my hubby's friend is an honest-to-goodness psychic and medium. He asked me if I wanted to know what William, Elizabeth's husband, looked like. Obviously I said yes! He said that he was not an attractive man with large "pork chop" styled sideburns. Hmm. I would love to find a photograph of him, but since they lived so long ago, I'm sure that will never happen!

Wallpaper Crafting

I promised you that I would show you my wallpaper crafts that I've been working on. Here you go!

I thrifted these magazine holders (for 59c apiece I think) a long time ago and just had them laying around, unused, not sure what to do with them.

I finally decided the route I wanted to go with them: Decoupage them with boyish wallpaper samples (freebies) and put it in Joel's room. Here they are mid-completion. I still have some touching up to do and some more modpodging to do. (Is "modpodge" a verb?)

This one started out life as a blue magazine holder, however since I had three blue and one green, I decided to spray paint one of the blue ones a different color.

Some of the papers didn't lie flat and got wrinkly.
Any suggestions on how to prevent this?

A cute construction scene.

Here's a project that was also a wallpaper craft, made by me a few months ago. This was a wonderful thrifted wooden dollhouse (can you say score at $1.91) but it needed some TLC. It was red, and I wanted to go blue. I painted it, decoupaged on some wallpaper, and voila! At a garage sale, I found two construction guys action figures for a dollar, still new in the package, to go with it :)

I'm lovin' this brick wallpaper!

To make the doll house a little more boyish, I added a firetruck scene to the back. That, and I ran out of the brick wallpaper. Remember, I'm just using free samples from wallpaper books :)

And last but not least, *drumroll* ... here's the barn!

It has a fresh coat of red paint and some decoupaged wallpaper cut-outs.

I used my scrapbooking supplies to cut out pretty shapes.

As you can see, my husband has not yet fixed the sliding doors to hide the messy bottom.
I think he needs a swift kick in the butt, don't you?

And just for a comparison, here's the barn before the fresh coat of red paint. It probably hadn't been painted since my dad was a child, about fifty years ago. It was looking pretty tired, wasn't it? Speaking of tired, I think it's somebody's nap time :)

I won! I won! I won!

I won my first three bloggy giveaways :) Yes, you read that right. I won three giveaways in the past couple weeks! I already blogged about winning the Valentines Day shirt from Robyn over at Our Homeschool Home.

My second giveaway win was a Wilton heart shaped cake pan by TidyMom and Lucky Leaf pie filling! Just in time for Valentine's Day! We washed it and used it right away. When I was making cupcakes for my son's birthday party, I used up some of the batter for a special Valentine's Cake for my husband and me. I frosted it with whipped cream and added a layer of pie filling on top. Mmmm! (Sorry I didn't take any photos. We dove into the thing too quickly).

For my third and final win, I actually came in second, but since numero uno didn't claim her prize, I won! A huge thank-you goes out to Jennifer at naughtysecretaryclub for hosting the giveaway.

It's a book about wallpaper crafts which is totally up my alley. So up-my-alley in fact, that I was already in the middle of several wallpaper crafts when she wrote me to tell me that I won! (More on that tomorrow. Or sometime this week. Or whenever I get around to it).



Here are some great ideas from the book that I hope to make someday: make some picture frame mats, cover up those old ugly tv trays, spruce up those cardboard letters you can get at Joanns (we actually have some of these from our wedding), make a belt buckle more purdy, and make a cool clock!

My mother-in-law would SO LOVE this clock. I think I'll have to get the ole jig saw out, use up some scrap plywood in the garage, and make one of these!

A huge thank you to all the giveaway-ers! Last week will forever go down in history as my luckiest week of all time :)

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