Introduction

Hello All,
Welcome to my new blog. I thought I would start off by introducing myself. My name is Kirsten and I am a stay at home Navy wife with two beautiful children, John and Emma. John is a first grader and Emma started preschool this fall. I am a practicing Catholic and my favorite things to do are make crafts, cook, and spent time with my family and friends.
I just finished my BS in Accounting and now with God's blessing,my  perseverance has paid off and now I find myself ready to embark on new journeys. Within the past year, my family and I have had lots of up and downs. A deployment started and ended, both kids are now in school, issues that homecoming bring up,I had knee surgery, and then there is always the  drama and joy that only a seven year old and a two year old can bring. Faith and prayer have helped see me through all of this and keep me on the path that I have chosen to tread.  I am planning on spending these next few months focusing on my children, home, exploring and expanding  my faith, and one of the things other than my family that I love most, crafting. I have until October to either find a job or make my passions pay for my student loans. So with a prayer and strong belief in a well thought out plan here I start my next chapter and invite you to join me on it. God Bless!

Teacher's Gift Idea

My son had his last day of preschool recently and it was really hard to say goodbye to a great school that we spent three years with. I have watched my son grow and become a confident little boy ready to face Kindergarten. To say thank you to all of his teachers we made these adorable pots. I of course did not take a picture of the final project, I guess that means that we need to make at least 1 more. But here is the general idea.

We took some terra cotta pots, primed them white, had my son draw line to separate grass and sky, using a paint pen for terra cotta wrote along the top "thank you for helping me grow". We then using his thumb and finger we made flowers around the pot. When the paint dried I used some spray varnish to seal the pots and potted them with lavender. I think that the teacher's really liked these gift as they were handmade, but useful. Plus what women does not like the smell of lavender.

Cupcake Invites

I am planning my daughter's 1st birthday and doing a cupcake theme. I am having kids all five and under so I am planning to do some cupcake decorating, pin the cherry or candle on the cupcake, and food in cupcake/muffin form. I think that this will be a blast. The hardest part was finding an invite that did not cost and arm and a leg. After hitting the wire for when the invites needed to get out I found a great cupcake image and using my very limited photoshop skills made up the invite. I hope that someone else can use this too. Take image 1 and print as many as you need, fill out the details in image 2 and using a red brad, attach the two at the cherry. Also image 1 would look awesome on vellum using the same method to attach and create the invite. I hope that you like. I am now on a mission to find some cardboard big enough to start making the felt board for the game. Happy crafting.

Super Pegs

As a welcome home present for my son I made him some super pegs, all his faves are here Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Spiderman, and Batman. A huge thank you to Naked Peggies, and Michelle at her cup overfloweth for the great idea. Next time I am playing with pegs villains and maybe some Disney princess.

Car Play mat prototype

So I was blog cruising and saw this awesome project by Tangarang http://tangarangblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/monday-craft.html. It reminded me of a project that I had seen in a 70's craft book, so I thought I would try to combine the two and see what happens. Here is what I created.




This is a prototype because I do not like how I made it into a pouch. The loopies just don't work for what I want so I think that I am going to make more of a drawstring bag on the next one.