Hot Air Balloon Birthday Party

I had a bunch of winning pins this week! My precious little babies turn 1 year old TODAY so we had a little family birthday party on Sunday.

I had a whole board for their Hot Air Balloon Party. The pins I ended up using were this one  for centerpieces, and the rest for inspiration. I bought this printable party decoration package from Etsy and it turned out super cute! I didn't do as much as I wanted to for decorations, but you know how that goes.

Here are my hot air balloon centerpieces:

And the cupcakes in their cute little printed wrappers:

And the silverware in mason jars:

Lily

Amelia

And the birthday girls loooooved the cupcakes!

Linking up to Pin for the Wednesdays at Mommin' It Up!

Bow Clutch

I wish I would have picked sewing back up before I had so many kids! I'm having fun with all these Pinterest projects, but I wish I had more time to do all the ones I have pinned!

I pinned this cute little bow clutch from elm street life 9 days ago and I've been obsessed with it ever since. I cut out the pieces last night at our monthly Pinterest party, and sewed it up yesterday in about an hour.

I won't try to lay out the steps, the tutorial is great. Give it a try, even if it looks a little scary! It was actually really easy!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Bad picture, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

There are a gazillion recipes for homemade laundry detergents on Pinterest, but they are all pretty much the same. Here is the one I used. It was super easy, just dump all the ingredients in a big bucket and mix. I wanted a powdered one because I was so not into boiling gallons of soap and trying to transfer that to other containers. From Sugar Pie Farmhouse (super-cute blog, btw):

1 box of Super Washing Soda $3.09
4 1-lb boxes of Baking Soda 4 x $0.59
1 box of Borax $4.09
3 bars of Kirk's Castile Soap-grated $3.79 for 3 (this was a pain, but didn't take too long)

I just mixed all the ingredients in a large container I already had, and then I threw in some Oxy-clean because I remembered seeing that on another recipe. I just use 2 tablespoons per load, and throw it in on top of the clothes, not in the little drawer where I would normally put liquid laundry detergent.

It has worked great so far, and the total cost was $13.33! I'm thinking this should last me a looooong time, even with 3 little girls and stinky dirty lumber-jack husband.

Dish Towel Apron

Artfully arranged doodles to disguise my messy kitchen.

So I thought I had an original idea.

Whenever I'm working in the kitchen, I tend to wipe my hands off on my pants. I can never find a towel in a convenient place, so I just use my clothes.

Anyway, I had a brilliant idea to make an apron out of a dish towel! I had it all laid out and everything. Then I started to think... "You know what, I bet someone else has thought of this before." So I searched Pinterest for "dish towel apron" and lo and behold, it came up with a gazillion pins for super cute aprons made out of dish towels!

So I'm not brilliant. But I did do this little apron all by myself. All I did was take a dish towel that I already had, folded it up about 2/3 of the way, and stitched up the sides. I stitched up 2 more seams to make 3 pockets for my apron, then sewed a wide ribbon on the top for a waistband. I used about 2 yards of ribbon, but you can just measure around your waist and then add about 2 feet for the amount you need. It was super-easy and only took about 15 minutes to make.

I use it all the time and I'm pretty proud of my "original" idea!

I didn't use this tutorial, but oddly the towel and ribbon look exactly the same as the ones I used.

Also, Pinning for the Wednesdays!!!

Stop Spamming Pinterest.

Is anyone else sick of the spam on Pinterest? It seems to be especially prevalent on the Kids board. I rarely browse that board anymore because it is so annoying. Not sure what to do about it.

Recycling Scentsy Wax

So I saw this pin on making emergency candles for power outages. I thought, "That's a good idea, I should make an emergency kit." Then of course I didn't do anything, because that's what I do. A few days later, I was dumping the wax out of my Scentsy warmer (need some Scentsy? My friend Jana sells it.), thinking, "This is kind of wasteful."

In the words of Mr. Gru, "Liiiiiiiiiiiight bulb!"

So I bought some wicks from Michael's, used an old jelly jar (yes! finally a use for all the jars I save!), and started pouring my used Scentsy wax in the jar! It's a gradual process, I just pour in another layer each time I empty my Scentsy.

Here it is so far:

I use the pencil to hold the wick up straight while I'm pouring. Now I can start my emergency stash! One candle down, lots of stuff to go.

I'm Pinning for the Wednesdays at Mommin' It Up!

Circle Earbud Pouch

It's time to PinFTW again! I have been eyeing this pin for a long time; it was actually one of the first things I ever pinned. I took forever gathering the supplies (not that they are rare or hard-to-find, I just take forever to do everything). Here is the original pin. Super cute, huh? I pinned it 15 weeks ago and just now got around to making it. 
This little circle pouch wasactually really easy. I'm pretty inexperienced at sewing, but this wasn't too challenging. I won't try to explain the steps, Erin Erickson from dog under my desk has a great tutorial. If you don't have a lot of fabric scraps laying around, don't worry. This can actually be made from 2 5-in. charm squares (quilting speak). I shopped at the "mom boutique", so it didn't cost me anything. My mom has gazillions of fabric scraps and little packs of quilting squares, so I had fun scrounging through them to find some patterns I liked. This probably only took me 45 minutes or so, and if you're an experienced seamstress you could do it in like 10 minutes. These would be fun little gifts for all your iPhone-toting friends.
I'm Pinning for the Wednesdays on Mommin' It Up!