MOPS Leadership Nametags

With the beginning of each school year, a new year for MOPS and MomsNext begins. For those of you not familiar with these organizations, they are groups for moms of all ages- MOPS for those who are pregnant through preschool age and MomsNext is for moms of school age kids. They are great if you are in desperate need of friends or support or just an outlet for relaxation. I have benefitted so much from joining the group and am on the leadership team. I do creative activities with a couple other ladies. We are having so much fun planning for the new year! The next theme is "A Beautiful Mess" and the Bible verse that accompanies it is Ephesians 4:10- "For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago." I am so excited!! 
Anyway, we recently had our leadership planning retreat and it was decided that we needed to stand out a little, in the sea of moms. We wanted them to know that we were available if they had a question or if we could help them in any way. Thing is, we only had generic looking plastic covered boring nametags. Those wouldn't do for me. Nope. So... I volunteered to come up with a design and to create a tag for each member of the steering committee. 23 in total. This project was so fun! I just went to Hobby Lobby, invaded their ribbon section and started my collage. I ended up using my Silhouette to cut the vinyl names and my labeler to create the position titles. I had blank bottle caps and found the jewels that I put in the center in the scrapbook section. I bought the paper, feathers, and burlap flowers there too. The chevron washi tape was something that I got online somewhere. I honestly couldn't tell you where. Maybe Pick Your Plum?? Not sure. But that stuff is everywhere these days. I cut out the oval shapes with my Big Shot machine. Then I glued all the pieces together with my hot glue gun and decoupaged the whole surface with Mod Podge. Simple as that! Not a hard craft, but definitely time consuming. It took me "some" hours to finish them all. But I think they are totally worth it. I am sure we will be easy to identify with our beautifully messy tags.

Custom Pallet Sign

I have a friend who likes to say that she isn't very crafty. But I say she has potential. She says she doesn't really have much interest in trying. But what she does have an interest in, is being generous, and supportive, and awesome. (lucky me!!) So lately, she has no problem asking me to make all kinds of stuff for her. (And I couldn't be happier!)
Thankfully Pinterest provides ample inspiration for her requests. She told me a little story behind her particular request, showed me a couple of pictures and gave me the green light to come up with something for the fence by their pool. I went in search of some pallets that would fit the bill and it took me a little while. It seemed that all the ones I was finding were spray painted on the sides or completely demolished. I just kept looking. Finally I found one near the dumpster of our local beauty school. Hopefully they didn't need it... In retrospect, I probably should have asked them before I loaded it into my car... but trash is trash, right? Let's hope so. I am sure they would appreciate the "art" that it became and they would be glad to let me have it. Right? Yeah. (Can you tell I have a guilty conscience??) Nonetheless, I made this sign with my "found" pallet.

First, I had to rip it apart. Thought it would have been easy. NOT! I mean, it was just wood and I am used to working with that particular medium. But...I was out in my driveway hacking away at this thing for what seemed like an eternity. I am pretty sure that when they put these things together, they use some impenetrable adhesive or something. Eventually I got the pieces that I needed loose from the main structure. Then I added a couple of rails to the back to keep the boards in place.


To do the design, I taped off the edges and painted the main space in an off white chalk paint. I used a sponge brush to freehand paint a wave-like row at the bottom and a bold blocky sunshine in the top right corner. Then I used my cricut to cut out cardstock and pieced the negative space together to creat a stencil. I stenciled the letters with a pencil and removed the paper. I hand painted the words and then let them dry. Next, I distressed the whole surface and edges with sandpaper. Finally I made an antiquing medium out of brown paint and water and lightly coated the project.

I really should have sprayed it with some kind of varnish or something. Of course, this was decided after I had already delivered it to its' new owner. Shucks. She said she would take care of it though, so I am hoping that it is actually ok. Now that I think about it, I should probably check in with her about that... Ok... will do. :)

Fruity Cheesecake Chimichangas

I think we just discovered a goldmine. A fat laden, sugar filled, super yummy goldmine. My kids and I were just sitting around on this lazy summer evening and we all got a hankering for some dessert. It is a couple of days before payday so we are low in funds and food and my car is temporarily out of commission (just keeping it real,) so I had to use what I had on hand. I searched my stockpile and came up with a brick of cream cheese and some frozen peaches. Seemed like a good start for something yummy. I wasn't in the mood to turn on the oven and heat up the house or anything like that so it needed to be prepared in another way.

I remembered seeing on Pinterest, a recipe for strawberry burritos. I thought, "does it really have to be strawberries??" My answer to myself was "No, of course not!" So my brain churned and I pulled out my package of tortillas, and got to work.

I started by melting 2 T butter in a frying pan and adding 2 cups of frozen peaches, defrosted and cubed up, 1/4 cup sugar, 3 T flour, 1/2 tsp cinnamon and stirred it all up until it was bubbly and thickened. Then I set it aside to cool.

Next, I creamed my room temperature 8 oz brick of cream cheese and 1/4 cup sugar, then blended in 1 tsp. vanilla and set that bowl aside.

I spread the bottom half of each tortilla
with an even layer of the cream cheese mixture, then topped it with the cooled peach mixture.

Following that, I rolled them in typical burrito fashion and pan fried them in a small amount of oil (gotta be mindful of the calories and fat. lol.)

 Immediately following removal from the frying pan, I rolled them in a cinnamon sugar mixture and placed them on a platter to cool a bit. Then I gave them to my kids who proclaimed me a genius. (I love it when that happens.) Happy evening kid-friendly dessert surprise, that is for sure. I decided that they could be done with any fruit really. Why not apricots, or cherries or apples, or pumpkin in the fall?! Oh man, gonna be a fattening adventure. ;-)

Wooden Disc Necklace Gift

A while back, I had made some washer jewelry with Mod Podge Dimensional Magic and scrapbook paper and a couple of embellishments. They became pretty popular both on Pinterest AND in real life with the people who received them as gifts. Got me thinking... I wonder if I could come up with something else using the same technique. I had recently picked up some wooden circle discs and discovered that they would be perfect to make some pendants with. So, as luck would have it, I needed another gift idea for my MOPS table mates to celebrate the end of our year. I made them each their own necklace with an affirming word decoupaged onto it and some little rhinestones and a scrapbooking paper flower embellishment.While I was at it, I made myself one, only I skipped the affirmation and rhinestone and added my initial and a pearl bead. Finally, I screwed in a tiny eye hook and hung it on leather cording. Works for me!

Polka Dot Teacher Appreciation Frame

I needed a gift for my daughter's teacher. We have really been blessed to have her this  year. This is her first year at our school and I can say that she is such a great addition to the staff! You can tell she really cares about her kids. That leads to happy Moms and awesome kid learners. So, I am her room parent. End of the year means a gift. What was I to do?? We never have a lot of spare money these days but I always seem to have an abundance of craft supplies. I mean, I could have gotten her a gift card to somewhere, but, that didn't seem cheap thoughtful enough for me. So I began to peruse Pinterest and then rummage through my stash. Started with a wreath idea I saw, with pencils around a chalkboard in a sunburst pattern. I had the materials so I gave it a shot. Ended up hating it. Then I decoupaged a frame I had on hand and printed a "welcome" sign to put in the frame. I started to like what I was doing. Then I added pencils to the top of the frame to give a "princessy" crown feel. Ended up hating it again. I couldn't seem to ditch the pencil idea. Well, I polled my crafty buddies and asked them what they thought. The opinions were unanimous. LOSE THE PENCILS. Okay, I thought. I will abandon my original inspiration. Guess what... They were right! It looked so cute and I can say that I am very happy with the final result. So it will not be a hanging wreath decoration, but will be a cute frame and will rest on a handy dandy plate holder/rack from Hobby Lobby. Another year done. Thank you Mrs. Carrillo for a fabulous year!