Decorate to Celebrate #8 "Anything Goes"

Good morning and Happy Wednesday, everyone! I am so excited to be a guest designer over at an awesome blog that I just recently found, Decorate to Celebrate!  Decorate to Celebrate is a super-fun challenge blog dedicated to showing off decorations for every celebration.  This is my first guest design spot over there and I am hoping for many more to come.  I've entered only one challenge so far and I won first place...click here to see what I won...it's AMAZING.  Thank you Rhonda, I can't wait to get my hands on that mini...

The theme for today's challenge is: Anything Goes...wow, so no direction there...well, this was actually easier than I thought it would be because I have a baby shower coming up this weekend and needed to make something special for this beautiful lady and her soon to be born baby boy.  Unfortunately she lives in another State and I will not be able to attend the shower, but I know she will be pleased with her gift.  She loves the things I make, at least she tells me that she does and making a shower gift is much more personal than just going out and buying something, so this is what I came up with:  Hold on to your seat, we are heading into a time capsule.


Now, remember when you had your first child and you wanted to save everything little thing to commemorate that blessed day?  I know I saved a lot of things from the baby and mommy bracelet to the coming home outfit.  But what do you do with those things?  Some things are too bulky to add to the baby book and other things are too little and get lost along the way...well how about building a time capsule?


This is what I started with:

Again, the recycler in me comes out.  I collected a lot of

these containers while working at the casino and they have

come in quit handy.  My dual paint and primer is my favorite

paint at this time also.  It adheres to plastic like a charm.

So spray painted the lid blue, next time I will 

remember to wear gloves...ugh.

I promise, no smurfs were harmed in making this project.

And this is what it turned into.  Now I wanted to take 

pictures of each step, but it was very late at night

and I had already ruined one container - 

do not leave plastic sitting too close to your hot glue gun...

ok, I've run out of excuses, but I think you can get the picture.

First I wrapped the entire container with a baby blue cardstock.

With my E-craft I penned, Name, Date, Time, Length and Weight

and highlighted each word with a blue watercolor pencil.

I also added a silver rattle rubon to the bottom corner,

now she will always know the details.

I added  a rub onto a strip of cardstock using a Martha Stewart 

border punch on which reads It's a Boy and some stick pins with a bit of ribbon.

I added silver stickers to the side of the bottle where

the measurements are and hand drew some lines.

On the other side of the bottle I added some dinosaur 

foam stickers...I wish I knew what her theme was,

it would have been a cuter idea...(afterthought)

Then I glued the cap from a real bottle on top of 

the lid to make it look like a real bottle.

Now I am heading out to purchase some baby items to put inside the "bottle" and off to the mail it goes.  A gift within a gift I say.  Now she will have a place to store all those "firsts" memorabilia from the time this little guy is born until???, well, that's up to her.  Wouldn't it be neat to give this to your child when he has a baby of his own?  Or when your child graduates...you know how we love to embarrass them at open house?  Or, you could take the "bottle cap" off and cut a slit into the lid and use it as a piggy bank to save up for his college future?  The possibilities are endless...

Thanks so much for stopping by today and thanks again Amy and Rhonda for letting me be part of your fabulous blog as a guest designer! Don't forget to make your own decorations for any occasion and link up at Decorate to Celebrate  I can't wait to see what you create!

Christmas in July Blog Hop

Good morning and welcome to the "Christmas in July" Blog Hop hosted by Jazzy from Jazzy's Cards. If you are coming from Libby then you are in the right place, but if you are just checking on my blog and stumbled across this, go start at the beginning. This is Jazzy's first time hosting a hop, and I know she would appreciate the love.

The theme for the hop was something Christmas related that included the colors green and red. This is what I came up with...

I remember as a kid I couldn't wait for Christmas Eve.  In Germany, my family celebrated Christmas Eve with a real tree that the Christchild brought and decorated while we ate sandwiches and soup in the kitchen.  Then the Christchild would ring a bell letting us know we could now enter the livingroom.  The room would be dark except for the tree with it's real candles and beautiful glistening ornaments.  I remember the smell of the fresh pine tree and the baked goods in a basket on the table, usually cookies and small cakes.  Boy do I miss those days...my parents still celebrate Christmas Eve, but we, at home, celebrate Christmas morning.  When we still lived in MN near my parents, we would celebrate Christmas Eve at my mom's house and then we would take the kiddos home and prepare for Christmas morning.  Now, we have changed our tradition a bit since we don't live close to family anymore.  The weather can be so unpredictable in the MN and SD areas that we do not go home for Christmas anymore.  We still have a real tree, but no real candles and we usually get the tree the first Saturday in December and decorate it the next day after church.  Now we usually have a munchy night on Christmas Eve.  Everyone in the family gets to choose up to 3 items they love the best.  Mine is usually shrimp cocktail, brie cheese with crackers and herring.  I know, odd combination, but when you get 4-6 people with up to 3 choices, there is a lot of food.  Most of the time we have mini hotdogs, bbq smokies, meatballs, rye bread with swiss cheese melted ontop, pizza poppers, breaded mushrooms, veggie tray, cookies, my 3 items and then there are some various items that get added or deleted each year.  It just depends on their moods.  (Just writing this is making me hungry)  Every year, since my kiddos were babies, we have bought brand new pajamas for everyone for Christmas eve.  This way everyone has new jamies for pictures on Christmas morning.  We usually change into them, and then we have a new family game to play or new movie to watch.  When that is done, we all help clean up and get ready for bed.  When the kids are in bed or have gone home to their own place, hubby and I finish wrapping any Santa gifts that are still needed and head off to bed ourselves.  Christmas morning we all get up, make coffee, mamossas, and usually monkey bread and then the fun begins.  I love watching the kids' faces when they get to come downstairs and see what Santa brought.  Remember, if you don't believe, you don't receive.  That's the motto in our house...it's getting close to that non-believing for our youngest, but thank goodness we now have grandkids to keep up the tradition!  The rest of the day is usually spent just lounging, playing with any new toys or gadgets and watching Christmas movies all day.  All the left over food (and there is usually a ton yet) from the night before gets brought out again and we just munch all day long.  I hope I haven't bored you with my Christmas tradition, but I just wanted to share what we do.  Leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite tradition is.

Now onto my project; it started like this:

On of our neighbors is selling her house, so she has been
cleaning out any unneeded things.  She knows how much I
love redoing things, so she thought of me.  Isn't that so sweet?
Hubby doesn't understand my obsession of other people's junk,
but wait till you see what I did.  She had two of these and this is
what I made with one of them.

and ended like like this:

This will be great to put some Christmas food on and carry from upstairs to downstairs, or just to have sitting on the coffee table with Christmas cookies and tea for holiday guests.

Here are some more pictures if you are interested.  I used my E-craft to cut the vinyl.  LOVE IT!!!

Not a single miss cut or bad cut.  Other than the fact that I have a lot of cricut carts, I might be using the E-Craft exclusively.  

Thank you so much for checking out my project... now head on over to Darlene but first I hope you remembered to wish everyone a "Merry Christmas" in order to be eligible for Jazzy's Cricut Cartridge Blog Candy.

1. Jazzy - www.JazzysCards.Blogspot.com
2. Amy - http://www.lovetocrop.com/
3. Gina - http://californiascrappin-gcinderella21.blogspot.com/
4. Theresa - www.thescrapbookingqueen.com
5. Nadia - www.nadiasbeautifulmess.blogspot.com
6. Elizabeth - http://visionsofpaper.blogspot.com/
7. Anita-http://www.anitaandbugs.blogspot.com
8. Libby - www.psastampcamp.blogspot.com
9. Brenda - http://createbyburffrau.blogspot.com/
10. Darlene  Simple Southern Blessings
11. LaKesha at Scrapping Diva

Krylon Paint and old table

Here is a relook at the table I made using my Krylon Dual Paint and Primer and something new so make sure you read on if you've already seen this post.

I have been so busy creating lately.  I have loved all my projects, but this one I am most proud of as of right now.  I was approached by Infarrantly Creative and Krylon to see if I would be interested in doing a project for them using a new product, Paint and Primer in one can.  Well, duh, of course.  Hahaha  I will try ALMOST anything.  I was allowed to pick two colors of this new Paint and Primer spray paint.  I chose red and blue of course. 

I started with this table.  When we bought our house 10 years ago, my inlaws bought us this table and chair set for our downstairs patio.  It was gorgeous when we first got it and I love wood so this was a perfect fit for us.  As you can see, 10 years of outdoor living has taken it's toll on this poor set, but I didn't want to get rid of it either.  I knew, someday I could do something with it. 

and wound up with this:

Isn't it just gorgeous:
This is how I did it:
I first disassembled the table by unscrewing all the slats from the metal legs.  The wood was a bit rotted in places, so when I painted it the red paint really soaked into the wood.

 I had to use 2 coats to get a proper coverage of the paint, but it is well worth it.

Then I painted the bottom rung and the metal legs.  I only needed 1 coat for each of these items.  The metal took very well and the wooden rung covered nicely also. 

After I let it dry for 25 minutes I sprayed a white spray paint also made by Krylon (had some left over from a previous project).  I let that also dry for about 20 minutes.

 Then I cut a star out of some vinyl and when I was sure the paint was really good and dry I placed the cut ontop of the white and used a strip to avoid spraying onto the red.  I placed the slats as far apart as they would be when the table is reassembled.

 I then used the blue spray paint to paint over the vinyl cut star.

 I let that dry for about 20 minutes also.

 I reassembled the table

 and this is it.  I am so in love with my new table.  I can't wait to do my chairs now also.  I used 1 can of each color and still have about half of a can of the blue left over.  The red is almost used up, but I think it's a very affortable project and the color really look great.  All in all this project probably took me about 2 hours.  Cool huh?

Now, we all know you can never have too many light sets right?  I know I can't, but they can get pretty costly and I love to make things so I made my own 4th of July light set.

First I cut stars out of some cleaned soda cans and some plastic containers.

I forgot to take pictures of the soda can stars, but I used the same method as I did for the plastic
You can cut them very easily with tin snips or even kitchen scissors (that's what I used)
I also spray painted the plate here and that's another project in itself so stay tuned...

Then I ran them both through my cuddlebug and embossed them with the "stars" cuddlebug folder.

Then I spray painted both sides of the stars.  Litterally in 20 minutes I was able to flip them over and paint the other side.  This paint dries so fast and it only took one coat each side.  Both the soda cans and the plastic took very well to the paint.

These are the soda can stars

Soda can stars

Plastic Stars

Plastic Stars

After the stars were completely dried, I sanded a bit of the paint off the soda cans to give it a bit of an aged look.  The plastic stars I kept as they were; no sanding.

These turned out awesome

I punched a hole in each star with my Crop-a-Dile II right in the center and put them on a string of lights.  Don't they look fantastic?  I even tried some clear ones and they are ok, but I do love the painted ones

Soda can stars

Plastic Star

 Plastic clear star

 Soda can star

Combination of soda can stars and plastic stars.  

Just think of the possibilities for Christmas (trees), Halloween (pumpkins), Valentines Day (Hearts), and the list goes on and on.  Wow, I can't wait for the next holiday to come along.

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think and tell me which ones you like the best:  

Soda Can, Plastic or clear plastic.