Monday, July 9, 2012

I've been Missing you...

Hey!
So I have been gone a long long looong time! I am sorry for that. I find that I have been blogging in my head a lot lately because I miss it. Does anyone else do that? lol

I have a lot planned for summer though, so I will be back... but here is a sneak of what I have been up too:
Vinyl Lettering Ideas...
And Miss P's Dress!! I JUST love it! She does too, she just hates all the pictures I take of her! ha!

 I am working on a few for me too and I hope to get those up soon...



xoxo!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Night's Events....

I am so excited! The last 2 days have been spent getting ready for my Night on the Avenue. I was invited to be the featured artisan of the night at the cutest shabby chic shop I have ever been in.

It's called the apple box boutique and tomorrow I will tell you all about it. In the meantime, here's a little picture to show off my crafts.


xoxo
Jacinda

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Sneak Preview!

Happy Tuesday!
I know I have been gone of late and I just want to reassure you all that it has been for good reason!

Last Thursday, I spontaneously decided to pack up and head on south to the old farmstead where I was raised. The kids were wanting to see Grandma, and I was lucky enough to have a extra days off from the day-home.

The break was much needed! 

Going back home to the country is like a breath of fresh air for me. {though the air isn't always so fresh near the cow's feeding manger... haha} Unfortunately I took very few pictures. I really just enjoyed my time with my family. Everyone was home, all 5 siblings of mine with spouse/kids in tow. It's trips like that, that make me think of moving out of the city....

One of the days I was home, my mom, my sister and I {plus 2 kids}, went on a little shopping trip {it was really little for me anyways! ;P}. We stopped by a few of our favorite shops, but the best part of it all was when we went down memory lane to the house my mom had graduated high school from. 


The House
My mom said that her whole family was excited to move there as it was the first house they had lived in that had a dishwasher! I am sucker for old stories so I soaked up every word as she related who lived next to her, where she had a car crash {and which cute boys saved her} and how my grandparents purchased the house for only $39,000!!!!


While home, I was also able to get my creative juices going... and here is where the sneak preview comes in! I am designing a family wall collage for a friend of mine. Aside from just pictures, she wants vinyl lettering on her wall, which is where I come in.I have been cutting and designing with vinyl for almost 4 years now! Wow that seems crazy.

Anyways, I am really excited about this project. It is quite an undertaking as the wall is a good 15ft long I think. Here are a few pictures of the process so far...

This is my favorite area so far; I made the square words to match the size of the frames. The tricky part was coming up with 4 letter words relating to family!
 
 Here is a wider view of a section of the wall. The paper is where words are yet to be placed.

Lucky for me, my friend had another section of the wall in this format! :) This project has definitely given me inspiration to get my own walls painted!

Don't worry! I will post more of 'the wall' as I work on finishing it!

xoxo

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Is this What You Imagined? Part 2

Happy Spring Day!

It is time to cheer you up from your midweek slump! I want to continue on from my last post (part 1 here) about Living the Life you have Imagined. I originally planned to post this on Monday, but it has been a real challenge for me to write. Last post, I talked about Living the Life you have imagined and ended with asking this question:

What is the life you have always dreamed of having?

For me this was more difficult to answer than I thought. Hence why it has taken me the last week and a half to write! I have always just taken life as it came at me, without a plan, going where ever the wind blows. 
With some intense thought, I found three steps to getting my perfect life:
1. Write a list of everything I want in life (the hardest part for me) 
2. Using that list to imagine the most perfect day of all.
3. After writing out the above 2, then follow this advice:
Live the Life you Imagined and Live it Right Now.

The sooner you start living and acting like you already have your dream life, the sooner it actually comes true. For next 2 weeks of my life I am going to be writing out what I do want.  I say 2 weeks because that seems kind of reasonable for me. Though I hope to get it done sooner. Like Today.

  SOURCE

What are you waiting for? Live the Life you've Imagined NOW!


Here is your Freebie too! :)
I had a really hard time making this one for some reason so I ended up making 2 different ideas and I hope you really like them There are 2 font color choices, one with brown lettering and one with black. The last one is a Facebook page cover. 
Please remember that it is for personal use only! Please direct others here if they like it too and let me know if you like it too! :)

Facebook Covers:



Let me know what you choose! I could end up making more that similar if there is a demand for it! :)


XOXO
Linking up to these great parties!

Blue Cricket Design Show and Tell




Today's Creative Blog
Tip Junkie handmade projects
Lil\'Luna

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Top 10 Ways to Make the Earth Greener {Earth Day ideas}

Happy Earth Day!

This year, Earth Day kind of sneaked up on me. Regardless, I am all about making the earth a better place to live for my kids, so I thought I would share some fun ways that you can make your community, home and earth a little better.

Each of these activities can be done with children as well, which makes them that much more awesome. If we don't teach our children to help keep the earth cleaner, who will?

Anyways, onto my list. A few are my own ideas, the rest come from Earth Day Canada website, where they also have a sweet free calendar with each day having an earth day activity on it. You can find that Freebie Here.

My Top 10 ways to make the Earth Greener: 

1. Get involved in recycling. I am sure a lot of people do this already, but I want to focus more on teaching my kids about the purpose behind recycling and show them items that we use everyday because someone has recycled. Set up a station where your kids can put the different items to be recycled and when it is recycling day, have them help you take it out.

2. Get and Use a Library Card. My son LOVES to read and I love that. However, buying books gets expensive! Most libraries (like Edmonton Public) will give free ones to kids. That's an easy way to opt out of having to pay renewal fees.
SOURCE: Edmonton Public Library
Plus as you can see from the above image of Edmonton Public Library Cards; they aren't just for old people anymore. The library has a new campaign, by Donovan Creative (my dream job FYI) that shows all the possibilities that a library card can hold. My favorite is "I'm an Information Ninja".

Aside from their cool new logo and library cards, Edmonton Public Library and most other libraries I think, have fun kid friendly events; book readings, movie outings, and playgroups too. To be honest, I could go on and on about the library's awesomeness for quite a while!


3. Clean your Local Park. When your done, admire your work and have a picnic! All you need is a few big garbage bags, gloves and away you go! It's fun and easy for your kids to be involved in too.


4. Plant a Garden. This is our first year to plant a garden in our new home and the whole family is excited. There are a lot of online resources for how to plant one, regardless of where you live. If you can't plant one, then there are community gardens, you can get involved in as well. Planting a garden is so great for kids in so many ways; teaching healthier eating habits, where food comes from, and responsibility {weeding}.



5. Use Pencil Crayons. A little known fact, I just learned myself, is that crayons take at least a century to decompose! Who knew! Personally, I prefer pencil crayons anyways, they seem to color smoother.


6. Save Energy by: keeping unused items unplugged {phone chargers, stereos etc} when not in use, keeping the lights off during daylight hours as well as when you are not in that room, use cold water for laundry, and much more. Check out Guelph and Government websites for 100s of more ideas.

7. Think about your Water Consumption. How can you use less? Ideas such as; not running the dishwasher or clothes washer until  they are full, and collecting rain water for your garden are just a few ideas. More can be found here and here. Tell your kids why we need to conserve water, information is power!

8. Use re-usable bags for groceries. We all know this, but I think we need to let our kids in on why we use them. For ideas, check out the site Re-Use This Bag. For preschool aged children, like mine, these ideas can seem a little bit to hard to understand. However, you can show videos about the effects of pollution, and talk about how plastic bags can cause some animals, like birds, to choke.


9. Have a Clothing Swap. It's cheap, fun and a great excuse for a play-date! Use your other worn out clothes for cleaning rags.

10. Make crafts from items around your home. This is more geared to kids, but it is also a great way to save money on activities for kids to do. Check online, or the library for books with kids crafts.

I found this great quote when collecting the information in this list, I think it sums up why we should work harder to make our Earth better:

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors;
 we borrow it from our children" 
~Native American Proverb


What are you going to change?
 

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Summer Dresses Take 2 {Tutorial Roundup}


Good Day Friends!
I am having the most difficult time trying to decide what dress to sew. There are so many! I think I will just have to sew them all! hehe!

It's deciding what dress shall be first that I am the most indecisive about. I haven't sewn a dress or skirt in years, so I actually feel a little nervous! I have spent most of my time sewing bags, home decor items and things for my kids. Which is why I think it is a good idea to start with something a little simpler; just so I can keep motivated! So here for your viewing pleasure are some more of my favorite dress tutorials.

Source: A Small Snippet
I really love how simple this dress is from A Small Snippet. Instead of a tank top though, I would use a t-shirt. The tutorial shows options for a longer dress or a shorter dress. Plus it has a little how-to included for using elastic thread. I think this would be a great dress for me to start with.

Source: Make it and Love it
Another great re-purpose dress tutorial from Make it and Love it. This blog has so many great tutorials, I could just spend hours there. I love that this dress tutorial doesn't have gathers all the way around the waste. They are in the front and back, which result in a slimming look.

Source: Everything Emme 








Source Everything Emme
The two dresses above are the coolest re-purposed dresses I have seen from a blog called Everything Emme. The first one is a mu-mu redo, which I just love, because mu-mus often come in wild colors. The second one, a modest vintage dress redo, reminds me of living in southern Alberta. haha!

I feel like they are one of those things were you see something and are like Duh! Why didn't I think of that?? Really, I want to go to Value Village right now and find a dress to tinker with and re-invent. Coolest idea ever. Period! To see more great treats like this, head over to the blog!

Of course, there are a huge number of dress patterns (like the one above) that I can find from Simplicity, McCalls and Burda. I think I will go look there next...

What dress is your favorite?

XOXO


Wednesday, April 18, 2012

From Instagram to your Computer {How To} plus Thrifty Finds

Happy Hump Day! The week is half way over! :)

Since I have become quite an Instagram fanatic, my camera has been put to rest. I discovered a recent problem however when I wanted to use my Instagram photos on my blog, for digital scrapbooking and printing.

Try as I may, getting my photos out of my Instagram profile was tricky. After looking online for a while, I found a site called Instaport. It is fool proof to use. All you need to do is use your login info from Instagram, then follow a few simple directions to download your photos to your computer.

There is one problem thus far though, and that is every time you export your photos, you export ALL of them. It's a minor detail really, but can be kind of annoying.I have to admit it's not that big of a deal to keep me from using Instagram...

I recently hit up our local thrift store, Value Village and found some great home decor items to go along with my retro inspired 'front parlor'. Of course I used Instagram to capture the vintage feeling of everything.

I really love old books; the feel, look and smell. Weird I know, get over it! Ha! I struck gold with this book published in 1951 appropriately titled "The Girl's Daily Life" for only $5. Inside are some great and hilarious insights into the expectations for girls in the 1950s. As I read more into it, I will be sure to share!

This great little clock was just sitting on an edge shelf waiting for me to come by.  It's bright orange, which adds the right punch of color to the room. All for $7. I found a similar one Here, on Etsy for $20!
At first glance, I thought that this mirror belonged atop a vanity. After I pulled it out, I realized I was wrong. I love the curvy lines of the frame. At $30, I almost put it back, then figured I would likely never see one like it again and brought it home. I plan on painting it a lighter teal color.

What's your favorite thrift store find?

XOXO