It's been a while

Wow! I hadn't realized how long it's been since I've posted a blog! Well I'm not procrastinating because I have a final on Thursday, I've been studying and doing papers for the past few weeks...I haven't done any new projects lately because life's been super busy...but I did do a few a couple of weeks ago.
I finally finished my dream/inspiration board. I found an old corkboard outside in my mom's garage and I repurposed it.
I started with painting the wood frame. Some of you familiar to pinterest may notice the rubberband accross the top of the bottle, it worked amazingly! I didn't drip paint anywhere, and I didn't have too much paint for the project!

I tried a few different approaches to repurpose the board (paint, spray paint, impression of leaves), but as you can kind of see some of the board was gouged out, and none of the approaches I was trying really covered this well. SO...I ended up finding a bright fabric that matched my paint and I hot-glue and thumb tacked it on.

I think it took me about 3/4 of a yard to cover the board, and I had to cut the edges so that the frame would show. I couldn't figure out a way to take the cork board out of the frame...but this worked well

It took a few passes with the hot glue gun to get all of the edges of the fabric to stick, I think I also ended up hot gluing some of the thumbtacks in (accidentally). But overall I like the way it came out.

Here it is with some of my things already added. It's put up right over my desk to keep me motivated when I'm studying or working on some papers.

 

As I mentioned before I'm kind of procrastinating on my homework, and I figured what better way to make me feel less like I'm procrastinating than to cook some good food of my son...I made us spaghetti and meatballs. I used a recipe from allrecipes.com for Meatball nirvana....OMG these were super easy and very delicious! but they might have been a bit spicy for Trent...

Unfortunately my son didn't like it because it was too spicy for him...Luckily I was also trying a recipe from Pinterest for easy baked mini omelets. It was super easy...just had to beat some eggs and cut up your veggies and bake! well there may have been a few more steps than that...but I loved it!

Luckily for me Trent loved this one...I used garlic spam (mmmm...delicious!!!) green onions, onions, bell peppers, and cheddar cheese, with a little extra cheddar cheese on top (after it baked). I think I might make these more often...especially since I'm not a morning person I can just pop these in the microwave for Trent while I wait for my coffee to finis brewing. ;)

Keeping Busy

I worked on that diaper cake I mentioned in my previous blog. I still need to figure out how to decorate it more, but it's the best I can do with what I've got. Her baby shower is gender neutral with a Winnie-the-Pooh theme. I looked up a few different ways to make the diaper cake, I've done a few before but I didn't feel like rolling a whole bunch of diapers. I found a pretty good tutorial through Pinterest, the link leads to Momaroo. Her instructions are pretty good, but the holding with string thing got pretty old when I was trying to be more efficient at adding diapers instead of one at a time. So I ended up using the basic principles of these instructions to make my diaper cake, I did a slip knot around the diaper cake with kite string to make my circles. It took me 3-4 different tries to tie off the string and keep the diaper cake together (meaning it fell apart 3-4 times and I had to start from scratch the same amount of times!).

Anywho, I was finally able to finish the diaper cake...then I ran out of ribbon for the top tier!

Here's the final project, I may decorate it more with other winnie the pooh things, I'm still debating on what's gonna happen with the look but I like this one it came out pretty good...and once I figured out how to tie off the string for the layers it went pretty fast.

While I was still in the mood to decorate the house I came accross a really easy and interesting idea paint the covers of shoe boxes and hang them. It took me two coats of the base color to cover the box completely then I stenciled on the design. I like how it came out!

Oh yeah! I also forgot to mention that I got the paint from Home Depot at their samplle section for $2, I realized that this was pretty cheap for the different colors and it would probably work better on some of the other painting projects I'm thinking of doing later on.

The last project I did was a version of another Pinterest pin. I think it came out pretty cool.

I cut the lines a bit close and some of them broke after I took the picture! oh well it wasn't a good shirt anyways and I was only planning on using it at home or at the beach.

I added the shirt underneath so that you could see the lines that I cut better. I'm planning on doing another paint project with another bottle and stencil idea. I'm also not sure if I'll be doing another crafting project or a cooking project soon. Oh well, I'm sure something new will come up soon, school is starting to get the best of me and I'm trying my best not to check out just yet! Thanks for stopping by

I've been busy...

So I just realized that it's been quite a while since my last post. There's been so much going on lately! I had to go to Oahu for school before Spring break, while there I got to stay with my brother and his girlfriend, I got to go see my mom and grandma, and I got to meet up with one of my best friends! It was so much fun, but it felt so short lived. But I digress.
It was actually because of this trip that I was inspired to do some rearranging and decorating around my place, so that it feels more like a place for me and Bo, rather than the obvious that we're living in my mom's place. I've been on Pinterest a lot lately looking up some decorating ideas and such. Here's what I've done so far.

I upcycled a mirror, the frame used to be a plastic with a wooden pattern. I just taped newspaper to the mirror (because I couldn't take off the frame) and spray painted it for the base color, then I stenci
led some flowers on with acrylic paint. I also added a wall cling of my favorite flowers to the area to give it a little more ME :p

I went to some consignment stores and found some cheap picture frames and I tried to upcyle these as well to make some "new" wall art. The first one I did, I just spray painted the press wood black and I added some scrapbook stickers and paper to the matting to make the picture look different. The second one (which I will be re-doing) I glued fabric to the back, cut out some letters taped down onto fabric and painted over...I don't like it much because I used the wrong color to paint over the letters.

 

 

I really liked the wall stickers so I kind of got a few...maybe a lot but they make the rooms look so diferent! I love them. I'm waiting for a few more to come in, they're just words so that I can add them to the pretty leaves and such.

This last one actually has it's sayings up it says "Cherish yesterday, live today, and dream  tomorrow"

And finally the last project I did was an upcycled wine bottle. I stripped it of the label which was actually easier than I thought (I soaked it in warm water and then under running warm water I scraped it off with a spoon, to make sure I got all the sticky stuff off I wiped it down with goo-gone and one last wipe with vinegar to make sure all the goo-gone was off) spray painted it white, traced a stencil on with pencil, then hand painted in the stencil with acrylic paint...I think this one took the most time but it came out so nice! I really like this one...Now I gotta figure out where to put it!

Next I'll be working on a diaper cake for my girlfriend's baby shower next weekend, I'm in charge of it and we're doing a gender reveal baby shower, so I know what she's having, but she and her husband have no idea! should be exciting! I'll keep you posted!

I'm not really sure what the next projects will be but it's getting closer to finals week, and my procrastination and stress levels are starting to increase....hopefully I can keep it under control, but I'll keep updating as much as I can. Thanks for stopping by!

First Time Quilting

For the past few weeks I have had the urge to do a sewing project. I finally go out my mom's sewing machine and worked on a project that I found on Pinterest (as you can see this is my go-to idea site). Here's the original tutorial I found to do this project. What I didn't realize when I began doing this project was that the bigger the letters the easier it would be AND I happened to have chosen rounded letters instead of straight edged letters whic turned out to be much more difficultthat I had originally planned! oh well..we live and learn.

I chose to make the letters smaller than the original tutorial primarily because I had a limited amount of fabric to work with. My letters were size 250 font, I believe the original tutorial has letters that are size 500...well something much bigger than mine were!

 

After the first two letters I realized that I was in for a world of cramped hands and sore fingers!

But it was all worth it! Trent loves these letters, he has been working on his alphabet a lot lately and has been singing his alphabets at least five times a day! I decided that we would do another coloring project with the paper tracings used for this project, he's actually coloring them right now. No idea what we're going to do with them yet but I'll definitely keep you posted!

Baked cheese balls

So I have been itching to try this recipe because it looks so simple...cut cheese sticks, dip in milk, bread and bake....simple...Pinterest is infamous for making things look more simple than they are...so here's my story...It was actually based off of Pintester's blog about this recipe that I decided I could do this with a few tweaks.

So I think my first mistake was making bread crumbs without first toasting the bread...I'm still not sure if this was a mistake or not because I've never made bread crumbs from scratch before, but I know that I've used them before (panko) and they're usually pretty stiff...not soft like mine were :p

Yeah...what kind of asian household do I have if I don't even have panko!?!? I know I know...oh well. So I made the bread crumbs (soft crumbs). cut the cheese and all I was supposed to dip it in was milk. But because I've breaded chicken before for fried chicken I know that dipping in just milk won't be enough, so I added an egg to the milk before dipping the cheese in the bread.

I was pretty proud of myself by this point because the bread crumbs were sticking well to the cheese! Then I realized I didn't add any kind of seasoning to the bread crumbs before dipping the cheese in. So I decided to just sprinkle the finished product with italian seasoning before throwing them into the oven. (I forgot to take a picture while it was in the oven.)

They melted!!! they were supposed to turn out like little round breaded cheese balls. Even the pintester was able to keep them in round form...they look kind of round in the top picture, but by the time I took them off the pan they were all melted and flat! :p

It was still tasty, but I think next time I'll just dip the whole cheese stick in the bread crumbs! In retrospect it could have been the bread crumbs, the egg, or the size of the cheese balls, but it may also have to do with the fact that I used the convection setting on the oven instead of the regular bake....idk but it was still fun to try! Maybe next time I'll use a real cook book instead of going based off of a picture and it's caption! LOL

Midterm cooking

Today I felt extra inclined to make something...must be because it's midterms and I don't want to clean so my next outlet is doing some kind of craft/cooking thing. Tonight I did two from pinterest that I've been meaning to do. I made sweet potato fries and some dessert croissants.
Here's the link for the original sweet potato fries recipe http://nannykimsrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/09/sweet-potato-fries-baked.html

This was my first time ever attempting any kind of french fries from scratch...the recipe was simple enough, cut the potato add some oil and seasonings and bake for 30 minutes....

I think I didn't have enough spacing for the fries on this pan because they came out a bit soggy...but it was still tasty...at least I thought so. Trent is still on the fence about this one

I probably should have also left it in a bit longer, I think that the browned ones came out better than the middle ones...oh well!

For the dessert croissants I just went off of a picture. http://shechive.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/berry-break-217.jpg
Looked easy enough spread peanut butter and sprinkle chocolate chips on before rolling them.

Unfortunately I didn't have any peanutbutter just almond butter, and I only had semisweet chocolate chips....I like them! I made half with Nutella, those were awesome!!! :p

I should have tried to roll them faster, because when I was rolling them it was a bit messy and didn't stick well...but they were still good!

Hopefully this will be enough to stop me from having a breakdown before my midterms on Wednesday. If I end up doing another craft/cooking thing I'll post more! Wish me luck for my midterm!!!

Birthday!

This weekend we celebrated Trent's 3rd birthday!

We had a party with friends and family on Saturday. We had kites, a pool, a ball, all at Kamalani park. For those of you who know that park I put up a little pool because they built up the wall of Lydgate's ponds so now it looks almost like river water...not the nice blue ponds we remember growing up :( anywho...it was lots of fun and we were so happy that so many people could come and help us celebrate. Trent was so sad when it was all over he started running after Grandma Evie's car begging them to stay longer. We finally convinced him to go home and open more presents.

Here he is flying his kite with his cousin Hayden and Papa Myles! It was such a good day for flying kites we ended up tying up the kites to a hammer and they flew themselves!

He specifically requested dinosaurs for nearly everything this year! Thanks to Grandma Evie for getting him this awesome Dinosaur cake and aunty Tess for getting the candle last minute!

I re-purposed a board that one of my friends had given me for Christmas one year for Trent. I pretty much had to re-do the whole thing to put in a different background fabric but I think it came out pretty good...Now I can display his birthday cards and drawings as they come in, so he can enjoy them for a while longer!

 Sunday was his actual birthday! Even though we're all kind of getting over our colds (Trent caught a cold after Superbowl and decided to share with Mommy and Daddy!) we still decided to try to make this an extra special day for Trent. We tried to go to Kountry Kitchen for breakfast....the wait time was too long, so we decided to go to Tip Top, we had just missed breakfast so we had lunch instead.

We surprised Trent and took him riding on a train for his birthday! We went on the Kilohana train tour (kinda the best you can do on Kauai for train fans :p.). He was so excited to see the train! They even gave him a shout out on the train ride which made his day. The best part of the train ride was that they stopped so we could feed the animals. Trent has recently been obsessed with farm animals and this was quite possibly the best part for him ^_^ After the train ride Daddy took him shopping one more time for a birthday present...wouldn't you know he picked a toy about animals! By the time we were halfway home he knocked out! It was an awesome day!

Trent and Daddy in front of the train we rode

Family day at the train...can you tell he's excited???

He was so happy to ride the train!

Most of the animals were pigs and goats. The sheeps and cows stayed back...the goats came right up and plucked the bread out of his hand!

Making promises and keeping them

Last night I had to rush my son to the pharmacy to pick up some nebulizer medicine for him before they closed (they didn't have the medicine). On our way to the pharmacy he said "Mommy I want to paint my house" I laughed and said yeah ok what colors do you want, we'll paint your house tomorrow! He started listing all of the colors he wanted and I was laughing thinking he'd forget all about it tomorrow....well he didn't!

As I was sitting down to do my homework he kept bugging me about painting the house. Remembering that I promised that I'd let him paint a house I groaned because I have to set a good example about making and keeping promises that are made (insert morality and guilt). So I set forth making a house out of cardboard boxes that we had laying around waiting to be sent to the recycle bin...yeah ummm, my boyfriend keeps telling me "I'll get to it" the cardboard has now piled up taller than my son :-/ that's another story and we won't get into it....Anywho I made him a house out of boxes and we went outside to pain the house. He only wanted to paint the roof!!!! Aaaargh I was trying to do my homework on my computer while helping him paint, it was a disaster...I had to put my now painted laptop in the house to finish his house painting project.

We painted the house together he told me what he wanted on the house and I tried to help him, my painting/drawing skills are not the best...actually I'm sure once he reaches second grade his drawings will be better than mine!!!

Here's the roof he painted....I totally forgot to put out the cup with water so that he could rinse his brushes before going into the next paint...so his house has a lot of brown/purple color all over :p

He asked me to paint a lion, yeah he said we would have a pet lion....thank goodness this is not a close up of it because it's pretty horrid!

He loves apples and trains so of course we had to have an apple tree and a train in the back of the house! hehehe...oh yeah and a polka-dot window...not sure what that was about!

Overall this was a good lesson for me...remember not to make promises to little ones that you don't intend to keep, because they'll remember and bother you until you make it happen! hehehe

Duct Tape bag

Tonight on Pinterest I was scrolling through my crafting idea board and I found a pin that I posted a few months ago for crafts to make out of duct tape....yeah I tend to just pin things and look at them later (a lot of times it takes me a few weeks-months to go back and look at pins I previously posted).

The pin led me to babble. There were a few different crafts that were here but I finally decided to make the duct tape no-sew tote. I didn't take any pictures while I was doing this craft because I didn't realize that I was going to blog until the mood struck!

The instructions were fairly simple to follow, but I had to click on them one at a time, until I found that there was a see all tab on the top (duh!). I pretty much followed the instructions completely, however I did not have a thick canvas type of fabric, I just had regular fabric. My tote came out similar to the one posted by soochmaroo. I found that since my fabric wasn't actually cut straight on the sides it lead to more cutting and trying to figure out the seams a little trickier than it should have been. I plan on doing another bag, maybe to give away...not sure yet! But my final product is below I think it came out nicely! I have plans to re-finish the bag as far as the top seam and the handles go, and I forgot to put my magnet 'till it was too late, but I think I'll be using this bag more for my exam kits than for anything else. It came out a little flimsy, but again this is probably due to my lack of using the proper fabric. I really enjoyed doing this craft while my son watched Thomas the tank engine (not my favorite show especially the 5th time in a row!) it kept me from having to watch and it was a good escape from studying! Thanks again for stopping by!

I'll try to post pictures of the next craft I do as I do it, as well as modifications I made to the instructions. However, the instructions for this craft was very well laid out!

My first Blog

Thank you for stopping by and reading my first blog. I've decided to start blogging hoping it will be better than facebook. I have grown very tired of a lot of the drama, preaching, and complaining.  I also dislike the people who post things just because others make a decent argument but they never do the research to see that the argument is irrational and idiotic. But most of all I've grown extra tired of those "like if you... if you don't have a heart keep scrolling" pictures and posts. UGH...they tend to annoy me the most!

Anywho...I've decided to start a blog to see if I can keep up with it. It's my late New Years resolution. A little bit more about me...I live on the beautiful island of Kaua`i, I was born and raised here. I'm a mother of a soon to be three year old boy. He brings the sun into my day, but too much sun can be bad and you get a sunburn...so yeah I get tired of him a lot too. I'm a registered nurse, I really enjoy my job but working with women all the time isn't healthy for you either...I think there's this thing about too much estrogen at a time...it gets tiring. And I'm a full time student, I'm going back to school for my master's degree in nursing, I am projected to graduate the summer of 2014.

I'm still trying to figure out why I suddenly have the urge to write a blog but oh well...it has begun! I am by no means a great writer and definitely an amateur photographer...I enjoy doing crafts which is what I think I will be dedicating this blog to doing.

I have done a lot of crafts over the past few months. They're like a sort of stress relief for me. I also really enjoy pinterest.com. I have a board dedicated to things that I've done but this doesn't do justice to the amount of crafts and pins I tried last year. I have seen others blogs regarding pins that sucked or ones that didn't work. So I decided I'd try a few and see if they work for me. I am by no means dedicating myself to doing a blog a day, but I think I will definitely try to do at least one blog a week. My next post will be regarding a craft I did from pinterest, it came out pretty good, it wasn't an epic fail but I would definitely re-do some things.

Thanks again for stopping by! I will try to keep all of the pictures on this blog original, the vast majority will be pictures that I have taken myself. If they are pictures that I did not take I will have a disclaimer at the end of all of my blogs in regards to pictures that weren't my own, otherwise they're all me :)
Aloha!