Mod Podge Storage Containers

I thought I'd put up a quick and easy project that only took a little bit of time, took very little money, and made my house look prettier.

So having an almost two year old leaves the problem of having toys all over the house.  I could keep them in her room, but her room is upstairs and we spend most of our time in the living room downstairs.  We had her toys in boxes out in the open but they just looked cluttered... we finally moved the boxes to behind the couch and moved the couch away from the wall so she has a little bit of a play area behind there.  It makes the room look so much less cluttered storing them out of the way and she can still easily get at them.

She does have little toys which don't work well in boxes because they get lost in the bottom and the pieces get separated and then she never plays with them.  So I came up with a cheap solution.  I eat oatmeal everyday...  I hate oatmeal, but it's for my cholesterol... so I continually have a surplus of empty oatmeal containers.   Well, I started storing her little toys, like her tea set, her legos, and puzzle pieces in these oatmeal containers.  I discovered they fit perfectly on the bottom shelves of our book shelves... (we're big book people... so have lots of book shelves all over the house).  But people would kind of look at us funny, seeing rows of oatmeal containers sitting out, so I solved that problem with this little craft.

I started with an empty oatmeal container.  I peeled the paper off.

I cut scrapbook paper to fit my container.  I had to use about one and a half sheets per container to cover the whole thing.  

I put a layer of Mod Podge onto the oatmeal container to stick the paper to it. I smoothed out the paper as best as I could, and then covered the paper with another layer of Mod Podge.

I let dry and I loved how they turned out.  I picked colors to kind of match my living room and I think it looks so pretty in a neat row on the shelf.  So much better then a row of oatmeal containers!!

I did have one little issue, the paper bubbled a little bit in places, but I've never used Mod Podge before, so anyone have any tips to get rid of this issue in the future?

I loved this project, it was easy to do while watching tv, and cheap too.  We'll see how long they stand up to a two year old, but if I have to make more, I have plenty more oatmeal containers and paper so that I can quickly replace any that get too beat up.

My Favorite 12 posts of 2012

Happy New Year!  2013 is here already, crazy!?!    Hope you all out there had wonderful holidays, spent lots of time with family, ate tons of yummy food, celebrated, and even got some rest. 

I thought I'd start this year with a look back at my favorite posts of this past year.  It's kind of been a cool year in the blogging world.  I started this blog two years ago but never really wrote on it, but then started in full swing in April of this past year. And even though I'm still a little blog, I am happy for the successes I have had. 

First off,  I wrote 75 posts.  Wow... that's a lot, especially since the previous two years I had only written a total of five.   Sometimes as a stay at home mom, you don't always see the fruit of your labor, but to see that in print - 75!  Now that's cool.. and not only did I write 75 posts, but I had to do all the crafting, sewing, cardmaking, and cooking to be able to have the content for all those posts. 

Second of all, I have just past 5000 hits on my blog.  Which may be small potatoes to some of you out there, but I'm proud of it.  I'm thankful to my few followers for being faithful readers and helping me hit that mark. 

Lastly, I have learned a lot.  I have learned about how to make my pictures better.  I have added a watermark, and personalized my site a bit. I have also discovered that blogging is hard work.  I have learned from mistakes and I am looking forward to a exciting new year full of exciting new posts and learning even more.  I hope to grow a little bit more and get a few more followers along the way.

So here's my favorite posts from the past year. These aren't chosen for how many hits they received, but more are significant marks in my journey over the last few months.  Hope you enjoy!

1. Little Red Riding Hood -The Cape.

So this to date is my most pinned post.  I wasn't expecting much traffic from it because I posted it late after Thanksgiving, but for some reason it took off.

2.  Baby Drawstring pants

I was just really proud of these.  I started out to make a pair of pants and it evolved into something more interesting.  I really loved the drawstring look which gave them so much more character.  It's nice to be able to go from just relearning the basics to being skilled enough to start being creative.

3.How to make an Ice Cream Cake

This was my favorite food tutorial.  I mean, who doesn't like ice cream??

4.Crafty Time: Angry Birds Pinatas

This was my favorite craft of the year.  It was a lot of hard work and I definitely messed up a lot!  But because of my mistakes I learned a ton and am totally proud of how it came out in the end.

5. Baby Girl Gift Set: Flower Applique and Two Tiered Circle Skirt

This was my favorite onesie set.  I started out with one idea in mind and totally had to rework it.  It was the first circle skirt I had tried and it turned out to be trickier then planned, but still came out soo cute!

6. Chevron and Circles Baby Shower

This was my first free printable.  This was also before I started using GIMP and was only using Paint.  I totally realized that sometimes it's worth it to find good software.

7.Orange Sherbet Tee

This was my first free pattern.  I learned a lot about how to document a tutorial (though still am learning).  I also had to work out lots of kinks trying to scan in the pattern and upload it so that it would turn out the right size.  Who knew it would be so difficult?

8.Boy Romper: Cars and Trucks

This was my favorite store bought pattern.   I hadn't done a pattern in years, so got to go through the wonderful process of trying to understand the instructions.  Sometimes I felt like I needed a translator!  But it turned out better than I'd hoped and I even made a second one.  (post to come)

9.Yoga Skirt: Maternity

This was my first attempt at sewing for an adult. My friend requested I make her a maternity skirt.  I agreed, but was a little scared of sewing for an adult.  I found out about sewing with knits, but with a little trial and error, it turned out great!

10.Shades of Blue Dress: The Ombre Skirt

This was my favorite upcycle. I don't know if this technically counts as an upcycle, but I took a shirt and turned it into a dress.  I was pretty proud of how it turned out, though you can't really tell how cute it is in the pictures because I hadn't started editing my photos yet.

11.Dolls for Fiji

This technically wasn't my own project.  I helped make dolls with my church to take on a mission trip to Fiji.  I think this was the project that took the most work but was the most rewarding. We made over 100 dolls and it was really cool to see afterward the pictures of the little kids holding their dolls.

12.Flowers in the Sunshine Dress

This was my first outfit made without a pattern.  I ran into a few hiccups here and there which I had to work out.  I had to do a lot of planning before I started sewing so that I did it all in the right order.  It came out a little big but otherwise turned out just as I pictured.

Thanks for following along on my crafty journey.  I'm excited to see what more is in store for the next year!

Apple Picking

One of my friends recently moved here from the east coast and has been searching to find a place to pick apples.  I recently finally found a place nearby and suggested we check it out.

There were lots of wonderful apple trees.  There were plenty of apples in the trees, but it was perfect for our little kids because there were just as many good apples on the ground as there were in the trees.

They only had a couple of different kinds of apples on the trees that you were able to pick, but they had plenty of different kinds of apples in bins.  After we picked our apples, I selected a few granny smiths since they are the best for pies.

It was a lovely day to go on a little outing.  It was perfect weather, nice and sunny yet not too hot.  We got lucky especially since the weather has been so temperamental around here lately.  The weather can't seem to make up it's mind which season it's in.

All the apples on the ground were perfect for the little ones. They had fun picking all the apples up off the ground. Though, even with all the great apples on the ground, somehow my little girl always found the ones that were the most rotten.

I don't know if she really knew what these apple things were that we were picking. But they sure looked like fun. The other half of the fun was just being able to run around in the fresh air.

The only problem was that the kids kept taking all the apples out of our buckets and throwing them on the ground. Or they would put all the rotten apples in the bucket and we would have to pick them out. So finally we got them their own buckets that they could fill and dump out to their hearts content.

It was a lot of fun, and a great activity. It was nice to bask in the sun, pick apples and share good times with friends.

But now, I have nine lbs of apples...Whatever shall I do with them?