Category Archives: DIY

DIY Haircut

. boys, DIY, kids .

It may have been the fact that we were kind of snowed in yesterday. (However, it was the poorest excuse for a “blizzard” I have ever seen.)

Or it could have been that my husband threatened to take buzzers to Brody’s luscious locks.

But I cut his hair last night.

This is what I was expecting:

Unhappy BrodesPigtails & Crewcuts – The only place you pay $17 to make your child cry

That isn’t a pleasant experience for anyone.

I figured I could do it myself, save the $17 (+tip).

I mean, I have experience cutting my guy friend’s hair in college, maybe a boyfriend or two. But I will admit, I never had a clue what I was doing. (Sorry fellas.)

I found this pin, How To Cut Little Boy’s Hair Like A Pro:

How To Cut Little Boy's Hair

The blog that this pin liked to, heavenlyhomemakers.com also offered pictures. Typically, watching a YouTube tutorial would have done it for me, but I found that a lot of the tutorials were either for some over-priced, awful time-saving, hair-butchering product or made by non-professionals that admitted they didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

If I am taking scissors to my child’s head, I kind of want to know the right way to do it so that I don’t have to go back to Pigtails & Crewcuts and spend $17 (+tip) to humbly apologize for butchering my child’s hair and now he is going to spend the next 15 minutes in this Police Car Chair screaming and flailing while they try and fix it.

My process:

Step 1: Strap in chair, with bowl of freeze dried corn (I know, weird right? But the kid goes bonkers for it), and Veggie Straws. Place in front of Disney movie (Mulan was the movie of choice last night.)

Step 2: Spray, cut, comb (frantically), refer to chart occasionally. This does not seem too hard. This is going well.

4 minutes later.

Step 3: Enlist help of Matt to hold Brody’s head which is now bent over so far, it is in his own lap (apparently he doesn’t like me combing his hair anymore and oh my word does this kid has a lot of hair.) This is not easy. This is not going very well.

Step 4: Repeat step 2 for next 5 minutes, while trying not to snip the little fingers that are now trying to swipe my scissors away from his head.

and done.

Here is a before of our moptop:

059 btw, recipe for this delicious dish coming this week. Both kids scarfed it (and it contained kale!)

but seriously, look at those bangs, they were almost down to his eyebrows.

and after:Brodes, after haircut{Post-Snow “storm” sledding}

I will admit, there are probably a few areas that I will trim up as I see necessary in the upcoming days, but I am pretty pleased with my first pass through. I mean, it looks pretty straight, no one lost an ear or got poked in the eye and I saved $17 (+tip). I say, success.

States of Love Floating Picture Frame

. Crafting, DIY, i want to make this . ,

A very strange thing happened this year for mother’s day. It took a “stately” turn. You see, back in October, I had this really awesome cutting board made for my mom for Christmas. I bought it on etsy and loved it so much I thought about keeping it for myself. (BTW, does anyone else other than Michiganders have a slightly unhealthy infatuation

The only state where you get TWO cutting boards for the price of one!

I found something better to give to my mom for Christmas (SOOOOO much better.) I decided to punt this one for a Momma’s Day gift and I think it was a score. For once, I had Mother’s Day covered well in advance.

Now, it’s pretty easy to buy or make gifts for your own mom (my mom has had her fair share of homemade gifts,) but your mother-in-law is a different story. So waaaaaay back when I first started my Pinterest addiction I saw the pin for a States of Love Floating Picture Frame (by kayladanelle.com) and knew it would be perfect for my MIL. She has grandchildren scattered between Iowa (her most recent grandson),  Colorado, and Arizona.

How do you photo glass straight on and not get a glare? Anyone?

I LOVE how this turned out and it was SO EASY! Even better, I was able to do it with supplies I had around the house. What? You think referring to a picture frame as a “supply” is weird? You have no idea how many dead soldiers we do not have in use right now just waiting for the perfect photo, print, or craft. So yes, this 11×18 floating picture frame was sitting, unopened downstairs in Matt’s office, just begging to be put to use.

The one thing I had a hard time figuring out with this is how to resize the images. I had 4×6 glossy photo paper and wanted the states to fit onto that. But when you go to this site to get the map images (use the Reference Map) it saves as an 8.5×11 PDF…and we all know you can’t resize a pdf. BUT, you CAN adjust your printer paper size, which in turn will scale the maps down to the size you want.

Go to file–>print setup–>and select your paper size under the “size:” section

I had 4×6 paper, but chose 5×7 as my print size and it fit perfectly (there is a slight border and some state facts that also print up along with the state.)

Use a craft knife and if you don’t have a craft knife, find the smallest scissors you own, like eyebrow cutting scissors size.  And the only reason I say that is because I used my eyebrow cutting scissors, only because my craft knife and craft scissors have vanished recently. Because, the more detailed you are with the borders, the sharper it looks.

I would also recommend using a small heart sticker to place over your city. I did not do this and cutting out those tiny hearts was tough. This probably took as much time as it did to cut out the states (Because lets face it, Colorado is not a challenging state to cut out. I’ll let you know long it takes me to do Michigan as I start my own States of Love frame this week with the states where Matt, myself and the kids were born – Michigan, Illinois, Colorado.)

So there you have it, a very “stately” Mother’s Day. Obviously my subconscious is trying to tell me something. I would love to hear what a therapist has to say about this one.

Friday Flop – Cutting Glass

. Crafting, DIY, Friday Flop . ,

One spring night back in 2000, my Senior year of college, in the parking lot of PT O’Malley’s in East Lansing, Michigan, I had a 2:15am, drunken, crying I-don’t-know-what-I’m-going-to-do-with-my-life, meltdown. I declared that I wanted to be a glassblower! And I was not lying. I would have LOVED to move to Makawao, Maui, Hawaii and work at Hot Island Glass….I have dreamed about it since high school. Unfortunately, Michigan State did not offer any glass blowing classes that I could justify taking (but Flower Arranging, I did get 2 credits for that one, Scuba Diving, 1)

Underwater Basket Weaving…if offered, I might have taken it

Where am I going with this you ask? Well, despite my love of glass, it is one crafting adventure I have not taken yet. So when I saw the Cut The Bottom Of A Wine Bottle Off To Make Neat Candle Protectors post, I jumped on Amazon and bought a glass cutter. It was about $8. I bought a really awesome bottle of Reilsling because the bottle was a pretty turquoise and figured I would be able to find a place to put it. Even though candles, or anything breakable in a house with a 3 year old and a 10 month old Godzilla Baby (“I WILL DESTROY ANYTHING THAT COMES IN MAH PATH!”) will pretty much be taken out at the knees (and yes, candles can have knees.) I still think it would be a nice piece of decor in my vastly-decorless house.

I also knew that this was going to be a more detailed project and I would probably not be successful on my first attempt so I decided to practice first on a beer bottle. Because, by just a few days after I bought the cool wine bottle, I found another pin How To Cut A Bottle Using Household Items which inspired to use a Corona bottle as practice.

You are correct, I did not read the instructions

Turns out, there are special bottle glass cutters and the one I was using, I determined, is most likely for stained glass or flat surface glass cutting. Definitely not bottles. I also didn’t hold it under hot water long enough, or cold water….just. a. total fail.

Glass CutterWarning: Do Not Use This To Cut Glass Bottles….

I will most likely use the yarn-rubbing alcohol-fire technique when I actually get around to it, seems like it’s less work with better results.

and that pretty blue wine bottle is still sitting on my window sill

and my future in glass is still bleak….

Bachelorette Parties & Sparkly Heels

. DIY . ,

I am SO glad I no longer have friends that are in the Bachelorette party stage of their life. Don’t get me wrong, they are MUCH better than baby showers. But well, as stated in previous posts, those late, debacherous, alcohol-fueled nights take me DAYS to recover from and these days, I do not have minutes to use for recovery, let alone days. So, when my Best Friend, Kelly got married a year and a half ago, not only was I ecstatic for her but I was also secretly happy that this would be the last bachelorette party I would have to attend ever! Or for a while at least.

Look, we are upright, and in control, and not at all sloppy or flashing panties!

So imagine my disbelief when, upon waking the next morning I discovered this:

If you look closely, you can still see bits of Kelly’s feather boa stuck to the bottom

It actually is a lot worse than this picture portrays because there is a HUGE chunk, like it was chewed on by a confused squirrel or GOT IT STUCK IN A SEWER GRATE on the way to the sweet, serve yourself wine bar, The Tasting Room. Or maybe not, I’m just sayin’, it very well could have happened that way, buuuut, I do not recall this particular incident. Hell, it could have happened while we were retrieving an inflatable palm tree from AOL headquarters (don’t ask, but I can assure you there was no B&E involved). Regardless, it happened and I was sad it happened because I had bought these shoes just for this occasion, therefore, it was the first time wearing them. And the last time.

So, when I came across the Refinished Sparkly Heels pin (from my sista! Holla Jodes!) I knew I would try it on these shoes. Because what do I have to lose? They look like crap right now, if it doesn’t work, they still look like crap. No loss right?

So I FOLLOWED THE INSTRUCTIONS to a tee, probably painted on 6-7 coats and this is how they turned out:

They look a little too hooker-y to me

I chose gold because they do have this iridescent sheen to them and I thought it would be a nice contrast. Yeah, not so much. I despise them more now than when they had the huge chunk out of them. So I am going to peel that gold hooker glitter off, find some super fine black glitter and start fresh. I think Carlos Santana designed these shoes with black heels for a reason and I will now respect that and simply dress them up with some black glitter to cover the big chunk out of his CHEAP PLASTIC HEELS.  I will certainly post the results when I get around to the re-do. But seeing as how I haven’t had a date night with Matt since August, I do not forsee myself needing these darlings anytime soon.  And THANK GOD FOR THAT!

About Time

. DIY, i want to make this, i want to wear this . ,

Stand by for some cool bracelets!

I have made 6 bracelets and only one of them is for me. (The purple one!) It’s kind of ridiculous, but they are really fun and so easy to make. In fact, I just got an “order” for two more from my neighbor. And by “order” I mean payment will be taken in the form of wine or child entertainment.

The original pin showed measurements for a single bracelet, but I prefer the double wrap, so. yeah. that’s what you get.  The only reason I have those two singles up there is because I cut the cord to short for the intended recipients wrist for a double.  Sorry Care!

When I first started this project, I ordered the buttons/findings that the pinned site took me too.  Unfortunately it took them about 3 weeks to send them and I just got them today.  I really like them a lot (one of them is on the purple bracelet, which, I finally finished today.)  The other buttons I got at JoAnne Fabric, they are fine, but not my style.  No matter since I will be giving those away, so everyone wins!