Pallet coffee table

Look what we made (idea came from Ana-White):

Cut a pallet in half:

Prime the pallet and let dry:

Paint!: (Even Lily was out 'helping' us paint)

Our little painting helpers:

Put the finished painted pallets on top of one another

Screw the two sides together and affix the wheels:

Turn it over on the wheels and touch up where needed:

Here it is with nothing on it, just drying overnight:

For Lunch the next afternoon while the girls were napping. 

We had fun putting stuff in the 'shelve' areas:

This was super easy, and such a fun family project. ANd now we have a coffee table! YAY! 

Abstract Stuffed Bear

I was headed to a friend's baby shower and had made a super soft quilt and some matching burp cloths for her second baby boy. I had some fabric left over and decided to make a matching teddy bear. My girls loved the bear, so the next day we went down to the fabric store and got them some of their own super soft fabric. I was on a roll, I ended up making the girls each a bear, one for their friend, and another for the baby to be's brother. Here's a little step-by-step for this super easy fun project...

-Draw a bear, cut it out, trace the cut out onto the 'inside side of a chosen fabric. (I used a solid color for the back of the bear and a fun pattern on the front):

-Sew button eyes onto the fun pattern fabric (or whichever you choose to be the bear's front). (No picture)

-Place the two pieces together front to front (you are going to pull it through once they are sewed together, so whichever sides you want to eventually be facing out are placed facing each other). Pin the traced bear:

-Sew along the black outline. Start at one side of the end of a leg, and finish at the other side, leaving the leg open at the bottom for stuffing. Trim the excess fabric once sewed together:

-Pull the bear through the open leg:

-Stuff with stuffing or leftover scraps of the super soft fabric or a combination. When stuffing, fill the extremities (ears, arms, other leg) first so they form their shape. Continue to stuff the bear to desired fullness and close up the open end of the leg with a hand stitch or use the machine:

(The five bears, the back of Dahlia's just for reference on the solid vs. pattern. You can see the button eyes in the picture below as well)

-Give the bears to the kids and watch them enjoy:

It was a super fun and easy project. I know I will eventually make another one for Lily when she get older, or when we find some fun fabric at the store.

I just love how these are such a perfect size and are so unique and not perfect. The buttons aren't centered and the ears and arms and legs don't quite match. The belly is a little too round, but they are so fun that way. And the girls sleep with them every night.

Happy creating.

Crayon melting FUN!!!

So I was browsing the old internet for some craft ideas and found this: Crayon Cars. SO we decided to have some fun making some crayon bugs and zoo animals this morning....

First you take the paper off all the crayons:

Next, spray the pans with cooking spray, and break up the crayons to fill the trays with the colors you want:

Put the filled trays in the 200 degree oven, and keep checking the progress every 10 min. Once most of the first crayons melt, there may be room for more crayons, so add some more and keep baking:

Take them out and have them cool and re-harden:

Then you have FUN crayon bugs and animals in fun multi-colors, YAY!:

FUN FUN FUN! Now we have some animal crayons to draw with! Happy crafting!

She's here!!!!

Lilian Joy Scanlon.

Born 6.16.2011.

10:04am.

At home.

8lbs.

21in.

We are in love.

This Thanksgiving, we are very thankful to announce....

Banana Slug Pals

Living in the Santa Cruz mountains, we see TONS of Banana slugs. So far this summer it's been about 3 a day when we leave in the morning to go to the pool. Today, our friend the banana slug stuck around until the afternoon. We were walking back up to the house from swim lessons and the girls hung out with their pal on our walkway for a bit. It allowed me to go inside, grab the camera and capture this precious time....

T-Shirt Quilts

When we had baby showers for the girls, we had an AWESOME idea to make personalized onesies with puffy paint... It was GREAT, and everyone participated.

Here are some from Cami's baby shower:

And this is the table with us working at Dahlia's:

It was super fun, and the girls had unique clothes to take home and wear:

Since they were so personal, it would have been weird to give them away, and kinda useless to keep old small onesies folded away in the closet. So, I decided to make a quilt for each for the girls out of their old shirts.

These were my first quilt attempts ever, I didn't know really where to start. I had ideas in my head about what I wanted. I found a SUPER easy quilting tutorial here: Quilt-in-a-Day. I found some fun fabric, a SUPER soft backing, and got started. I cut out all of the onesies, cut out squares in the colored fabric, sewed the t-shirts onto the squares, then quilted all of those together. (I really followed the tutorial, except I didn't sew the last step along the horizontal rows, I just sewed bullets in each four corner intersection of the squares).

And here are the finished projects:

Cami's:

Dahlia's:

The girls are actually napping with them right now. They are super cozy and heavy. It was fun.