Elf On A Shelf

 

It has been a long time since I have blogged. Needless to say I have been really busy with my kids sports, soaping, packing and shipping orders and doing all the other Christmas stuff that needs to get done.

 

We have started a new tradition at the request of my daughter who is 8. She wanted an Elf on the Shelf. I ordered one from Amazon and it has been so much fun. I only wish we started this tradition when both of my kids were little.

 

The book comes with an elf that is said to report to Santa on whether the child is naughty or nice since Santa is busy and canno't continuouly watch each child. Well, my daughter is older and knows that the doll is not real but she really likes to wake up in the morning to search for the elf.

Here are some pictures of what her elf, named Bernard, has been up to:

 

 

 

 

 

Pantry Organization

 

I am on an organization kick lately and the first place I started was our pantry. I wish I had a "before" picture but I didn't think about it until I was finished. I buy a lot of food from bulk bins at the heath food store so there were a lot of unlabeled bags on the shelves. The kids have a tendency to finish up a snack and leave the empty boxes so there was also a lot of trash on the shelves.

 

I decided the best way to combat the clutter was to put everything in canisters. I bought these canisters from Wal-Mart and they are great! Everything that was in a box now has it's own canister. I even put the microwave popcorn bags in it's own canister.

 

I used my favorite tool, the Silhouette, to make my labels. I cut the background label with chalkboard vinyl and cut the white letters out of vinyl as well (my handwriting is hideous). I used the font,
Jaro Handwriting, from myfonts.com.

I was really happy with the end result. I ran out of white vinyl so there are a few canisters that still need labels so I will finish up next weekend. The project took me over 11 hours but I cut and labeled over 40 canisters!

Pumpkin Patch Soap

Summer is ending soon and I am ready for fall. I am already craving those comfort foods and sweet bakery smells. My first fall soap is Pumpkin Patch - I used my favorite pumpkin fragrance oil (Pumpkin Crunch). It has aromatic notes of fresh pumpkin, orange peel, sweet carrot, ground cinnamon, clove buds, nutmeg and vanilla cream. This scent will leave you craving more.

The top of the soap is sprinkled with body safe glitter to add a little bling to the soap.

Monster Eyes

I am working on creating some creepy looking Halloween soaps. This one is my monster eye soap, they have creepy eyes but smell oh so sweet. I have some other creepy creations coming soon.

Swiper

Chance from Perfect Chance Photography takes all of my wonderful product pictures for my Etsy shop. She takes the pictures when her son is sleeping for one big reason......

 

She was just finishing up taking pictures of my jumbo bubblegum lip balms when her son woke up and immediately made a beeline for them. What a cutie!

Camo Soap

It is hunting season again so I decided to make a soap for my husband and son who are avid hunters. Shouldn't all hunters use camo soap during hunting season? Of course this soap is unscented because they can't be going out in the woods smelling like a bakery. This soap is also "man sized", it is close to double the size of my normal bar of soaps. Right now the soap is still curing so it won't be listed in my etsy store for 3 weeks.

Birthday Party

My daughter's birthday is July 6 and is such a hard time to plan a birthday party since usually her friends are out of town for the holiday. This year we decided to hold off on a party for her until school started.

The party was Friday night. Ashley had 5 friends come over for a sleep over. It went great.

I made a birthday banner using my Silhouette, it was really easy to make.

I purchased these cute mason jar cups and paper straws for each girl and cut out each girls name in vinyl. It was my first time cutting vinyl so it was a little challenging for me with the tiny letters. As you can see from the picture the "l" moved a little from use. The cups worked out great and it was so nice not having paper cups and juice boxes all over the house.

 They made yarn monsters for the first craft.

The second craft I heated up river rocks in the oven and then they used crayons to color them. When the rocks are hot the crayons just melt onto the rocks. The girls then decided that they needed some bling so I brought out the glitter glue. When the were finished I used Modge Podge to seal their artwork. The blue rock is Justin's - he is still planning on adding fins to it to make it into a shark.

The silly birthday girl