Flower Pen

Flower Pen:

I am always getting frustrated in our office because our pens seem to vanish into thin air.  I was looking for something creative and crafty to help "discourage" them from vanishing and came across this cute idea from The Frugal Girls.

Here is their actual blog post on how they make their flower pens: http://thefrugalgirls.com/2011/02/how-to-make-a-flower-pen.html.  There are so many cute crafty ideas on their site!!!

What you will need:

*4 silk flowers.  I purchased mine for 50% off at Joann's.  They came in a bunch of 8 of them for $3.99 on sale.

*1 square glass jar.  I found mine at the Dollar store.

*1 bag of river rocks.  I got mine at the Dollar store.  I bet you could find something like this at one of the craft stores.

*4 ball point pens.  I purchased mine from the Dollar store.  You could also get them from a office supply store, Target, or Walmart.

*Green floral tape.  I got this one from Joann's at 50% off.

*Some thin ribbon.  I had this on hand but I know that the craft stores carry it.

Step 1:  Take your pen and pop off the tip.  I had to use my wire cutters to get the tips off.  It was really quick to just pop them right off.

Step 2:  Now that you have the tip off the pen.  Cut one of the flowers off leaving a little stem part to stick into the end of the now open top of the pen.  If my stem to my flower had been a little thinner you could have left a longer portion and stuffed it into the top of the pen.  The flowers I chose to use, the stem was really thick so I had to cut it quite short to fit into the top of the pen.

Step 3:  Take your green floral tape, starting at the top of the pen, wrap it round the pen going all the way to the bottom just to the black portion on this pen.

Step 4:  Next add some ribbon around the base of the flower.

Step 5:  Fill the square glass jar with the river rocks leaving a little room for the flower pens.

Note:  I tried using this kind of pen and didn't have good luck with it.  The first one came out ok but the the next ones the bottom kept popping off. I think if the stem had been a lot thinner it might have worked better.

This was such a fun and easy craft to do.  They turned out so cute I made them up for friends and family for Easter this year.  They all LOVED them!!! I give this craft a 10 out of 10, it's really easy that a child could do with supervision from an adult.  These would be super cute gifts for Mother's Day!!

Paper Diamonds.....

I have been looking on Pinterest for decorating or ideas for my parents 50^th Wedding Anniversary. I found this site that had the directions on how to make paper diamonds. They really look quite cute and decided to try to make some.

The original site the directions were from is http://www.minieco.co.uk/. If you look through the site there are some really cute ideas for kids and other paper crafts.

My first and second attempt looked like this:

 

I decided after trying it 2 times on regular copy paper I tried a little thicker paper and actually follow all the directions. (I didn't score every line with a pin and ruler the first 2 times).

1. Print out template from the website at http://www.minieco.co.uk/ for Diamonds. It will look like this.

2. Cut design out as directed on the site.

3. Score with a pin and ruler on the dotted lines. (This step is VERY important DO NOT SKIP).

 

4. Glue flaps together and fold as you go. I used as stick glue for my first 2 and switched to Tombo Mono Aqua Liquid glue (works much better than the stick glue).

5. I sprayed a glue over the front of the diamond and sprinkled glitter on the top.

I REALLY liked how it turned out. This project is a little difficult at first and you have to have a LOT of patience but the end results are worth it. These would make great decorations for a wedding, anniversary party, birthday, or even a baby shower. If you are making a lot of these I would suggest to do them up way early and have a group of people working on them together. I give this project an 8.5 out of 10 due to the level of difficulty and how long they take to do up.

Random Act of Kindness

This is my second attempt at blogging. Last year Darren tried to get me to do a blog and I did one and gave it up. So here I am again trying to see if I can get the blogging thing down (not to mention that Darren promised me something really cool if I could do it for a year).

I thought a lot about what to blog about each week or day. I have so much that I love to do or things that interest me, that I have decided that this will be a diverse amount of things. Things such as my couponing adventures, goat raising and showing, gardening adventures, traveling adventures, cooking adventures, video games, movies, music, tv, life, basically anything that interests me that day I'm writing my blog ;-)

I was trying to think about something to blog about today, and I noticed a post on Facebook from Cold Stone Creamery, on it was this title “Practice Random Acts of Kindness”. I was intrigued and read more, they wanted people to write on their wall any random acts of kindness this week. They are randomly giving out things to people that are posting about what they or someone else did for them this week in celebration of Random Acts of Kindness week. This made me think of a very special act of kindness that someone did for Darren and I last night. I don't think people realize just in one small or big act they can impact someone's life in such a positive way. Darren was having such a hard day with finding out about his Grandpa but I will say that he didn't complain nor did he let his clients know. He was just finishing up a clients project at around 5:00pm when he got this amazing call. The person on the other end asked if Darren could use 4 tickets to the Portland Trailblazer game. Game started at 7:00pm and Darren had a client coming in to sign a contract at 6:00pm. He looked at me and said do you think we can make it? Well I knew that it would be close but I thought that it would be an amazing time for him in this sad difficult time, so I told him not to worry about anything I would arrange to get the tickets in Portland and come back to get him and get back to the game by 7:00pm. Amazing that it was Darren's client was really hungry so they just wanted to sign papers and get to dinner. Needless to say we were able to get to Rose Garden and walking to were we needed to go listening to the National Anthem. What I haven't said yet is what kind of tickets these were, these were tickets for the 5^th. Floor which are for what is called the Executive Suites. Executive Suites are where they are enclosed with a balcony to go sit and watch the game on. They are fully catered and have TV's everywhere!! (Even in the private bathroom). For Darren and myself this was a once in a lifetime chance and it was amazing!!! This maybe a big random act of kindness but it will be a memory that will be with us forever!! Thanks so much again for EVERYTHING!!! (and by the way the chocolate cake was yummy).

To close this off I wanted to share a dessert that I made for Darren for valentine's day. It's not fancy but he really liked it. It's called a Peppermint Cream Brownie Torte. All you have to do is make some brownies in a cake pan. Cut the brownies up into 3 even sections after they are cooked and cooled. Set one layer down on a dish and put some of cream cheese whipped topping on that layer. Put the 2^nd brownie part on top of that and drizzle the chocolate sauce on top of that. Next put the last layer of brownie on top of that and frost with the last of the cream cheese whipped topping. I used chocolate and red sprinkles for the finishing touches. If anyone wants the actual recipe I would be happy to send them a copy :-).