Messenger Bag

With school fast approaching (at least for my kids) I thought this was the cutest thing, especially for little girls.  A messenger bag instead of a back pack.  I found it on a blog called "Diary of a Quilter" (their picture of the completed project to the left), although it is not quilted. All the kids have a back pack and something different is always nice, at least while kids are still little.  For the full tutorial click here.
My daughter is starting kindergarten this fall and hasn't gotten into the whole "I have to be just like my friends" yet so I thought it would be the perfect "special" thing for her to start her elementary school experience.   I am going to try it out this week I think, I'm on my way to the store today and will let my daughter pick out her favorite material, Tinkerbell no doubt but she might surprise me.  I am also thinking of adding a pocket on the front or maybe doing a couple of things a little differently but I will let you know how and if it works out.

Hand Trees

So for the 1st thing to write about on this blog I thought I would start with a project I actually tried...Mod Podged Hand Tress, (their picture of the completed project is to the right). I found this project on the blog Mod Podge Rocks, which linked me to the full tutorial on At Second Street:a creative blog which you can find here. As you can see they are these really cool trees you make out of your kids hand prints, and they can help you make them which is a big plus.  They look cool and they also preserve a moment in time with my kids hand prints. My kids are always putting their hands up agaist them to see how much their hands have grown even though they only did them a few months ago. 
Here are pictures of how our project went:

Here are all my supplies out and ready to start.  I did one thing differently then what she did at, At Second Street.  I went to Lowes' and got one long 12 inch wide board and then cut it into 3 pieces, then painted them with black acrylic paint. I followed her instructions from there.  Another tip is that I wanted all the greens in the leafs to not clash with any of the other greens in my great room ( I have a lot of green) so I went to JoAnn's Fabrics where they were nice enough to group the "like" greens together. ;)

My kids had a blast using the Mod Podge.  As it dried on their hands you could peel it off like dried white glue.  Does anyone else remember LOVE putting white glue on your hands as a kid and letting it dry just so you could peel it off? I know I sure did which I told my kids all about (bounding moment).
Then the finished project, which hangs proudly on the wall behind my kitchen table.  It was the perfect place for it as I have a great room (living/kitchen/dinning room all together) of which I have a HUGE wall.
I just love how they turned out and they are such a conversation piece as well.  The best thing of all is that my kids and I made a great memory that they will always remember.