I love going to a blog that I regularly follow and seeing some sort of handmade treasure being given away. I decided to give something that fits my personality & what I blog about on this space.
My giveaway includes:
• A bolga basket. I wrote about how much I love baskets here. Bolga baskets are my favorite, non-thrifted basket. The colors are just beautiful & each is individually handcrafted.
• A thrifted vase: I bought this vase at the thrift shop for $1.50 and the very same weekend went down to Old Town, San Diego and saw it in the pottery shop for $10. I love a good save & this is so bright and colorful (handpainted in Mexico).
• The wooden figures: a mushroom, fairy, frog & snail. I’ve really enjoyed handmaking these little guys & for those who have asked, I’ll be sharing later this week what our little “workshop” looks like & the tools that I use.
The rules are pretty simple. This giveaway will run until Wednesday of next week. To be entered, leave a comment below. I’m curious how many lurkers are out there. If you like this and want to be entered more than once, come on by the next day and leave an additional comment. The only rule is one comment per day. The winner will be announced Thursday. 
I will ship anywhere… even Guam. 
About a month ago, Camille got a package from Gena at Small Burst. She had read my post about Cami staying in her bed at night & sent her this beautiful reward.
It was the sweetest gesture and though its been a month, I decided we’d do the same. So we are sending a little prize to my friend Erica’s son Arly for not asking to get a drink, go the bathroom & the 20 other excuses that are thought of between the time of 8-10 every night. Here it is. Arly we are mailing it today!
In other news, my sweet Cami is growing up. Along with that has accompanied some I don’t know how to put it other than … a bit of sass. She’s still the sweetest pea, but recently had several time-outs for disrespectful talking back words or downright telling me no she won’t do what I ask. I know this is a growing time for her. An area that is stretching me as much as it is her. Still yesterday was filled with “growing pains” & after I put her down I decided I needed to think of a new approach. Dawn had mentioned putting rhymes up around the house to say to the kids. Both kids love stories, sayings & songs that rhyme. I pulled one (that had to do with one of the areas of struggle) out of a book & wrote it on one of the many sheets of watercolor we have lying about. I also made two little animals for her so she had a lovely little surprise when she woke up. 
My guy has been underway the past couple days. Though I much prefer him around, I take the time in the evening that we normally hang out (after the kiddos go to sleep), and work on design or crafty stuff. I couldn’t sleep last night so I was up late working on a little gift for my mom since her birthday’s around the corner & my first giveaway, which I’ll be posting tomorrow (the giveaway, not mom’s gift). Yay!
Posted in child play, cultivating creativity, handmade, imagination, repurposing, reuse, thrifting
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Tagged celebrate summer, DIY handmade, outdoor fun, reusing, thrifting
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Baskets are probably my favorite form of storage. There are so many different styles and colors that I can really decorate the place cute, while keeping it tidy. I love going to look at the basket section of every thrift shop. A lot of times there is absolutely nothing, but sometimes there is a real gem. The top two and bottom left photo are baskets all from my kids playroom. They are a great size, paying a dollar or less for each of these, what a deal! Camille and Noah both love the little baskets, they’ll dump them out and load them up with tons of other toys. Another thing I love about baskets for the kids is that they are open vs. the closed toy box they both have in their rooms (and barely ever play with stuff inside of them). It appears to me that when they actually see the fun toys arranged in the basket, they want to play with the toys.
I have several other thrifted baskets, but I really do love this one. We use it to store the kids bean bags. What I love about it also is the handle can bend, so that we actually use it for tossing the bean bags too.
happy thrifty finds!
This past week my guy and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary. I absolutely love our wedding photos, although they were taken on film. Even though it doesn’t seem too long ago, digital wasn’t that great at the time like it is now. I remember working at a photo lab at the same time I was preparing to get married and someone came in with digital wedding photos. They were horrible, the digital wasn’t near as strong as the film on a camera. It amazes me how quickly time changes things. Anyways, I haven’t been able to find all the film that my photographer friend gave me from our wedding since we’ve moved here. So although this picture is only 7 years old… its one of the few I have printed out right now.
Here is what I did:
The first thing needed is to either scan the picture or take a picture of the picture in good lighting and with a small aperture. I think this was taken in daylight at F16 with a shutter speed of 1/60.
The main tools I use in restoring a photograph are:
- The Unsharp Mask. From the top of the toolbar: Filter — Sharpen — Unsharp Mask. Using a max of 125-140% so that your image isn’t too pixilated.
- The Healing Tool & Clone Stamp.
The clone stamp allows you to replicate exact pixels from one part of your image to another. Great for tiny areas (or wrinkles as I posted previously). The Healing tool is great because it will actually take into account all of its surrounds and try to blend in with those colors. Here is an example of some spots that needed healing (there were several blue/bright spots all over the picture). 
- The Blur Tool. After I corrected all the faded spots and discolorations, I used the blur tool to correct the background sharpness & pixilation. The wall & people that aren’t the center focus did not look great that sharp (especially that back wall).
For this particular photo after I made all those corrections I changed the color slightly to give it a sepia tone. To do this go to Image — Color Balance and adjust your colors. I also gave it a vignette (Filter — Distort — Lens Correction). And here’s how it turned out:
Happy Anniversary my Sweet Guy. Loving the past 7 years!
Do you have a favorite old photo? I used to love when I worked at the photolab and people would bring in pictures for restoration. It normally came with a great story.
On a separate note… I’ve update my blog links, kid quotes & book reads finally. I think its been a month. I’m not fully satisfied with the organization of my blog reads. I separated them out, but I’m not sure I like how I did it. Oh well, at least its up right?
I’ve been a bit behind in cards & gifts to my friends and family having babies and birthdays. The other day I was at the store and I almost bought a card. My older sister buys the best funny cards, but the ones I buy are never funny to anyone but me.
I told Camille the names of some of the people that we had stuff to mail to and asked if she wanted to make the cards for it. She loves participating making and giving gifts so she was really happy about it.
We’ve been practicing her cutting, so she cut strips of watercolor paper to be 4 inches tall by 10 inches wide.
After she cut them, she painted all the strips with watercolors (orange, red and yellow this time):
We hung them up and let them dry (it didn’t take too long). I then helped her fold them in half and cut rounded corners on all the cards.
She finished each one with some beautiful pastel colorings & I tied raffia around the front of each holding it firmly on there with a touch of glue.
She loved making them & I love how her little personality went into these. I posted some cards that she made a while back, and I noticed the way we made these are a bit more messy. There are spots of watercolors all on the inside of each cards. I love it! 
Also, because she’s learning to cut not every line is completely straight. It would really frustrate her if she got off the straight line I drew. I asked her if she wanted to stop and she said no way. So, I just encouraged her that it didn’t matter, it was only a guide & to try to get back on the line. She did and they look wonderful.
The next step… to get all these beauties in the mail.
Cami’s birthday is just around the corner (and she keeps talking about it), but this four year old gift basket we created a couple of weeks ago for a little friend of hers.
This little monkey here I made following a free pattern I found at mmmcrafts. I used a bunch of fabric that I’ve had lying around for ages that I thought I’d never find a good use of. The main fabric, I was just so thrilled. I had despised it sitting in my fabric pile for the past four years, but it actually ended up being the perfect style for this project.
Camille wanted to make another book like the one from Noah’s party & we had extra pencils from the party.
We stuffed all of them inside a bolga basket and she had an extra painted a card that we cut and attached to the front with some yarn.
I think it turned out great!
Here are some of my new favorite free fonts:
.: click on the font to download for free :.
Josefin Sans Std Light, Molengo & Lobster are all part of the Google Font Directory, which you can get the code on there to create these fonts on your blog that are visible on most web browsers.
Recently, I’ve noticed a way that Cami learns and orders things. A couple weeks ago for Noah’s family party, I bought ice cream cupcakes & Camille went with me to pick them out. I ordered a package of six. I asked her if she wanted to hold it & how many were in there. Camille said “six. two threes is six.” It was the way the package was set up, and I’ve noticed in the bath or when we are making something how she likes to organize each foam letter on a single square tile in the bathroom and then count them, or have the lemons in a row. Its so fun to watch her natural way of learning.
