How fun is this?! My sister and brother-in-law shared the excitement of finding out the sex of their next child with a Gender Reveal Balloon release (No worries, the balloons weren’t actually released!) They had the ultrasound tech put the results in an envelope and then gave it to me to fill the box with either pink or blue balloons. For 20 minutes, I was the only one who knew what they were having!
Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone has a wonderful day full of good food and amazing family! Now that Thanksgiving has almost come and gone, we can start thinking about the end of the year and all the holidays associated with it. Here’s a fun Permanent Chalkboard Wishlist tutorial I wrote for the awesome blog, Ucreate (original post). Hope you enjoy!
Hello, lovely Ucreate readers! I’m Vanessa Brady from Tried & True and I’m here to show you how to make your own Permanent Chalkboard Wishlist. Kids (and adults!) will have fun filling it in year after year and when the holiday season is over, all you have to do is wipe it clean and store it for next year. I’m planning on taking yearly pictures with my kiddos and their wishlists…if they stay still long enough. :D Hope you enjoy the tutorial!
Materials:
- free “All I Want For Christmas Is” printable
- clipboard
- chalkboard paint
- transfer paper
- white paint pen
- fine sandpaper
Instructions:
1. Apply a couple coats of chalkboard paint to the clipboard, waiting recommended time between coats. Allow to dry and cure completely.
2. Use the transfer paper to copy “All I Want For Christmas Is” Free Printable to clipboard by laying it on the chalkboard with the free printable on top. Use a pencil to trace around the edges of the words and lines. Remove papers and voila! I love how this stage looks.
If you decide to tape down the transfer paper, you might want to tape it to the back of the clipboard. You can see how I accidentally pulled up a bit of the paint when I tried to remove the tape! (Just paint over bare spot if you make the same mistake.)
3. Color in transferred image with white paint pen. I gotta tell you, there’s a bit of a learning curve with paint pens. Too much paint and it’ll be hard to sand away. Not enough and it looks streaky. Just go slow and know that any mistakes you make will just add to the hand drawn look of it. ;)
4. Once the paint is completely dry, take your fine sandpaper and gently go over image. Starting to look like chalk, huh?!
5. There you go…all you need to do now is fill it in, hang it up and wait for the gifts to come pouring in. :D
There’s a chill in the air, toy catalogs have begun to arrive by the truckload and I gained five pounds just thinking of holiday dinners…you know what time it is?! Time to start working on your Retro Space Age Stockings! They’re not difficult to make but they can be time consuming so I suggest you start now if you want your family members to have these by Christmas.
As always, please let me know if you have any problems downloading the files. Hope you and all the space nerds in your family like their stockings!
Click here to download your Retro Space Age Stockings!
Once again, canning season sneaked up on me. I was talking to a friend about having a little Can It Forward party only to find out that Can It Forward Day had passed…two weeks prior! Maybe next year?
Fortunately, I was still able to put in an order for a bushel (53 lbs) of tomatoes with the awesome farmers down the street. Last year I waited way too long and had to drive to Las Cruces to buy some beautiful, if somewhat overpriced, tomatoes. Not this year! A dollar a pound…and she even threw in a cantaloupe. :)
This year’s crazed canning session was made so much better with the additional help from my sister (who just moved here!) and my mother. Even canning at 10 o’clock at night is fun when you’re laughing and goofing around with your family.
The KitchenAid food press attachment I got for my birthday earlier this year was also a welcomed addition to Tomato Canning 2012. Soooo much easier than manually pushing each tomato through a sieve to separate the skin and seeds.
The only somewhat depressing part is that after processing all those tomatoes, we only walk away with about 28 half pint jars of tomato sauce. Don’t get me wrong, that’s 28 half pint jars of pure tomato goodness but wow, tomato sauce is hard work! Maybe next year we’ll do salsa. :D
Maxwell arrived May 2, 2011 at 11:45 pm. Just like his brother, Max was quite eager to make his grand appearance and decided to get it all done in three hours. It was an absolutely beautiful (and excruciatingly painful) birth that ended with my husband catching our son and the midwife running in just minutes after.
We’re all adjusting nicely to the new little bundle in our home. Some better than others, I guess. (ugh, sleep deprivation sucks) It’s becoming hard to remember our lives before Max…but then again, that could just be the lack of sleep talking.
I’m still trying to figure out when I could possibly squeeze in crafting (Um, 3 am?) so until I do, I’ll be updating this blog with guest posts (spots still open if you’re interested!), Pinterest links (I’m officially addicted!), thrift finds and other crafty musings.
Hope you stick around and enjoy this crazy adventure with me!
Ridiculous amounts of photographs after the cut:
Amanda @ Dreamsicle Sisters: Awesome giveaway! Hope I win :)...
Vanessa Brady: I used alcohol markers: http://www.amazon.com/Spectrum-Noir-Alcohol-Ma...
Gwen: Wow! What an awesome giveaway! That would be a dream!...
Michelle: Hi,
I love this! Yours looks painted. I'm coloring mine now with c...
Vanessa Brady: That would be enough to make anyone smile! Have a great long weekend!...
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