Mod Podge Tiger Painting

I never told the Blog world that we found out that we are having a baby BOY!!!! Here are big brother and sister holding up the first picture of their brother! We have already chosen a Tiger theme to incorporate into Keaten's room which is decorated mostly black, white, and pink. Just to add, Kiki doesn't actually sleep in this room because she shares the bunk bed with her brother. Her toys and her clothing are in the room but it is used mainly as a guest room right now so it's not hard to bring back some baby stuff! I decided to phase out a little of the pink and stick with black, white, and cream.

Here is the first step in the transformation. I had to paint my little guy something. I took an old painting that we were never going to put up in our house and used the canvas, FREE! Then I bought 4 pieces of some antique looking scrapbook paper and ripped then up. Got my trusty Mod Podge and covered the whole canvas. For more information on how to Mod Podge and what it is, here is an old blog I did on it.

http://lifesprinkledwithglitter.blogspot.com/2011/10/crafting-with-mod-podge.html

With pencil I drew my Tiger face on top of the Mod Podge papered canvas.

Here is the before and after.... Taking out some of the feminine and adding some masculine. Sorry, the chandelier is not being removed! I LOVE it! =)

I will keep you posted as new transformations arise! 

I LOVE painting for children and I have done a few over the years for different friends. I will show you the ones that I have painted for my other two kids. Here is the whole wall of "Keaten's" room... Before she was born I painted this picture of Eloise and her dog as inspiration for her room!

I couldn't dig up the picture of the first two paintings I did for Brenden's baby room but right before Kiki was born I painted this BIG Gorilla for him! He has always loved Gorillas!

Our New Kitchen Bar (Home Renovation)

 I wanted to show off ALL the hard work my husband has POURED into our house in the past month! We have always hated this wall between our kitchen/dining room. I also hated having an exposed trash can so I had an idea for my husband to put in a bar that would bring the two rooms together....My husband made it happen! The before pictures.... black trash went where the Whole Foods bag is!

 Fun Times breaking out the wall!

Can you see my son peeking through? =)

We bought some pre made cabinets from Home Depot (20% off I might add). Then my husband did some tweaking to make them fit our needs...Don't forget the wine rack! 

We started painting, the same color as our other cabinets.
WAIT, I almost forgot to mention ALL of the electrical rewiring he had to do to get the new light switches in place because the light switch used to be on the wall we removed!!!

The next part is my FAVORITE of this whole project! What were we going to do for the counter top you ask!? My husband bought some REALLY old wood and with the help of his brother, who by the way is AWESOME, they planed and joined the wood.

 They brought it over in two pieces and joined the rest at our house!

After it was dry, we took it to the garage and sanded, stained, and polyurethaned the wood!

My husband did a glaze treatment to the cabinets and added the hardware.

 We brought the top up and screwed it down then put up a little tile backsplash.

We FINALLY changed the old linoleum which is pictured above if you want to see how UGLY it was!

And here is the finished bar area! We still have so much more work to go but I couldn't hold out on the awesome transformation that has already taken place! May it inspire you to create in your home!

Update from 2016:

We moved about 3 years ago and my husband has done a ton of remodeling to our new home. To check out the kitchen and breakfast bar remodel click HERE.

Homemade Jello Orange Smiles!

I am SO EXCITED about this post!!!!! It's SO fun and easy! I saw this really cute idea on my phone and took a picture of it with the link at the bottom! I got inspired! I always loved Jello as a kid but I don't feed it to my kids unless it is from Whole Foods or Trader Joes (which is 3 dollars for 4 containers) because I stay FAR AWAY from artificial food coloring. This is a topic for a blog all by itself, which I will do one day. However, I have to add that some food coloring has ALREADY been banned in the UK due to studies. Example, McDonald's Strawberry Shake in the UK is made with REAL strawberries but over here it's made with RED 40!!!! Oh, i'm getting started! This blog is NOT about this! But there is hope!

I researched and it is SO EASY to make jello out of your child's (or your) favorite juice! It just has to be 100 % Juice. I wanted to get a "pretty" juice just for this blog... but if you come over and have some jello it might just be green.... We just got a juicer and we are using lots of Kale and Spinach in everything!!! YUMMY!

Here is what you need:

One packet of Knox Gelatine (there is four to a box)

2 cups of your juice

And if you are using a very bitter juice like 100% Cranberry you will probably need 1-2 Tablespoons of honey/sweetener. However, most juice is sweet enough!

In a little bowl add your pack of gelatine and 1/2 cup of juice.

Then add the rest (1 1/2 cup) of juice to a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

Remove from heat and add the softened gelatine and juice, stirring until completely dissolved.

If you are going to do the orange smiles, cut an orange in half and remove the insides.

Pour in your juice mix and put in the fridge for about 3 hours!

Cut into smile slices and serve!  I did kind of a bad job this time around at removing all of the orange at the bottom but I didn't want to accidentally cut through the skin! To me it was good to have a little orange with the jello! ENJOY!

Valentine's Breakfast

Just a fun Breakfast idea! Heart shaped egg for your little loved one! I have a mold but you can just cut out the shape with a knife or cookie cutter!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Snow Smoothies

We FINALLY got a day of snow here in Kansas!!! Very little but enough to do an activity with it! I know everyone makes ice cream but I have a son home with Croup and I'm sure none of us need extra sugar added to our diet with all this sickness going around! I came up with a fun HEALTHY snack to make with your fresh snow! SNOW SMOOTHIES! You can make yours however you want with what you have in your kitchen....

Here is what I had and sorry for some of the blurry pictures! My phone camera is going downhill since I use it SOOOO much!!!

We added a little watermelon, a banana, some yogurt, frozen blueberries, frozen spinach, and orange juice!

My son added in the yogurt, which by the way has fruits and veggies in it! It's pretty cool that they are coming out with stuff like this, it's marketed for babies but ANYONE can eat it! The only thing I wish they would leave out is the added sugar!

 My son had fun cutting the banana with a butter knife, while my daughter added the pieces to the blender!

Now for the FUN ingredient! I filled up a bowl with fresh snow! 

Love their faces when they saw the "secret" ingredient!

They took turns putting a scoop each in until the snow was gone! 

   

Love my daughter reaction to the blender! "It's too loud!" Do any of your little ones do this? =)

This was my first time trying this and I LOVED the consistency that the snow gave the smoothie! SO GOOD! Now I'm gunna be sad the rest of the year when we make smoothies because we won't have any of our "secret" ingredient! 

CHEERS!!!!

Photo Valentine and Lego Valentine Box

I thought I would share with you all the cute Valentines we made for Brenden's Kindergarten class this year! I LOVE anything with a picture on it and suckers are my(and my kids) favorite candy! So simple and inexpensive!

First you need to take a picture of your child or children with their fist out. Then go get it printed in one hour photo... I got wallet size, 17 cents for two pictures! Then cut out your picture and with a knife cut two slits, one above and one below your child's hand.

You can give it to friends just like above but because my sons teacher wanted the children to have practice writing numbers and names we hot glued a paper backing onto each picture! He wrote out ALL 23 friends names, a number per child, and his name on the Valentines! It took a while but I'm very proud of his hard work! Good practice for any young child! =)

We were also supposed to bring a shoe box to hold all of his cards and goodies in for his Valentines party! Here is a simple and fun idea for your Lego lover! You can even do this for your child just to have to carry some of their legos in! If your child is like mine, they like to bring a few legos in the car and on short trips.

 All you need are a few empty TP/Paper towel rolls. I cut them about every two inches, for this you will need 12 two inch pieces. 8 of the pieces you will cut one opening and the other 4 you will cut completely in half (these will be used to make your circle a little larger).

Insert your extra piece in your circle to make it a little larger and tape or glue together.

Hot glue a piece of cardboard to the tops of each cylinder piece. I used an old cereal box. Then hot glue each cylinder to the top of your shoe box, the way a lego brick would look.

 Then spray paint the color of your choice and have your child decorate it the way they want to!