Archive: Thomas the Tank Engine Costume

Fumbling for a Halloween costume idea? You can easily make a Thomas the Tank Engine costume.

Last year, my little guy wanted to be Thomas, but wanted to wear real clothes. (Hint: Look for a post of this years bizarre costume request in the next week or so...) Anyway, I had to figure out how to make this happen. Always up for a challenge, I went to Pinterest for inspiration.

A lot of parents built a Thomas out of cardboard and while those costumes were fantastic, they still were not clothes.

I went to Walmart and found a blue hoodie and gray sweatpants. Next, I hit the craft aisle and bought felt and puffy paint. 

I lined the jacket with red puffy paint. Next, I cut out circles to make a train look for the legs. I cut a number 1 and lined the inside with yellow puffy paint. I tacked all the felt items onto the outfit and was able to remove the train look from the pants so he could continue to wear the pants after Halloween. 

Here is the front of the costume:

And here is the back:

To complete the costume, my son wore a white winter hat and red mittens. Looking back, I wish I would have designed the legs a little better, but I was pretty pleased with the results! 

Project Sixteen: Pumpkin Fruit Cups

This was one of the easiest projects ever! My son's daycare has their Halloween party coming up and I signed up for fruit. One could say, "Fruit? How can I be creative with fruit?" But I found a way!

I purchased a 12 pack of orange fruit cups from Target. The only other supply I needed was a black sharpie. About 5 minutes later I had pumpkins!

Voila! I have a healthy and fun snack. My little guy LOVED watching me draw jack-o-lantern faces on the snack cups. Have fun creating your own pumpkin fruit cups! 

Project Fifteen: Banner

When my girls were younger, I made them name banners for their birthdays. My oldest has a "monster" themed banner and my middle has an "Annie" themed banner (as in, the sun will come out). They hang in their bedrooms to this day and turned out super cute. When I made them, the whole name banner thing was still a pretty new idea. Now, if you search on Etsy, you can get banners in all shapes, sizes and colors!

My sister-in-law and brother recently came to stay and saw the banner in my middle's room. This sparked my sister-in-law to ask me to make a name banner for my nephew's room. I was really excited about making a cute banner in a baseball theme, until I realized how nerve-wracking it is to make something for someone else!

I pondered and pondered... I even went looking on Etsy for ideas to "borrow." I finally decided I was creative enough to walk confidently into Micheal's and begin to shop.

I wanted to make the background into triangles to give the pennant look and feel. I downloaded a cute, sporty font (courtesy of dafont.com) and printed the letters. (I do not own a Cricut, as I am truly not crafty.) I also wanted to have a cute image for the beginning and end of the banner. I found a vintage looking baseball image from Google Images and printed it too.

To make the pennants, I bought single sheets of scrapbook paper. I picked rough paper bag looking paper to go along with my vintage theme.

All that was left was what to hang the banner on and ribbons. I picked out a blue and white polka dot ribbon and a red ribbon. For the line, I purchased jute (hint: this is used in quite a few upcoming projects). I was ready to start creating!

Below, you can see my supplies:
- Glue, had in my cabinet
- Hole punch, had in my cabinet
- Ribbons, purchased from Micheal's
- Paper, purchased from Micheal's
- Jute, purchased from Micheal's

 

While I was printing my letters and baseballs, I printed a triangle to serve as the template for my pennants. I cut out all the triangles, letters and baseballs. Next, I glued the letters and baseballs onto the pennants.

The next step is the dreaded hole punch... where all the work you have done can be ruined with one wrong move. Luckily, the holes lined up perfect and I could cut out both holes in one quick action. Phew! It was nice not to sweat so much!

Once the holes were punched, I strung the pennants through the jute. The last step was cutting and tying the ribbon on either side of each pennant. Unfortunately, I could not get a big shot of the whole banner, but here is a little teaser below.

This project was super easy. And while it wasn't necessarily inspired by something on Pinterest, I felt it was an important project to highlight. The banner looked super cute, was super cheap and it did not require any sophisticated and expensive equipment. Go on, wannabe crafters, and make your own banner!

Project Fourteen: Batman Cape

Holy cape, Batman! My little guy is all about Batman, so much so he spent last weekend wearing a Batman mask everywhere we went. I had wanted to get him a Batman cape, but I didn't want to have to buy a full Halloween costume or order one online. I figured if I waited and was patient, the cape would just happen. And, it did!

I had searched Pinterest for ideas on how to make a cape. And there are lots out there - and some of these ladies are CRAFTY. Much craftier than I am and ever claim to be... So I went out on a limb and came up with my own Pinterest project. 

Remember my Dollar Tree trip? Well, they had black, satin capes for $1. Woohoo! All I needed was a plan for adding the bat symbol. I went to Micheal's and purchased black and yellow felt. I also bought a new pair of scissors. My scissors are old and really do not cut fabric as good as they should. Batman should not have a cape with jagged edges!

While I am artistic, I am not practiced at drawing the bat symbol. I found a picture using Google Images and pasted the symbol into a Microsoft Word document. I made the image a little bigger and was ready to print. Since it is just a template, there was no need to print in color or use good paper.

Here are all of my supplies:

I worked on this after the kids went to bed, so yes, that is my blanket in the background. No need to be uncomfortable when creating a cape! 

To start, I traced the oval on the yellow felt and cut out the shape. Next, I had to cut the bat out of the template. Here is where I failed to plan... I had a black ink pen and black felt. Not my brightest moment. Since it was late and I was not feeling like walking back downstairs and thinking of a new idea, I traced the black pen on the black felt. Luckily, it left a sheen, enough so I could carefully cut out the bat.

I am very adverse to using my sewing machine. Yes, I do own one. It probably has 8 years worth of dust layered on the case, but I really hate to sew. I cheat and use glue or stitch witchery whenever I can. Unfortunately, I was going to have to sew for this project. Instead of pulling out the sewing machine (which would take me an hour to remember how to even set it up), I just hand stitched. I first stitched the bat onto the yellow felt. I used black thread of course (and my needle and thread set came from the dollar store YEARS ago - still going strong!). Next, I pinned the yellow oval with the bat now attached to the cape to keep it in place. I stitched the bat symbol to the cape using yellow thread. 

The whole project took about an hour and cost $2. Take a look below... Sometimes I even impress myself!

Archive: Bathroom Remodel

This project was not mine. Well, it happened in my house, but I had very little to do with the project itself. You see, it started as just "updating" a few builder grade items - the mirror and the lighting. The mirror was one long big mirror and the lights I affectionately refer to as "circus lights." They were the round ones all on one long track. Blech!

So we bought mirrors at Big Lots. Yes, you read that correctly - Big Lots! They are beautiful and big and different than what you would find at a hardware store. The lights we purchased at Home Depot. Did I mention this project started about 3 years ago? I didn't? Well, that is important to the story too.

My hubby hung the lights and mirrors and that's where the project stopped. He didn't paint the walls, which were riddled with patch spots. He didn't seem to have any plans on finishing the project. I would nag him here and there. He would tell me that he had more to do and then he would paint. That process took about 2 years.

Fast forward to February of 2014. I went to Dallas for work and had a really late flight. I got home at about 2 a.m. and went into the bathroom to take out my contacts. There were tools everywhere. The light fixtures were hanging off the walls and the mirrors were taken down. I guess having the wife out of the house is enough to light a fire? Who knows! But what I do know is for 7 months my bathroom was torn up. Unrecognizable. Demolished. Not usable. This meant all 5 of us shared the kids bathroom. And I use the word "shared" loosely.

As my son's 3rd birthday was approaching, which meant a party at our house and family staying, I tried to scream and yell politely encourage my husband to finish the project. He did and the outcome is beautiful. Here is the inspiration I had from Pinterest:

And here are his finished pictures. The supplies came from Home Depot. He made the shelf for me. The picture frames were from Target, but were cream. He painted them to match the shelf.

Personally (and I might be biased), I think his turned out soooo much better than my Pinterest inspiration! What do you think?

Please enjoy pictures of the entire project below:

Project Thirteen: Dollar Store Fall Table Decor

I love fall. I really do. I love the cool crisp air. I love all the activities that fall brings... pumpkin patch, hay rides and haunted houses. I also love to decorate for fall and Halloween. So I decided to go through Pinterest for some fun and easy ideas.

I found a post (that I'm certain I have pinned about three times) about finding fall decor at the dollar store. Here's the picture that inspired me:  

Thanks to Laurie at Passionate Penny Pincher. Use this link to see Laurie's original post: http://passionatepennypincher.com/2012/08/the-friday-fluff-up-decorating-on-a-dollar-at-the-dollar-tree/

Well, I just had to go to the dollar store, specifically Dollar Tree. I went on my lunch break and immediately had to grab a cart! I will definitely have a few new posts from my 30 minute trip.

I really wanted to make the pretty fall table decor, similar to Laurie's picture. I gathered the following supplies (all $1 each):

- 3 small grapevine wreaths (2 of the wreaths were bigger - accident, not on purpose)

- 3 candles (2 orange and 1 red)

- 3 candle holders

- 1 package of yellow and red leaves (loose leaves... Laurie used garland)

Doesn't look like much, right? Just wait! 

To get started, I removed all the tags, stickers and wrapping. I plugged in my hot glue gun and grabbed the first wreath. I decided to glue a red and a yellow leaf together. Here's the first one:

I tried to make the second wreath look just like the first:

The smaller wreath I decided to do a bit differently. I wanted to put it in between the other two wreaths and thought it should stand out. I placed the leaves all the way around, in a pattern of 3 yellow and 1 red. 

And here is the final table decor: 

I am very happy with how it turned out. It looks pretty classy on my table. It took me about 20 minutes to complete this project. If you are craftier or willing to spend more than $10 or head to a craft store, you could really make this sizzle. But I like the simplicity... And I have leaves leftover for another project! 

Project Twelve: Handprint Birds

Since my Dad received a handmade gift for Christmas, of course my Mom would need one too! For her picture, I found the image below. I have tried to find who this image belongs to, but I cannot. I've actually held off on this post because I wanted to give credit to the rightful owner!

As always, my paint supplies were on hand. I used a canvas I had stored in my cupboard. I had the paint too. So I sat down at my dining room table and began to paint. Here is my tree branch. This took no time at all. The longest part was waiting for the background paint to dry so I could paint the branch.

You would think I have learned that my son does not cooperate on these projects, but I guess I'm a dreamer. You can see in the finished product below the paint was not thick enough on his hands. And hand prints aren't exactly something you can try for again or make an exact match over the top.

Once the hand prints dried, I painted on the eyes, beak and feet. I think the birds turned out very cute! My Mom also loved her painting. I think my parents enjoyed how different each of their art was - one hands, the other feet. I highly recommend this project. Very easy to do!

Project Eleven: Pretzel Snacks

Yummy, yummy, yummy! I love these treats, but have never made them. A lovely lady I worked with used to bring them in around the holidays, so this is in honor of her. Thanks, Jean!

The picture below is from Pinterest. The caption states to bake these for 3-4 minutes at 225°.   

Here are my supplies. For the life of me, I cannot find the pretty, round pretzels like in the picture. I tried, but had to purchase the mini twisty pretzels. They work just fine and taste the same.

The very first step is unwrapping the needed amount of Hershey's® Kisses. Now it might take even longer if you play the "one for me, one for the recipe" game. Next, I laid out all the pretzels on the cookie sheet and sat the Hershey's® Kisses on top. (Please note that I purchased new cookie sheets for my husband for Christmas. Yes, I realize how awful those look. Hmm... Maybe my next project will be bringing cookie sheets back to life. I certainly have the supplies!)

Here is my finished product! I left the pretzels in for 4 minutes, but ended up putting them back in for longer. I'd say 6-8 minutes was more accurate. Once you take the cookie sheet out of the oven, simply "smoosh" the M&M's® onto the Hershey's® Kisses. These will take about 15 minutes to cool but I do not recommend leaving them on the cookie sheet. The chocolate starts to melt under the pretzel and it becomes a bit messy.

Project Ten: Box Of Candy Money Gift

We've all seen this picture, right? How adorable! Take a box of chocolates as a unique way to give money for any occasion!

When my husband asked what exactly I was doing as I tried to explain the idea, I showed him the picture below. His comment was, "Really?" And not a nice really. A "my wife has nine heads" really.

Now, I thought, "How rude to put down my wonderful idea!" This image has been repinned a million times, so it MUST be a good idea. I'm here to tell you, this project is a total fail. A stinker. A bomb. An awful idea that ruins a child's Christmas.

I bought the box of candy from the dollar store, because why spend too much on candy you're probably going to throw away. Let me just say, the only perk of the project would have been me actually eating the chocolate! I asked my husband to get the money for me, asking for various denominations so it could be all cute like the box in the picture. That didn't happen. I also thought the box of candy would have the cute little wrappers like the picture. That didn't happen. And the money sits so nicely in the picture. That, also, didn't happen. And the procrastinator in me waited until Christmas Eve to work on this little project. That probably didn't help.

Here is my finished product. I had to tape down the money into the spaces. It looked awful. It was for my 8 year old niece, who looked highly disappointed when she received a small box of candy. When I prompted her to open it, she still looked disappointed. It was the second time in two days I received the "you have nine heads" look. She would have been far more excited to open a $20 bill in a card. I've seen it happen. Let me state again - Epic. Fail. 

Project Nine: Footprint Backhoe

The holiday season was AWESOME for completing Pinterest projects. I have even more still pinned that I wanted to work on but ran out of time. Do not be surprised if I have a "Pinterest Christmas in July" segment!

This project was inspired by the lovely footprint John Deere tractor below. I would love to give credit to the artist, but when I went to click on the link I received a warning. Bravo to whomever on their cute artwork! I enjoyed using it as my inspiration!

It looks like they used a Cricut® or a Silhouette Cameo® to create nice accent pieces. Since I do not own either, I hand painted the whole picture. My dad owns an excavating business, so a backhoe seemed like an appropriate trade for the John Deere. I wanted to make sure the foot was still seen and of all the heavy equipment options, I think I made the right choice.

I luckily had the supplies on hand. I did purchase the frame from Menard's (of all places). I think it was $12 and maybe on sale. The paper is just heavy stock paper. I purchased a huge package of it for another project a few years ago. The paint is cheapy acrylic craft paint. This stuff is amazing and costs so much less than nice acrylic paint!

I used the matting that came with the frame to trace out the space to work in. You can see the pencil marks on the paper below. It was nice to know my boundaries. I highly recommend this step! 

Of course, actually making the footprint was a chore. My one year old never wants to cooperate with Mommy's artistic vision. This went much better than the Christmas Tree painting, but it still took my husband holding on to him to make this work.

Here is the finished product! I finished the edges in black to make it "pop" more. Waiting for the yellow paint to dry so I could finish the edging and tires was the longest part of the project. It seriously took no time at all to complete. The final piece was writing my son's name and the year. I did cheat and use an Ultra Fine Point Sharpie®... Writing in paint is not a strong suit of mine. 

I think my Dad was very pleased to open this homemade gift. And since it was from his grandson, he loved it even more! Big Christmas win, huge! 

Project Eight: Reindeer Gift Bags

I wanted to make ornaments for my son's class this year. If you're wondering where the post is about the ornaments I made off a Pinterest idea, you will not find it here. I tried. I looked. But none of the Pinterest ideas seemed appropriate for 1 year olds to remember their daycare years. But, they needed a cute way to be wrapped. Enter reindeer gift bags!

Here is my model. This is from a site called Room Moms 101: Where you can find ideas for all your school needs. P.S. They did a much better job than me!

Here are my supplies. I had the lunch bags and clothespins on hand. If you read my last post, the wiggly eyes and jingle bells were borrowed from my Reinbeers project. I did not have enough pipe cleaners left for the antlers on the bag, but I felt the clothespins would keep the bags closed better.

I took a brown marker from the kids markers and put some lines. I was trying to be artistic, but I think maybe they just look lazily completed. Keep in mind, these are for 1 year olds.

If you're wondering what is going inside these lovely bags, here it is. Their treat is a package of fruit snacks. And here is my ornament. I ordered these from Oriental Trading Company. You could make a Santa, Snowman or Reindeer. I loved these because there was plenty of room for the kiddos names. They all received a matching rubber ducky, also from Oriental Trading Company.

Here is my first completed bag! They are much simpler than my model, but I wasn't willing to put a lot of time or money into this project. Especially since I know the bags will be thrown away. Oh, and they took very little time to make. A total bonus in my full-day-craftathon!

Here are all the bags. I ran out of supplies for the teacher bags, so I used my red jingle bells and made them some holly. They also got cupcakes, so I doubt they were concerned about not receiving a reindeer bag.

Project Seven: Reinbeer

Christmas is next week! Knowing the clock was ticking away, I made this weekend a very crafty one. On Sunday, I tackled quite a few projects. One of those projects was my "Reinbeers."

My family, like many families, does a name exchange for Christmas. I love exchanging names, but I have a love/hate relationship with the price - $10! That's all we can spend on the gift. It is really hard to spend $10 and not give a really bad gift. Thanks to Pinterest, I decided to give the gift of alcohol. Who doesn't need alcohol during the holidays?

Below is the picture I used as my inspiration. If you type in "Reinbeers" as a search on Pinterest, there are many to choose from!

The supplies for this project are very simple. I purchased my brown pipe cleaners, wiggly eyes and jingle bells at Wal-Mart. I had a very tired toddler with me, so I really do not know how much this project cost. I do remember the pipe cleaners costing .77 cents because my husband laughed about them being cheaper than at the dollar store. (Long story short... I checked out the dollar stores and found items were not cheaper and I had little luck. Very rotten experience.) I did re-purpose the eyes and jingle bells for my next post, so I got two projects out of my supplies!

I simply tied the pipe cleaner around the beer bottle and cut the antlers to match in length. I took a few pipe cleaners and cut them to the same size to complete the points of the antlers. Again, I tied those on. This took no time at all!

And here is my finished product! I hot glued the eyes and bells on for noses. I used all red noses for the bottles so it looked consistent. I think the jingle bells add an extra layer of fun to the project. I think this took me maybe 15 minutes and that was with lots of help from my little guy. This idea would be perfect for a white elephant exchange!

Archives: Button Christmas Tree

Before I started this blog, forcing myself to be a Pinterest Pinup, I tried a few Pinterest projects here and there. This project is from last Christmas. I thought it would be a fun, easy project to do with the kids. Even though it is a year later, I still remember this project vividly and here is why...

First, finding buttons was not an easy task. I went to Michael's and spent a lot on small bags of buttons. I bought about 5 bags and about 3 packs of stick pins. I purchased the three Styrofoam trees and headed home for some crafty fun with my daughters.

I did not plan out the best way to attack the Styrofoam with buttons. We started placing buttons here and there, willy nilly. This was NOT the best approach. I can tell you looking back, we should have started at the bottom with the big buttons and then worked our way up. Mistake number one.

Mistake number two was thinking a 5 and 7 year old would have the patience to pin all these buttons onto the trees. While this seems very simple - take one button, place pin in button, push into Styrofoam, repeat - it was very daunting. The large tree was mine and it took 3 nights to complete. I worked on the tree for a few hours each night. And then I got to finish the two little trees because my daughters lost interest.

Mistake number three was thinking the supplies I purchased were enough. I grossly underestimated the amount of buttons and pins. I had to make about 4 more trips to Michael's and had to drive around to multiple store locations because I bought out all the pins and buttons available at my main store. Let me reiterate how much this project cost - A LOT.

Now, had I known how all of this information ahead of time, I would have purchased bulk buttons from the internet. This Christmas I found Oriental Trading Company sells very large bags at a very reasonable price. I also would have waited to complete such a project with my daughters until they were older.

The upside to this project is my daughters are very pleased and proud of their work. The trees sit on an end table in the living room during the holiday season - a prime spot in the house. They love putting them out and looking at their names on the bottom. And we do receive many compliments on them.

My final thought, if you will... These look adorable and can be much more cost effective, but be prepared to spend much more time than expected completing this craft!

Project Six: Cherry Cheesecake Dip

The night before Thanksgiving, I made three desserts. My Pinterest dessert was a Cherry Cheesecake Dip and was pretty easy to make!

The recipe, by Lisa Lohwasser, is:

1 Box Jello No-Bake Cheesecake mix
1 Container Cool Whip
1 Can Cherry Pie Filling

Mix Jello No-Bake Cheesecake mix with one container of Cool Whip. Chill. Top with a can of cherry pie filling. Serve with graham crackers.

Here are my ingredients:

I poured the cheesecake mix into the bowl first. Since it was powder, it would have probably been better to put the Cool Whip into the bowl first. I tried mixing it by hand which did not work well either. My husband grabbed the mixer and that worked much better.

I put the mix into a pretty serving bowl. A packet of graham cracker crumbs also comes with the mix. I planned on garnishing around the edges of the dip, but poured way too much. I went ahead and poured the packet over the top of the dip and put it into the fridge overnight. I waited until right before dinner to pour the cherries.

While the recipe did not call for the graham cracker crumbs, I think it really made the dip. I served with Scooby Snacks graham cracker sticks. Everyone seemed to really like it. I would give this recipe a two thumbs up. It was easy and tasty!

Project Five: Christmas Tree Painting

Yes, yes. I know. I disappeared for awhile. You are all thinking what a great site this is and the POOF! Gone. But let me explain... We had quite the round of sickness hit our house. On top of feeling under the weather, my camera on my iPhone stopped working. And since I am not a technical genius, I only know how to load images from my phone to this site. The good news is I am back! And tis' the season so there will be lots of projects!

We put our Christmas decorations up over the Thanksgiving weekend. And we have A LOT of decorations. I had one spot in my dining room really needing a picture of sorts. I pinned last year a hand print Christmas tree picture and decided this would be the perfect project!

I always have art supplies on hand, so I did not purchase anything. The canvas I used is from Hobby Lobby and I believe the price tag was about $7 for a pack of two. 

As  you can see below, the paint I use is just craft acrylic paint. This is what I use for all of my paintings. It costs almost nothing and works just as well as the expensive acrylic paint. I have a tendency to waste paint (or let my kids waste the paint), so this is far more economical.

The canvas was a little worn, so i used a mix of cream and brown to make the canvas appear "old". Most of my Christmas decorations have a vintage look and feel, so this was perfect! It did not take long to put a coat of paint on the canvas.

After the canvas was dry, I used my little guys foot to make the trunk of the tree. As you can see below, it isn't the nice, neat, crisp footprint seen on Pinterest. When working with a 15 month old, you take what you can get. I thought he would love Mommy painting his foot, but he was not happy! It took my husband to help hold him and place the footprint.

I learned a very good lesson during the footprint step of this process. I actually painted my son's foot. Genius, right? Wrong. The paint dried very quickly. For the branches, I pour green paint on a paper plate and had my daughter's dip their hands in the paint. They also practiced making a hand print on the newspaper before going straight for the canvas. As you can see, this worked much better. Having older children also helped!

We tried again using my son's hand for the star on top of the tree. As you can see, it went just as well as the base of the tree. The ornaments are thumb and finger prints. My husband and I helped make a few ornaments. I dated the lower right corner and we were done! The picture hangs in the dining room and was the perfect addition! Very little prep or mess to this project. I highly recommend creating a Christmas Tree paining with your kiddos!