Toddler Friendly Gift Tags

I don't know about ya'll, but to me it seems those who want to be most involved in all the excitement of holidays are also the ones who can't read yet.  Our toddlers.  They want to be part of giving out the gifts and watching people open them, but when you can't read the gift tags, it makes it a little difficult. Yes, you could have an adult crouched down at the tree on Christmas morning handing out gifts and telling them who to deliver them to, OR you could take this idea and run with it.

Toddler Friendly Gift Tags

I love it! This is the second time I've done it, but the first time I was much more fru-fru about it.  I found cute tie-on tags and printed everyone's pictures out and glued them to the tags so they looked framed.  This Christmas was total chaos and the cuteness didn't happen.  

But guess what.  The toddlers still knew who to give the gift to without the fru fru tags.  Yup.  So fire up the computer, pull up some photos, print, cut and tape to the gifts (I printed on plain copy paper).  Now ALL your family can get involved in the gift-giving excitement while you prop your feet up in the recliner. :) 

Enjoy!

{Tutorial} Buttons & Burlap Heart

My weekend project to help decorate my house for Valentine's Day! Very simple, quick, and cute idea for those of you with tons of buttons lying about the house.  Let's dive in and I'll tell you how to make your own!

What you need:

--Burlap Canvas - I purchase a two-pack of flat 8" x 8" burlap canvas board at Hobby Lobby for $5. This however, means it can't be hung unless you glue a ribbon hanger on it, so I'm using an easel.
--Paper to draw a template heart
--Scissors to cut out the template
--Pencil to trace on the canvas
--Buttons. I used tons of red and pink together. Old and new, too.
--Hot glue (I used high temp, but it did singe my fingers a bit!)

Since my canvas was 8x8, I used a sheet of 8x8 paper, folded in half, to make a heart template that would fit well in the middle of my canvas.  Cut it out, make sure you love it and then trace it in the center of your canvas very lightly.  I just eye-balled the center but you can get OCD and measure if you need to do so.

Thankfully, I had sorted out pink and red buttons from my piles, but Sweet Niece #2 helped mix them all back up... but get your buttons together and get an idea of what works by laying it out first on your canvas.  I promptly messed up my layout as I was gluing, but it still came out ok.   Then, grab those buttons with the tabs on the back because they fit in all the bare cracks well and start gluing a second layer.  If you see burlap peeking through, glue more buttons on top.

It really takes NO time at all to finish this! And hot glue dries so fast, it's set and ready to decorate your house as soon as you are done! I watched TV and glued like nuts and finished in about an hour. Not bad for such a cute project.

Hope you enjoy! If you try it, send me a pic, I'd love to see! B_covington (at) yahoo.com  Thanks ya'll!

The 2014 Fru Fru Pumpkin Reveal!

Each year, I make a "Fru Fru" pumpkin for the office and when it's time to send it on its way, I undecorate it and toss it into the back of the flower bed.  Finally, it took root and came back this year! So exciting!

Let me catch you up on the progression of this pumpkin - the plant (which for the longest time we had NO idea what was growing in this flower bed), then the pumpkin started showing up but was dangling outside of the flower bed!! We moved it into the bed and it really ripened quickly.  The bottom two pics were taken with 24 hours of each other. 

So back to the fru fru pumpkin - I hit Hobby Lobby last night (man, I love that store) and picked out what I wanted to do this year. And I'm in love with it. It cost considerably more than the dollar store finds I usually use in making these pumpkins, but it was SO WORTH IT when you see the difference. (By the way, I did a post earlier all about making Fru Fru Pumpkins, feel free to check it out for other ideas!)

TA DA!! I love the chevron and the blue/orange/burgundy combo.  The rustic colors and burlap just bring the look up a few notches compared to the dollar store glitter ribbon I've been using.  

This is last year's pumpkin with all items coming from the dollar store.  So this in total (not including the hot glue and stick pins) cost about $8-9 and will last several months. It will carry you through the entire fall season.  

I also did one a little tamer last year, still using dollar store items.  I bought a dish towel at the dollar store and ripped it into strips, fraying the edges for a more rustic look.  The fabric was too floppy on its on, so I used wide packaging tape along the back of one strip to form the bow shape.  I really liked this one, too. 

For today, I'm enjoying our new pumpkin in blue.  :)  AND I have enough decor left over to do another one for my house and I can't WAIT! We even have another pumpkin in our flower bed, so I may get two pumpkins for free! :)  If so, I'll show you how that one turns out, too. 

Ya'll have a lovely hump day! Thanks for joining me in my crazy fru fru pumpkin excitement!

Bunny Cake!

I saw this cake on Facebook and how to make it - someone had taken a photo from an old cookbook and posted it.  It looked pretty easy, so I decided to try it out.  I would think any cake would work - from scratch or a box - as long as you can get two round cakes from it.

My whiskers are a bit crazy, oops.  For the dark details I melted chocolate and put it in a plastic baggie and snipped the end.  Mom happened to have some blue gel icing in the cabinet for the blue details, so that was nice.  And I dyed coconut pink for the ears.  I trimmed the ends of my ears to be a bit more flush against the rabbit's head, but I'm not sure I would do that again.

There is the cutting pattern for you.  I wouldn't have seen it myself until I saw the cutting pattern, but it's so easy! So cute, too, and the kids loved it! What an Easter treat!  Or any kind of party that would need a rabbit - bunny themed birthday party? I'm sure you can think of other ways to use this cute and simple cake!  Feel free to share your examples with me-I'd love to see your bunny cakes! :)

Felt Friends

I started going through some older photos and found a few that I never posted here! I wanted to share with you my FELT FRIENDS! You know I stareted by making felt hearts from a Pintrest pin I found (see the original post here). Actually, I started by making felt food for my sweet niece #2 - I'll find some photos I took of those items soon...

 Anyway, once I started with felt, I fell in love.

 After I made hearts, I had a request for clovers for St. Patrick's Day.

Then I made tons of hearts not in a Valentine's Day theme.  I'm still holding these, trying to think of a nonprofit or something that would like to use them for something?  Any ideas? 

I did some with stars, thinking boys might like hearts with stars instead of hearts with hearts or buttons? Just a thought, maybe I'm crazy. 

Then... I discovered FELT FRIENDS. I wish I could find the website where I printed out the best patterns for animals.  Don't you know, I have searched and searched with absolutely no luck. But anyway, here are several I made for my niece and for a friend of the family. 

It started with a rabbit for Easter.  Goodness gracious, everyone wanted a rabbit.  And rabbit ears aren't the easiest... but it's so darn cute.  It had to have a cow to play with as friends.  Then someone wanted a PIG.  And the pig was C.U.T.E.

So then I just made a farm of felt friends.  Cats, dogs, sheep, cows, pigs... fun fun fun.  Some I added the loops to and others I just left as random heads.  Which do you like better?  Loops or no loops?  I've thought about making sets of these as baby gifts.  There is nothing to harm them as they have no buttons.  Everything is handstitched.

You know that once the gates open up, someone else asks for a random something... which was an ADPi lion.  So, I made up an ADPi lion. 

And a penguin.  Because every child needs a felt penguin to play with, right? 

So there are my felt friends!! Feel free to copy any of the ideas - some were patterns and some I made up on my own (lion, penguin). And give me feedback, a good gift or no? Better for one-year-olds vs. babies? I don't have kids, to help me out! :)

Autumn is {Finally!} in the Air!

Ya'll, it's finally cooling off in the South, and we are getting a touch of fall color in the trees. I've been waiting to switch the AC over to heat and - although I haven't done it yet - I'm thinking surely before THANKSGIVING I'll be able to make the great switch (right?!).

So here is the latest in pumpkins on the hill.  The hill consists of three houses - mine, my sister and her family, and my parents.  Katie has made three pumpkins for gifts so far.  I've decorated the office with an extremely tacky pumpkin and this one is for the house.

I know I have other "tutorials" on how to make fru fru pumpkins on this site, but let me tell you about this one.  I didn't see burlap ribbon in the dollar store so I had to improvise.

Here is how it goes:

• Buy a cute pumpkin
• Visit the dollar store for cheap leaves. Either the pack of leaves or pictured are leaves from two "bunches" so I could get green, red, orange and yellow
• Grab some hot glue sticks or straight pins
• Find a cute kitchen towel 
• Grab some packaging tape

To make my own ribbon I shredded a kitchen towel! Simply snip one end (I wanted shorter strips) and pull really hard. It makes the great frayed ends.  For one strip I put packaging tape down the length to make it stiffer.  This was used for the bow. 

I chose to hot glue everything for this pumpkin. Just a few dots to hold everything in place.  And I tried not to over do it with the leaves, which is usually my downfall.  I have a few more decorative items I can use on it tonight, but I'm liking it ok as is. 

I love these - great inexpensive centerpieces for Thanksgiving and they last forever (not really forever, but through the holidays, for sure!).  

Ghoulish Custom Order! :)

I love it when you, the customer, comes up with really cool ideas for a scrapbook.  Check out this all Halloween book, where this Mom can keep all the fun costume pics together in one album.  LOVE IT! She requested for the pages to start off kid-like and get progressively scarier as her son aged.  We also added some journal pages to record all the fun from each year.  It turned out so incredibly cute just makes me want to SQUEAL! :)

Visit the Etsy shop to see the single layouts I am now selling or submit a custom order for yourself!  Ya'll come up with the best ideas! :)  Click below!

http://pressedclovers.etsy.com

Special Order Coming Right Up!

I wanted to share this custom order request from a mom in PA.  She does a scrapbook each year for her son from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year, with all the holidays in between.  Love it! Can't you imagine how cool it will be to look back and see how he has changed year to year?

Anyway, she wanted more than one picture per page, which really helped open my eyes to doing pages outside of the one 4x6 picture like I do now.  So it was a great learning time for me, too. Please excuse these HORRIBLE pictures, they were taken with my phone and uploaded for quick approval.  The joys of not having high speed internet out in the country where I live. :)

I just thought it turned out cute and I can see a little boy's smiling face showing up all year long in these pages. :)  Those without mats she can fit two or more photos on if she trims them down.  The layouts with mats can hold a 4x6 and a 2x3.  What are you thoughts?

Watching baby grow through the year...

A lady at my workplace (the full-time job!) had a wee little surprise when she visited her doctor... she's expecting again after 15 years! Can you imagine? What a blessing - a little baby boy to be named Conner.  She's seen my Pressed Clovers books for a while now and I know she's been wanting one, so what better gift the week before she leaves us?

Since Conner will be born in January, I decided to do a calendar book, beginning with his birth in January and moving to all the major holidays:  Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother & Father's Day, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This way, at the end of 2013, she'll have a beautiful book showing how much her precious baby has grown throughout the year.

His birth page - welcome to the world, Baby Conner!

You know he's will be his mama's valentine...

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

I can see him now, dressed in his red, white and blue!

Family festivities with all the trimmings

I do love these books and we've already started one for Macy. :)  Since she was born in June, I made a book-and-a-half to pick up those holidays at the end of 2012 and all of 2013.  Isn't it amazing to see how quickly they grow and change?  With Conner it will be no different.  Can't wait to meet this precious baby boy!

Hippity Hop Hippity Hop, Easter's on the Way.

I'm tickled to share this book with you - a special order from Pressed Clovers to include all the pictures with the Easter Bunny!  Love it! The mat area is larger to accommodate for the 5" x 7" photos.  This really has me in the mood for fun Spring colors! 

Can't you see a precious little boy sitting with the Easter Bunny, with magic just glowing through him eyes? He's so excited to think of the candies that will be waiting, magically delivered by one generous rabbit on Easter morning? I think it's adorable.

I made up a few note cards, too, that will display a wallet-sized photo.  What do you think? I considered offering some of this in the Etsy store, but... someone else in my office said she would prefer them without pictures. So hmm... ya'll give me some feedback. What do you think?

I personally have made similar cards for my nieces birth announcements.  Super adorable. And allowed a note of thanks to be included on the inside. :)  A keepsake. Can you tell I'm all about keepsakes and special treasures? Seeing how quickly this 6-month-old is growing up and changing, I want to cherish every second I can! :)