What's up, Chuck?

Here are a mish-mash of photos from the past couple weeks:

Celebrating a friend's birthday

Making crafts for Chuck

Welcoming spring by germinating beans

Entertaining a furry house guest

Hubby's favorite pair of socks

Embroidery Thread Wrapped cable

Is it just me, or are the USB cables for Apple products kind of flimsy?  Within a couple months of use, our cord's outer plastic coating tore, exposing the wires inside.  Now, I'm not an electrical engineer or anything... but I figured that exposed wires weren't too safe.  After using electrical tape to fix the tear several times, our resulting cord looked less and less attractive.

So when I came across Brit + Co's tutorial to wrap cables in embroidery thread and Flax and Twine's   tutorial for embroidery thread wrapped earrings, I turned to embroidery thread as a stylish and fun way to solve my problem.

Geek chic?

Here are the materials that I used:

- Tacky glue

- Scissors

- Embroidery thread

- Broken Cable

Directions:
1.  Cut all of your embroidery threads five times the length you want wrapped.

2.  Tie a knot at the base of your cable.  This is where you will start wrapping.  Put a drop of glue to secure the knot in place.

3.  Begin your design by wrapping one thread around the other embroidery thread and cable.  (In this case, I started by wrapping my pink thread around my orange thread and cable.)  To switch colors, simply switch threads and continue wrapping.  At any point in time you'll have one thread being displayed while the other thread color is hidden.   (Note:  I found it helpful to use my foot to hold down the other end of the cable I wrapped. I would have taken a photo of this... but I figured you didn't want to see my large pale foot.)

4.  When you've wrapped as much cable as you wanted, tie a knot and snip off any excess thread.  Once again, add a drop of glue to secure that knot in place.  

Now we'll see if that tear appears again...muah ha ha ha ha ha.

DIY Studded leather gloves

Guess what I made while Chuck took a nap yesterday?

A pair of studded black leather gloves for a tough chica friend

Although Spring is right at our doorstep, I had been meaning to make these leather gloves for quite awhile.  Last winter, one of my college friends came into town and we did a little window shopping.  She found a pair of black leather gloves at Urban Outfitters and debated whether or not to get them.  In the end, she left them behind.

I kept thinking about her studded gloves for the next couple of months.  When the weather got warmer, tons of stores had winter sales to clear out their merchandise.  Once I saw this pair of black leather gloves on sale, I snatched them right up.

Here are the materials that I used:  
- Black leather gloves
- Sharp pair of fabric scissors
- Chalk
- Golden cone spikes

The spikes contained two parts:  The sharp spiky cone and the screw 

Directions:
1.  Use chalk to mark where the spikes will go.

2.  Use the pointy part of your fabric scissors to pierce the top of your gloves.  (Make sure not to pierce through the bottom as well!)  Poke your screwback through the leather and screw the cone on.

 And that's basically all you need to do to make a pair of tough girl gloves.  The spikes are surprisingly easy to screw on and the screwbacks didn't bother my hand one bit.

What do you think?  Rock star fashion statement?  Or, tough chic weapon? 

Tattoo a banana

Got a banana?  Got a safety pin?  Great.  

Now you can tattoo a banana.

 Materials:
- banana
- safety pin
- pencil
- refrigerator

Directions: 
1.  Use a pencil to sketch a design on a banana.  (If you don't feel comfortable sketching straight on the banana, you can sketch your design on a piece of paper first.  Then, tape your design to the banana to guide your poking.)

2.  Use your safety pin to poke holes in the banana.  Watch your tiny dots turn black.

3.  Place the banana in the fridge for a couple of hours.  Pull it out to reveal a new tattooed banana.

4.  Place the banana in your kid's lunch box.... or sneak it back into the pile of bananas at the grocery store to surprise shoppers.

Happy tattooing!

(I first spotted this idea on the excellent How About Orange blog.)

I love New York

Every time I venture into Manhattan,

I eagerly soak up all the sights and sounds.

Oh New York City,

you intoxicate me.

Easter egg crafts

Hi everyone!

I hope you had an egg-cellent Easter.
We had a really nice time eating and celebrating with our egg-stended family.
I think I went a bit overboard with this Easter's egg-related crafts:

Inspired by Krokotak's egg carton hens, I made my own chicken and ladybug egg holders.

I also blew out a bunch of eggs, colored them, and then turned them into confetti eggs for our family Easter egg hunt.

Blowing out the eggs:  
I used a safety pin and pricked the top and bottom of the egg.  Then, I used the safety pin to enlarge the bottom hole.  Then, I placed my mouth over the smaller top hole and blew the egg out over a bowl.  Once the egg was emptied, I rinsed the shell out and left it to dry on a paper towel.

Marbleizing eggs with nail polish:
Once the eggs were hollowed out, my sister and I marbleized some of the eggs using Camille Styles' instructions.  (Note:  Her eggs came out beautifully!  As you can see, I had a lot of trouble getting even results. Maybe it's because my nail polish was the cheap 2 dollar kind... or too old?  Or, perhaps my water wasn't the right temperature?  Hrmm...  Did anyone else have trouble making these eggs?)

Designing with masking tape  and dying eggs:
I had much better luck dying the rest of my eggs.  Hubby and I used masking tape to first create designs and then we dyed them.  To create each color, we simply combined 1 cup of boiling water, 20 drops of food coloring, and 2 teaspoons of vinegar in a large mug.  Then, we held our eggs in the dye until they took on the hue that we liked.

Filling the confetti eggs:
Once all the dye dried (and the nail polish smell dissipated... yuck), I filled the hollowed out eggs with  rice krispy treats (poured through a simple funnel made from rolling a piece of paper) and sealed up the holes with masking tape.

The kids had fun finding these special eggs and stomping on them to reveal the rice krispies within.

Although these eggs were fun to make, it was even more fun to see the kids smile each time they found a special "stomping egg."

Happy Monday!

Happy Easter

In the midst of dying Easter eggs and making crafts, this chorus kept repeating itself in my head.

"Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone;
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living,
Just because He lives!"

Hope you had a good and restful Easter weekend.

Guest Post: Sumo Plastic Bottle Bowling Pins

Did you ever look at plastic bottles and think... whoa... those look just like sumo wrestlers?

(Am I the only one who does this?)

If you want to make yourself a whole bunch of these fun guys, you can get my full sumo wrestler plastic bowling pin  tutorial here!

Styrofoam gliders

Guess what?  We won the lottery.  Then we took our winnings and purchased a small fleet of planes.

Ok, ok, ok.  I'm just kidding.  We didn't win the lottery, but Chuck and I are the proud new owners of three airplanes, Styrofoam gliders, to be exact.

One of the nicest things about being a mom is that I get to let go and do fun kid things again.  Currently, Chuck is still too young to fully appreciate flying toy airplanes.  However, he is old enough to enjoy throwing things and seeing them float around.

Armed with leftover Styrofoam plates, I made him some Styrofoam gliders.  Then we had a lovely day enjoying the sunny weather, the company of some feathered friends, and our new gliders.

(Psst- If you want to make your own, you can get the templates from NASA here  and here.)

I heart peeps (freezer paper stencil)

Ok, ok, you got me.  I have a thing for freezer paper stenciling... but it's just so easy to make cute, customizable shirts for the holidays.

Take this "I heart peeps" shirt, for example:

I just used the same freezer paper technique that I used for St. Patrick's day and my "left" and "right" pants.  The results are always so clean and neat.  Here are some photos of the process:

Hooray! Now Chuck has something to wear for Easter.

Hrmm... and since we're talking about peeps, now I've got a hankering for a large pink rice krispy peep treat... yumm...

What's up, Chuck?

Hi everyone!

How was your weekend?  Ours started out fun and ended a bit stressful.  Friday night a friend kindly volunteered to watch Chuck, so hubby and I went on a real date.  (Thanks Melissa!)  On Saturday we had fun with some friends at an Easter egg hunt in Hoboken.  (See photos below.)  Then, on Sunday I got stressed out by a guest post that I'm writing for another blog.  (I'll share more details about that later this week.)  I was really struggling because none of my craft ideas were working out.  Thankfully hubby helped me to keep my cool and everything ended up working out in the end... phew.

Here are some photos from the Easter egg hunt.

Thanks Olena for taking this photo!

More than 2,000 people attended the event.  Can you spot us in the crowd?

After this photo was taken, Chuck tried to hop in the pool with the ducks.

I love boy bonding time

Forget the Easter eggs, bring on the hay!

Counting our loot

Everybody left tired and happy....

    

Hubby makes a rollie pollie chair

A few days ago I shared that hubby and I engaged in some friendly competition.  Both of us wanted to make kid friendly furniture for Chuck.  I came up with the idea to make a chair out of pvc pipes.  Hubby followed these directions and took another route.  He made a rollie pollie chair

This chair may look like a beanbag chair, but it's not.  It's filled with stuffing instead of beads.  (Basically, it's one huuuuuuge pillow.)

 <<UPDATE!  4/8/13-  We un-stuffed the rollie pollie chair and exchanged the stuffing for a laaarge  bag of Styrofoam beans from Walmart.  We noticed that Chuck was kind of just bouncing off the chair whenever he tried to sit on it.  Now he sinks in nicely and it's way more comfy.>>

So who wins?  Well... while Chuck easily sits in my chair,  he'll outgrow it in a year or two.  Hubby's rollie pollie is too big for Chuck to use right now, but he'll grow into it some day.  (I'm getting it ready  for him by napping on it now.  Zzzz...)

So I guess this round of friendly furniture competition ends with a draw.  Admittedly both chairs have their drawbacks, but I'm proud of what we accomplished.

Have a great weekend!