The Librarian and The Soldier

There are so many lovely picture frames and wooden signs all over Pinterest and Etsy but I just can't bring myself to spend that kind of money on something I know I could easily make myself.  Both of these signs were inspired by images I saw on Pinterest (if I find the links I will add them later to give credit to the creator).   The first is a shadowbox picture frame that says, "Family is Forever, Love doesn't Melt."  For this one I glued snowman scrapbook paper to the back of the frame and then painted the words on to the frame with black acrylic paint.  You could totally use letter stickers but I was impatient and didn't want to go to the store.  Each Christmas I add a silver jingle bell unless it is the first Christmas with a new child and then the jingle bell is red.  I take this frame out each year for the winter season and love adding the jingle bell to it, watching the frame fill up and keep track of my husband's and my life together.  (This year is th

There isn't much from my husband's childhood that he talks about so when he does talk about something wonderful and positive from that time I make a point to reinforce those memories and incorporate them into our life.  One of those positive memories comes from the time his family lived with his grandparents.  His grandparents had a small piece of land that they called Candy Cane Ranch.   Our retirement plans revolve around owning land and homesteading and once we have gone through the work of buying raw land and turning it into a hopefully self sufficient homestead we will need to name our little slice of heaven.  It obviously needs to be called Candy Cane Ranch in honor of my husbands grandparents and the love they gave my husband. But just calling our land Candy Cane Ranch isn't enough, we need a sign so I set out to make one. A sign for our future home that we can look at as we continue working towards retirement and our future.   Our previous house had an old wooden sw

Flannel Boards are one of my favorite ways of storytelling and creative play for littles.  Unfortunately the one that I use for storytimes with my little one is far too big to be used anywhere but at home. Luckily Simply Darrling  has the perfect solution for a travel flannel board for littles to play with and everything stays contained! Use a DVD Case and envelopes to hold the pieces!  Genius! I went in search of an old DVD case and found an old video game case that wasn't being used anymore.  I cleaned the plastic with rubbing alcohol and then coated it in tacky glue and then glues down blue felt across the entire case, being sure the edges got plenty of glue.  I then closed the case and let the glue dry.  Once dry, I trimmed any excess felt and started on the pieces.  I chose to use blue only because that was what I had that was big enough to cover the case but you could also do whatever is your kiddo's favorite color or tan/green for the ground and blue for the sky or two d

I used to think getting mail was awesome and then I became an adult with bills and mail became the worst ever, but every once in a while you get that one person who sends a card or a letter just because and it can make your whole week.  I just love it when I open the mail and have a letter or postcard waiting for me from a friend.  I love that feeling of being special enough that I wanted to do that for others too but I couldn't bring myself to purchase beautiful postcards because it seemed too expensive so instead I decided to make my own, making the happy mail that much more special. Blank Mailable Postcards  I purchased this set of blank postcards and got to creating.  I am pretty terrible at drawing though so instead I opted for acrylic paints and some amazing video tutorials on Pinterest.   For my first postcard I just painted the entire back and it looked fine but was very clearly homemade.  The next one I tried making a border around it with painters tape and it came out loo

Farm Travel Flannel Flannels are an amazing learning tool, a great way to retell a story, and a wonderful way for children to play and learn. They are also ridiculously easy to make at home so you can have custom stories and play sets.  To begin though, you need to make a flannel board for your stories. This is very easy to do and can be made out of every day items depending on how big you want it to be.  The one that I use for storytimes is made out of a large framed canvas covered in purple felt because that is the color I had on hand that was large enough to cover the canvas frame.  However, if you will be purchasing felt I would go with a nice bright red, most pieces will stand out very nicely on that color.  The base can be a canvas frame, the back of a magnetic whiteboard (this adds a HUGE amount of variety when making or purchasing flannel pieces) cardboard or something smaller like a DVD case.  Whatever your decision for a base be sure to really glue the felt to it, I like to u