Easy Felt and Twig Valentine's Tree Tutorial

Yesterday I shared my melted crayon LOVE tiles that I made for our mantel.  Once I finished them, though, there was still something missing.  We needed something with a little more height to it.  After looking around on Pinterest I had this and this for inspiration, I remembered an empty red vase hanging out in our kitchen begging to be used.

A few scraps of felt, thread, and a glue gun later...

Remaking Play Food Boxes to Last: 12 Days After Christmas

Did your kids get any play food for Christmas?

My totally awesome sister, Kendra, gave my kids a little shopping cart with lots of play food in it, some of which came in boxes. The kids love them. The only problem with boxes is that they get squished easily...at least if your kids are like mine. Less than 24 hours after they arrived at our house, a few were already looking a bit squished, so this project moved up the priority line.

Here's what you'll need:

Scrap corrugated cardboard, ruler, scissors or rotary cutter, glue gun, noodles or other filler food are optional.

Measure the bottom of your box. You can do this with a ruler or just by put your box on top and make a mark. You'll want to cut your pieces, but a little bit smaller than your box to make sure they'll slide down into it easy. I made mine about an 1/8 inch smaller in each direction than the outside dimensions of the box. I just measured the first one and then used pieces I'd already cut to measure, but kept using my ruler to make the lines straight. You could easily do this with scissors.

Once you've got a nice pile of cardboard rectangles, pull out your glue gun.

Glue your little rectangles together using a glue gun or other glue. Keep gluing the rectangles together to make a tower. Make sure that the rectangles are lining up straight. If you're not putting anything inside the box to look like food, you'll want to make your cardboard stack as tall as your box. Since these boxes were for noodles, though, I decided to glue some noodles on the top. If you're adding some sort of play food to the top, you'll want to leave some space. I put my cardboard stack inside and then added big globs of glue from the glue gun and then filled it up with noodles. I made sure not to get the glue on the sides, so if I ever decide to take the filler out, I can. I dumped out any loose noodles and then used the glue gun and more noodles to fill in any empty spaces. And we also made some Pasta Swirls.

The final step, which I didn't take picture of, is that I reinforced the box with mailing tape. I like the stuff that comes from Costco because it's really think. (I also use it to protect the spines on our kids books...especially board books.) It's especially important to do something for the top of the box because this is the part the kids are most likey to rip when they got to open the box.

It's quick, it's easy...so go do it before your kids ruin their play food.

Update: 1/20/2010  If you're interested in other great ideas for kids' play food, come join our Felt-Food Cook-Along.  There something for everyone...no-sew, hand-sewing, and/or machine sewing.  We're well underway, but there's lots to go.  See the link of foods we've done so far at the top of the right sidebar.  You can also share your felt food creations here.

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Sleeve Extenders...sort of :)

Firecracker discovered that Sweet Pea's leg warmers double pretty well as sleeve extenders. Who would have thought they'd be able to share the same clothes so soon! She might not win any fasion contests this way, but Firecracker thought it was pretty cool to wear Sweet Pea's clothes.

Tutorial: Encouragement Band-Aids

I have the best husband in the world. He's working like crazy to finish his PhD in chemistry, so we can move and he teach high school science. He's sick to death of his project, but he works like crazy on it anyway, so we can finally be done.

As I was cleaning off the desk a couple days ago, I found a page I'd pulled out of a magazine over a year and a half ago. I'm not sure where I got it from because I don't subscribe to Family Fun...but there it was. Here is the link to the online version of the original idea. I thought it might be just what the doctor ordered for my wonderful Hubby.

It's not to hard to figure out, but here's what I did to make mine.

Materials: Band-aid box, ziploc baggie (for all those band-aids that don't have a home anymore), colored or scrapbook paper, scissors, pens for decorating with

1. I used my quilting ruler to draw 1 1/8 inch strips on the back of a piece of scrapbook paper. You wouldn't necessarily have to measure.


2. Cut out the strips and pile them all up together.


3. Cut them into shorter strips. Mine were about 3 1/2 inches long. It doesn't matter if they're not exactly straight because the next step is to round them out. I did the rounding about 4-5 at a time and just trimmed the ends.
4. I wrote on the backs of mine since the front pattern was a little "busy" but if your paper is plainer, you could write on the front. For some, I looked up inspirational quotes on the computer. I also used some scripture verses. I wrote some notes of my own, and I also had the kids tell me things to write to Daddy, like, "I like going on bike rides with, Daddy." - Firecracker or "Daddy, Purple!" - Boy (purple is his favorite color). Sweat Pea even chewed on one for him. Firecracker also drew some pictures on a couple of them for him.


5. Now for the box... I took our band-aid box and put the bandaids in a ziploc baggie. I decided it would be easier to turn the box inside out, rather than cover up the box with some other paper. Then I pulled the box apart along the seam, so that I still had the tab to make it easier to put back together.


6. I did the decorating of the box before putting it back together. Since my bandaids were color coded depending on where the message came from, I made a key on the back...but that's not necessary. Other than that, I used some colored sharpies and ballpoint pen for my decorations.


7. Put the box back together, inside out. I used mailing tape because I don't have any fancy craft glue or anything. I kept the tab on the outside because the side of the box didn't look very pretty where the tab had been originally. I also taped the inside of the box for added strength.


8. Finish folding in the top and bottom...


9. Put your bandaids in...and you're done!

"Braided" Paper Organizer Tutorial

As long as you have some manila folders around, you shouldn't have to go out and buy anything for this.

As seen in the pics in the last post, our desk was in sore need of being cleaned off and organized. When I finally did it, I realized just how long it had been since I'd gone through and thoroughly cleaned off the whole thing. I've had these paper organizers on the desk that tend to eat papers. I put papers in them and they get forgotten about for a year...or more...seriously. Out of sight, out of mind definitely applies for me and paper work. Since we're getting ready to move in a couple months, there's a lot of paperwork we're working on with applying for jobs and things. Therefore, it's important to keep them organized and the process moving. I was trying to come up with a way that I could keep them visible, organized, and not all over the desk...because all over the desk quickly becomes disorganized and not visible because they get covered with stuff. Plus they don't make desks big enough for all the piles I would need to make...and if they did it wouldn't fit into our apartment, nor would we be able to afford it.

So here's what I came up with. It's not exactly braided, but I thought it kind of looked like it and when Hubby saw me working on it, it said it looked like a braid...so here it is after trying a few things:

Materials: Manila folders, stapler and staples, mailing tape, regular tape, scissors or other way of cutting, (ruler or straight edge optional)

1. I started by using my quilting ruler to make a straight line. It's not totally necessary that it be straight. In fact, I was thinking it might be cool to have kind of wavy lines, but I went simple for my first one.


2. Cut just the top along the line you drew. (I realized after the first few folders, that it really would have been better to cut the back rather than the front, so those lines along the left side wouldn't show...but it's not a big deal and I didn't want to start over.) After you cut, it should look like this if you open it up. Also, cut off the tab that would have the label.
3. Close it again, and staple the bottom about 1 1/2-2 inches up from the bottom. Then you'll want to cover the fronts of the staples with scotch tape, so that it's easier for the papers in the next compartment to slide over them.
4. Do the same thing to another folder, but make sure it's facing the opposite direction. Staple this folder an inch or so from the bottom, like you did with the last one. Cover the staples with scotch tape.


5. Line up folder #2, so that the back of the folder goes behind the first one, and the front flap goes over the first one. You'll want to make sure that it's off-set by about 1/2 an inch or so. If it's pushed all the way up next to the first one, the slots for the papers are too tight and the papers won't slide in them well.


6. Once you have them placed where you want them, carefully turn these two folders over so that they don't move. Tape it at the top and sides with mailing tape.


7. Repeat these steps for adding more folders to your "braid," although you won't need to offset the folders each time...just at the beginning. At each folder, you'll want to make sure to staple the bottom and put tape over it.


8. For the last pocket, you'll use two folders instead of one folder per pocket like it's been so far. The first of these folders you'll do going the same direction, as the previous pocket as shown here.


9. Staple this one at the bottom too, but don't tape it on the back until you've added another one to the other side and you can see how they're going to meet. Most of this folder will not be visible, because it will be covered by the final one.


10. Cut one last folder for the other side. Adust these last two folders, so that they both end at the same place. I trimmed the back folder just a bit, so they would line up evenly. You can see in the picture that the second to last folder added just shows a little bit. Once you have things lined up where you want them, you can tape up the back and tape up where they meet on the front and tape up the bottom if you want, although taping the bottom is not necessary.
11. When you're finished you have something that looks like this:
12. And with papers in it, it looks like this:

I just have this standing on it's own, leaning against the cabinet, since I didn't want to put any nails or tacks into the side of the cabinet. The attractive Costa Rican mail sorter my sister gave me as a gift if doing a nice job of keeping it from slipping on the desk or falling between the desk and cabinet. There are quite a few ways you could attach this to a door or fridge. If this set-up doesn't work long term, my original plan was to attach it to a couple of ribbons going over the top of the cabinet and secured out of sight.

There are quite a few options for making this cuter, but I had all this stuff on hand. If I end up loving this long term, then it would be worth either going and buying colored file folders or covering with scrapbook paper and making it look all cutsie.