A March Chalkboard Printable

In my quest to do a printable for each month of the year that can easily be switched out, here is March!  I found this super cute Irish blessing and thought it would be perfect for a March printable!

This is meant to be printed as an 8X10- just send it to your local print shop.  I keep mine all in the frame together so they can just be switched out as the year goes by.  Click HERE or on the picture itself to get the downloadable file!

{Pssss- Looking for Subway or Chevron St. Patty's Day Printables- we've got em!!}

Looking for January or February??  Just click on these little guys :)

Enjoy, and as always, thanks for stopping in!

A Skittle and Rainbow Valentine for the Hubby

Just a last minute share here... because of course the hubby would see if I posted it earlier!  He loves his Skittles, especially with all the new creative flavor combos!  We bought a bunch and mixed them all up in the glass jar- let's see if he can tell them apart :-)

In all seriousness, I love this guy and have a ball making him his own little custom Valentine each year... this year it reads, "You light up my rain, no colors refrained."  And he does, he lights up my rain!

 

Happy Valentines Day!

Creating Our Own DIY Handprint Valentines

I have always made my hubby's Valentines.  He may think I am crazy, he may hate them, he may adore them- I have no clue, but since we first started dating, I have always made his Valentines.  Sometimes it has been collages, other times it has just been simple cut out hearts, but almost always it reflects something going on in our lives.  I like to make them... I like creating something with my own two hands instead of buying some card invented by some random person I don't even know.

So a few years back when my oldest daughter came along, it was only natural that daddy get a Valentine from his little girl too.  Well, it's that time of year again and this year we have one more little lady to add in to the mix and our Valentine making has been extended to Grandparents as well (because they just love getting them too!).  Because both girls are still fairly young, I combined both of them into one Valentine and created a fun little design on the computer (that I could just print out multiples of instead of hand writing them all!) to do their hand-prints on.

We used washable Crayola paint and I like to actually paint onto their hands.  This year big sis was able to paint her own hand- HUGE fun, lol!

Big sis had to switch up the colors for each person (of course), but after doing little sis (9 months old) once, I decided she would just have to stay purple the whole time.  We did all of hers in one fell swoop, then let big sis take her sweet time.  They had a blast!.  To back the Valentines, I just used some old scrap-booking paper that I don't plan on using for anything else, glued on our little hearts, and cut with some scallopy scissors.  It really only took us about an hour from start to finish.

 

After they had time to dry, I went back and wrote each girl's name along with this year's date.

We will be delivering Thursday!  Fun times!  So, I am dying to know- anyone else crazy enough to make their own Valentines each year??

Oh- and if you like the little 'HAND/heart' background I used, you can download it by clicking HERE- it is saved in my google Drive :)

DIY Bleach Dyed Fan Shirts

This year our team was in the Super Bowl- fun stuff!  A couple of days before the big game I decided it would be fun to try and make some shirts for me and the girls... well, honestly, more like the day before :)  I remembered seeing a cool bleach "dying" method on Pinterest from one of my favorite blogs, Six Sisters' Stuff which you can see here!  I kind of read through it for some helpful hints, then thought, "I've got this!"  Sometimes that thought can be disastrous... but this is a super easy process!

I started out by creating this graphic.  If you happen to be a San Fransisco fan, feel free to steal it {Click here for graphic} or print out any graphic of your choosing!  We are having College Day at school every Wednesday and many of my students don't have college related clothing- I was thinking about doing this simple process with college initials for them as well!

 

I already had a roll of contact paper, so I decided to use that!  I simply taped the printed out graphic onto the contact paper then used an exact-o knife to cut it out... being careful to not cut out the whole center so the whole piece was still intact like a stencil (compare the graphic above to the final design so you can see what parts I did not cut!).

 Next I peeled off the paper backing and placed the graphic stencil on the shirt making sure it was well adhered in all places.

For the bleach solution, I used an empty and well washed hair spray bottle.  I filled it 2/3 of the way with bleach filling the last third with water.  As the Six Sisters post suggested, I used a piece of cardboard from a cereal box to place inside the tee shirt to keep the bleach from soaking through.  Next I carefully sprayed a thin layer and waited...

While Six Sisters suggested waiting up to 20 minutes... me of little patience found other ways, lol!  After waiting the first minute I started seeing instant results but wanted more... I gently dabbed the puddled bleach off the stencil part and sprayed a bit more.  I waited about 1 minute more before it hit me- BLOW DRYER!  At this point the hubby was looking at me with the you-are-slightly-crazy-why-can't-you-just-wait look, but I didn't want to wait.  Then I got the this-will-not-work look, but it did!  The blow dryer intensified the bleaching process!  I sprayed a little more on and blow dried again till I was happy with it.  Once I felt that it was a large enough contrast, I carefully peeled the contact paper off and dunked the shirt in the bathtub to quickly rinse and dilute the bleach.

It turned out great the first try!  I peeled the contact paper off my shirt and put it on to big sissy's shirt and did the same.  It seemed like the contact paper would most likely do three shirts before it would have to be trashed.  Once both shirts were bleached then dunked, I did a full wash to make sure all the bleach was out.  

Oh- and the best part... we got these shirts at JoAnn's for only $3 each!  What a steal.  Only bummer is that they didn't have red onsies so little sis didn't get one.  Maybe next year :)  

 

I loved this and will definitely be doing it again!  Thanks for stopping in to check them out!