Little Girl Artwork

 My little lady loves to paint.  "Mom Iana pink" is how she asks. 

This is what happens when I get distracted while she paints. Oops.

I bought a canvas and some paint to match her room and let her go to town.

This masterpiece took several sessions and a bit of glitter help from me.  I really love how it turned out.  We hung it in her room and she loves to point it out to Mom and Dad. Definitely one of our more successful mother-daughter crafty undertakings.

Valentine's Day Craftiness

I've been trying to use some of my cooped-up-in-the-house-all-winter-cause-it's-too-stinkin-cold-to-leave time to spruce things up around this place.  Hence the Valentine's Day clutter, I mean decorations. The good news: they were cheap and easy, my favorite kind of craft.  Everything was made out of stuff already in my house.

I painted this picture frame, cut some burlap to fit inside, and wrote the word "love" with a dry erase marker. The dry erase marker seemed to work better on the burlap than acrylic paint or a sharpie, and it made for a nice clean line.  If I owned a die cut machine, I definitely would have used it to make a cute little stencil, but the dry erase marker was super easy, and the red frame gives the pop of color my wannabe mantle was lacking.

This blue frame has been sitting around in need of a home for quite some time.  Now it gets to live on the front door.

To make the burlap heart, I cut a heart from cereal box.

Then I cut strips of burlap, and wrapped them around the heart, hot gluing the burlap down in the back.

It looked like this when I was done. 

 I tied a ribbon around it and hung it from the nail in the door, behind the picture frame.  I love that I can use my blue-red-brown decorations from Christmas all winter long.

Unresolutions

The Holidays we're good to us.  We went to my parent's house for Christmas, and had a lot of fun.  We went skiing on Christmas Eve, and even the Little Girl got to join in on the fun!

Unfortunately, the holidays were not as kind to our house. And by holidays, we're talking from Halloween on.  I did some serious slacking in the housekeeping department.  We came home from Christmas to find bills in the mailbox, dirty laundry, and a new rodent friend living in the girl's bottom drawer. Yuck. 

And so the past few weeks have been spent deep cleaning and ridding our apartment of pests. 

I've neglected to set any New Years Resolutions.  There are all sorts of possibilities.

Like everyone else, I need to exercise more, and eat less(actually just eat better).  Mostly because sitting around eating crap makes me grouchy. And achey.  And because I know better.  I majored in exercise for Pete's sake.  But it's frigid outside, and there isn't enough room in our apartment to achieve any sort of aerobic activity, and I really like treats.  So the being healthy resolution may have to wait until March. Or April....

I often plan to read more in the coming year.  I think I've accomplished that one already. I also remembered why I don't read more. I've read 3.5 of the four Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books(VERY intellectual stuff we're talking about here).  Numbers two and three were finished in two days flat. I didn't get dressed, or do any significant amount of housework, and my family watched TV all day.  And that my friends, is why I don't read.  I can't seem to pull myself away once I start a book.  So much for that resolution. I read half of number four last night, and luckily I forgot about it this morning. So I've been able to do a bit of housework.

Which leads me to my last unresolution. I have got to get organized and keep my house clean.  Hopefully I'll be a little more driven in this area. 

I like to make lists, because it's the only way I can remember everything, and because it feels good to cross things off.  I know that the whole "turn a picture frame into a dry erase board" thing is nothing new, but I put a To Do list behind the glass that I can use to stay a little more organized.

 I used this picture frame that once served as a bow holder and removed the ribbon and paper.

Then I printed of this list which I made to specifically fit inside the frame.  I listed the things that need to be done daily, like making beds and doing dishes, as well as the things that need to be done once a week or so.  I also left blank spaces for monthly obligations, groceries, etc. I printed the list, cut it to fit the frame, and slid it in behind the glass. I bought dry erase markers from Dollar Tree.  They're smaller than most dry erase markers and have a chisel tip, so I can write small enough to fit in my list.

This picture shows the irony of my organized little list sitting on my super messy dresser.  Cleaning off my dresser is on the list, I just haven't done it yet :)