Mother's Day Gifts 2011

It was that time of year again. Time to create presents for the mom's in my life. This year TWO of my sister in laws were mommies so I made these frames for them. 

I didn't take pictures of the presents I made for my mom and my mother in law. They actually aren't fully finished yet for a couple of reasons. 1. Bryan needs to drill holes in the frames and 2. they are just adding on to the picture frames of all their grandkids from this post. My mom had one new grandson born this past year and my mother in law gained 2 new grandsons. Needless to say, they needed more frames added to their gift from last year :)

Mother's Day Gift with Tutorial!

For my mom and mother-in-law I decided to create these adorable linked hanging frames that I saw on HowDoesShe? I LOVE this blog! The ideas are so cute and I am storing a bunch of them for future use! So here is what I did to make this project my own :)

While we were in San Diego on our anniversary trip, my hubby took me to IKEA! He sure knows the way to his woman's heart. Anyway... I saw these frames and knew they would be perfect for some kind of craft project, so we grabbed 3 packs (that is 9 frames). At the time I just wasn't sure what. Fast forward a few weeks and now it is time for Mother's Day crafting. These frames turned out to be just the perfect project. I had exactly the amount I needed since my mom has 4 grandbabies and my mother-in-law has 5.

I began by having my sweet hubby drill small holes in each of the corners. This is where the eye screws would be placed to link the frames. His drill was already out since he was hanging all my shelves and rods in the SCOR.

I painted the frames with a cream colored paint to go with the papers I had selected for use.
I traced the frames onto the back of my paper (I had taken the plastic from the center where the picture would sit).
My paper choices. My boys have "colors" that I have assigned to them so I used those. The purple was for my niece and the yellow was for my nephew (because that is his favorite color!).
Here are the cut out frames for my mother-in-law's gift.
Using Mod Podge (which I LOVE) I glued the paper to the frame. I also cut out each grandchild's name on white paper using my Cricut. Those were then applied to the corresponding frame. This one was for my newest nephew!
Next, I screwed the eye screws into the predrilled holes. I did that on all four corners.

Using cream colored ribbon, I tied the eye hooks together to link the frames. Lowe's didn't have any eye hooks or I would have used those (although the ribbon junkie in me LOVES how the ribbon looks).
To hang the frames, I just tied another long ribbon. Wish I had a nice metal handle like the one on HowDoesShe? but no biggie!
There you have it! You can totally add to these as well (although 5 was pretty heavy so I might would just start another one!). Since only 2 of the 6 kiddos on my hubby's side have had kids, I am sure I will be making another one of these somewhere down the road!

Cowboy Party Decorations

Howdy folks! For my son's 3rd bday, he wanted a cowboy party. I was thrilled this was his pick since I had a few Cricut cartridges with adorable cowboy themed designs! For the sign on the front door, I used the Old West cartridge to cut out a large sherrif badge and then the Howdy shadow and word. First, I was going to just put it on a solid background, but I found that to be too plain. As I was working on the banner (see below) I had some scrap patterned paper so I used that to create a "patchwork" quilt look behind the sherrif badge. I LOVE the way it turned out. (NOTE: please excuse the bubbling of the Mod Podge! I was in a BIG hurry trying to get all the decorations done so there was some bubbling and lifting)
This is my favorite banner I have created so far. I used 2 shades of brown and cut out (using the Old West cartrdge) a rustic, western poster. Then found several papers that looked western to add some color. The font is also from the Old West cartridge. On the ends, I took a left over barn and sun and cowboy from the invitations to embellish the banner a bit more.
At Michael's they have wooden unfinished frames for $1. I purchased two and created menus for the food and drink. These can be reused for a Old West BBQ by just changing out the paper in the frame.
For goodie bags, each child had a brown lunch sack with their initial on a sherrif badge. I tied it with some rustic rope and that was it! So simple. Inside was a water gun, a foam sherrif badge the kids made when they arrived, and some gummie worms. The children also received a bandana (red for boy and pink for girls) as they entered so they looked the part! So easy and yet so wonderful!