Puppy Bed

When my kids and I moved into our apartment after getting the job with My Mind's Eye, I realized that these apartments are PET FRIENDLY! I've been wanting to get a puppy for a long time and I just couldn't resist starting the search for our newest family member.

Could YOU say no to that little face? I sure didn't. ;) I named him Perseus. I LOVE Greek mythology, and the kids love the movie Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, so it fit. We call him Percy. He is such a sweetheart!

I've had an idea for a puppy bed project for a long time, and finally had a reason to make it! Here are the materials needed, all of which can be found at Roberts:

• Batting
• Fabric
• Patterned Paper
• Boards
• Thread
• e6000
• Mod Podge (not pictured)
• Spray Paint (not pictured)
• Wood candlesticks (4)
• Wood balls (2" or so in diameter) (4)
• Buttons (optional. I ended up not using them for THIS project. lol)

First, spray paint the boards and let them dry. Then, using e6000, glue the wooden balls to the candlesticks. Let that dry, then spray paint them as well.

I cut my patterned paper into 2" squares, then Mod Podged them onto the tall boards. I applied a layer of Mod Podge over the top to seal them. Once it dried, I took a pen and outlined the squares and drew squiggles here and there.

e6000 the candlestick/ball things to the bottom of your base board. These are the legs of the bed. Let dry. To attach the two "headboards" together, I used a staple gun to staple a thin board behind them to secure them together. Then I did the same to attach the base to the headboard.

To make the cushion, I cut two squares out of my fabric and sewed them together, wrong sides facing together, leaving a hole on one side. Turn it right side out and fill with batting, inserting the batting in the hole. When it's filled, sew up the hole.

Then put the cushion on the bed and you're set!

Percy loves his new little bed! He kept laying down on it, but he'd jump up and run every time I tried to take a picture. Figures, right? haha!

Father's Day Ideas

So some of you may or may not know, but my full time "bill paying" job is working as the graphic designer for a Utah based scrapbook/craft store called Roberts Crafts. I do all their marketing and web design, and run the blog and facebook pages. We have a guy named Brett Lund who features projects using products we carry in the store on a local show called Studio 5. He was on today showing off some really REALLY fun and cute Father's day gift ideas. He had asked me to design some labels he could use to put onto the Jones soda bottles.

The giveaway he's talking about on the Roberts blog can be found by clicking HERE. Don't miss entering this one! I'll be drawing the winner for it on Friday. :) We're giving away the Life's a Party Cricut cartridge, an i•Top & magnet daddies from Imaginisce. YAY!!! ***REMEMBER*** Comments on this post are not entries to the giveaway. I'm just telling you about the giveaway on the Roberts blog. ;)

AND! If you'd like to download the soda labels I created, click the picture of them below. It will take you to where you can download them. Just download, print, then wrap around the bottles and adhere the ends together. Done and done! :)

Have an amazing day everyone!!

What I've Been Up To

The last few weeks have been a complete whirlwind! At the beginning of the month, I was lucky enough to get to meet Teresa Collins. That woman is amazing! Seriously the sweetest, strongest woman ever. I told her about my idea for a scrapbook line and she invited me to lunch to talk about it some more. GAH! Totally one of my most favorite lunches ever. :) I started reading her blog and was so impressed by her as a person. The strength she displays, and the love she has for those around her and her love of what she does. So inspiring! I decided I wanted to make her this, as a thank you for being such an inspiration and for taking time out her insanely busy schedule to help me.

The paper in the dress comes from a TCD line. :)

She totally is strength and love. :)

I love the dimension the ribbon adds to it.

These are vintage buttons from the 1950s. I had to use some from my little stash of vintage buttons for this! They looked to good not to. lol

I've been making more things for my Etsy site as well!

I may just keep this headband for me! hahaha

I made this for a Mother's Day present for myself. ;) 3 pearls for 3 kids! I'll be adding it to the Etsy site soon.

My friend Leslie asked me to sew a bag for her to hold her portfolio pieces for her photography class. I had a lot of fun with this!

She wanted a pocket to put information cards in. I used the same fabric to line the flap.

I put together this frame for Roberts Crafts. We're doing a Youtube video featuring all the new frames that have come into the stores. I did another frame, but don't have a picture of it yet. It was a lot of fun! Think buttons and modeling paste. ;) lol

I'm really looking forward to May! Hopefully it will decide to be spring, and stop snowing on us! Also, it will be my daughter's 8th birthday! She's really excited about being baptized and turning 8. Every time we talk, she's telling me what else she wants to do for her birthday party. LOL! So far, she wants to go to the water park, have a pinata, go see Kung Fu Panda 2 (it comes out ON her birthday, May 26) and I can't even remember what else. I'm sure Pirate Island Pizza is in there too. hahaha! It's going to be a FUN month!!

Sneak Peak!!

I'm going to be guest posting on the Roberts Crafts blog this week. . . I'm going to show how to create all kinds of fantastic jewelry using scrapbook supplies!! I'm really excited about the projects I've done, and wanted to share a sneak peak of a few of them.

 

The only elements that did NOT come from the scrapbooking section are the parts of the earring that go through the ears (not studs. . . shoot, what are those ones called? LOL) and the green beads. Everything else is a scrapbook embellishment or paper. I have more earrings made using brads from the Posh collection of Teresa Collins Designs, and a leather bracelet cuff with Bo Bunny embellishments.

I can't wait to show you all of them! :)

PUT THE BROWNIE DOWN!!

Ok, I honestly don't care that much for chocolate. But there was a pan of brownies sitting on the counter, and chocolate seems to be a (generally) universal temptation for everyone. Unless you're abnormal, like myself. hahaha So it worked well for this picture. But seriously. . . I've got plenty of things that I need to just put down and walk away from. Puh-lenty!

Over the last few, uh, months, I've been analyzing and thinking and pondering and just in general wondering what the heck went wrong when I was training before. Yeah, I was insanely hardcore into it. (Two workouts a day, two hours each. Obsessive much? hahaha) Yeah, I had some personal setbacks that made me turn back to emotional eating. And yeah. . . The thinner I got, the creepier the guys got. (Remind me to tell you the story of pool boy sometime. . . . *shudders* That's a classic creeper guy story) 5 months, 40 lbs down and then I just stopped. SO close to my goal!! And sadly, a year and a half . . . wow. . . almost TWO YEARS later, I've put it all back on plus some. (a lot) BLEH!

SOO not happy about this.

I've repeatedly tried to get back on the proverbial wagon since I took a flying head dive off of it. I just totally lost all drive and motivation. (I'm being totally honest in this post. No more sugar coating or dancing around the harsh truth for me!) But I just couldn't find my groove again. My gym time turned to commute time after I moved away from living up the street from work. That definitely didn't help. It's hard to find motivation when it's hard to have any consistency in a work out schedule.

So. I've come up with my new BRILLIANT plan. (Cause aren't all my plans brilliant? Ok. . . except for maybe a few. . . ;)

I'm building a mini gym in my room. AND I've outlined a new diet/exercise plan for myself. For the next year!

My idea is this. A big problem for me before was I hit that 40 lbs lost, and then I just plateaued. Nothing I did or changed helped. I was stuck. I don't want to hit that point again. So. I'm going to switch it up monthly and not allow my body to get used to anything before I've moved on to the next month. I've given myself one year to hit my goal. And believe me, it's a pretty lofty goal.

I seriously couldn't sleep last night, I was up until way too late outlining this, and I'm so excited to share!

Last week I took the kids to the Roberts Crafts family night that was designed by the Crafting Chicks. I'm using the Inspiration Journal to write all this down. (I had to throw that in. Bossman will be happy. hahaha)

How CUTE are these?! Seriously. :)

Ok. So the plan is simply this. Try a new diet and a new exercise plan each month. I know when I was training, we changed my workout each month. But my diet stayed the same. I can't help but wonder if that was part of the problem of my plateau. 

April
Diet: Vegetarian
Exercise: Cardio
Objective: Cleanse and jump start weight loss.

May
Diet: High lean protein, low carb, low fat
Exercise: Strength training
Objective: Continue weight loss by building muscle to burn more calories

June
Diet: Low calorie
Exercise: Yoga
Objective: By increasing flexibility you can increase muscle area that can be built up. More muscle = more calories burned per workout.

July
Diet: High fiber
Exercise: Endurance
Objective: Train the body to fill up on less food. Also build up strength by increasing endurance.

August
Diet: Low carb
Exercise: Strength AND Cardio
Objective: Cut carbs, increase protein, build muscle. By combining strength and cardio you will see an increase in weight loss and fat percentage loss.

September
Diet: High lean protein, low carb, low fat (by far my favorite "diet")
Exercise: Pilates
Objective: Continue to build strength to fuel weight loss.

October
Diet: Low sugar (seemed a fitting month for that)
Exercise: Zumba
Objective: Sugar amounts should already be cut drastically. Focus on maintaining this month. Shake things up and have fun with an entertaining workout like Zumba.

November
Diet: Low calorie
Exercise: Tae bo
Objective: Jump start maintaining through the holidays. Allow yourself to enjoy the holidays, but watch portion sizes. Great cardio and intro to kickboxing with the Tae Bo.

December
Diet: High lean protein, low fat, low carb
Exercise: Kickboxing
Objective: Fuel body and de-stress. Take holiday stress out by learning some good fighting moves in kickboxing.

January
Diet: Vegetarian
Exercise: Cardio
Objective: Cleanse and refresh.

February
Diet: High fiber
Exercise: Strength & Cardio
Objective: Push through the last "candy & treat" month.

March
Diet: High lean protein, low carb, low fat
Exercise: Endurance
Objective: Push yourself to goal.

So by April of next year I WILL be at my goal. :)

I'll outline in detail my weekly meal plans. Last night I was able to get through the first month before I finally crashed asleep around 2:30am. lol

I'm sure not everyone needs a full on year to hit their goal. This is just my personal year long fitness goal that I'm sharing with everyone and anyone who reads my blog. And, it definitely doesn't hurt to follow along whether you need weight loss or just a plan to stay fit. Or just to follow and have a year of workouts and meals planned for you. lol

Good luck everyone!! Sorry for the extra long post today. I'll do another post a little later with April's meal plans all laid out for you. :) Believe me, with three kids, a full time job and trying to start my own business, I keep ALL my meals pretty simple and easy to throw together. Cooking is one thing I do NOT have time for.

Fabric Flower Project

Ok, back when I made the video with Kristine McKay on fabric flowers, I talked about different things you can DO with fabric flowers. One of those projects was a headband. Today I finally made one! The kids and I are going to be doing family pictures in a few weeks, and I wanted to make my daughter a super fun and colorful headband.

So here we go!

First, gather your supplies. I have strips of fabric ranging from 1" wide to 1 3/4" wide, a headband base, ribbon, needle, thread and a glue gun.

Take one end of the ribbon and wrap it around the end of the headband, keeping it at an angle to wrap around the rest of the headband. Hot glue it in place. (If you have the eye hand coordination to sew it as you go, go for that. I definitely don't have that kind of dexterity, and therefore use hot glue. lol!)

Continue wrapping around the headband, hot gluing as you go until you get to the other end, wrap and hot glue (or sew) down.

This would be cute just like this too! :)

Take a strip of fabric. Fold one end over slightly and secure it with a stitch. Then loosely weave the needle and thread through the length of the fabric.

Once you get through the length of fabric, fold down the other edge and secure with a stitch. Then pull the thread to scrunch the fabric. It will automatically make itself into a circular shape.

Wind the fabric on itself, creating layers. Stitch the layers together.

Tie off the thread and you're done with the sewing on that flower. You can add any kind of embellishment to the center, or just leave it plain. I love myself some bling, so I add things like buttons, rhinestones, brads or whatever I find that I think would be super cute. You could seriously use most any scrapbook embellishment.

This was a scrapbook embellishment that had a foam adhesive dot behind it. I took off the dot and glued it down. Done and done. :)

This was just a brad that I stuck the "brad" part through the center, spread the prongs to "extra" secure it, then glued down the button top to the fabric.

I had a felty button that I glued down. Then I removed the adhesive foam from behind the rhinestones and hot glued them down on the felty button.

This was an acrylic sticker thingy that I just glued down. I didn't end up using this flower on the headband, but I still wanted to show another way to finish a flower. :)

I took a rectangle of lace that had a scalloped edge on one side. On the un-scalloped edge, I weaved some thread through one edge. I gathered it then sewed through it to secure, making a clam shell shape with it.

Take an oval of felt. Glue or stitch the lace to one end of it.

Then glue/stitch your flowers onto the felt, placing them for your desired look.

I took another length of ribbon and glued it to the back of my felt, letting it peek out. When you turn it over you see the loops.

All you have to do now is glue it down to the headband!

I can't wait to see my little princess all dressed up for pictures (with her hair done. LOL) wearing this! I'm making the boys ties to coordinate with the colors in the flowers. It's going to be so much fun!

Other things you could add to your headband would be netting. You could either gather it under the flowers to have as a base, or create a veil. You'd make the veil part how I did the lace for this particular headband. You'd just cut it a bit bigger. Feathers are a lot of fun too! They create such a fun vintage look. I know at Roberts Crafts we're expanding our selection of feathers and felt and we've added fabric! The fabric pictured did not come from Roberts, I bought it before they put the fabric in the stores. But if you check out the Roberts Youtube channel, I made a video of the fabric we have in the stores. I know you want to check out my video editing skills! hahaha (Or lack thereof. ;)