Getting Crafty

A big part of my New Year's March resolution was to start crafting things again.  It's been too long since I've sunk my teeth into these fun projects and it's time to start again.  I know it's not everyone's thing, but for me it's a real stress relief and gives me a much needed dose of self-accomplishment.

So I've set two goals for myself that I got to take for a spin over the last few months:

Goal #1:  Start to give people more hand-made presents.

My mom saw these cute pottery barn chalk tags in their catalog one day, so I thought - "Hey self, you can probably make those!" and got to work.  I think they turned out pretty cute...can't say that I saved that much money on them compared to the PB ones, but I got to test drive chalk board paint for the first time and was very happily surprised with the results!  Can't wait to put up a big chalk board in the mudroom for the boys to destroy

For my niece's bday, I stole borrowed this idea straight from my favorite DIY site (which, side note, they are discontinuing and I am still in deep denial about).  I bought her a Tinkerbell tea party set last year, so I thought this cake stand would be the perfect compliment.  I decided to stick to her favorite colors and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It also gave me the excuse to set up my new table saw....turns out I LOVE POWER TOOLS.  I forgot to get a really good picture of the whole thing together before I gave it to her (of course) but got a good close up of some of my favorite cakes

Goal #2:  Take on one craft project each holiday/season for the house, and one with Blake

This fall, we went a little pumpkin crazy so we have quite a few painted pumpkins around the house that Blake made, and we took a craft class together - so I'm checking the second half of that one off the list.

For my project, I found this picture on Pinterest....fast, cheap, easy = GO.  So I took one slow morning, a lot of googly eyes and a glue gun and churned out this for my front door.  I've had a few eyes fall off on windy days, so in retrospect I should have used super glue from the get go, but have been able to get them all back on with no problem.  I'm also really concentrating on putting together simple but pretty arrangements around the front door.  I never really concentrated on that in the Townhouse besides hanging a wreath, but this new house deserves the finest in life!

So that's my early fall craft round up;  I've got a few more brewing already for the Thanksgiving season....now gotta push myself to remember to blog about them earlier!