If You Give A Mouse A Paintbrush...

I worked like a dog to get orders packed and shipped this morning so Madison and I could play this afternoon.   When playtime finally arrived, I started with one project hoping to get finished, only to run out of this or to have to drive someone there... At the end of my day there wasn't one finished project to show for the time, but a ton of fun was had!

The first project was to make three more of these scarecrow/snowman signs.  First the paint was touched up.  Next I reworked the vinyl faces, cut them and got them applied.  The painted noses were glued on and it was dinner time already.

The terrible thing is I wanted to paint my pile of new projects.  I didn't get that far...but I did get my turkey's legs and beak painted when I touched up my snowman noses.  Lol.  Some days I have to celebrate the small sucesses.

After dinner I glued some burlap around my no. 10 cans I use to hold my brushes and other junk, like glue sticks and my plyer collection.  I tried a couple of wooden shapes to be used as labels, but the pieces were all too small.  I have to cut bigger ones so that project will have to wait.

Last, I spent a couple hours working and reworking these three Cinderella pieces to fill Emmalee'S adorable metal frame I have for her room.  I finally got all the curls on the letters right where I wanted them, plugged the files into my Silhouette and hovered the whole time the machine cut.  I was totally excited to watch my design come to life.  Sadly, I have a busy weekend so these projects all have to hang for a while. 

It's OK though.  It has been such a long time since doing my own projects, I'm really just glad to have started   Have a great weekend.  I hope yours is full of fun, family, or creating!

Vanessa

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Emersyn's 2!

Little Emersyn has me wrapped around her little finger.  This darling is so stinken' cute I can't hardly stand it.  Madison and I were totally excited when Emersyn's mom asked if we would take her 2 year old pictures.  We barely recovered from those blond curls in her 1 year old pics, this was just too much to ask for.  

Mads and I followed Emersyn around Heritage Acres in Fairmont, MN, letting her take us where 'er she wanted, us just trailing behind like enamored puppies.  We just snipped away enjoying each and every grin.  What a delightfully magical afternoon.

Emersyn, you are such a doll.  What a lucky mom and dad you have!

Happy second birthday and Thanks for letting Madison and I spend the day with you.

Between The Bellows

Can you guess what this is?  It is what I have been working on between the bellows of my children today.  The first day of school finally arrived and I still felt like I got nothing done.  I did get a pile of vinyl orders filled, then made these little gems for a project I started with my sisters and Madison and Grandma yesterday. 

Here is one of my orders I have been working on.  It was one of those that you start, thinking it will be a breeze, then something goes wrong.  Soon everything has gone wrong and you have been at fixing it for days.  I think I finally got it pulled together.  This guitar picture frame is finally getting shipped tomorrow!

So here is the project we started yesterday.  This is one side of the project.  You flip this boar over...

And you have this!  This great idea was sent to me from Renae, a lovely lady in Fairmont, MN.  I am so glad she sent me the idea because I needed a simple little craft break!

I sanded and nailed together 4 of these yesterday.  We had time to paint them, but not get them all gussied up for the porch.  After a little playing around, I made some faces out of vinyl.  I know it is crazy to cut vinyl when you can just paint them, but I like the guarantee that they are going to be cute.  Faces stress me out.  Anyway, forgive the terrible phone photos taken in the middle of the night ;0}

Scarecrow

Snowman

Aren't they cute!?!  So easy and cheap{if you skip the vinyl}.  I will probably be back with a tutorial when we are all done.  For now, I will just be happy to have a moment of quiet tonight while all the little monsters sleep in their beds :0} 

More Churchy Smash Stuff

I was looking for a file in my design program the other day and came across these.

I was released from Young Womens back in April and jumped right into teaching the 7-8 yr olds in Primary at church, then will all that was going on with weddings and family, I forgot to post these.  

Basically, as a youth teacher, some days I felt like lessons went in, then out all before the kids left my class.  I felt like what we were missing was time to think about the lessons and have the girls figure out how to apply them in their own lives.  I wanted a few minutes at the end of the class for the girls to write something that stuck out to them, or something they wanted to work on, to write down the weekly challenge or something.  

That was when I came up with the idea to print these out, the topics for each month.  Our curriculum has changed, the girls are to pick the lessons they think they need, but the monthly topics stay the same.  Since I am a HUGE lover of the idea of a smashbook, made just from a composition book {cheap at back-to-school time like now} I had to make a printable for the lessons.  Long story short, here are the files I made.  Feel free to print and share or destroy, whatever you need to do with these.  Let me know if you want them smaller or larger or something.  You can find them HERE in my dropbox or email me if you want original files.  Enjoy!

Mr & Mrs. Robinson Open House

This darling girl was one of my Young Women I taught at church the first 2 years we lived here in Minnesota.  She met her handsome hubby at BYU this past school year and were married out in Utah last month.  After a fabulous ceremony and reception there, she came back to Eagan, MN for an open house.  There were a couple bridesmaids that were not able to make the wedding in Utah, but Mrs. Robinson wanted to be sure to have them included in photos, so I got to play wedding photographer for the night.  Check out this house!?!

Another family from church lives here.  Yep.  I was astonished at first sight.  They live in an actual FREAKING CASTLE!  Wow.  Was it ever fun to run around shooting photos at this open house!

Not to mention, of course, that the bride and groom were just about as cute as they could possibly be.  I loved every goobery, loving stare <3 p="">

Prepare yourself for a few too many photos.  This cake smash is probably my all time fav.  

Not only were they positively ruthless...

But they are just so cute!

I don't know why I didn't think to record their song.  It was beautiful.  I knew there would be a special number that Mom wanted photos of, but I didn't know it would be Mr & Mrs. Robinson that would be singing it!

Here are two more of my girls.  Awe.  They are getting so big!

And a frog.  Probably a prince since we are obviously at a castle.  Someone should have kissed it!

I can't resist showing you just a few more pics of the grounds.  Man am I glad I don't have to clean or mow this thing!

Gorgeous.  It was a positively gorgeous night for this happy couple.  May you have thousands more just as magical Mr & Mrs Robinson!