Messy is Fun

I love the blog "Ramblings of a Crazy Woman". Every time I read her posts, Jennwa helps put things in perspective for me. She seems like she has so much fun with her kids, and does so many fun and creative, yet simple things that don't take a lot of preparation. Since I teach art, I tend to over plan and get too detailed when I do crafts with my kids, when most of the time, teaching them "art" or the project outcome is not the point.

Anyway, Jennwa's post yesterday inspired me to take action. So even though I had one of those crazy, busy days, I took 15 minutes out today and had some fun with my little one instead of resorting to Dora to keep her occupied. The bonus was that I got my counter tops nice and shiny in the process, and she kept playing after I got done so I got my kitchen tidy-ed up.

I know it's not a craft, and it's not art, but it is creative and fun--plus I spent some quality time bonding with one of the most important little people in my life.

Thanks Jennwa! Love your ideas!

Oh--and thank you Amy from Mod Podge for the blogger for dummies tip on enlarging my photos--I've had no idea this whole time that there were buttons there that let you select three sizes when you upload them (mine was set on small), but now I see it!!! Yeah for bigger pics!

Playroom sign

Well, so after two hours of downloading Picasa to my Mac and trying to figure it out, I ended up uploading my last three pics using my IPhoto. I still can't figure out how to size correctly. I changed the pic above to a 3 x 5 but it's still tiny. I did think it was cool that you can add the text to your pictures through Picasa (see more pics below), but the only problem was trying to find them after I saved them. I uploaded one using the upload to post, but then I couldn't figure out how to get the next one to the same post. I think I'll stick to painting and crafting-you'll have to use some of your great imaginations with my photos.

Meanwhile, we've been iced in this weekend. We've had lots of time snuggling by the fire trying to thaw out our nose and toes from hours of sledding and snow angels. Oh, and of course, we also had plenty of hot chocolate and chili. Luckily the storm hit after my middle child's birthday party so we got to celebrate with her friends. I can't believe she's 8!

And more excitement on the family front, we have adopted a new critter. My neighbor found "Khaki" and we were fostering her until we found a good home (since I'm allergic to cats), but I'm afraid we've become quite attached. I think she's a keeper.

Can you find her in the pic above?

And this is what I completed this weekend. It's a fun little wooden sign for our playroom that I'm trying to redo. I've still got to attach the hangers and get it up on the wall, but I love how the colors and distressing turned out. I thought the saying, "Be nice or leave!" was appropriate for the playroom. Looking forward to seeing some more great ideas this week at all the parties! You creative people never cease to amaze me!

Hanging Heart Happy

Made some cute hanging hearts this weekend out of fabric.

To see a tutorial on how I made them click here.

These were easy and inexpensive to make and would be a great Valentine Happy!

***And if anyone could give me some tips on how to increase my pic size now that I have my Mac I would be forever grateful! I can't figure it out for the life of me.

Is organization an art?

I hate to admit right here on my "creative blog" here, that this is the first week in awhile that I did not create something : ( My art classes start back up in a couple weeks...I've been off from teaching for two months.... so I have had plenty of time to "create" total chaos in my studio. Does that count????

So, needless to say, I spent the little free time I had this weekend (in between basketball games and birthday parties) trying to clean up and organize things. Not only is my studio a mess, but it's starting to overflow again into all areas of my home. Seems like I go through this process about every 6 months or so and I get soooo stressed out.

My inside office desk.

My kitchen counter

Even my kitchen table

And I'm afraid my three little ones have inherited my messy genes.

Help!!!!! Seems no matter how hard I try, I can't stay organized. Like I tell my hubby , who BTW, is super organized and borderline OCD, God didn't create me that way, and I'm probably not going to change anytime soon. He says, "If you would just put things away when you're done." Like it's that simple?? Does anyone out there feel my pain??? So, please say a prayer for me this week as I continue to try to get everything pulled together and cleaned up--it's really hard for me to stay focused, especially when it's something that I'm not good at. I definitely know that organization is a gift! So I say to those of you out there who are organized, be thankful! And please give us disorganized ones out there a break!

before...... after ....

I'll be sure and post some pics as I get things done so you'll know I have been doing something! As you can see above, I did get some things done the other day!

Another New Look

Remember this canvas and frame makeover (click here)?

The frame turned out too pretty to store up in the attic all year with the Christmas decorations, so I had to come up with something new to put in it.

I took a inexpensive 16 x 20 canvas, some modeling paste and some paintable caulking.

I drew a VERY simple straight line design using the caulk gun.

And added some color with acrylic paints.

Just love it in that old frame!

I spent about $6 total on this work of art. Now that's pretty good for wall art!

New Art

I've been busy creating lately. If your an artist, you know that creativity comes in spurts, or at least it does for me. Seems like when something inspires me, I can't stop. But then I can go weeks without having that creative spark, especially if I'm crazy busy. I've been having so much fun lately combining my love for paint with collage. There are so many fun scrapbook papers-I just love the colors and patterns. And I love using scripture as inspiration, and having God's word sprinkled throughout my home.

I hope you like the pieces I've created over the past couple weeks!

"Love your neighbor as yourself"

"Love the Lord your God...."

"The birds of the air...."

Help Around the House

I stopped making New Year's resolutions a long time ago, but my husband and I usually talk about some changes we can make that might make our year better than the last. One of the things we both agreed on was holding our kids, especially the two oldest ones, more accountable for helping out around OUR home. With a family of five, it's going to take some team work, or mom and dad will be continually exhausted. I have seen so many cute chore charts in blog land, but a) if I made one that looked THAT cute I wouldn't have it finished until mid-year, and b) I didn't want to spend a lot of money. I did however want to have more than a sheet of paper; a more interactive chart. I cleaned out my junk drawer over the holidays and ran across all these refrigerator magnets that were about to go into the trash when I remembered the chore chart I had on my "to do" list.

I used a magnetic dry erase board that I had from home schooling last year. I thought that way I could change or adjust things a few times until we get figured out what way works best for us. I started making the glass magnets, but they were too big, so I downsized to just the magnet and covered it with scrapbook paper.

Then I made the chore magnets and days out of the old magnets I found. I decided to just do Monday through Friday. I used some Mod Podge and covered them with scrap paper. My four year old was determined to help so I let her glue on the words.....thus the smeared lettering.

Now we've got to figure out what incentives to give, as well as consequences when things don't get done.

I would love to hear if any of you out there have found something that works for kids under 12. We were really thinking about giving a small allowance or tickets to get extra TV privileges, etc.

My break

In case you're curious about what I've been up to the last couple of weeks, here's a quick post to update you.

In my last post, I said Santa had been good to me. Well, here's what he brought me! Isn't it beautiful!!! It's a MacBook Pro. I'm in love!

The only problem now is that I have to figure out how it works and get all my old stuff transferred over, so...... you are going to have to bear with me. You know.... I am in the "middle aged" category so I'm a little tech challenged--he, he. I may not be posting as much until I get it all figured out. Luckily I did figure out how to download my new photos.

I also wanted to show off this cute mosaic that my daughter made over the break.

And I've started exercising to firm up my blogger bottom.

I spent a lot of time alone with Jesus and time reading His word.

I started some new artwork that I can't wait to show you!

I tried not to work too much, but I did clean out some drawers. I ran across some old magnets that inspired me to create a chore chart for my kids so we could start off 2010 right! But I spent most of my time with my family, just playing and being lazy. We even did some shrinky dinks yesterday--I haven't done those since I was a kid....and my kids were amazed. They thought it was the coolest thing ever. I started a whole bunch of projects, but didn't get even ONE finished! Time to put in back in high gear!

Happy New Year

I hope all of you have had as much fun as I have over the holidays. I've taken a week off from blogging (although I couldn't resist keeping up with my favorites), spent a lot of quality time with my family and friends, eaten way too much good food and started exercising. Santa was good to me too-more about that later. My lifeline broke down (my iPhone) and I had to send it off, so between not having that distraction, and taking a week off from blogging, I was amazed at how much time I've had to reflect, relax and enjoy the week.

Since I've only been blogging on Calling All Sleepyheads since October, and have had a huge learning curve, I'm still discovering new things each day and starting to have somewhat of a blog identity crisis. But to wrap up 2009, I wanted to highlight my top five favorite blogs that have inspired me, plus recap my own blog posts. These are listed in no particular order and are my favs for a variety of reasons.

Deep Space Sparkle is one of the first blogs I ever started lurking around on about a year ago. It is a super creative blog that has a ton of wonderful art lesson ideas and tips for creating art with children.

Shanty2Chic inspired me to start blogging simply by giving me so many projects to want to try and great tutorials on how to do them. These sisters are so creative and generous in sharing their ideas.

Mod Podge Rocks is a treasure chest of not only creative ideas, but functional and do-able projects for the average person or even kids. Plus, I love how Amy introduces her followers to new creative people on almost every post. She's turned me into a Mod Podge Junkie.

Funky Junk Interiors is my favorite decor blog. I love to decorate and I love decorating with things that are special to me, make or get great deals on. Donna has so many fresh and fun ideas for decorating and she is so skilled with her tools! She also has a great party every Saturday night!

Art du Jour has inspired and challenged me so much in my own creative journey. I've loved seeing Martha Lever's daily art journal entries so much that I've started my own art journal.

Thank you and all the others out there in the blog world for sharing my passion to create and inspiring me to keep creating and blogging!

As far as my own blog goes, I don't have a years worth of posts to pick from, but here's a few favorites....

Top Posts based on number of comments:

Glassware Glam-click here to view post

My Christmas Collage (click here to see post)

And, a couple of my personal favorites:

Easy t-shirts (click here to see post) Can't tell you how many of these I gave as Christmas presents, as well as I recieved many emails with questions.

Art U can do and a bathroom redo (click here to view post) because I love inspiring people to create their own art for their home.

Since October, I've made 35 posts, had visitors and made 76 new friends who follow my blog. Thanks so much!

Happy New Year! See you soon in 2010!

Jesus is the reason for the season!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

--Isaiah 9:6

"....I bring you good new of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

--Luke 2:10

"Every good and perfect gift is from above."

--James 1:17

Merry Christmas to all!

I hope you experience the GIFT of Jesus Christ this Christmas season.

See you in 2010!

Embossed Aluminum Ornaments

Well the kids are out of school and bored already. What's a mom to do??? At our house it's project time-I try to keep 'em busy. And since everything I do with the kids is pretty easy and inexpensive, I thought I'd share what we did today so maybe you moms, grandmas or friends out there might try it over the holidays. You'll need some medium weight aluminum (I ordered mine from DickBlick awhile back, it's called Art Emboss Aluminum Sheets, but I think you can get aluminum sheets in craft or hardware stores), Sharpie permanent markers and scissors. You can also use heavy duty regular aluminum foil but you will need to glue it to a cardboard backing of some sort for support.

It's a pretty simple, so I'll let the pics explain the process. Be sure though to emboss the design with a blunt pencil on a piece or cardboard and then flip the ornament over before you color in with the Sharpie.

You know I like me some fun, funky colors, but I was thinking the gold and brown sharpies would look gorgeous for those of you who have the more neutral color palettes.

I love to give hand-made gifts, both that I make and that others make. And if I were more organized, I would give hand-made gifts all the time, but alas, I am very unorganized and scatter brained. I do however, do a lot of little things like this....they are an easy add-on to a store bought gift. My daughter had a birthday party today so I whipped up an ornament to attach to the present that she picked out at the store. To me that always adds a nice personal touch. I purchase these ornaments from Michael's at the end of the season on sale and then I always have them on hand to add to gifts during the holidays. Here's a couple I did today. I have fun packaging them up too. I love the zebra stripes for girls and camo design for boys--topped off with an initial. Polka dots are always fun too!

I use paint pens on ornaments-they go on smooth and shiny, dry fast and are easy to draw or write with.

You can also use acrylic paint, but you will have to seal with varnish.

This will be my last project post until after Christmas! Hope you have a WONDERFUL Christmas and take time to reflect on the true meaning of why we celebrate this holiday!

Hope I see you at these parties this week. I'll be linking up at:

Fun Gift Tags or Ornaments

Welcome to all my new followers!!!! I'm soooooo excited to have you! And in case you missed it this week, Amy at Mod Podge featured my Decoupage Do-over this week at Mod Podge Rocks. To thank all my followers, old and new, Amy will be giving away a custom decoupage piece of art that I created with a lucky follower in mind-if you haven't signed up yet, you can still can by looking here. This is what we will be giving away.

You can......



Hang it on your china buffet.....



Spice up a lamp.....



Put it on your tree!

Or you can give it as a gift. I can't wait to hear how the winner uses it. For those of you who are new, I usually like to post at least three times a week, but with the holidays, and kids getting ready to be at home 24/7, I will be posting once a week until January. Last night I was scrambling around trying to pull together teacher gifts and I realized I didn't have any gift tags. I had to pick up some light bulbs at my neighborhood home improvement store and these caught my eye.




"What are they, you ask?" Paint and formica sample cards. A light bulb went on in my head---FREE gift tags. Yeah!!! So my kids and I did a little crafting last night. They had a blast and it cost me no dinero....we just used supplies that I already had like ribbon, puff paint, Mod Podge, jute rope, hole punches, scrapbook paper, rubber stamps, etc.... Here's what we created:

We starting off with the intention of making just gift tags....

But then the kids said, "What about ornaments?" Great idea, kids!

"Or a necklace, or an initial tag, or gifts for our friends!" I guess the possibilities are endless.

My kid's created the few above.

I'll be linking up with these creative folks this week:

Nature Friday @ www.themagiconions.blogspot.com

http://thepersimmonperch.blogspot.com/2009/12/made-it-monday_20.html

Engulfed in Christmas decor? (Plus, a give-away)

Have you felt like you are engulfed in Christmas decor lately?? I have, so when I went over to my friend Michelle's house the other day and walked into her bathroom I about had a cow. Well, maybe you've seen this before, but it was new to me. I just had to take a picture for all my fellow bloggers to see. Talk about hard core Christmas decorations...Isn't this too cute! I don't know if you can tell or not, but the white stuff that looks like bubbles is styrofoam wrap, and then the ornaments are placed on top.



I'm so excited this week for a couple of other reasons besides Michelle's fun Christmas decor. First, Amy at Mod Podge Rocks is featuring one of my Christmas projects this week. Amy is one of the first people I met when I started blogging. She is such a sweetheart and has been so helpful to me. Plus, she has an awesome blog! If you haven't checked out her site, you need to. You can find just about any Mod Podge project that you're looking for. I've always loved to decoupage, but her blog has really inspired me to think outside the box. She has great gift ideas, fun projects to do with the kids, and great holiday crafts. If you've missed some of my old posts, here's a highlight of some of the crafts I've made with Mod Podge:



Glassware name tags (click here)




Storage bin created from a Tide box (click here for tutorial)




Napkin rings made from toilet paper rolls (click here for tutorial)



Children's animal art (click here)

The other reason I'm so fired up today is that I've almost had 10,000 visitors to my blog. I know there are bloggers out there who get that almost in a day, but for me it's a big deal. A year ago, I had never even heard of blogging! I'm sooooo thankful for my followers and subscribers. You have encouraged me with your sweet comments to keep putting in the extra time to blog about the projects I do each week. Plus you motivate me to keep plugging away at that never ending project list.





Sooooo......in the spirit of Christmas and as a thank you for my wonderful friends out there, I've hand-made a special gift for one lucky follower out there. Above is a sneak peak at what Amy at Mod Podge Rocks will be giving away this week in a drawing. To register for the drawing you must be a follower of this blog and a follower of Mod Podge Rocks.

Head on over to check out Amy's post tomorrow at Mod Podge Rocks and register to win!

Paint Your Own Christmas Tree-EASY

I've been really preoccupied the last few weeks with decorating for Christmas and completing some dyi projects that I was inspired to do by fellow bloggers. I realized that it's been awhile since I've done a "U can paint" project. I posted this last week on my art lesson blog-you can check out all the details here, or keep reading this post for a quick overview. This is a super easy project that you HAVE to try. You will be proud of the results. My four year old did the painting above with NO help from me....so I know U CAN DO THIS. It's also a great project to do with the kids while they are out of school for the holidays, or how about a wonderful Christmas present for the grandparents..... what grandparent wouldn't like a hand painted work of art from their grandchild? And how excited would your child be to give it to them!

First cut a triangle template out of a poster board.

We used a 10 x 20 canvas panel, but any type of canvas/size will do. Cover the background with a gold metallic acrylic paint. Next, blend some copper metallic paint around the edges and throughout background. Paint your floor with some brown.

Lay your stencil on top of the canvas and secure to the table with painters tape. Using a natural sea sponge, dab on an olive green acrylic.

Now remove the stencil and soften the edges with green paint. Next, sponge on some darker green over the top.

Add your red tree skirt.....

and the tree trunk....

And last, some bling.

It's that simple. The trees above were all painted by 4-10 year old children.