I Love You Because

Before Christmas, my mom sent me a link to the picture below and said that she would like one but not with the bright red frame. I took that to mean that I should make her one for Christmas and make it go with her decor. She also sent it to my sister, so I let my sister know that I planned to make one that would go with the beach house’s decor in case she planned to make one too.

I <3 you because....

I picked up a basic light brown frame and some island blue paint. I painted the frame with two coats of paint. I found the fabric in my fabric stash and had enough to use but only if I made it a vertical picture with horizontal stripes. I decided to use the stripes as the lines (Although it doesn’t look like I used them at all to line up the words because the words you and because don’t appear straight.) I wrapped the fabric around the inset part of the frame and glued it down on the back side.. I cut the vinyl in the cricut machine, using the flip feature. I applied the letters to the inside of the glass and lining up the letters with the lines of the fabric. I didn’t consider that the lines might not be perfectly level…because once I flipped the glass over to properly put it in the frame the words no longer lined up properly.

I love you because....

To finish off the gift, I got two dry erase markers for Mom and Dad to use to fill in the remainder of the sentence. I didn’t put a blank line for the remainder of the sentence, deciding that they could use the lines in the fabric for as many lines as they wanted.

I gave Mom and Dad the frame and markers at Christmas and they were happy with it. And who knows…maybe we will add these to our inventory of Two Florida Girls when we do local shows.

Cookie Decorating Day

At the beginning of December, Little Monkey had some friends over to have a cookie decorating day. We met one of the other families at a PKU event and another family online through Facebook. Turns out one of the families lives about 15 minutes down the road from us. We were very excited to all get together and decorate cookies and let the kids play.

We talked to our dietician and she was able to get us connected to a person at Cambrooke who generously sent us some wheat starch that we need to make the cookies. Wheat starch is the one odd ball ingredient in the cookie recipe and it isn’t cheap. We were thrilled that Cambrooke was happy to send us some for our little party.

Before the party we cooked up a bunch of cookies, decorated for Christmas and made aprons for each little guest. We also planned to make some cookies once the guests arrived so that we could show them the recipe. Little Monkey decided that we needed a sign in the yard so that people would know where to park. Mimi tried to convince him that wasn’t necessary but he wouldn’t give up. They ended up making a sign and putting it on the back of my car. While making that sign, they also made two signs for the door. Little Monkey did all the writing and then hung them up. Apparently this special animal tape was all he could find.

Welcome!

We set up two tables for cookie decorating but ended up only needing one. We used the other to collect all the finished cookies. We laid out all the aprons for the guests, but Little Monkey decided that just their first initial wouldn’t be enough. So he labeled each apron with their names too!

Appliqued aprons for the guests.

Once all the little chefs arrived, we had some pku friendly foods for everybody to eat. Once their bellies were filled up on good stuff, we got to the fun part! We pulled out all the cookies and lots of icing and some phe free decorations and let the kids go at it. It was a fun crazy time with lots of icing covered fingers and candies and cookies being eaten.

Concentrating on decorating cookies!

Even Little Monkette had fun decorating cookies (and eating them).

As cookies were decorated, we moved them over to the other table to make room for more decorating. Each family had their own section and we filled up some cute storage buckets with all their creations and more undecorated cookies to take home. We’ve been enjoying snacking on our cookies for most of the month. Amazingly, the cookies keep pretty well. We also took a plate of cookies to Little Monkey’s nurse and deitician. They shared the cookies with the office and everyone was surprised at how yummy the cookies tasted. (Lo pro foods have a bad rep for not tasting too great.)

A small collection of the decorated cookies!

A great time was had by everyone and we hope to have another cooking day in the new year. Our deitician has also asked us to consider putting together an event for our entire clinic (pku patients and families) next year. By the time Christmas comes around, the new Nemours Hospital should be open and they are going to have a big teaching kitchen that we could use to hold our event!

 

Four Seasons Towels

I found this idea on Pinterest–they were sold in an Etsy shop that is now closed until July.  I decided to use the photo as inspiration for my own set of towels.

Water4Christmas Etsy Shop 4 Seasons Towels

I did some free hand drawing (I’m not very good at that…) and cut out the trees from two different brown fabrics I had on hand. Then I picked out some fabrics to use for the leaves and just made an ovalish type shape. I ironed them onto the flour cloth towels I bought (Walmart $2 for 2 towels) and then stitched around the edges. I usually sew just about EVERYTHING with white thread but this time picked out colors closer to the fabrics I was using. These were all threads I had on hand too. My four seasons tree towels are similar to the ones I found on Pinterest but also a little bit different. I really like how they turned out.

Four Seasons Towels

As I was making them, I thought….I need to make myself a set of these! This set was given to my grandparents. My Grandma C really liked them and said that she didn’t want to use them, but just put them out for display. I assured her that they were meant to be used and could be washed and dried in the washer and dryer.

New Monkey Hat

About a week or so ago, Sew, Mama, Sew held its Giveaway Day. I entered quite a few, just hoping to get lucky enough to win one. Well, I ended up winning two! Yay! So far only one of my prizes has arrived but I’m excited to share it with you.

I won a Monkey Hat from Raven’s Rascals.

Here I am trying it on right after opening the mail. I am also wearing a new shirt I got from Uncle K and Aunt S for Christmas. It is very comfy.

Monkey Hat (and new shirt)

I was hoping the hat would bring with it some cooler weather (it was coming from WA) and lucky enough for me, it did. Today we headed out to run some errands and it was chilly out so everyone bundled up. Little Monkey decided that since I took a picture of the kids all bundled up, he should take a picture of me too! He made me pose in the same place they did.

Posing with my monkey hat!

I am loving my new monkey hat, though Big Monkey thinks it is quite silly. What does he know anyhow?!?

Go check out Raven’s Rascals. They are a Relay for Life Team and are raising money for the American Cancer Society.

Raven’s Rascals Relay for Life Team
Blog: www.ravensrascals.blogspot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ravensrascals
Etsy: www.ravensrascals.etsy.com

Snowman Ornaments

It is that time of year again….time to make another ornament to give to our family and friends from Little Monkey. I had been saving some ideas on a Pinterest board and let him pick one of the options. He decided on this bottle cap snowman. I ordered the bottle caps off of Etsy and the other supplies we had on hand. (You could use bottle caps from sodas/beer if you have them, they would just need some white spray paint first—and a good washing!)

When we sat down to work on the snowmen, I had Little Monkey line up sets of three bottle caps.

Sets of bottle caps, waiting for the glue!

The next step I took care of for Little Monkey. I attached a ribbon loop to the back of all three bottle caps with hot glue. This serves to hang the ornament on the tree and hold all the bottle caps in the right place. After I had the parts glued together, Little Monkey took over with the rest of the project. (This really is a pretty quick and easy project!)

Hard at work designing snowmen!

I drew him a sample on a piece of paper so that he would know what parts the snowmen needed. Each snowman got two black eyes, one orange carrot nose, four to five black mouth coal pieces and three black coal buttons.

Finished Snowmen!

After getting ready for bed (hence the wardrobe change), we worked on labeling gift bags and putting an ornament in each one. Little Monkey also wrote his name and the year on the back of the ornaments! He is very excited to give out his ornaments. He already took one to his teacher, who loved it and immediately put it on the Christmas tree in her classroom. (If you are in our family, please act surprised and excited when Little Monkey gives you your ornament!)

Need ideas to make ornaments of your own? Here are the other ornaments we have made:

Christmas Tree Puzzle Ornaments

Snowmen Globe Ornaments

Popsicle Stick Reindeer Ornaments

Reindeer Puzzle Ornaments

Our Christmas Card

A big thanks to Shutterfly again this year. They let me do a review of their site and give away some free cards. In exchange for my post, I was given some free cards of my own. I used them to get this year’s Christmas card. I was planning for a picture of our whole family again but we just didn’t find a good time or place to take a picture. I ended up taking a few pictures of the kids one day while we were at the Magic Kingdom. They were doing some filming for the Christmas Day Parade, so we weren’t able to find the big tree or many other Christmas decorations without lots of television cameras and gear around. We did find one tree up in the train station though so we decided to use it. I took a handful of pictures and then used the best one out of those.

Merry Christmas from the Monkeys to you!

I love how they are cuddled together and holding hands! Little Monkey and Little Monkette are so sweet together…most of the time!

Merry Christmas to you!

Christmas Card Display

Each year we have displayed our Christmas cards in a different way. One year we lined them all up on our bar counter top and another year we taped them onto our mirror in the dining room. This year I decided that I would make something to hang them from.

The red, yellow, green and blue streamers were still up from Little Monkette’s birthday party, so I decided we should probably take them down. I still had some streamers, so I headed over to the sewing machine with the red and green streamers. I used the same technique that I did with the streamers for Little Monkette’s party. Basically you make a long stitch on a very high top thread tension and it make them ruffle. After running together a LOT of streamers I decided there was enough.

I hung the streamers with a few twists in them on our mirror. I added a few curls of ribbon along both ends. To hang the Christmas cards, I just took some clothespins that I had on hand and colored them with a marker to make them red and green.

Our Christmas Card Display

I like how it turned out and added some festive color to the dining room. If you have sent us a Christmas card, you are up there somewhere! I’m not sure how well the streamers may keep in the attic for a year, but I’m considering trying to store them. They don’t cost much time or money to make though, so I could make another set next year.