Everyday Live Happy

We have a tradition at our house that we love. We have done it off and on for many years, but we have done it every year for the past 10 years. We make a Halloween house. Think gingerbread house for Halloween. We make it out of graham crackers so we can make the tallest, spookiest looking house. We have got together with friends many of the years, but not this year. Kids, schedules, work and holidays don't make it easy to have a day that works for many people. So my daughter and I put together our house for this year. Like I said graham crackers and hot glue until you get something that you like. We have made these for years so we kind of have an idea of what to do to so it turns out according to our idea. Most years our houses are pretty similar, but never exactly the same. Since it's a Halloween house you want it to look run down and haunted. So perfect lines and perfectly broken crackers are not needed. In fact the more mismatched it looks the better. Then com...

My daughter disappeared into her room today. Awhile later I peeked into see what she was up to. She hadn't made her bed or picked up her clothes, but she had been busy. She was making an owl. A stuffed animal. For her birthday she got a big stack of felt. I think that she was more excited about that gift than any others that she received! Since I didn't see what she was up to until she was at this point I don't have step by step pictures, but I'll do my best to explain what she did. She hand drew a pattern for her owl. It's basically like a circle or a squashy oval. She adds the ears where the circle would curve. She just goes straight up and then comes back down. You can't make them too small since you need room to sew around them. Then she makes a straight line from one ear to the other for the top. You can curve it a little if you want. She also makes the bottom of the pattern more of a straight line too. After she cut out her pattern for the owl body,...

My daughter loves to make creations out of old socks. A while ago I actually bought her some cute stripped ankle socks that she could use to craft with. (Her older sister did snag a pair or two to actually wear!) The other day we were searching Pinterest for a fun craft idea to do together when we came across a cute octopus stuffed animal. There were no instructions just a link to an Etsy shop. (They octopus was no longer available.) My daughter immediately thought of that stash of socks and it was decided. Obviously, longer socks would have been better. If we make these again I will be buying cute knee socks! Since there were no instructions and we were using ankle sized socks, we had to come up with our own way of making these cute little sea creatures. We started by using Poly-Fil to make the head. It worked out best when we kind of shaped it into a ball before putting it into the toe of the sock. We filled them until we got the desired shape and firmness. We used a ...

I probably should have blogged about this before  the 4th of July, but I guess late is better than never. I love to decorate for holidays. I have boxes of decorations for Christmas, Halloween, Valentines and more. My 4th of July box is a little different than the rest. For some reason almost all of my July 4th decorations are hand made. Mostly by me. I'm not sure why that is. I do know that I am kind of picky about my decorations. I won't buy a decoration just because it corresponds with a holiday. I actually will pass by more decorations than I will stop and look at and I buy even fewer. I really love the decorations that I have. Sometimes I will switch out old decorations that I don't love anymore, but I develop an attachment to the handmade and memory decorations. Those I never change. Maybe that is why I love my July 4th decor. One of my favorites is this red, white and blue swag. I got the idea from pinterest, but then changed it some to use items that I already had ...

I used to be a really big scrapbooker a few years ago. It seemed like everyone scrapbooked for a while. There were entire store devoted to only scrapbooking supplies, magazines with ideas and even convention type expos where you could come to shop, take classes and scrapbook all day and night. Now a days you don't hear much about it. But I would guess that those of us who did it still have a huge stash of supplies. I know that I still have more stuff than I could probably ever use. My daughter wants to scrapbook. I told you that we have tons of pictures at our house already printed off. She wants to use the pictures of her, her pets and her activities to make a book about her. I think that it is a great idea. It uses up pictures but it also means that her pages will be about what she finds important in her life right now. We will get a book from her perspective. That will give us all a glimpse at who she really is. So we pulled out a lot of my supplies and she excitedly went to...

I don't know why but making slime is a huge trend right now. They say that in some stores they can't keep white Elmer's Glue in stock. I guess that makes sense since white glue is in almost every slime recipe. There are so many recipes! Literally hundreds of different ones. Search Pinterest if you don't believe me. There are recipes for glitter slime, fluffy slime, smelly slime, edible slime and so many more. My daughter got a recipe at school that she has been dying to try, so we made it. It was a recipe for fluffy slime. She and my nephew made it all by themselves. This recipe had both shaving cream and foaming soap in it to add the fuffiness. The only foaming soap we had was an antibacterial kind. So I guess we made fluffy antibacterial slime.  Here's the recipe that we used: Fluffy Slime 1 cup of water 1 tsp. Borax 1/2 cup glue 1/2 cup shaving cream 1/2 cup foaming soap 2 squirts body lotion 2 Tbsp cornstarch 8+ drops food colorin...

The other day I talked about Pinterest and how people have different talents and likes. Today is Make it Monday and my 11 year old daughter showed off her talent by doing something that she enjoys - creating. Unlike me who can copy others creations, she comes up with her own. One of her favorite things to make crafts out of is fabric. We have an entire tote filled with patterned fabric, solid colored fabric, lots of colors of tulle and more. Most of it is left overs from costumes that I have made. (My sewing machine and I have a love/hate relationship. So costumes are pretty much all I use it for.)  She got into the fabric and made it into something that is purely her own design. Unicorn Pillows! She made both of these pillows with things that she found here at home. She started with some chevron material and made both of the pillows. She then used a red thin felt type material and free handed a unicorn head on the opposite side of the fabric which she doubled over to cut out...