Personalized Disney Water Bottles

Welcome to our week of Disney! We will have five fantastic Disney inspired posts for you this week and a few giveaways! Make sure you come back each day and enter!

Last week at Target, in the dollar section, I found these awesome water bottles. They are red with black tops- PERFECT for what I had in mind! (Honestly, I was just about to purchase some custom water bottles on Etsy for $9.99 each!). I spent $3 on each bottle, and purchased five (I have four kids and my neighbor is coming with us to Walt Disney World so I made one for her as well.) I just happen to have a Cricut Die Cutting machine and knew exactly what I was going to do. I grabbed my Mickey Mouse cartridge and began cutting out the kids names in Disney font. For those who do not have the ability to do this you have a couple of options: you can purchase vinyl letters in Disney font on Etsy for a fairly cheap price, you can cut them out on your own using sharp scissors and some sticky vinyl, or you can make a stencil out of Disney font and paint them on with a permanent paint pen.

Wash and dry your water bottles very well, this helps the vinyl to stick properly.

Print off your names on sticky vinyl.

Carefully remove the back side of the vinyl and place it on your water bottles.

Firmly press every part of the letters to ensure they are stuck really well.

Peel off the top layer of your sticker and smile because you've just created an adorable thing! 

Disney Shoes and Hair Bow

Welcome to our week of Disney! We will have five fantastic Disney inspired posts for you this week and a few giveaways! Make sure you come back each day and enter!

Wanna know how to turn simple flip flops into adorable unique shoes for Disney and for the Disney fan? It is really easy. First, I found these adorable Mickey Mouse flip flops at Target for 7.99 but, any pair will do even the cheapies from the dollar store can be made cute!

You will need to cut six pieces of ribbon 4 inches long, and then cut a triangle out of each end of the pieces.

Arrange the pieces of ribbon in the order you want them to appear in your decoration.

Pinch the pieces of ribbon in half like this.

Insert a needle with thread into the center of the ribbon and attach the remainder as well.

Wrap the thread around the center of the ribbon stack several times, very tightly, then knot it and snip the end.

Wrap a small piece of ribbon around the center to cover your string and glue it to a pony tail holder OR your shoes! Adorable!!!  Want a Mickey Mouse pony tail holder like the one above? Enter our giveaway!
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Disney bags for our trip

Welcome to our week of Disney! We will have five fantastic Disney inspired posts for you this week and a few giveaways! Make sure you come back each day and enter!

Measure and Cut the following in fabric:
2 pieces of fabric 14" by 30" (outer and inner bag)
1 piece 3 1/2" by 26" (casing)
1 piece of 1/2" ribbon measuring 2 yards


Fold your two long piece of fabric in half (right side to right side), sew each down the sides and finish the edges with a zigzag stitch.

Turn one of the pieces right side out. Place the lining inside outer fabric with wrong sides together, matching side seams.

Pin them together, starting at the seams and zigzag stitch together close to edge. Set aside.

Take your casing piece of fabric and press each short end down 3/8" and stitch to closed.

Fold casing in half, lengthwise, and zigzag edges together leaving ends open. Match casing on outer fabric of bag with the ends meeting in the middle of the bag and straight stitch to bag.

Press the casing around the the bag upwards and stitch a 1/4" straight stitch to keep the casing upright.

Thread your ribbon through the casing and pull throught so that both ends are even in length. Pin the right end to the left corner of the bag and the left end to the right corner of the bag.

Stitch the ribbon in place and snip off excess. Turn bag inside out and fold bottom corners so the seam of the bag falls on the center bottom of the bag.

Measure 1/2" from  the corner along the stitching line, and draw a 1" line at a right angle to stitching line and stitch across. Repeat on other corner.

Turn the bag right side out and enjoy!

Make your own Disney character autograph book

Welcome to our week of Disney! We will have five fantastic Disney inspired posts for you this week and a few giveaways! Make sure you come back each day and enter!

We're planning a surprise trip to Walt Disney World for the spring of 2014. I am over the moon excited! I'm looking forward to seeing their faces and enjoying this special place with them. We want to be able to reserve our money for doing the special things there that you can't do anywhere else therefore, I am planning on making a bunch of things at home before our trip. First up? Autograph books! At Disney they range from $15-$49 and I have four kids...so that's a boat load of money! I spent quite a bit of time finding the correct fonts for each character so I hope you like it!

I personalized the covers for each child (Cate is just a fake name I made so you could see what it looked like). The next page is in Disney's famous font "Autographs." Each character has a blank page above it for a photo of your child and that character!

Merida from Brave was the hardest font to find but I finally did it! YAY! I grabbed some free, copyright free photos of each character so that the kids who can't read knew who they were looking for.

Each page has a character or two and their photo. I love how they turned out!

The last page has a well wish to see you next time. I took them to my local copy center and had them put together with a coil binding. It's perfect for sneaking a pen in there for those autographs! Now the challenge for me is to keep these secret until March of 2014! AHHH
If you've kept reading then you're in luck! I'm giving away a book to one of our lucky readers!  Enter below for your chance to win! Also, if you want to make your own I am attaching the files! Click on the words below to download.

Disney Autograph Book

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Insects Made From Cereal

So as I am scheduling our posts for this week I realize that ALL of them are tasty treat related but we're still sticking to our regular schedule. Today's post is both a craft and a tasty treat. We're making insects from cereal. Ok, sounds gross, I know, but they're actually super cute!

I told you they were cute.  To make them (and then eat them) with your kids, you'll need:

• Froot Loops, Fruity Cheerios, or the generic of either
• Pipe cleaners
• Large gum drops
• Candy sprinkles (optional)
• Frosting (optional)
• Scissors
• Toothpicks

1)  The inch worm is super easy and is good for younger kids.  Just curl a pipe cleaner slightly on one end and start stringing the cereal.

2)  Press a gum drop drop at the other end of the stringed pipe cleaner.  We found it easier to poke a hole in the gum drop with a tooth pick before trying to press it onto the pipe cleaner.  

3)  Use a small amount of frosting and candy sprinkles to make a face on the gum drop.

4)  Use another pipe cleaner to make antennas.

For the butterfly, you'll need 4 pipe cleaners.

1)  Curl the end of one pipe cleaner and string the cereal.

2)  String two more pipe cleaners then attach those about 2/3 of the way up the first pipe cleaner.

3)  Cut two small pieces off of the 4th pipe cleaner and save for the antennas then cut in half.

4)  Add to the body under the wings.

5)  Repeat steps 2-4 above for the head.

Admire your work then eat it!!
Do you think your kids would eat cereal insects?

Pintrest Inspired St. Patty's Day Crafts

Because Jamie and I are busy taking care of our daughters this week (post surgeries) we are bringing you a week of fun Pintrest inspirations.

1. Shhhhh, don't tell but that's the shirt I made for my princess last year. She loves that festive shirt so much I thought I'd "re-share" it with you. Here's a link to the original post.

2.  What an incredibly cute St. Patrick's Day craft that will also double as a little writing exercise for the kids. You only need a few items and this craft is complete. Stop by Classroom DIY to see the instructions. 

3. Yup, another festive shirt. I'm partial to mine but this one had me debating which one I liked best. Just another EASY and fun way to make a St. Patty's Day shirt.

4. Making a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it is exactly what I think of when I think of St. Patrick's Day crafts. Here Come The Girls Blog shares with you how they did it and what they learned.

 5. Liluna shared step by step instructions for making this amazingly beautiful St. Patrick's Day banner. I have the perfect fireplace where this could hang. Pinned for next year indeed!

6. A fantastic Military Mom shared the green and rainbow inspirired shamrock she made with her kiddos for St. Patrick's Day. It's something you likely have all the "ingredients" for already.

 

7. Shamrock Printing is something I remember doing as a kid...and it's perfect because you likely still have out your heart shaped items from Valentines. All you need is a little green paint and some paper and you can make your own print!

See Through Easter Egg Window Decorations

If you've been reading our blog long enough you know that we love to make crafts out of contact paper.  We also love to make window decorations for holidays.  See Through Easter Eggs combine the best of both!

They are fun and easy to make too.  The only things you'll need are contact paper and things to decorate your eggs with such as glitter, paper, ribbon, and foam shapes (or really anything else you think might work).

If your kids want to make a framed Easter egg, help them to cut an egg shape out of paper.  Fold it in half and cut out most of the middle to make a frame.  Put the frame on the sticky side of a piece of contact paper then decorate the inside of the frame.

If your kids want a frame-less Easter egg, help them to cut an egg shape out of paper.  Lay a piece of contact paper sticky side up on top of the paper egg.  Decorate the sticky side of the contact paper only where the egg is under it.
Once the eggs are decorated, put another piece of contact paper, sticky side down (or sticky sides together) on the egg.   Press together firmly, especially around the edges or around the foam shapes. Last, cut of the extra contact paper around your egg, put some tape on it, and hang it on your window to enjoy! What types of crafts have you made with contact paper?

Embroidery Floss Eggs- Pinned it, Did it

Jamie and I have always said we'd be honest when we "failed" at something...so here's another one of our honest posts.

Here's the original pin

here's mine

 Here's what you SHOULD do:

Blow up a balloon (pretty small), use GLUE to wet your embroidery floss and then cover the balloon with the gluey floss, After it completely dries pop the balloon and remove it. You will be left with a great looking Easter egg!

Here's what I did WRONG:
Instead of using glue, I used Mod Podge. I thought that it would be OK but it turns out that the Mod Podge left an additional shell on top of the balloon and didn't give me the effect I was hoping for.