Emily's Birthday frame

I LOVE crafts made from rolled magazines and newspapers like these >http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/hot-or-not/hot-or-not-recycled-accents-from-urban-outfitters-055533. I decided to start small and make a rolled magazine frame for my sister-in-law, Emily's, birthday. I started rolling small pieces of the magazines and gluing them around the frame.

Then I started gluing the "tubes" around a picture frame.

Finally I sealed all of the tubes together by mod podging over the top of them

So cute. Maybe I'll try a magazine vase or basket next ;)

Adventures in Mod Podge- That's My King!

Chris has become kind of obsessed with a sermon done by Dr. S. M. Lockridge entitled "That's My King". They showed this video at our church http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzqTFNfeDnE and it's pretty amazing and inspiring. Well, it turns out the video is a shortened version of the actual sermon, which Chris downloaded on his phone.

Rewind to a month ago when I was walking around TJ maxx and found these on sale for a dollar each.....

I decided to try to mod podge after being inspired by blogs like this one http://www.modpodgerocksblog.com/.

From what I was told, mod podging on canvas was pretty easy. I just needed something to put on them to cover up the horrible flippy floppies.

Fast Forward to "That's my King". I knew I wanted to use alot of different fonts and put as much of the sermon as I could. So I edited the fonts (took forever but Oh so fun) and printed the pages (8 of them, 2 on each canvas).

I made sure to paint A LOT of M.P. on the canvas and then position my paper. Lesson: Mod Podge dries quick so you gotta work fast. I also had a tiny rubber roller to smooth out the bubbles. Then I dipped my foam brush in the M.P. and painted the beejezus out of the top of the paper, smoothing as I went.

I put a thin strip of black paper between the two different parts and continued to paint over the entire project.

This is the finished project. When the glue dried, the paper felt as though it was part of the canvas. I need to take a close up picture and a picture of them on our wall but they're pretty UH-mazing! Love Love Love.

Sunday Banana French Toast Casserole

I love Sunday Brunch, especially now that Chris doesn't have to work on the weekends =) Today I made Banana French Toast Casserole and it was deeeelicious. This is the first recipe I've taken a picture of for the blog YAY! Our whole house smelled like Fall and it was super duper easy. I haven't gotten it down to an exact science because I kinda eyeballed it, next time I make it I will measure. The egg mixture should look like your typical french toast mixture.

You need:

1 Loaf of French Bread

5 eggs

About a Cup of Milk

2 Bananas

1 1/2 Tbs of Cinnamon

2 Tbs of Sugar

(make sure you have some maple syrup too)

Break up the bread into a casserole dish ( I used my medium one so that the bread was thick)

Beat your eggs! I'm using my beloved Quicksmart from Tupperware. It's Uh-Mazing!

Add Milk.

The Yummies. Sugar, One Banana and Cinnamon.

Then you pour the egg mix and make sure all of the bread is smothered. I sliced up the other banana at this point and threw the pieces in.

Bake at 350 for about 25-30 min.

and.............................

OMNOMNOMNOMNOM!

Well....it looked like a Pumpkin =)

I'm trying to post crafts as I finish them and a lot of them are "in the works". If it looks like I post a lot of crafts and recipes in one day, I'm just catching up on the blog =).

I feel that I should preface by saying that Chris and I {Heart} Faithfarm's thrift store. Chris likes it because, deep down, he dreams on being an "American Picker" (ya know, like the show). He likes old stuff and forgotten treasures. I like it because it's basically a "crafter's"paradise. You can get cheap frames, ceramics, glassware.....My list of places I can spend hours in = Homegoods>Michaels>Faithfarms. Anyway, I was looking through the glassware section and I found this:

Yeah I know....it looks like a pumpkin, I agree. It was also $1. I was really liking the idea of having an autumn candy dish, cue Cricut and vinyl:

Cute! It's sitting on my table waiting to be filled with candy =)

My $5 Marshalls find!

Happy Thursday! It's starting to feel cool in the morning and the humidity level has dropped just slightly. These are pretty much the only indication that we get in Florida that Autumn is coming. That being said, I've pretty much become obsessed with Fall crafts. I'm going to post some of the ideas that I have found this weekend because they are pretty much incredible.

I finally got around to a project that I've been putting off for a while. I found a wood sign at Marshalls that was 1. in two separate piece (some may use the word broken) and 2. on sale for 5 bucks......naturally I needed to take it back to the laboratory...er...I mean the apartment. I wasn't really sure what to do with it. This week I just had to do something with it. Not only was it piling up in the "DIY graveyard", the nails that were exposed (remember, broken) so it had become a hazard.

Anyway- this is what it turned in to...

You can kinda see where it was broken. I put a few nails into it but it was still coming apart soooChris to the rescue!!! In the end it was still kind of wobbly but...whatever it was 5 bucks! So I continued. I decided to paint it this cute "buttercup" color that I got for 50 cents at Micheals. I knew that I wanted to add a quote (because of my new vinyl cutting obsession on my Cricut) so I picked Romans 8:31 because Chris really likes that verse and I thought it would be really cool in our living room.

This is what it looks like now. The next project I do will definitely have more "before" pictures =)

and I'll take some of it hanging up.

The first step to page filling...

I really wanted a blog. I've been on a lot of them but I always struggled with the thought that all of the time, energy and memories I put into it would somehow dissolve into cyber-space. I also have this thing - it's a perfectionist thing - where I hate my own writing as soon as it's finished and I want to change it. I guess it's time to get over it. I like the idea that my first year of marriage will be archived; I like the idea that my day to day stories will now be apart of some form of catalogue; I really like the idea that I would finally have a real place to post all of those before and after pictures for all of my attempted crafts. So here I am.