Kindle and Case

What do all electronic books need? An accompanying home to protect it from crushing textbooks, pens, and whatever else floats around that bag of his. Enter part 2 of my husband's Annivers-itines Day gift.

From the outside it looks like any other boring money management book that lost its dust cover (or is it called a dust jacket?)

But on the inside- a secret kindle case!

It does a great job protecting the kindle, and I'm thinking that the chances of someone knowing it's a kindle and stealing it are slim. An added bonus is that in order to carry around his fake book, he has to carry around a real book! Hahaha I'm sure these electronic books are the best thing since sliced bread, but I just don't like the idea of them at all. I guess I'm just old fashioned. :) He likes it, irony and all.

More Quiet Book Pages!

Round 2 of quiet book pages!

Boys need to know how to braid too, right? My husband said no, but I assured him that if  trapped on a deserted island, he would need to know how to braid rope. Besides, teal hair makes it less feminine, right?

The apples snap on and off and store in the pocket. What do all trees need? An owl hole of course.

Visit: tatertotsandjello.com for the weekend wrap up party!"

Quiet Book Pages

 My pet project right now is a quiet book for my son's 2nd birthday. I read that it's super time consuming, but it's really not been that bad. I've really been enjoying coming up with different ideas for pages and making patterns for them. Here are some of the pages I have completed so far. Notice that the edges are still rough. They will be finished when I bind the book.

       The door opens, letters slide inside the box, and the flag goes up and down. I think I might sew a button on the door as a door pull. I think it looks a little naked right now.

                                      

This page is made of an up-cycled pair of baby girl's pants. I intend to put a few goodies in the pockets, including a pad of paper and pencil to write letters to "send" in the mail.

The W isn't crooked- I promise.

This z page has the zipper of course, and also the snap closure (it's a faux button), plus the pocket on the pants. In order to attempt to keep the pieces of this book together, I made the pants on this page into a giant pocket that can be accessed at the waist band. 

I've already shared the H page, but I finished the inside last night. I added the plastic sleeve on the base heart to hold a family picture. The top is open so the picture can be changed over time.



That's all for now. I'll share more pages tomorrow.

Visit tatertotsandjello.com for the weekend wrap up party!

Handmade Gift #2 ABC Blocks

Months ago I found pre-cut wooden blocks at Goodwill, and of course I snatched them right up. $3.99 minus 30% off special, plus an additional 10% off as a student discount = a great deal.

After a coat of primer, some acrylic paint, and some sharpie permanent markers, this is what we have.

We already celebrated Christmas at my house, and I'm pleased to say that he likes them! That is, he likes to knock them over after I stack them.

Family Tree

I've been keeping busy working on Christmas presents the past couple days. We plan on giving home made gifts to most people on our lists. One thing I've been working on is a family tree painting that was inspired by this post from Make The Best of Things. Isn't she so talented?

Here is my interpretation:

 

The colors are a bit off on both, but you get the idea. The reds are more like the one on the right, but the tree color is dark like that on the left. My original idea was to make this into a family tree, but I'm not sure if I will like the finished product if I do that. I'm going to sleep on it, and go from there.

Magnetic Spice Jars

Well hello there! You still read this ol' thing? I thought you all forgot I existed. Oh...you did? Ah well, I'm still here, just busy busy. My sister is putting the house up for sale, and since we rent from her, that means we have to clean clean clean, and don't forget to declutter. As a result of all of this cleaning, I can't find a single thing. Sigh. On a positive note though, I've been more productive out of necessity, trying to maintain the clean, so here I sit on a Tuesday afternoon, and all of the weekly chores are already done! Yay me! You know what that means? I get to post here, AND maybe even paint something. Sweet! Before I go crazily painting all of our furniture, here's a little something I did for my husband for Father's Day.

Magnetic spice jars

He's been looking for a spice rack, but I thought these were so much cooler, plus, I got to use up some of the empty baby food jars we have, and be crafty. Yay! All I did was spray paint the lids black so they all matched, then glued the neodymium magnets to the lid. I ordered my magnets online, but they were much smaller than I anticipated(so I had to use 2-3 on each lid), and with the inflated cost of shipping (Magnets were like $3, shipping was $16), I would have been better off just buying the 4-packs they sell in the Walmart craft section for $3 something each.

I used superglue to attach the magnets, created labels using this Celtic knot design that I stretched:

Typed in all the spice names, printed on clear address labels I already had, and voila!

The finished product. For now they are on the fridge, but you're supposed to keep them in a dark cool place, so eventually I plan on mounting a cookie sheet to the inside of a cupboard door, and keeping them there. My total cost was about $20, which was the cost of the magnets. Everything else I had on hand. My only advice with these is to not tighten the lids much. They are pretty hard to open if you tighten them as much as you think you should.  Oops, the baby's awake. So much for painting furniture! Happy Tuesday everyone.

"Autographed" Baseball

My husband is a big sports memorabilia collector, and he loves baseball memorabilia especially. So, for Father's Day, one of the gifts the wee one and I made for Daddy was this:

A baseball "autographed" by my husband's biggest fan. I took the hand print during nap time using acrylic paint, then wrote my son's name and date underneath. I'm pretty sure my husband loves it! I may be biased, but I think it's the best autographed baseball in his collection.

Happy Father's Day Baby!

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