Flash Back Friday: Country Chic Cottage Beach Bash - Lake Lounger

So it's not too much of a Flash Back, but in case you missed it, here is my project from Country Chic Cottage's Beach Bash the other week:

Hi!  I'm Emily from Domestic Deadline, my piece of the bloggy world documenting the crafts and craziness that side track me from the things I should be doing (dishes... again?).  I have three kiddos that keep me on my toes, but I love to craft, cook and create for them and with them.

When I got Angie's email to participate in her Beach Bash, I was so excited!  Summer is my favorite time of year, especially when I get to lounge on the beach!  Even though I could find a sunny patch on the Jersey Shore any day of the week, my favorite beach is Linwood Park, in Vermilion, Ohio!

What's the best part of the beach on a hot summer day?  The water of course!  Lounging on a float in the water is always so nice, until I'm trying to remember where the patch is and find the hole!

Time to steel your kid's pool noodle and make your own Lake Lounger!  You'll need:

(2) 6 foot pieces of Rope
(1) 40 inch by 27 inch home decorator fabric (or double up some left over cotton from your stash)
(1) Pool noodle, go for the wider heavier type if you want to make this for an adults use
Basic sewing supplies

Step 1:  Fold over edges of all four side, I used a serger (turned the blade off) but you could also zig-zag all the way around, making the edges sturdier.

Step 2:  Folding over the end (yes, I took this picture before sewing all the way around), sew a tube for your noodle to slide in to.  We are folding back your length, the width after sewing around is about 25 inches.  My noodle measured 11.5 inches around, so I measured back 13 inches for my sew line.

Step 3:  On the opposite end, sew a narrow tube, about 1.5 inches, or a half inch wider than the width of both pieces of rope.  Your piece should now look like this on the back side (yup, too lazy to iron this first!).  Feed your ropes through, leaving an equal amount on both sides.

Step 4:  Fold your piece back to the sew line of your noodle tube (yup, that's a technical term!) and make a mark 1.5 inches up from the fold on both  sides.

Step 5:  Sew an inch zig zag repeatedly over this line.

Step 6: Knot your rope at the ends and at the edge of the fabric, repeat on other side.

Step 7:  Arc your noodle and tie one end onto each side to look like this:

Step 8:  Throw your daughter into the pool and make sure it works!

This was a quick and easy project that took longer for the kids to get into their bathing suits than it did to make!  Plus I got to use up some fabric from my stash that I don't even remember where it came from.

PS:  This got lots of use on Lake Erie earlier this month!  I've already made a few more since the kids loved it so much.

Peace be with you,

 

I'll be linking up to some of these parties, stop by and check out the talent!

M: Made by you Mondays, Made with Love Monday, Making the World Cuter, MMM @ CRAFT, Just something I whipped up, Organizing Mission Monday, A Round Tuit, Motivate me Monday, Sharing Monday T: Sew Cute Tuesday, Handmade Tuesdays, Tip Me Tuesday, TCB, Topsy Turvy Tuesdays, Take-a-Look Tuesdays, Too Cute Tuesdays, Giggles Glitz & Glam, It’s Sew fun Tuesday W: We Did it Wednesday, Night Owl Crafting, Sugar & Spice, Tea Rose Home, Upcycled Awesome, We’re Organized Wednesday, What I Wore Wednesday, What’s Up Wednesday T: Make It Wear It, Frogs & Snails, It’s Stinkin’ Cute, Making it with Allie F: Fun Friday Finds, Fingerprints on the Fridge, It’s a Hodgepodge, Chic on a Shoestring, Fantastic Friday, TGIF, I’m an Organizing Junkie, Spunky Junky, The Shabby Nest, While He Was Napping S/S: KISS, Funky Fresh, Weekend Wrap Up, Nifty Thrifty

Flash Back Friday - Spain Scrapbooks

My mom is awesome!  I am truly lucky to have her and I'm not just saying that because she took me to Europe....  Yup, my mom took her 3 daughters to Europe for two whole weeks when she turned 60!  It was a great birthday present to all of us, we had the most wonderful time and even though it was almost 3 years ago, we talk about it a lot.

We took well over 2000 pictures while we were there.  Since I'm the scrapbooker of the family, I decided my gift to my mom and sisters for the following Christmas would be a scrapbook for each of them.  I had about 1000 of the pictures printed, 4 copies of each and what I thought would be 4 of the same scrapbooks turned into 8... one set for our first week in France and a second set of four for our second week in Spain.

IronFish and I got to go to Germany in the summer of 2009 and I finished the France albums just after that trip.  Spain took me a bit longer but I'm happy to say they are done!!!!!

Well.... except for the fact that we each need to journal in our own albums... but this is the fun part, where we get to hang out together in our evenings at Linwood and talk about the great memories we have.

Next time I attempt to do albums for multiple people... I'm going digital!

Peace be with you,

Flash Back Friday - Beaded Stem Wine Glasses

When IronFish and I were registering for our wedding, I couldn't find wine glasses that I loved.  I also didn't see the point in registering for a dozen plus wine glasses with no place to put them in our tiny New York apartment.  That didn't mean I didn't want wine glasses though.  A few 50 cent glasses, a spool of fishing line, a few thousand left over seed beads and a dab of epoxy and 2 weeks later I had wine glasses!  Yup, pre-kids I could actually spend my evenings stringing seed beads onto yards and yards of fishing wire. 

Since each stem is one strand of beads, if a glass breaks I can just put the beads on another glass!

The fishing line is epoxied on the top and the bottom only, not the whole stem.  Maybe I need a glass one wine now....
Peace be with you,

I'll be linking up to some of these parties, stop by and check out the talent!

M: Made by you Mondays, Made with Love Monday, Making the World Cuter, MMM @ CRAFT, Just something I whipped up, Organizing Mission Monday, A Round Tuit, Motivate me Monday, DIY, Sharing Monday T: Sew Cute Tuesday, Handmade Tuesdays, Tip Me Tuesday, TCB, Topsy Turvy Tuesdays, Take-a-Look Tuesdays, Too Cute Tuesdays, Giggles Glitz & Glam, Gettin’ Crafty With It, It’s Sew fun Tuesday W: We Did it Wednesday, Night Owl Crafting, Sugar & Spice, Tea Rose Home, Upcycled Awesome, We’re Organized Wednesday, What I Wore Wednesday, What’s Up Wednesday T: Make It Wear It, Frogs & Snails, It’s Stinkin’ Cute, Making it with Allie F: Fun Friday Finds, Fingerprints on the Fridge, It’s a Hodgepodge, Chic on a Shoestring, Fantastic Friday, TGIF, I’m an Organizing Junkie, Spunky Junky, The Shabby Nest S/S: KISS, Funky Fresh, Weekend Wrap Up, Nifty Thrifty

Flash Back Friday - Pizza Party

Sorry for the late edition, my Internet has been a bit spotty.  As I write this I have 5 little girls watching a movie in their pajamas tucked into sleeping bags.  This is the year sleep overs have officially started in our house!  It has actually made it easy to make the birthday party low key (yes, JuneBug's birthday was 2 months ago... it took this long to organize a night when all her main buddies could be here).
I try to alternate years between big parties and low key parties.  It helps reduce trying to out do the last party with a bigger and better one.  My girls can then focus in on who their best buds are and really think about who they are closest to.

A Pizza Party Birthday

While I've done stamped and other types of custom cards in the past, a favorite of my crew is to make photo card invites.  JuneBug had fun dressing up for the picture and we made up a poem together and ordered them online.  Since we'd decided on a pizza theme, she wore a chef's hat and apron and held a bowl and spoon in front of our red kitchen wall (pizza theme just screams red to me... tomato sauce maybe?).

On the day of the party, as the girls arrived they each got a canvas apron to decorate with permanent markers (if I ever do this again, I will probably make the aprons, the only plain canvas ones I found were so cheaply made I sewed half of them back together before the party even started!).  This worked great because their was room to spread out the aprons with only a few girls at a time.  Mainly they all signed each others and drew little doodles in between.  They were all thrilled with it!  We also had chef hats for them to wear.  

A pizza party requires pizza!  Each guest go a personal sized pizza crust to top however they wanted.  Obviously sauce and cheese were a part of the spread but we also had pepperoni, ham, onions, green peppers, pineapple and grilled chicken.  I was surprised how many kids divided their pizza up and tried different combinations, especially after their uncertainty as to the choices!

A few years back I stopped trying to organize too many party games since the kids seem to just want to play together, so we sent them all down the basement to play while the pizzas baked.  Note to self: there needs to be a plan or system for remembering which child made which pizza...

We got it figured out eventually!

Instead of a cake we made pizza cookies, yumm-o.  What's a pizza cookie?  I thought you'd never ask!

I made large sugar cookies, topped with pink frosting (too much red food coloring makes it taste funny and JuneBug likes pink, go with it).  Topping time!  For the real pizzas I made little signs on Popsicle sticks to label everything.  At first I had great ideas of all types of candies to look like the real toppings but came down to m&ms... why, well, do you know a kid who doesn't like m&ms?  I didn't think so.  We sorted the m&ms by color and then used the same type of signs.  The part of cheese was played by coconut.
Green - green peppers
yellow - onions or pineapple
red - pepperoni
brown - sausage
orange - ham
blue - I don't remember what the blue ones were... if they still had the old original colors with the two shades of brown it probably would have been easier.  I did consider getting the bags of individual colors but didn't think the cost difference was worth it.  The blue ones were gone first since they all thought it was funny to have blue food on their pizzas (again, go with it).

When it was time to leave, I took a picture with JuneBug and each of her friends individually wearing their aprons and chef hats.  JuneBug wrote out a simple thank you to each of her friends and I had single cards made out of each picture with the personalized thank you typed on each picture.

It's been a few hours since I started typing this post... the sleepover is officially a success... they are all sleeping!

Peace be with you,

PS - I'll be linking up to several of these parties!