Enter To Win!

Since posting about the giveaway, my site has been visited 277 times.  Yet only 3 people have entered to win!  Maybe you didn't see it? Or maybe you just haven't had time to leave a comment?  Or...maybe you just don't like my Family Birthdays sign?  Yowch. At any rate, I'm extending the giveaway period until this Thursday evening at 8pm.  Same rules apply: one comment per person and let me know what's on your holiday wish list.  I'll use random.org to pick the winner Thursday night.

Now go! Enter to win!

Meet My Family

Hello there!  As I mentioned in this post, we tried to take family photos a week or so ago.  Now, our family is full of bankers and teachers, with one accountant (me!) thrown in.  None of us are professional photographers.  But we still drag out a tripod and at least attempt to get a few decent pictures each year.  If anything, just one good enough for a Christmas card is all we're really looking for! This year we gathered at our new house to try to utilize the front steps and brick porch.  The bricks have such a great texture!  I'm not sure we used them as well as a real photographer would, but we tried.  My mom likes to have a full family shot to use as her Christmas card so we all crammed onto the front steps to try to get a decent one.  At first, I was clicking the button on the timer and then running to my spot, but that resulted in lots of pictures of me half straddling the steps trying to get into position.  We learned after a couple takes that maybe someone from the front row should be in charge of pushing the button.  (And maybe I should ask Santa for a remote control!)

In my opinion, this is the best group shot we got.  Sure, Katie's crying and Ramer (the other baby) is looking over at her, but I figured if anyone was going to be looking off, it might as well be the babies.

We try not to be too matchy-matchy for our pictures.  The general rule is to just wear solid shirts in fall colors.  It's just a coincindence that we all showed up in mostly grey, navy, or purple.

With the group shot out of the way, the adults got out of the way so we could focus on just my parents' seven grandchildren.

Probably the best picture from the pose above would've been if I'd turned my camera around and snapped the seven other adults behind me singing and chanting and waving their arms around trying to get everyone to look and smile.  If only I'd had another camera - couldn't risk missing the kids' smiles!

We broke out into our individual families next.  Now usually I don't like to share the picture being used for the card until after cards have been sent out, but since I don't think there are many of my brothers' and parents' card recipients that read this blog, surely it'll be safe to share some of them.

First up is my oldest brother, Nick, and his family.  His wife is Beth and they have two kids: Jett (7) and Bren (4).

Hopefully these pictures will print better than they're showing up on the ol' blog.  I'm using very low-resolution files for this but the real files are bigger.

Jett-bo made me an aunt for the first time 7 and a half years ago.  And Brennie was my very first niece.

Next in line is my other brother, Ben.  He's married to Erin and they have two boys: Parker (4) and Ramer (1).  Ramer refused to look at me and my camera!

Parker is just 8 days younger than Bren and they are bestest friends.  I love listening in on their conversations.  Ramer is a chunky monkey who loves his mama and just recently took his first steps!

Parker and his daddy were outfit twinkies. :)

With just two older brothers, that makes me the baby of the family.  As you know, I'm married to Doc and we have Wyatt (12), Anna (11), and Katie Wynn (2 months).

Since a lot of you guys are on our Christmas Card list, I'll refrain from sharing the one we're using just yet.  It's decent, but probably not the best picture ever.  It's hard to photograph two tweens with a floppy newborn!

And, of course, my brothers and I all belong to these two, most commonly known as Mimi and Poppy these days.

This would probably be a more accurate portrayal of them: my dad doing something stupid while my mom laughs at him.

Usually on our family photo-op days we focus on the kiddos.  This time, I made sure each set of adult couples also had their picture made.

 

  

Ben and Erin also took this one in front of the fall leaves.  I like all the colors in it.

I had the good idea to get a "girl grandchildren" picture.  Of course, by this time the football had come out so there was no way I could get the boys together for a "boy grandchildren" one.

Anna was in the mood to pose, so I got a few cute pictures of her.

I caught Jett between football plays.  Darn Lolli for walking through the background!

I had to sneak in a quick one of Bren too.  As soon as I took her picture she said, "Can I go play now?" I guess they had been tortured long enough.  Also, next year I'll remember not to have red gatorade for them to drink!  (I whitened her teeth in this but she still looks like she's wearing lipstick.)

I couldn't pull a smile out of ol' Parker.

Of course, I was hesitant to get too close to him.  Have you ever seen such scary shoes?!

After lots of clapping and snapping and clucking and whistling, I actually managed to get a couple grins from sweet Ramer.

So besides Katie, I think Wyatt is the only other grandkid I didn't get an individual picture of.  That sounds about right since he's the one who hides from my camera the most.

Speaking of Katie, family pictures wore her plum out!

Actually, I think they wore us all out.  And made us hungry, too!  With over 500 pictures on my camera, we called it a day and headed out for a dinner out.  Be on the lookout - some of these pictures may show up in some of your mailboxes soon!

Birthday Sign and a Giveaway

Alternate title for this post:  The Craft Project That Tried To Kill Me. Seriously, I started this "simple" little craft project of making Family Birthday signs last spring.  They were supposed to be Mother's Day gifts.  Mother's Day came and went and they sat unfinished.  I finally completed them sometime around August and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.  After finally finishing them, I just needed to step away for a while.

But now I'm ready to share them with you!  And, in all honesty, now that I've completed three of them, they really aren't that hard at all.  I just tried to make it really hard.

Before I start with the tutorial, let me make one thing clear: nothing about this is my own original idea.  In fact, the whole idea was found via Pinterest right here. (I would post a picture of her Family Birthdays sign, but don't want to use it without permission.)  I thought it looked really cute when I saw it on Pinterest, clicked over to her blog and read through her short and sweet list of steps, and figured I could knock out a couple of them as gifts in no time.

Ha.  Hahaha.

I'm gonna show you everything I attempted, just so you don't try to get extra fancy and waste your time trying some of the ideas I tried.  Now let's get started.

Step one is to cut a piece of 1x8 to roughly 2 feet long.  No need to get extra picky on this length, just somewhere in that ballpark.  If you have a router, feel free to fancy up the edge a little bit.  I used an ogee bit and went around the edge for a little detail.  Paint your plaque of wood any color you'd like - this will be the base of your Family Birthdays sign.  Here is where I'd show you a picture of my painted plaques if I hadn't deleted it.  D'oh!

This next step doesn't necessarily have to come next, but it makes it easier.  Flip your plaque up on its side so that the bottom is up on top.  Measure the length of your board so you can calculate your spacing...you'll want to divide by thirteen to come out with 12 marks, one for each month of the year.  Here's the pic where I measured one of mine and lined another up with it to cheat and use the same marks.  Hopefully this will make it make more sense.

Here's a helpful tip: use chalk to mark your lines.  It shows up better than pencil and is much easier to wash off when you're done.

With your spacing marked, go ahead and drill holes using a tiny drill bit.  You won't need to screw the eyehooks in until later, but this way you'll already have your holes made if your chalk lines get smudged away while you're working on the rest of it.  Make the holes in the middle of the board so it doesn't split.

To put the writing on the plaque the way I did, you'll need access to a Silhouette machine, or something similar.  I already had a roll of black adhesive vinyl that I planned on using for this project, but you could cut the letters out of paper and modpodge them on or even freehand them with paint.

If you'd like to follow along with my method, here's what I did.  First, I downloaded the free font (Teeny Boppin FN) and laid out my letters on my computer.  I'm self-taught when it comes to using the Silhouette, so I have no idea if I do this the correct way or not.  I prefer to keep as many letters grouped together in one text box as I can while minimizing the amount of wasted vinyl at the same time.  In the picture below, you can see that "Family" fit in one text box and "Birthda" fit in another, but I had to just squeeze in the Y and the S at the end.

I like to keep as many letters together as possible so that they spacing between them is correct and they're lined up the way they should be.  For the Y and the S, I'll have to manually line them up on their own.

For those of you unfamiliar with a Silhouette machine, it looks a lot like a small home printer but instead of printing out your image, it uses a small blade to cut it out.  Here it is being fed into the machine.

And here is the vinyl when it's finished cutting.

The vinyl comes stuck to a piece of white paper, which obviously makes it much easier to work with.  I suppose you could start pulling off each letter one at a time and sticking them down, but I wanted to do them all at one time to keep my spacing and to keep them straight.  To do that, the first step is to pull off all the background vinyl, leaving only the letters.  Below, I've cut out the word Family and pulled off the background.  (I had already stuck down the initials for each of the 12 months using the holes I drilled earlier for my spacing.)

When I initially purchased my adhesive vinyl, I also bought the recommended roll of...tape?  I don't really know what it's called; to me, it resembles a big roll of masking tape that's just not as sticky.  I pulled off a piece of it and stuck the word Family face down.

After pushing down the letters really well to make sure they've stuck down, you can pull off the white paper.  Now the letters should be backwards and have the sticky side out.

Now, I have one more trick that I've learned before just sticking it down.  I like to cut the tape off right below the letters, making a straight line at the bottom that I can use to line up on my sign.  With the font I used, I had to skip over the A, but I still had plenty of straight bottom to use.

Now the letters are finally ready to be stuck down.  I had already drawn a chalk line to line them up with - once you have the size of your letters figured out, just eyeball it to figure out the spacing.

Now, in my opinion, this is where things start getting a little bit tricky.  In a perfect world, you would just be able to make sure the letters have been mashed down and then pull the masking tape backing off, leaving the letters perfectly stuck to the sign.  Unfortunately, this world is far from perfect and it doesn't work that easily.  The stickiness of the masking tape is stronger than the stickiness of the vinyl letters, so if you peel it back the letters usually stay on the tape instead of on the sign.  Grr.  I usually just peel up a small corner at a time and try to hold it down while peeling off the rest of the paper.  It may defeat the purpose of doing this process in the first place, but the important part for me is that it helps keep the spacing between the letters.

With just a little bit of time and patience, they're eventually all stuck down and perfectly spaced.

After that I was able to stick down the bigger section of Birthday, but I still had to manually line up the Y and the S with the rest of the word.

After all the letters were stuck down, I still had one last step to do.  Because the vinyl is not incredibly sticky and can be pulled up, I opted to brush on a layer of a clear polyurethane to kinda help seal them in.  And with that, the sign part of this project was complete.  That was the easy part!

For the wooden discs, I originally tried to take a large dowel rod and slice it into thin pieces.  That didn't work well because I couldn't get them the same thickness.  And let's face it, I really didn't want to have to sand all the slices either, so I was fine with that not working.  Thankfully, I was able to find pre-cut wooden circles at Michael's.  I believe they are about an inch and a half in diameter (give or take a little, it's been a while since I looked at them) and have a nice rounded edge.  They came in packages of 12, I think.

Painting them was not hard at all, just more of a nuisance since they had to be painted on both sides.  Because I wanted the discs of each family to be the same color, I had to do a little bit of prework and figure out how many of each color I needed.  I was also working on three Birthday signs at one time so things got a little confusing!

And now we've reached the part where it all went downhill.

Here's why: I needed to somehow write the names and birthdate of each family member on the discs and the original sign that I was copying had handwritten discs.  So I grabbed two different pens - one a regular sharpie and one a sharpie pen - and gave them a try.  Holy kindergartener handwriting!  They looked terrible!  The thin pen was bumpy on the wood grain, and the fat pen bled too much and got to thick to read.  Imagine if I tried to do a name longer than three letters!

I had come too far in this project to junk it up with some terrible writing, so I set out to figure out a way to print my names and birth dates using the same font from the sign.  After doing some googling, I discovered that I could actually print the text on paper and then transfer them to the wooden discs using elmer's glue and mod podge.  I followed these directions to a T.

The first thing I had to do was get all of my text laid out in a format that would be easy to use.  Being an accountant, I consider myself to be pretty handy in excel, so I used it to set up a nice little grid.  It's uber important to remember to print your text in reverse, or as a mirror image.  I hadn't done that before so I had to click around a bit to find it...I think it's in the Print Setup options.

I got my file set up, painted my white card stock with Elmer's Glue like the directions said, and then printed my text onto the sheet.

After printing, I modpodged the discs facedown onto the print.  According to the tutorial I read, all I had left to do was run the page under water until the disc lifted off, pulling the text off with it.

I got busy sticking the discs down, being careful to put the right colors on the right names.

I cut off the top one in the corner so I could go ahead and see if it was going to work.  I was able to rinse the paper off and the text did transfer to the disc.  Yay!  The print was a little light and slightly spotty, though, so I carefully traced over it with the sharpie pen.

Admittedly it's not the most perfect looking thing in the world, but I liked that the font matched the main part of the sign and it sure as heck beat my kindergartener handwriting.  Onward I went.

I'm not really sure how this went wrong, but after sticking all of the discs down and letting them soak in water for a fair amount of time, I got very splotchy results when I pulled them off.  I got an average of about 2 full letters per name and some of them could've been salvaged, but not all of them.  Whomp, whomp.  Why did I glue down every one of them??  Now I had to start all over again...

I cleaned out the bags of wooden discs at the first Michael's I had gone to, so this time I had to go to a different location.  Luckily they had just enough for me to try again.  This time, after more researching, my plan was to use transfer paper to iron the text onto the discs.

From what I'd read, I pretty much just had to do the exact same thing you'd do if you were ironing a design on to a t-shirt.  Seemed easy enough.  Once again, I got all my text laid out and printed in reverse onto the transfer paper.

I grabbed a handful of painted wooden discs and headed to the ironing board.  I placed the transfer paper print-side down and got to ironing.  This was even worse than the other method!  The discs were slightly cupped, not perfectly flat, so the transfer paper wasn't sticking to the middle.  In fact, it was leaving a bubble in the middle of each disc.  You could also see the clear plastic it was leaving.  I guess I didn't take a picture but trust me, they had to be trashed too.

By this time, this project had already spanned a couple of weeks since I had to keep going and buying supplies and reprinting things.  I was getting majorly bummed out and decided they would not be Mother's Day gifts afterall.

I had one more idea that I thought I would try - Transfer Artist Paper.  For whatever reason, though, I pushed this project aside and gave up on it for a while.  At some point I did order a bulk box of wooden discs since I had already ruined so many and Michael's apparently wasn't planning on restocking them any time soon.

Fast forward to the end of July when we were packing up our house to move and I ran across these things again.  I decided rather than packing them up I might as well try to finish them up.  And, of course, I'd never gotten around to ordering the Transfer Artist Paper and I didn't feel like waiting on it to arrive now, so I had to go on without it.

There was no choice left but to go back to my original method and just handwrite them on.  Grr.  I did make a few improvements, though.  First, I added a layer of clear polyurethane to each of the painted discs (the third set of painted discs at this point, ugh).  I also looked at every different kind of pen and marker that Michael's had before settling on one that had a good tip to use.  It actually had two tips - a thin one and a fatter one - so surely one of them would work.

Thankfully, the pen worked much better and the coat of poly kept the ink from bleeding into the wood grain.  Much better this time!

The last steps went pretty quickly.  I screwed the eyehooks into the 12 holes I drilled at the very beginning.  I also drilled tiny holes in each of the wooden discs.  This required a little bit of planning because some discs needed holes at both the top and bottom and others just needed one at the top.  I used jump rings to hang them from the eyehooks.

The finished product...finally!

The sign above is the one I made for our house.  It has all of our birthdays on it, both of our sets of parents and living grandparents, and also our siblings and their spouses and children.  Each family is in a matching color (for example, my oldest brother's family is all in green).  With all the birthdays added, it just so happened that we only had one month with no birthdays in it...

(I see JASON every time I look at this...he's not even in our family!)

Thankfully, we were able to fill that little hole exactly one month ago!

And now our little sign of Family Birthdays is complete. :)

I told you I was working on three at one time, so here are the other two.  I did one for my mom and one for Doc's mom and I tried to use colors that would work well in their houses.

This one is hanging in my mom's kitchen:

And this one is in my mother-in-law's kitchen:

So, here's the deal.  When I started working on these three, I went ahead and cut out an extra piece of wood and routed the edges.  I also cut out another set of letters out of the vinyl and I have leftover wooden discs.  That means I have all the supplies for one more sign ready to go.  Anyone want one to hang in their house?  You can choose the color scheme and will, obviously, have to provide the names and birth dates, but I'll do all the rest!  I suppose if you don't like my handwriting I can send the discs blank so you can write them yourself.

To enter for a chance to win a Family Birthdays sign, just leave a comment on this post.  And to make it fun, why don't you tell me something that's on your Christmas wish list.  I'd love to see what you guys are hoping for and heck, I might even get some shopping ideas!  We'll be using the honor system here - please just one comment per person.  I'll close the comments Thursday evening at 8:00pm and will use Random.org to choose the winner.  Good luck!

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I hope that by now, you all have full bellies and are settled in for a nice, long nap.  I managed to squeeze in a quick one and now the baby has just settled in for one, so it's nice and peaceful! I think it's silly that we only designate one day each year to focus on our blessings, but I guess one day is better than no days at all, right?  And so I'll go ahead and jump on the "I am thankful for..." bandwagon and list some things that has me feeling especially blessed this year.  Though, really, no blog post could ever be big enough to list them all.

I am thankful for the big, general things:

  • A God that is so big and mighty and loves me everyday, even despite my constant failures.
  • Living in a country where I'm free to make my own choices.
  • A healthy body that allowed me to grow and carry my sweet angel for nine full months this past year.
  • A job that provides a stable income, supports a great cause, and is something I genuinely enjoy doing.
  • A big house to live in that keeps us warm and has more than enough room for us to all have our own space.
  • A fridge that's full of good food to eat, and when it empties, having the means to go to the store and fill it back up.

I am thankful for lots of people:

  • My husband that loves me all the time, is my best friend, and works so hard everyday to provide for our family.
  • My husband that is also the best daddy to his three children, going out of his way to cook meals they enjoy, cart them around town, hold them as they fall asleep in his arms, and love them to pieces.
  • My healthy, happy daughter who makes being a mama so fun and enjoyable and one of my greatest pleasures in life.
  • My mom who is my other best friend and spends more of her free time with me than she probably wants to, helping me take care of and love on my daughter, clean my house for guests, cook meals for friends, assist with projects, and shop at every store in town until I find exactly what it is I'm looking for.
  • My dad who gave me my sense of humor, provides work and financial advice, teaches me daily about tools and building things, loves my daughter and my dog (even if he won't admit it) and is my go-to handy man.
  • My two step-children who love their little sister, keep me and their dad on our toes, educate us on school lessons long forgotten, and teach us about all things tween/teen so we can attempt to be semi-cool.
  • My mother-in-law and father-in-law who love me just like I am their own, offer parenting advice for our children, spoil our kids every time they see them, and always cook us our favorite meals.
  • Two brothers, three sisters-in-law, and one brother-in-law that are all also friends that take care of us, tease us, joke with us, and remind us that life's short and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
  • Two nieces and five nephews that make me laugh so, so much and always steal my candy and, before becoming a mama, made being an aunt the best job ever.
  • Lollipop, the dog, who is so good around her new little sister, even when she gets overly excited or jealous of the attention.
  • A list of friends too long to list individually that are always there when we need them, bring us meals after moving or welcoming home a baby, join us for meals out, welcome us in their owns, and provide countless hours of fun and belly laughs.

I am thankful for material things:

  • My iPhone that I check a million times a day and that keeps me in touch with the real world while I'm on maternity leave.
  • My camera and laptop that allow me to blog and keep track of my life in pictures.
  • A fireplace that burns fire for me to sit next to and keep warm.
  • A new mattress being delivered next week to make my bed even cozier to sleep in.
  • New living room furniture and new rug that will be moved into the living room this weekend.
  • Footed pjs that my little girl looks stinkin' cute in.
  • Bologna sandwiches and french onion dip.
  • Packages full of Christmas presents to give arriving on our door step each day.
  • A DVR full of my favorite TV shows waiting to be watched.

Like I said before, this list doesn't even come close to including everything we have to be thankful for, but it's a start.  I hope your list is miles and miles long too.

Are you venturing out tomorrow for Black Friday shopping?  You couldn't pay me to go, and you know I love to shop!  I don't think there's a deal in the world good enough for me to go to Walmart at midnight.  Yeesh.

But guess what?!  In honor of all the super good deals going on tomorrow, I'm going to have a giveaway on this here blog.  Yep, I've got a craft project I knocked out forever ago and I've got an extra one to share with one of you fine readers.  Check back tomorrow for your chance to win!