Whitniffic Whatnots

Oh, Martha Stewart... or I guess Martha's Minions who craft for her magazine... you always come up with stuff that is so simply obvious, but clearly not obvious enough for me to invent on my own... and then leave me kicking myself for not thinking of it first! Take this cool black Halloween door decoration featuring slithering snakes on a grapevine wreath, for example. I'm actually kind of surprised there's a tutorial for this, it's so simple! Anyways... I loved it, so I decided to make my own. I ordered a bunch of rubber snakes on Amazon.com: a 12-pack of 36" snakes and a baggie of little 6" buggers. The grapevine wreath was from Michael's. And this is all I needed... So, basically, all I did was weave the snakes in and out of the grapevines, starting with the big ones. They were more coiled than I expected, so they fought with me a little while I was trying to stretch them out, but they keep their shape nicely once they were adjusted. I gravi...

I can't believe I forgot to post about this! This past Easter (umm... 6 months ago?), I brought a really fun and simple craft project along to our family gathering to do with my niece and nephews... bunny paintings! I bought a four-pack of 8x10 canvases at a craft store and pulled out some craft paint I'd had hanging around for a while. I painted each of the canvases a nice pastel background color; pink, green, blue and yellow. Then, I stuck some removable bunny-shaped stickers that I printed out at work to the center of the canvases and they were ready to go. Jackson got to pick his canvas first, since he's the oldest (and likely had the only opinion of the three), and he chose the blue one. I also had him pick a few paint colors and squeezed a bit onto a paper plate for him. I had cut up a few dish sponges to make paint dabbers, and he got to work painting away! Jackson picks his paint colors. It was kind of funny how terrified he was of getting dir...

I'm a little behind on my blogging. Just a tad. I'm sure you all remember my inaugural 2014 running book, right? Well, I loved it so much, I decided to make another one for 2015! After all... I needed somewhere to put my 28 race bibs for the year. Ha ha... I changed up the look significantly, giving it more of a concrete, road-race look. Except for the trail races... those got a "dirt" background. I added dimension, color and interest to each page by picking a fun color to accentuate the theme of the race (much like last year) and using a chevron shape overlaid onto the backgrounds. I was totally into chevrons last year... they look fast. Unlike myself. 2014 vs 2015 Dirt background  I kept the same information on each page, since I love having a record of date, time, distance, and I  included the photos of the t-shirts again, although this time I gave it a less formal look by just tossing them on the ground to photograph them. I also ...

My niece and nephews are growing so fast! And I'm really, really behind on blogging. Oh well. I mentioned way back at Thanksgiving how I was so excited about the kids' Christmas gifts... which got done in time, but I just haven't had a chance to write about them! I still love how they turned out, so I'll take this opportunity to share them with you now. They're appropriate for the Back to School season as well, so umm... awesome!  Giant height rulers! Sorry for the crummy pic... there's a lot less ambient light in winter! What's more iconic to starting a new school year than buying school supplies? Or maybe you remember starting each new school year by making a mark in your door frame to show how much you grew over summer... This project combines both of those back-to-school memories into a cute, colorful keepsake. Ok, so the idea for this is not originally mine, but I put a fun twist on them that makes them unique and fitting for each kiddo...

Alright. This is a bit of a departure from what I normally write about, but I had this grand scheme to convert an old freezer into a "keezer", also known as a kegerator, for the hubby for our anniversary this month (like he needs to drink more beer...). I quickly realized that I would need some technical help. I found several good instructional tutorials online to accomplish this task, but the electrical components had me questioning if I could actually do this by myself. I contacted an engineer friend, who's also a home brewer, and he basically wrote me a novel on what I should look for and what I needed. Then he said, "Well, if he's anything like me, he'll want to get in there and see how it all works." That's when I realized it wouldn't be fair of me not to include my service technician (i.e. nerd) husband in the conversion of his own new toy. So I spilled the beans. I located a small upright freezer on Craigslist; I went for upright i...