The Stockings Were Hung...

My husband made this super great sign for our stockings since we don't really have anywhere else to hang them. 

We used old barn wood, silver drawer pulls, and he burned in our words "The stockings were hung…"

It worked out perfectly!

Cowboy Boot Stockings

After several years of looking for western Christmas stockings, we just couldn't seem to find what we wanted. So, to the drawing board...

Start by drawing the shape you want of a piece of cardboard of paper. Draw it a bit bigger than you want the finished product to end up. 

I had a HUGE pile of old jeans and knew I wanted wrangler pockets on the stockings. With this in mind, I laid the stocking on top of the jeans where I wanted and traced. You want to cut this side out along the traced line.

Stop cutting right at the side seam. Flip over your pattern and trace the outline of the other side of the boot and then cut it out.

Once One side is cut out, flip it over so the backside is what you see. Line it up on another piece of jean/cloth. Trace this and cut it out just like you did with the first piece.

Once you have one side traced and cut out, open the jeans and trace the rest of the boot. Then cut this out too.

I knew I wanted an easy hanger for the stockings, so I used the thick seam of the jeans. No extra sewing :)

Just cut to the desired length and stitch onto the inside of the back side of the stocking.

Make sure to line up the wrong sides facing. 

It is slightly off which was okay with me since there would be items in the stockings at some point anyway.

Pin the two sides together making sure the edges are together. Sew it up, and turn it right side out. You may need to use a pen or scissors or the tip of something to help push out the corners and tip of the boot.

I attempted to sew on initials. I wrote initials in chalk and permanent marker to follow with my sewing machine. I decided not to do it, but it sure would look neat if you choose to. 

Merry Christmas in July! 

Shark Reef day

Oh my goodness! There have been a ton of Vegas posts lately. It is bittersweet for me to tell you that this is the last Vegas post I have. It has been fun reliving our visit from this summer, but I am very excited for the next set of posts that include school, food, and diy stuff. 

On this day we visited the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. It was pretty awesome. We had sharks swimming around us and got to pet stingrays. We saw many different types of fish, and we even saw an octopus and jellyfish. 

After the Shark Reef we spent some time in the store looking and playing with various toys.

If you have read my other posts about the different days we had while in Vegas, you will know that we tried to make an entire day of the things we did. This day, we read about sea creatures, did some sea creature math with little fish crackers, and had an art project. And that, my friends, brings me to the purpose of this post. We made jellyfish that turned out pretty awesome!

To make these cute little things you will need:

Ribbon, lace, and/or strips of some kind for the tentacles

Plastic bags

Needle

Thread

Hot glue/Hot glue gun

Tissue paper

Foam cut into circles

First, we cut circles out of the foam for the base. The we cut the handles off plastic grocery bags. We sewed them onto the foam circles; gathering the plastic as we went along. Leave a space to fill the inside of the plastic bags with tissue paper. When we were done sewing, we filled the inside with matching colored tissue paper. While everyone was choosing their ribbon and lace, I sewed the bags closed with the tissue paper loosely wadded up inside. Once everyone had their tentacles chosen, we hot glued them onto the base of the foam. we used lace for the inside to match the jellyfish we saw at the aquarium and ribbon or yarn for the outside tentacles. They turned out incredibly cute, and the kids were so proud of them. For hanging, we sewed thread to the top of the plastic bag.

Life-like Puppets/Masks

While we were in Vegas, we wanted to make the most of it so each day we had different activities planned for the kiddos. Each day was named something fun. This day was puppet and play day. We created these amazing puppets and put on a play that my younger brother wrote. They had such an amazing time and the puppets are so incredible, I just had to share. The templates we used came from Fellers Arts Factory.

Bridal Shower Cake

Before what seems to be my bi-annual trip to Utah and Nevada to visit family over the summer, I was a co-host for a cousin's bridal shower. In the past I have made a couple diaper cakes for baby showers, but I saw this pin on Pinterest and wanted to give it a try for quite some time.

I would love to add a link for you to this picture to give credit where credit is due, but the link from Pinterest for this picture is broken. So, to make sure, this is not my work though it is very cute and I'd love to take credit, I cannot.

However, by the end of this post I will have created my own cute kitchen/bridal shower/new house (call it what you will) cake.

The first step is to research. Look at bridal registries or find out favorite colors to know what direction you want to take the colors of the cake. My cousin's colors for her kitchenware on the registries she created were black and red. She is also a very shimmery person as in she has a very fun and sparkly personality. Additionally, she is very fashion forward so I knew I wanted something hip rad cool fly super sweet sick--which I still don't get. I, for one, would rather be super sweet than sick, just sayin' =)-- 

[insert the most trendy and up-to-date word for awesome here].

This was actually a gift to my cousin from my mother-in-law and me so we went shopping together. Our haul included:

4 black and white and 4 red kitchen towels (the bigger kind), 4 black dish towels (the smaller kind), 2 black pot holders, a red oven mitt, a pizza tray, and various kitchen tools in red, black, and silver

We also got a roll of black tulle and a roll of sparkly silver ribbon.

You will also need a roll of paper towels, a plastic serving size bowl, and safety pins or the kind of pins you use for sewing projects.

This step is very optional, but I think it adds to the finished product. Loosely wrap tulle around the outside of the pizza pan. You can tape it to make sure it stays.

The base of the cake is the pizza pan, a roll of paper towels, and a bowl. 

I do not have a picture of this because I had to add the bowl after the 2 other times I made it. When the cake was completed, I had my husband take it up to his mom's house (an hour away) where the shower was going to be. He took is large diesel truck which is incredibly bumpy. Not only did the bumpy ride help the cake to slump down terribly, but when he handed it to his mom he spun it to her with one hand as if he was some sort of great server in a fun restaurant. As he was doing this he added "Mom, I don't know what this is, but I was supposed to bring it to you so here." It didn't look very good after all that. So a few days before the shower, we went to get a large plastic serving bowl to add more structure. The bowl I got had a lid which I put right under the bowl.

So your cake should be in this order so far from bottom up: Pizza pan, tulle-if desired, lid-if your bowl came with one, bowl face up, roll of paper towel sitting inside the bowl.

Begin with the larger towels laid out and folded lengthwise into thirds.

Then roll both ends toward the middle. When you stand it up it should look like this. Place these rolls inside the bowl around the roll of paper towels. If the towels do not fill up all the space around the paper towels leave the gap toward the back of the cake. In other words, push all the rolled towels together toward the front of the cake so there is no gap showing the paper towels. 

I didn't like the white stripes showing because it just didn't seem to fit with the way I wanted the cake to look so I covered them with the smaller plain black dish towels. You can just lay them down over and around the rolled black towels tucking as needed. However, when I added the bowl, I had to tuck the plain black towels into and under the bowl instead of the towels. Depending on your bowl and the rolled towels you have, you may have to make your own adjustments as needed.

Minus the ribbon, this is basically what your cake will look like so far. I only added the ribbon the first and second time I made it to help add structure and keep the towels together. The third time I made it, the bowl added the structure, and I didn't have to add the ribbon until the very end.

Working on the second tier of the cake, roll the second colored towels the way you did for the first colored set-folded lengthwise into thirds. These should easily cover the entire roll of paper towels; however, if not, make sure that the gap showing the paper towels is at the back. Set these towels on top of the bottom set of rolled towels with the rolls facing out, if you like it, or in, if you prefer it this way. You may need to tie your ribbon around this tier to help keep the towels together. I actually used tulle to hold this level together.

Next, it's time for the third level. This is the black pot holders. Wrapped around the roll of paper towels they almost covered the entire roll. Once again, I put the gap toward the back. Tuck these into the second tier. To cover all the gaps in the back, I used the red oven mitt tucked into the rolled towels. 

I knew I wanted some kind of bow or something for the cake topper. To accomplish this, I used strips of tulle and a silver twisty tie. It was cute, but not enough. So I added a dish scrubber.

I tucked the handle down the hole of the paper towel tube in the center of the cake.

This is when you can add your ribbon around each tier and all the various kitchen tools you got tucking them in here and there-wherever they look best to you. Before I added the bowl, I had several kitchen tools that I couldn't put into the cake because it was simply not strong enough to hold them all. After adding the extra support, I got all the tools in there.

This is the front of the final product with the added support.

Left.

Right.

Back. Oh, I should have suggested that you tie your ribbon or pin or safety pin your ribbon in the back. I ended up tying the tule, and pinning the ribbon.

And, this is my cousin-in-law who texted me this picture with the title "Our first new home gift."

So glad she liked it.