Recycled Decoupaged Vases

In the parable of the sower (Luke 8:11) Jesus says, "The seed is God's word" because it causes us to grow and be like Jesus. Our May Missions Project for the children at our church is to help raise money to help fund Bible translations of the New Testament for the Dadiya people of Nigeria. The older kids were challenged to create their own fundraiser, so we decided to do this as a family project and get a little crafty. They turned out so cute, I had to share! I got this idea from my friend Julie after seeing the cutest decoupaged containers in her kitchen....she was kind enough to share with me how she created them.

We started off collecting some old glass containers; jars, frappuccino and beer bottles (hey, we'll take what we can get).

Next, we picked out some cute scrapbook papers and decoupaged them to the bottles using Mod Podge. And yes, I think the kids had the most fun peeling the glue off their hands. After the glue dried, we applied a coat of Triple Thick, then added some jute, raffia and ribbons for accents. My neighbor kindly donated some flowers, since ours have already bloomed and died, for the final touch. We plan on selling these this week around our neighborhood. Pray that we will raise enough money to buy three verses-one for each of my girls. It takes $26 to translate each verse. We made eight vases total so hopefully we can get donations of $10 each.

We would love your prayers that God will guide and bless the efforts of the translation team, that the Dadiya kids and families will be blessed by God's word, and that they will share his word and love with others. To see a video on the Dadiya People click here. For more information on, or to donate to the Jesus Film translations, click here. For more information on donating to help translate the New Testament into other languages, click here. The Jesus Film is offered in over 1000 languages, and there's also a children's version. You can watch the Jesus film in your language, by clicking by on the film/media tab at www.jesusfilm.org. If you want to know more about Jesus, click here.

Yes, I'm still alive

I know, I know, I was quite embarrassed when I saw that my last post was mid-April. I've even lost three readers : ( Thank you all those that are hanging in here. I have been busy....but fairly focused. Have all you moms been as swamped as me in May??

Last weekend alone we had a basketball tournament, a gymnastics meet, a piano recital and a birthday party. My husband and I were exhausted. In the past month, we've also hosted a princess birthday party, created a science fair project, helped with school mini Olympics, driven for service projects and field trips, plus had a wonderful 15 year anniversary weekend get-away.....not to mention all our regular activities and homework.

To keep my sanity, I have been working some on a couple different projects in the midst of all the chaos. I'm almost finished reclaiming my back porch--can't wait to show you that. Also, I'm almost done refinishing a buffet hand-me down. And, yes, I'm still working on my chairs....I've started number four of six. I had one reader request a tutorial on recovering the chairs so I'm posting that today. Disclaimer: I'm no PRO, and have definitely seen more professional tutorials than this one, but I can show you how I did it.

First, turn your chairs over and unscrew the cushion from the frame. Fortunately, that was the simple part for me. I pulled the old upholstery off just by tugging gently. I had two layers of upholstery underneath but I only removed one-the bottom one was very thin. This is were you could add some extra cushion with batting if you wanted.

I used a heavy duty staple gun. As you can see from the pic above, the people before me used upholstery nails. I usually like to leave a little more fabric around the edges, but the fabric I got was a remnant and I wanted to make sure I have enough for all six chairs.

I started in the middle and stapled the center on each side, pulling the fabric tight. Work your way around each side, going from the middle to the corners.

The corners are just like wrapping a present. Just make sure you position the staples so you can screw the cushion back into the frame. That's how I did it...pretty simple!

I've also been trying to oil paint at least one full day a week, so I'll share a couple of my most recent paintings. One was inspired from my fabulous anniversary weekend get-away in Laguna Beach, California. I painted this from the picture that I took above.

Sunset at Laguna

Flower still life

Daisies up close

Good morning Rooster

Hope to see you at some parties this week!