Easter T-shirt Tutorial

I love seasonal matching t-shirts for my boys... I get them Christmas shirts, Valentine's Day shirts, St. Patrick's Day shirts.... but there are not Easter shirts. Even if there were Easter shirts... they'd be super girly with chicks, bunnies, pink eggs, oh my! So, I took matters in my own hands... and made them Easter shirts.
Here's what I did....
For the bunny, I did an applique.

1. Find a chocolate bunny clip art off the internet. Print it full page (8.5x11) and cut it out.
2-3. Trace the bunny onto Wonder Under.
4. Iron the Wonder Under onto your fabric.
5-6. Cut out the fabric. Peel the paper off the back.
7. Iron the applique onto your shirt. Sew around the edge of the applique to make sure it sticks... and because it looks cute... and because that's just what you do.

For the words, I did Freezer Paper stencil.

8. Cut your letters out on your Cricut... or some other die cutting machine... or trace them and cut them out. Iron the freezer paper onto your shirt, waxy side down.
9. ***Make sure you put something inside your shirt so the paint doesn't bleed*** Dab a mixture of acrylic paint and textile medium onto the stencil. Dry with a blow dryer to heat set. Peel the freezer paper off and you are done! (I tossed mine in the dryer as well to make sure it was heat set well.)
"Ouch!"
"My tail hurts"
"What?"
They love them and couldn't wait to wear them to school. Totally cute, funny and totally boy! I let them each pick what part of their bunny was eaten!

Happy Easter!!!

-Anisa

Buttery Corn Bread

My hubby doesn't like corn bread much... so I never get to make it.... or I'd have to eat the whole pan. So, the other day I made this cornbread recipe from allrecipes.com. My mom can't get over how good it is.... so I thought I'd post it. It gets 5 stars from allrecipes.... which is good in itself. HOWEVER, I make a slight modification to it.... I add Buttermilk! As my friend Jacinda from Tip Top Cake Shoppe says, "it's always better with buttermilk." It is soooo moist and delicious!

(I also have a delicious recipe for buttermilk waffles and buttermilk syrup... buttermilk is always in my fridge!)

Ingredients

* 2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
* 1 cup sugar
* 3 eggs
* 1 2/3 cups milk BUTTERMILK
* 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 cup cornmeal
* 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Combine the eggs and milk. Combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with egg mixture.
2. Pour into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake at 400 degrees F for 22-27 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cut into squares; serve warm.

-Anisa

T-shirt Refashions

I ordered this cute hat on A Side of Peaches a few months ago for our family pictures. The funny thing is that the hat didn't show up in the mail until 2 days after our pictures! So I didn't even get to use it! However, I based our family pictures on the colors that I thought were in the hat... not the colors that were actually in the hat (it looked totally different when I ordered it online). Anyway, I didn't have anything in these colors, so I went to Target to see if I could find something to match this hat.
I found these two plain t-shirts. Now, I'm a t-shirt kind of gal, but I like them to have a little something... maybe a ruffle or something. They've been sitting in my closet for a few months and I don't wear them because they are.... boring.
So, first up is the yellow one. I saw this idea on Icandy. Totally cute! I stole some lace from my mom's stash. I didn't follow the tutorial on Icandy... I just pinned mine on and sewed it. It's all the same, right?

2nd up was the purple one. I loved this idea from Less Cake {More Frosting}.... I even loved the colors. I used my Cricut and the Storybook cartridge to cut out my freezer paper.
And now I have two totally cute t-shirts to wear with my super cute hat!
I'm sure I'll be wearing my hat a lot this summer!
-Anisa

Flickr

I have decided to create a Flickr account to upload all of my scrapbooking pages to. I would like for you to view them without having to post all of them to my blog.

You can find my Flickr gallery HERE!

Yard Sale Treasure

Do you want to see what I did with that shelf I bought at a yard sale a few weeks ago???
I am so giddy with excitement!!! In my old craft room, I had a system of curtain rods where I organized my embellishments.... but I didn't want to do the exact same thing this time. I had kept my cute buckets and jars from Ikea and they fit perfectly on this shelf!
I already had the green spray paint and the shelf only cost me $3. I love how it turned out!!!
-Anisa

Speaking of buttons... grab mine!

<center><a href="http://larciebird.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Manic Mother" src="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv70/ryanisa/grababutton.jpg" /></a></center>

Button, button, who's got the button?

I spent about 45 minutes this morning doing a little more button organizing.... I stole all of my mom's buttons so I had several more to add to my stash.
The top dish is my large flat buttons. The bottom dish is the buttons that are not flat... ya know the kind that have the thing on the back that you sew on... what is that called? These are the buttons that I use to make my fabric flowers.

A whole pint jar of white buttons (I actually sent quite a few of these to the local thrift shop... how many white buttons do you need?)
More jars of buttons...
And my traveling case of buttons that I take when I go to a crop. Wow, that's a lot of buttons?

-Anisa

Strike While the Iron is Hot

I have a lot on my plate right now... I'm working 30 hours a week, taking 3 credits online, and I'm supposed to be studying for a Praxis test that I am taking this Saturday! That in addition to being a mom, cleaning the house, cooking dinner, doing laundry, exercising, etc.... But here's the thing.... I'd rather be Scrapbooking!!! I sneak down to my craft room whenever I get the chance... whether it be early in the morning, late at night or just when I can... and I scrapbook. My grandma always said, "Strike while the iron is hot." Do you know what that means? I figure I'm totally in the mood to scrapbook right now... so I'm going to. I'm producing pages that I love and I'm getting things done. Currently I'm working on my Fall pages... so I thought I'd share!!!




I'm still working on a Flickr group of my pics... and hopefully I'll have a reader gallery too!

-Anisa

Yard Sale Treasure

Check out this awesome shelf I found at a yard sale yesterday? Any ideas why I'm so excited? What do you think I'm going to do with it?
-Anisa

Shrinky Dinks

I've become a scrounge.... I'm digging through garbage:)... in a way. At my school I teach a remediation class during lunch. The students have 45 minutes to work on assignments, take tests, write essays, etc. At the end of the 45 minutes they are given a box lunch. Well, one of my co-workers told me that you could make "shrinky dinks" out of the plastic lunch boxes. Do you know what shrinky dinks are? Well, you're about to find out!
So, I took the boxes and cut the plastic top and bottom out of them to make square sheets. Then I used the die cutting machine at my school to cut out the shape of a clover. I used my circle cutter to cut the circles in the middle. This piece of plastic is about 4" square and the circles in the middle are about the size of a dime.

The next step is to bake them in the oven at 325 degrees. Put them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. They will cook for about 3-4 minutes. They will curl up and shrink. When they start to lie flat again, they are done.
When you are finished, you will end up with these cute clear embellishments. They are much smaller than the original size. They are now stiff and about the thickness of a nickel. You can tell by the size of my thumb and ribbon how small they are!
You can use them on your scrapbook pages, or make jewelry, or on a cute banner like I did here.

The science teacher in me is ready to experiment! Let's see what I come up with next!!!
-Anisa