Stairway Boxes

6 Apr posted by Plum Adorable

Hello Friends! I hope you had a great Easter! It was a beautiful weekend here in the Pacific Northwest, we actually got to 70 degrees! Easter Sunday was a beautiful day spent in reflection of what Christ did for each of us. HE IS RISEN INDEED! We got to spend our day with family on beautiful Whidbey Island, it was a perfect day!!

These 2 certainly made it especially fun!

This past week was Spring Break so we took advantage of the school-less days to visit with some dear friends that we don’t get to see very often anymore, our very best friends and former (and see Char, I didn’t say OLD) neighbors, who now live over 2 hours away from us! Our former neighbors, the Pez family (that is the well abbreviated form of their last name) have been some of our best friends and the funny part is that the majority of our friendship has been long distance! We were just realizing this week as we were talking that we have now been NON-neighbors for almost 6 and a half years! And we lived next door to each other for less than a year before we moved away! Sometimes lifelong friendships just happen that way!

When we first moved away (we moved 2 hours North from our former home), we got together EVERY single month. We met in the middle in Seattle or took turns making the trek from one of our houses to the other! My first born, Cole and their one and only, Faith, are two months apart, so it was a friendship from the get go for our two little ones! When we had Kaylee almost 2 years later, she was just accepted right into the Faith and Coley-Bear (that is Faith’s nickname for Cole) mix. And though our monthly meetings have now spread out over the six year span to more like every 6 month meetings, we still pick up right where we left off, including the kiddos!

It was so FUN to spend the day at the Pez family house! The kids played the day away, we barely heard a peep! and Char and I spent the day chatting and crafting and scrapbooking away! PERFECT day!!!

Char shares my love for crafting and scrapbooking and Pinterest too! So it was really fun to be at her house again (I hadn’t been there since last October) and see all the fun ideas she has incorporated from Pinterest or just come up with on her own, she is SUPER creative! One of the ideas that she found on Pinterest, I HAD to take pictures of because I just LOVED it. It is super simple, it was easy and cheap to make and is super functional!!!

I LOVE these Stairway Boxes!!!

I should have taken a few more pictures, but we were awfully busy doing all that talking and crafting!

Char just covered some boxes she had on hand with different colors of burlap, used chipboard letters and glued them on! Now when she has stuff that needs to make its way upstairs, she just puts it in the designated box at the end of the stairs and up it goes at the end of day or whenever you are making a trip upstairs! This sure beats the piles of stuff I leave on the end of my stairs that everyone walks right on by ten times a day! (Sorry, pet peeve rant!) And I REALLY should have taken another picture to show that her stairs are actually quite wide and there is a wide landing below so her stairs don’t feel cramped AT ALL by the boxes, it is SUPER CUTE!!

Oh, and The D is for Dad, F is for Faith and M is for Mom! Everyone has their own box! LOVE it! I have a few other crafty ideas from my friend Char that I will be sharing with you but I am saving those for another post!

I also got to spend some time with 2 of my besties from High School over Spring Break which was so fun! And my baby brother came up from Florida to visit all of us Washingtonians, well really he just wanted to snowboard! And it was a bonus to see us too. I didn’t get to see him as much as I wanted to but it was still good to spend some time with him! He did make us this AMAZING salmon one night that I am HARASSING him about sharing with the rest of you so I’ll update you on that if he ever lets me share the recipe, it was seriously AMAZING!!

~JESS

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Filed Under: burlap, Crafts, Fabric

Expressions Vinyl Giveaway!

6 Apr posted by Plum Adorable

Expressions Vinyl is giving away $25 to one of our lucky readers!

I have mentioned many times before how much I love using Expressions Vinyl. They have so many different colors and types of vinyl. But, the best part is that you can purchase them in sheets for a lower price which means that you can create many, many things!

Scroll to the bottom to enter, but before you do, let me share with you some of the things I have made with their vinyl. Some of these things we have shared on this blog and others are gifts that I have made, but never shared. As I was going through all of the pictures, I was amazed at how many gifts I make using their vinyl!

Indoor & Outdoor Vinyl

I made these cute herb pots for my daughter’s teacher last year. I cut out the words ‘basil’, ‘parsley’ and ‘oregano’ using white vinyl.

Remember this personalized mug? I have made quite a few of these mugs using their outdoor vinyl. And yes, you can even put it in them dishwasher. I made mugs for my kids and have put them in the dishwasher over and over for more than a year now!

I made this wood sign for my cousin. I painted it with chalkboard paint, then I cut out the vinyl, ‘weeks until’ and the cute onesie.

Remember this sign I made last Fall? It was one of our very first posts. I needed something new for my Fall décor so I whipped up this cute sign using their brown and orange vinyl.

Here is another chalkboard sign I made. I cut out the vinyl ‘days until’ as well as the flower and flip flops. We made this for my daughter’s best friend that was getting ready to go to Hawaii. They have a place over there, so she can use it again!

Remember our tutorial on how to make your own glitter ornaments? Who knew these would become so popular! I used vinyl to add to these ornaments to give it a personalized touch!

I love this sign. I made it as a gift to give at our Women’s Retreat.

Here is another one of our very first posts. Click here to see the tutorial on how to make these cute gumball machines. I cut out ‘memories’ using Expressions Vinyl.

I found this picture while for something else. This is a great way to use their vinyl. Cut out dates and titles to add to your scrapbooks.

T-Shirt Vinyl

I LOVE their t-shirt vinyl. It is so fun to create personalized gifts with it. I whipped up this t-shirt the night before my daughter had a Veteran’s Day Assembly. See the tutorial here.

I made this hat for my cousin using their t-shirt vinyl…awww!

I also made this for my daughter’s friend to wear in Hawaii.

This is a cute hat I made for my niece Lola who lives in Australia. It’s not the best picture, but you can see her name on the side.

This shirt was also for my cousin’s little boy. I saw a similar idea on Pinterest and knew I could design my own using the t-shirt vinyl.

Remember these burlap pumpkin placemats? I made these using their t-shirt vinyl.

Inkjet Printable Vinyl

And of course you probably remember this post from yesterday Printable Waterproof Vinyl Tray

Those are quite a few projects wouldn’t ya say? Eleven of them I made as gift for others! Of course there are more that I didn’t share with you, but those alone should give you a reason to start using vinyl! Of course you need a personalized cutter like a Cricut or Silhouette Cameo. I have had a mini Cricut for years but…

I am still holding out hope that the magical Silhouette Cameo Fairy will bring me one. I know, I mention that a lot. One can hope!

Ok…enough about my projects.

Let’s get on to the giveaway…

The above information is all 100% my opinion. I am in no way being compensated by Expressions Vinyl. I just really like them.

___________________________________________________________________

$25 to Expressions Vinyl

The first two votes are mandatory!

‘Like’ Plum Adorable & Expressions Vinyl on Facebook. That’s it!

We’ve made it easy for you to do using Rafflecopter below.

Good Luck!

Contest will end at 12:00am (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, April 10th.

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Filed Under: burlap, Crafts, Fabric, Gift Ideas, Giveaway, vinyl

Printable waterproof Vinyl Tutorial

5 Apr posted by Plum Adorable

Who knew you could print on vinyl?

Well, maybe you did, but I just found this little secret out.

I made this tray for my sister’s friend that is getting married. I started with a piece of white printable vinyl. I created my design, printed it out on an inkjet printer, cut around the scallop shape and stuck it on the tray. The best part is that is also waterproof!

Seriously, who knew?

I buy all of my vinyl from Expressions Vinyl. I love being able to purchase sheets in various colors for a lower price rather than buying a whole roll of one color. My sister and I ordered this 8.5 x 11 inch printable vinyl for only $1.99 a piece.

Here is how I made the above tray.

First, my sister bought these digital papers from The Shabby Shop. Once we decided on which paper we wanted (we used Kiwi Damask2) I uploaded the digital paper into my design program and created what you see on the tray.

Don’t leave just yet!

It’s ok if you don’t do graphic design!

I realize that not everyone will be able to do what I did above. So, if you don’t do graphic design, no worries. You could still purchase digital paper and print it right onto the vinyl. Then you could cut out additional vinyl letters and add them on top. Confused? Check out this tutorial on just how they did that here.

Below is the vinyl after I printed it out. This is not the actual piece we used on the tray. It wasn’t quite the color we wanted. But you can see that it was a white 8.5 x 11 inch piece. I drew the scallop in my design program, but you could always print out the vinyl and then trace a shape on to it and cut it out.

After I cut out the shape, I just peeled it off and stuck it on the tray.

So. Cool. Right?

And the best part is that it is WATERPROOF!

This could be used as a serving tray, but when you are not using it you could also set it out to display.

Now the question is, what else can I attack with this fun stuff?

I’d love to hear some of your ideas.

What would you like to create with printable vinyl?

~Jenny

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Filed Under: Crafts, Gift Ideas, vinyl

Refrigerator Scrabble

28 Mar posted by Plum Adorable

Well now that my fridge is looking so clean, or really so plain and boring now that my Christmas cards are finally down, I had an idea in mind to make use of some of our open fridge space. My little Kaylee girl is at the stage of the game where we are starting to build on her letter sounds to make 2 to 3 letter words and will be starting Kindergarten in the fall! She is starting to read just a tiny bit, and I want to encourage that for all its worth! And I kind of LOVE Scrabble - well, actually I kind of LOVE SPEED Scrabble, I don’t actually really like regular Scrabble so much! (If you don’t know what speed Scrabble is, GOOGLE it and then find someone to play it with!!) My hubby and I really like to play and the kids have started begging to play with us too, which is fairly difficult since Cole is only in first grade-but he is a GREAT little speller and really only needs a bit of help and Kaylee only has a few words under her belt - mom, dog, cat, dad, Cole, Kaylee, hat, bat, at, etc.- you get the picture.

And I have to admit, I have a Hate-Hate relationship with those multi-colored plastic alphabet magnets that used to be on my fridge when my kids were toddlers! When you have OCD, they aren’t a good idea! They drove me CRAZY! I would find them everywhere because my kids LOVED to knock them off the fridge and then run around with them. I am breaking out in hives just thinking about those things!

So I decided to use the scrabble pieces that we found for a KILLER price at the Goodwill, add some magnets and use them on our fridge for word building practice for little Miss Kaylee! Or for Speed Scrabble practice for Cole or for leaving notes for all the family! The kids LOVE this!!!! They have been glued (the kids – not the magnets) to the fridge for half the afternoon coming up with all sorts of fun stuff! It was really easy, really affordable and it looks like the kids think it’s pretty fun!!

Yes, that does say $3.99!

And I think a standard Scrabble game comes with 100 pieces, this one had over 300 – I think they shoved every scrap Scrabble piece that ever came into Goodwill into this box! YAY for us!

I only ended having enough magnets to put up about 65 letters on my fridge (tripled the vowels and most common used consonants).

~JESS

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Filed Under: Crafts

How to make a faux mini pallet sign for around $5

21 Mar posted by Plum Adorable

I wanted to make something for my cousin’s birthday. She recently moved into a new house, so I thought a sign would be perfect. Originally, I had thought about doing a picket fence sign, so I bought 7 of these at Ace Hardware for .79 a piece.

After I got home, I decided that I didn’t want to keep the tips on them (at least not for this project) so I cut them off with my handy saw that my hubby got me for Christmas. Then I cut them in half.

They are about 10 inches long. I also found a couple of pieces in my garage to nail to the back to hold them together. You could probably just use the same wood, I just liked it a bit thinner.

I knew I was going to sand it and wanted to have a darker wood under the paint, so I stained it with some dark stain I had leftover from another project from last summer.

Then I painted them with a light yellow acrylic paint.

Before I nailed it together I sanded down each piece including the the two pieces that actually get nailed on the back.

To attach the pieces on the back I put them all together and then nailed the nails into each board. Make sure that your nails are not so long that they go through the whole sign.

I had a couple of different sayings in mind, but then I saw this pallet sign on Pinterest from Corner House. I loved it for a couple of reasons. I loved it for my cousin because it’s a great reminder that she has lots of family that will love her always! The other reason I love it is because as a Christian, I know that even if for some reason everyone around me stopped loving me, I know that God will never stop loving me!

Or, as my 4 year old said to me the other day, “God will still love us even if we’ve done really, really bad things.” Love that boy!

I cut the words out on some leftover vinyl. I wanted to make sure it would stick since I was giving it as a gift so I tried it with the vinyl first. But, then when I made the second sign I used contact paper and it worked just as well!

I used a small sponge to paint inside the negative part of the vinyl & contact paper. Then I peeled off the vinyl and let the paint dry completely. I then went over it with sandpaper again to give it that vintage look.

I only spent about $3 on this whole project. I had everything on hand besides the wood. But, even if you had to purchase the other items, it would still make a great inexpensive project and or gift!

I made another one…I love this one!

~Jenny

Linking up with…

The 36th Avenue

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Filed Under: Crafts, Gift Ideas, paint, vinyl

Decorating for Spring

20 Mar posted by Plum Adorable

It has snowed TWICE this week! SO I feel a little weird putting up all my Spring decorations…But I am going to choose to be optimistic and put them up anyway and PRAY that spring really is right around the corner! PLEASE….PRETTY PLEASE!

I found a really cute candle holder centerpiece idea on Pinterest not too long ago, and put it in my St.Patty’s Day Folder to add to my March Mantle décor and I was really proud of myself because I actually did get it up in time for St. Patty’s Day! On the 16th!! Talk about cutting it close. But I liked the candle holders so much and I felt that they were actually quite perfect for a good transition into my Spring decorations so I still get to share them with you today! And I REALLY like how they turned out! Thank you so much Two Twenty One for the awesome idea, I NEVER would have come up with this on my own and it was so EASY and so AFFORDABLE!! (My FAVORITE!!!).

Here is my inspiration from Two Twenty One!

And here is all you need to make it happen!

I found the candlesticks at Value Village ($1.99 each, the hurricane vases were $2.77 at Wal-Mart, our local Dollar Store was out of large vases- totally weird!, and the candles were $2 at Wal-Mart, had the E6000 on hand and the Split Peas were $.88.)

The hardest part of the process was removing all the stickers from the bottoms of the vases (those bad boys DID NOT want to come off! Had to whip out the miracle worker- Goo GONE!)

Next Step was to adhere the candle sticks to the vases with the E6000, Easy Peasy! And then just let it dry! (Seriously, the waiting was hard for me too, I am not the most patient person!)

Once I waited (FOREVER) at least a few hours for the glue to dry, I added my candles, my peas, and a ribbon and it completed my lovely St. Patty’s Day mantle! FOR A WHOLE DAY!!

Today I got to work on my Spring Decorations! And thanks to Jenny and her ADORABLE printables, I had the perfect addition to my Spring Mantle and new hurricane vases!!

Have you decorated for Spring yet? It’s coming! I just know it! It has to right…. RIGHT?!

~JESS

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Filed Under: Crafts, Free Printables, Spring, Spring

Here Comes The Rain AGAIN!

14 Mar posted by Plum Adorable

So I seriously want to know how many of you read the title to this post and IMMEDIATELY had the 80′s song running through your head?! You know that 80’s hit, Here Comes The Rain Again by the Eurythmics (lead singer Annie Lennox). NO? JUST ME!? I have this problem, if I hear the title to a song or just a snippet of a lyric, the song is playing in my head ALL DAY LONG! My hubby thinks it is pretty funny to just walk by me and say something like, “everybody was Kung-Fu fighting” because he knows that not 2 seconds later, I will be singing THAT song!!!! Earlier today I was singing the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club House! (The life of a stay at home mom!)

This weather here in Western Washington, not too far from the city of Seattle is driving me CRAZY!! And yes Milli Vanilli, I DO BLAME IT ON THE RAIN!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!! I know, I know… I do choose to live here and this is typical weather for us, but I could just really use a day or 2 or 10 of sun or not even really sun, just not RAIN. I just don’t want to get soaked every time I go from car to house to school to store to car to home! UGGHHH… Good thing I am a fan of pony tails and cute rubber boots! Speaking of which, I thought I would share with you my favorite new accessory for this week (an apparently the next 10 days according to the forecast - RAIN, RAIN, RAIN, RAIN).

These are my boots, Cole’s boots and Kaylee’s boots. For some odd reason, can’t seem to get Mr. Plum Adorable into a pair?!

So all this rain does mean more time indoors. My hubby tells me to just buck up, bundle up and grab an umbrella and go outside anyways (he was born and raised here, I CLEARLY WAS NOT!) so I am still not so keen on that idea. So I have been doing lots of searching on Pinterest for fun indoor activities and found some cool stuff we are going to try this upcoming week! (Especially since early release and Spring Break are coming up soon and I want a back up plan in case we are spending some time indoors.) Check out these cool indoor rainy day activities!

This site, Inner Child Fun, has 10 different Rainy Day Activities to do!

Check out this Nerf Gun Shooting Range from Busy Kids=Happy Mom!

This magic paint from Modern Parents, Messy Kids looks super cool, I can’t wait to try it, my little artists will LOVE IT!

I loved the simplicity of this balloon ping pong, good way to get them moving inside the house!

Another fun rainy day activity for us is to just put on some music, turn it up LOUD and have a little dance party! My kids used to look at me like I was crazy when I would try to do this with them but for some reason now they have decided they love it! So for your listening pleasure, here are a few of my favorite RAINY day inspired songs!! (If you are reading our blog via email, the youtube links won’t come through so you’ll have to go to the site to see the videos!)

Singin’ in the Rain

Set Fire to the Rain

Flood

It will Rain

She’s my Kind of Rain

Hope ya’ll are staying dry! And finding something fun to do!

~JESS

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Filed Under: 'Pin'talicious, Crafts, Kids

March Mantle

8 Mar posted by Plum Adorable

It should be pretty obvious to all of our faithful followers that Jenny and I LOVE to decorate for the seasons and we LOVE to come up with very inexpensive ways to do so! Some of my favorite ways to decorate are with flowers, printables, and things that I already have on hand! My March mantle is very simple and I didn’t really have to buy anything new, just added a couple extra touches!

I don’t usually do a bunch of decoration for St. Patrick’s Day. I LOVED Jenny’s Printable so OF COURSE I added that to my mantle, you can find that here and then I found another one on Pinterest (OF COURSE!) that I loved too! Who says you can’t do 2 printables? Or 3 or 4? Or maybe even more? Well…actually, let’s stop at 2 for now. This printable thing MIGHT get out of hand at some point (at least if they are in the same room, on the same mantle!). I already had a couple little flower bundles hanging around that I have used in the past for various decorative purposes so I decided to next try my hand at a Pinterest project that I had my eye on for while!

Remember this photo? I talked about doing this vase in my dollar store vase make over post here.

Well I had an extra dollar store vase lying around and the last time I was in Michaels, they happen to have their Frosted Glass Finish Spray Paint on clearance for about $5.99 plus I had an extra 20% off coupon so I got it dirt cheap (please don’t ask me to do the math here, I am the WRITER, MR. Plum Adorable is the Math Man- he could whip that up in his head no problem, I would be sitting here STILL figuring it out with my calculator and a dumb look on my face and I’m ok with that- I know my strengths!) So like I was saying- CHEAP! They used white spray paint above but I thought the frosted glass would look cool!

And this is all I needed to make it happen Cap’n!

Next step was to add those bad boys (the rubber bands that is!) any which way I wanted!

SO I took it out back and sprayed away, took a couple coats and about an hour to dry and then this was the finished product!

And here it is on my mantle with my fun Printables and flowers too!!

I kind of LOVE that vase and those flowers!! They are making me SO EXCITED for Spring! I hear it is eventually going to make an appearance. I have high hopes! Did I mention that school was 2 hour delayed start on Tuesday due to SNOW!!?? IN MARCH!!???? I’m gonna just keep looking at my pretty vase and flowers and keep hoping and praying for SPRING!!!

~JESS

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Filed Under: Crafts, paint, St. Patty's Day

Striped Frame using matte & Gloss paint {Free Scallop Outline Printable & SVG’s}

6 Mar posted by Plum Adorable

I have so many plans for these cute little frames.

I saw a similar tutorial for this striped frame at The Crafting Chicks.

Love their blog!

I used the same technique they did, but with different materials.

1. I found this frame at Hobby Lobby for only $2.99. With a 40% off coupon it’s only $1.79! (The size is approximately 8.25 x 11 inches) I hand painted it with a gray acrylic paint. But, you could also spray paint it, just make sure that you use a ‘matte’ spray paint.

2. Once it was painted I put Frog Tape on the frame to make stripes. {The Crafting Chicks were promoting their new Scotch Blue Edge Lock tape. It sounds like it works great, but because I had Frog Tape on hand, I used that instead.} I probably should have started a stripe in the middle as a guide, but it ended up looking great in the end. Spray a clear gloss paint all over the frame.

3. Once it’s completely dry remove the tape to see the contrast.

I love it!

ADDING A PICTURE TO THE FRAME

I thought it would be fun to have the picture match the scallop look of the frame. (I realize this is not a true scallop shape, but let’s call it that for fun because I don’t know what to call it…m’kay.)

I have a program where I create all of my graphics which makes it easy for me to insert my photo into the scallop frame I designed. . But, I realize most of you are not able to do this, so I made it easy for you to cut out your pictures to match the scallop frame above.

Click on the image below to download and print out on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. I have sized these scallops to be slightly smaller than 4×6 & 5×7 inch pictures so that they will fit on top of your picture. Once you print the image below, cut out the scallop outline, lay it on your picture, trace it, then cut it out to create a scallop shape of your own picture.

For all of you SVG fans out there, I have also created free SVG files of these scallops. Scroll to the bottom to download.

Because there is no glass covering on this frame, I recommend that you first spray your picture with a UV-Resistant Coating to protect it. I then attached my picture with a Staples Glue Tape Runner.

So, I originally thought I would make this as a gift for someone’s birthday coming up, but I love it so much that I think I might do a wall full with different colors. I have it on a stand right now, but because I will eventually be adding brackets to the back, I thought I would share with you my little trick to putting on brackets. Does anyone else get frustrated putting those darn things on? Usually I am having to use small nails so that it doesn’t pierce through the other side of the wood which makes it more difficult. Hopefully this tip will help you in the future if you ever have to add a bracket.

Since Jess featured her family photographer yesterday, and I just happen to be using my pictures today, I have to give a little plug to our family photographer. Arlene and I have known each other since before we had our babies. A few years ago she started her own photography business. In a nutshell, she is amazing. I have so many beautiful pictures (like the one below) yet to hang on my wall. Visit her website at arlenechambers.com or click on the image below. Beware, you will get sucked in looking at all of her amazing photos…like I just did for the past 15 minutes. Seriously.