Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my Mama! I was home with my family this weekend and we enjoyed a nice, relaxing few days.  

My gift to her was a craft from Pinterest :) I hot-glued river stones to a piece of black felt (both from a nearby craft store) to make a hot pad for her tea kettle.

To celebrate her day today, we went to a restaurant called the Chart House for a delicious meal.

We had oysters on the half shell for an appetizer,

and my entree was salmon wrapped in prosciutto with a balsamic reduction and a miso sauce. Spectacular! There was also a chocolate lava cake and a creme brulee for dessert but we devoured those before I remembered to take a picture, oops! Plus, we had a nice drive through the mountains to and from the restaurant. We ended the evening with a nice long walk along the creek nearby. 

Hope you had a great Mother's Day, love you so much Mama! 

Melted crayon art

I've wanted to try melted crayon art for a while now, since I am pretty much bombarded with it every time I go to Pinterest. Finally got around to it, and I think we ended up with a pretty original creation :)

We (my roommates and I) started by buying a TON of Crayola crayons (which was fun in and of itself) and peeling off the wrappers of the blues and greens (not so fun). We aligned them on opposite ends of a canvas and glued them down with superglue.

Using a blowdryer set at high heat on low airflow, we melted the crayons while holding the canvas at an angle so the crayons would drip this way.

We kept going until we felt the blue side was done...

...and then we started on the green side

This is what we ended up with! We are really happy with the originality of it, I've never seen on that looks like this on all of Pinterest!

PS: I've decided to start taking weekends off from blogging, weekends being Friday and Saturday. Have a great weekend, and I will be back on Sunday evening!

Home-made headbands

Re-purposed an old t-shirt to make two headbands today!

Cut the t-shirt like so...

Simply twisted the thicker, bottom loop into a figure-8

And placed it around my head. End result :)

Cut the top three loops along one seam and stretched them so the ends curled

Tied a knot in one end and braided the strands until they made a band that fit around my head

Put the knot on one end of the braid through the braid to keep it in place

End result #2 :)

Merry Christmas!

Had a wonderful Christmas! We ate fantastic food with fun family, and all of my baking came together perfectly:

Every year it is a tradition that we have a round of White Elephant, which always involves much laughter. This year I got a pretty cool gift, a wine bottle filled with Christmas lights, like this one:

Tutorial here.

Photo frame organization

I've been seeing sheets like this on Pinterest a lot lately and I really like the concept so I decided to make one of my own. I didn't want to waste the amount of paper it would take to use one for every day though, so I decided to make a re-usable one. I designed my own simple sheets using Word and Picnik and printed them out in sizes that would fit in some spare photo frames I had laying around. With this format, I am able to write on them using dry erase markers and start all over the next day without using a new sheet.

I made two sheets: one is a to-do list and one that has a spot for a to-do list, a homework list, a reminder list, and a spot to check off daily glasses of water, fruit, veggies, and exercise.

Crocheted flowers

Today, the day of two midterms, has finally come to a close! And in order to celebrate and de-stress, I am crocheting! I love little projects like this, with nearly instant satisfaction.

I can make these little flowers in just a matter of minutes. I love to put them on a bobby pin and wear them in my hair or sew them onto a hat, scarf or headband.
If you are interested in learning how to make them, here's a link to an instructional video. These little flowers are pretty common, patterns and other videos are all over the Internet, find what works for you.