Sunflowers in Glass Vase with Flameless Tea Light Candle

I had these glass vases on my mantle that I wanted to put sunflowers in but every time I put sunflowers in the vase they seem to just clump onto each other and did not look very cute.  I looked around the house for some ideas on how to get them to stand up inside the vase and look pretty.  I found a water bottle and the wheels started turning..... I gathered up my supplies and ...

Supply List
Glass Vase that is see through (diameter big enough to fit water bottle in)
Water Bottle
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun / Glue Sticks
Artificial Sunflowers with stems removed (I used 5)
Flameless Tea Light Candle

I cut the top off the water bottle just at the top so you can put the tea light in later.  (for a smaller vase you can cut the water bottle to size)

Let the hot glue gun warm up while removing the stem connectors from the artificial sunflowers.

Add glue to the back of the sunflower and stick it to the water bottle.  I started at the bottom and worked my way up.

Continue up to the top of the water bottle.  I only did one side because I am putting on the mantle and I wanted to be able to see the tealight glow.

I then put in a flameless tea light candle

Carefully stuff the bottle into the vase.  You can even crush the backside of the bottle if needed it will fix itself once in the vase.

Finished Product!  It would probably look better in a clear or lighter vase but I have purple and yellow accents in my livingroom so this is gonna me it for me :)

In darker room you can see the light coming through (photo really doesn't show how pretty it is)

I added a candle to the top and it is ready for the mantle!

You can easily just dump out the tea light to turn it on and off or you can remove the whole bottle.  Being that these vases are a always on my mantle I may use this same technique to make my Christmas mantle.  I will be doing a butterfly tree this year so maybe I will put butterflies in it....... the wheels are turning again OH NO....

The Rainbow Pumpkin by Christina Tucker (age 5)

My five year old daughter loves making picture books. I usually scan and store them on the computer or I would have books all over. I decided to use Shutterfly and make this one into a playable photobook.  She is going to love it.  I should set her up with an account and show her how to do it, because as much as she loves to draw she loves to use the computer.

The issue I have run into is that the photo book is 20 pages long and her book is not.... hmmm gonna have some blank pages.  She will still love it.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Photo Book Tip: Create an adventurous travel photo album at Shutterfly.com.

Halloween BAH BOOBUG (Bah Humbug)

I am just not that into Halloween this year.  I did not attend any of the Fall harvest festivals that my husband took my daughter to.  Which is surprising because this is my favorite time of the year.  I was actually thinking about how I could carve my husband when he returned with 3 pumpkins to be carved.  Last year we spent Halloween on vacation and we spent the day at the Crayola Factory so we did not do a lot of decorating the house or pumpkins.  I usually try to do something crafty.  In 2012 I attempted Rarity from My Little Pony (which my daughter loved) and we even made a haunted gingerbread house.

Rarity (My Little Pony) lit pumpkin

Rarity (My Little Pony) unlit pumpkin

Gingerbread Haunted House

This year all I could muster up is carving 3 small pumpkins and spooky candles.  For the pumpkins my daughter just drew faces and I carved them out.  As I was secretly cursing my husband :).  They came out cute and my daughter loves her creations.  We even lit them up with some real tea lights.

As far as costumes go, thank goodness my daughter already had an Anna (Frozen) dress because we would probably not even have a costume for her.  I am usually ready for Halloween a year in advance. :)  I don't think we are even going to give out candy this year.  BAH BOOBUG!

Pegboard With Removable Cups for Crayon, Marker, Colored Pencil, Pastels, Etc...

Anyone who knows me knows that my daughter is a crafting fool just like her mommy!  With that comes way way way too many supplies and keeps growing.  Over the years I have tried many storage ideas.  This is my current solution.

With some of the Pegboard scrap that I had from my previous Pegboard projects I have made a holder for my daughters bedroom door.  I hung it low on the door so she would have no problems putting the supplies back where they belong.  I let her paint the Pegboard so she love love loved this project. :)

As I had mentioned, I had my daughter paint the pegboard. The first Pegboard was painted Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue.  The second Pegboard was painted Purple, Pink, White, Brown and Black.  We only put one coat of paint on because heck it was painted by a kid it did not need to be perfect.

I drilled the holes in the plastic cups that I got from the Dollar Tree (3 / $1.00)  I used a total of 20 cups.  I found it easier to drill the holes with a 1/8 bit first and then drill again with 1/4.  It seemed to go faster with less cracking.

1/8 Drilled (sorry it is blurry but you get the idea)

1/4 Drilled Cup

I then laid them out to get an idea as to where I wanted to Zip Tie the cups and I zip tied them to the pegboard.

I made some blackboard stickers and painted the left hand side of them with the same colors that were used on the pegboard.  I added the stickers to the set of cups that are going to sit inside the zip tied cups for easy removal.  (I wish I thought of this when my daughter was learning to read her colors, sort, etc...)

I then just mounted it to her door using my favorite black drywall screws.  Now she has her own area to organize all her supplies and she can just grab the color and media that she wants and be off.  This SHOULD also help with clean-up time we will see.

Recycled Wine Cork Pegboard Spacers

I was hanging pegboard for the craft area and didn't have any spacers.  I didn't feel like running to the hardware store (God knows I don't have the patience for that).  Looking through the house I decided to cut some old wine corks in half and try them. It worked like a charm!  I think it was even easier than using spacers.

I was able to place the screws (I used dry wall screws LOVE THEM) where I wanted them and just added the corks to the end.  I used 9 screws/cork halls.

I was able to easily hold up Pegboard to the wall and the corks pushed the screws out for screwing.  It was amazingly easy.  I could have done it myself but since I'm short I enlisted my son to help.  I did not use anchors because I'm only holding craft supplies with it and the drywall screws hold great in my walls.

Note: I used Barefoot wine corks because they are more plastic like than cork.

Painted Glass Window

Well this project kind of came together by accident.  I wanted to frost my hallway/porch windows.  First I was gonna use some projects that I saw on Pinterest, then I was just going to spray frost them.  I ended up doing this.

You can see that my porch/hallway window was very blah and really had no view other then the neighbors garage and tree.  We like to stack our firewood next to it during the winter so we really didn't want to hang curtains.  My first thought was to get some spray frost and frost them, but I read somewhere that the clear Con-tact Magic Cover has a frosting effect on windows.  I had just saw some at the dollar store so figured what the heck... I would only be out a few dollars.

This is what the window looked like when I put the Con-tact Magic Cover on it.  It was pretty simple I just used the back of the Con-tact Magic Cover with the grid and cut the squares to size.  I then decided to paint an owl by just sliding a picture I liked under the contact paper and just using some watered down acrylic paint to paint it.  Even though it did its job it still seemed quite plain.

I then took a little watered down acrylic paint and in a swirling motion painted all the window pieces and I loved it.  The paint and Con-tact Magic Cover paper gave the window a matte look so I took some gloss varnish and I painted over them all as well.  When the sun shines through it looks beaHOOTiful.