Christmas Photobooth Props

To go along with the North Pole decoration I made for my ward's Santa Hour, I made a bunch of Christmas themed photobooth props to make the Santa Hour pictures more fun for everyone! These props are so adorable and not just for little kids! I love the sparkly cardstock paper. Even my daughter loved these and wanted to play with them. We had to hide them in our closet in order to keep her away from them. My favorite is the bowtie. I made a few different colors of bowties I loved them so much!

Making these props takes a little bit of time, but its so worth it! So let's get started.

Things you will need:

- White Printer Paper

- Pencil

- Cardstock Paper

- Wooden Craft sticks (1 ft long)

- Gold Metallic Acrylic Paint

- Paintbrush

- Hot glue gun + glue

- Metallic peel-off letters

(I used some gold letters made for letterboxes)

How to make these props:

1. Paint the craft sticks gold. Give them a couple of layers of paint. While they are drying, continue on to the next steps.
2. Click on the picture of the prop cutouts you want to print to view it full-size.
3. Right click and save the image to computer.
4. Print the image and cut out designs.
5. Trace the designs onto cardstock color of choice (I used the glitter cardstock from JoAnn's from the scrapbooking section.)
- FOR THE NICE & NAUGHTY SIGNS:
-- Trace one arrow onto cardstock paper, then turn over the template and trace again.
--- Peel off your metallic letters and stick them on the arrows.
6. Cut out the designs from the cardstock.
7. Glue the gold stick onto the back of the cardstock design.
8. Voila! Now you have some awesome Christmas photobooth props!

 Comment below if you made these, and don't forget to post a picture of how they turned out!

Christmas DIY - North Pole

Last year, I started getting into the habit of blogging regularly, and then I totally lost my groove and stopped blogging for A LONG TIME. Well, my goal for year 2017 (I'm starting early) is to pick up where I left off and blog at least once a week!

To kick off the holidays this year, I wanted to post this super fun (and super easy!) DIY project. I'm in charge of my church's Santa Hour and wanted to make some fun decorations for that. I made some photobooth props as well as this really cute North Pole decoration.

I started out looking on pinterest to get ideas, but didn't like anything I saw. I had an idea of what I wanted, so, I went to JoAnn's fabric and craft store and bought most of my supplies there.

Things you will need:

- 3 slabs of craft ply (1/8" x 4" x 12")

- white, red, and green acrylic paint

- red ribbon at least an inch thick

- 1 wood coaster

- 1 wooden ball (flat on the bottom)

- 1 wooden pole (3 ft long)

- fake craft snow

- hot glue gun + glue

- paint brush

This project was so fun to put together! First, I painted the wooden ball white, and while I was waiting for that to dry, hot glue gunned the pole to the center of the wooden coaster and painted them white. It is important to not glue gun the wooden ball to the pole yet, I'll explain why later!

I really wanted to do a red and white stripped pattern to create a pretty legit North Pole, but I didn't want to paint any stripes, so I bought some red ribbon to make a stripe. Once the paint had dried on the pole, I hotglued the red ribbon to the pole.

I started gluing the ribbon down from the very top of the pole. I would put a little glue down on the pole, then pull the ribbon across the glue to keep it in place. Then I would pull the ribbon around the pole a little more, and glue past that point. Then I repeated that pulling and gluing motion until I was all the way down to the bottom of the pole. Then, at the bottom, I pulled the ribbon down around the base of the wooden coaster and glued it in place. I cut the excess ribbon on the top and bottom of the pole, and voila! One perfect looking red stripe!

I had some fake snow stashed away, and sprayed it onto the wooden coaster around the bottom of the pole to make it look icy. I love how this looks!

After this, I glued on the wooden ball to the very top of the pole, being sure to tuck in any excess ribbon from the top. Then, I sprayed on some fake snow to the top of the wooden ball. The snow really gives the top of the North Pole an extra touch!

Next, I hotglued the wooden plys onto the pole, making sure to stager them and put them at fun angles.

After that, I painted the plys alternating colors. I painted the words super lax and a little messy, but that is the look that I wanted. Lastly, I sprayed some fake snow onto the tops of the plys. Ta-da!

This is how it turned out:

I'm super happy with the finished product! It didn't take very long to make it (maybe 1.5 hours max), so this is a very fun, easy way to decorate for Christmas!

Baby Name Sign DIY Tutorial

I love the idea of name signs in a child's nursery! They can be so fun, colorful, and add a touch of personality to a room. When decorating my daughter's nursery, I decided to make my own name sign.

Here's what I used:

- Wooden letter cutouts

- Scrapbooking paper to cover the letter cutouts

- Acrylic paint to match the paper above

- Mod Podge

- Pencil

- Paintbrush

I wanted to have fun, bright colors for my daughter's name sign, so I chose some scrapbook papers that had a variety of colorful floral and geometric patterns. I think you could really play with different patterns and colors depending on the gender and the theme of your nursery!

Here's how I made it:

1. Start first by flipping the letter cutout so that you are looking at it backwards and place it on top of the backside of the scrapbook paper. Now trace and cut out the letter! Put your new paper letter cutout to the side for later.

2. Start painting the sides of the letter cutout with a contrasting or matching paint color. Let it dry. (Otherwise, you will end up like me and have a bit of the paint getting on the front side of the letter).

3. Paint Mod Podge over the top of the letter cutout.

4. Place your set aside scrapbooking paper cutout on top of the wooden letter cutout VERY carefully!

5. Place more Mod Podge on top of the scrapbooking paper. You can use your paintbrush to help smooth out any wrinkles that form. I also use my fingers and fold down the edges of paper that stick out from the letter. Let it dry. 

6. Repeat for any other letters you may have!

7. Hang up your letters with some command strips. I used one large strip per letter, and it worked great. For the "A," since the tip of the letter was very thin, I cut one large strip in half lengthwise, and attached it to each side of the "A."

And voila! There you have it! After everything is dry, you have yourself a cute little name sign for your baby's nursery! Enjoy!

My $13 Patio Set Project

After moving to Arizona, my husband and I knew we had to have a patio set. We love being outdoors, and so having meals outside is a lot of fun for us. In Arizona, you can pretty much go outside all year round, even in the 100 degree heat of the summer, as long as you're in the shade.

After looking at patio sets all around town, we found out that patio sets are expensive! For a little two seater, you're looking at paying at least $100 brand new! For us, we knew we wanted a set with at least 4 seats, and we knew that we wanted to pay as little as possible for it!

I was able to get a very sturdy metal table from my parents for free, but it had a bit of rust. It had been my grandparent's, and I remember going to grandma and grandpa's house and having lemonade out on the porch in the summer at this table. So for sure, even with the rust, the table was a keeper!

The only problem was that I had no chairs! For a couple of months, my husband and I took our dining room chairs outside with us because we refused to buy expensive or cheap or uncomfortable chairs brand new. I even looked all over at every thrift store I could find, but alas, no chairs.

Our patience paid off, however, and a nice lady in our church sent an email out that there was a table and chair set her husband's coworker was giving away. Well, just luckily, there was another girl who wanted only the table, and I wanted only the chairs, so it was a match made in heaven! (I had to double check that she didn't need the chairs though, because I honestly couldn't believe it).

The only problem? The chairs looked like this:

The chairs had this dark green metal frame and cushions that looked like they came right out of the 90's. They weren't exactly ugly, but they weren't exactly pretty at the same time. I decided that since they were free, and the cushions were actually very comfortable, I could definitely find a way to make them work!

For the table and chairs, all I needed to give them a facelift was four cans of spray paint and about 2 cups of chalk paint, and that's it! I got two cans of spray paint for free from Ace Hardware (I had a $10 off $10 coupon) and two cans at Home Depot for about $4 each. I had some leftover chalk paint that I had bought at Joann's for another project, and I had just enough to paint the cushions. (I had a 40% off coupon, so it came out to be $5). I was a bit disappointed that the chalk paint allowed a lot of the fabric's 90's pattern to show through, but for the most part, it covered the chairs pretty well and tinted the chairs to provide some contrast.This is the end result when all was said and done:

For my entire project, I spent a grand total of $13 for my patio set! Woohoo! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and we spent way less than what it would have been to buy one cheasy patio chair at WalMart!

Cloth Diapers: Our Experience

I LOVE the concept of saving money whenever I can. When I found out that I could save money on diapers by sewing my own, I knew that I had to try it. After sewing and using cloth diapers for the last 6 months, I wanted to review my experience with them and whether or not I think its worth it to use them.

Our Experience:

I actually really like our cloth diapers. I have a pretty good system of cloth diapering during the day, but we also use disposable diapers when we go on road trips, hiking trips, and at night when my daughter goes to bed. Ella is a morning pooper (sorry for tmi), so it works out for us that we rarely ever have to deal with soiled cloth diapers. When we do get that occasional soiled diaper, it is pretty simple to clean: you just shake the diaper out in the toilet, scrape the diaper with a scrub brush, and throw it in the diaper pail. I rarely have to touch anything icky with my bare hands.

BTW, there are these handy little tools that you can buy that hook up to your toilet to spray off soiled diapers. I never bought one, but I have heard that it makes cleaning messy diapers a WHOLE lot easier!

As far as leaks, we hardly have any with our diapers; we did have leaks in the beginning because Ella was too small for the diapers I made and the pee leaked from the leg opening, but she's grown into them and we don't have that problem anymore. The type of soaker (the fabric pad that is inserted into the diaper and holds in the pee) really helps with this, and buying quality soakers is key. I will get into what soakers I use later on in this article. We have 16 diapers that I have made total, and wash and dry them about 2-3 times a week.

The Benefits of Using Cloth Diapers:

Financial
We have saved a LOT of money by cloth diapering Ella. (We could save a lot more though if we chose to exclusively cloth diaper our daughter, but our active lifestyle doesn't always allow us to do that.) After you make the initial investment of sewing or buying your own cloth diapers, the only cost from there on out is just the cost to wash and dry the diapers.

Environmental
Cloth diapers have very little environmental impact. Disposable diapers, on the other hand, do. A child can potentially go through 9,000 diapers in the course of 30 months if you are exclusively using disposable diapers (that's 10 diapers everyday for 30 days for 30 months). That's a lot of trash to sit in a landfill somewhere! For me, this is not the main reason why I chose to use reusable diapers, but it is kind of like the cherry on top knowing that I can help cut down some of the environmental waste out there.

Health
It is not just a myth that cloth diapers help prevent diaper rash! My daughter rarely gets diaper rash now that we use cloth diapers.

Cuteness Factor
I love cloth diapers because they are so much cuter than disposable diapers. You can make them in whatever pattern you want, and can mix and match diapers with tops to make cute outfits! Plus, you don't need a diaper cover when you have such adorable diapers!

Resale Value
One nice thing about cloth diapers is that they hardly lose their value. Once your child has outgrown them, you can resell them to recoup some of the money you spent, which adds to your overall savings. This also provides environmental benefits as the diapers would be reused and recycled, instead of being thrown into a landfill.

The Cost of Making the Diapers:

For me, I spent about $137 on everything including fabric, soakers, tools, etc. If you want a breakdown of what those costs were, read below. If not, feel free to skip to the next section!

Initially, I spent $60 on materials to make cloth diapers. I got all of my supplies 40% off at Joann's (they were having a promotion) and used a $5 off coupon. Everything I bought included:

- $20 on plain, white waterproof "Outer" fabric (2.3 yards)
- $10 on Dri-Wicking "Liner" fabric (2 yards (we got the end of the bolt)
- $6.59 on plastic snaps
- $12 on the snap pliers
- $7 on the Fold Over Elastic (don't buy it, its only decorative, and I haven't even used it yet)
- $6 on an instruction/pattern book
- $3 on flannel fabric to make Soakers (1 yard total)

I could have made 16 white, plain cloth diapers from just the above materials, but I made a couple and realized that they were BORING! Actually, my husband and I saw some cute fabric on the clearance rack at Joann's, and he convinced me to make some cute diapers that had a pattern to it. Also, I didn't have a waterproof diaper pail liner, and I couldn't wait a month to buy one on ebay from China, so we bought some more stuff. We spent about $27 extra on:

- $9 on plain, white waterproof "Outer" fabric (1.3 yards)
- $18 on an arrangement of cute, patterned fabric (about 8 yards total)

I made the diaper pail liner out of the waterproof fabric, and still have extra to make a few more diapers with. Likewise, I have a few yards of patterned fabric that I am waiting to use for when I have to make a larger size of diapers when my daughter outgrows the ones she's using.

Other costs:
- $50 for 24 charcoal bamboo, 5 layer antimicrobial soakers

I made a few soakers with the flannel fabric that I had bought during my initial trip to Joann's, tried them out, and they FAILED MISERABLY. So, I ended up buying bamboo soakers on eBay and LOVE them! They are extremely absorbent and do exactly what they are meant to do! You can find soakers anywhere online - amazon, ebay, etc. Sometimes you can find them in maternity consignment shops as well. They come in a variety of materials and layers, but I suggest buying the soakers with the most layers as possible.

Is it worth it?

The question you are all probably wondering is, is it worth it to cloth diaper my child? And to that, I would say, it depends! Cloth diapering is not for everyone, and that's ok! I don't find it much different than using disposable diapers, except it is a little less convenient to have to wash out soiled diapers in the toilet and launder them. Because I had the opportunity to save money, I love to sew, and I have no problem cleaning the diapers, it was a no-brainer for me to try to make and use the diapers.

Alternatively, you can buy cloth diapers on-line or at maternity consignment shops, but they are more expensive that way. I say if you want to try them out, buy one or two and see how you feel about using them. If its not what you want to do, then you haven't spent too much money, and you can probably re-sell them online pretty easy.

If making cloth diapers sounds like something that you would like to give a go at, there are pattern books at any craft store and there are free diaper patterns on pinterest. I had a lot of fun making my cloth diapers, and will be making more in the future when my daughter gets bigger!

Palatki Ruins in Sedona, AZ

What better way to spend a day off than by getting out of the house and going to see something new? Well, for us, it was new, but in reality, what we were going to see was something a few thousand years old.

Many people know Sedona, Arizona for the beautiful red rock landscape, but what many don't realize is that there is a rich native American culture that is almost as old as the rocks themselves. In fact, there are many native American ruins in the Sedona area, a shadow of a people that once called the land home. One of the ruins that C and I visited before he started school this August was called Palatki, meaning "Red house," in the Hopi language. Palatki is the site of the largest cliff dwellings between AD  1150 - 1350 built by the Sinagua people. To visit the ruins, we had to make an appointment for a tour. We called that day and were able to get a spot with no problems.

Our trip to Palatki took us 30 minutes outside of Sedona on a dirt road in the middle of the Sedona outback. The path wasn't extremely rugged, but it definitely made me wish we had a 4 wheel drive vehicle to traverse the landscape with. We were surrounded by large junipers and towering red rock vistas.

We arrived at the visitor's center and were greeted by friendly park rangers. They instructed us on how to access the cliff dwellings and gave us wooden walking sticks for hiking up the mountain to the area. The hike was only one quarter of a mile and was not bad at all with a baby; we had a hiking backpack for Ella, and she rode in it very contentedly.

Making our way up to the cliff dwelling site was pretty mind boggling thinking about how the Sinagua people would frequently climb the mountain every day, most likely multiple times a day, to travel between their shelter in the cliffs and their farms in the valley below. (The picture above shows the valley where they grew their crops thousands of years ago, taken from below the alcove where the pictographs were located). I couldn't imagine myself having to go on a hike (not that I would mind) to access every resource I need like water and plants for food or for building materials. We are pretty lucky that we can turn on a faucet and have our water so easy!

The tour at the cliff dwelling site was very interesting. We were not allowed to enter the cliff dwellings to prevent damage to the site, but could see from the outside how they were made with bricks chiseled from the sage stone mountains. There was another site towards the west of the picture below of cliff dwellings, but we were not able to access that site due to severe deterioration (aka, some parts of the ruins had collapsed making it extremely dangerous to enter).

Our next stop was to the site of a ceremonial alcove in the mountains towards the northwest of the visitor's center (about a half mile from the cliff dwellings). There, there were many pictographs (some of which dated 6,000 years ago, way before the time of the Sinaguans), of lines, squiggles, animals, and one that resembled Princess Lea from Star Wars (see below left). In reality, the pictograph was most likely created by someone from the Hopi tribe as the figure has hair that is like that of Hopi women (see below right of a picture of a Hopi girl). Apparently, the area had been inhabited by not only the Sinagua people, but also people from other tribes as well throughout a period of hundreds of years.

All throughout the alcove on the cliff walls were hundreds of these lines that had been etched into the stone. We discovered that they were a result of someone taking drugs (which would have been ceremonial to the user) and trying to translate what they saw in their world that they were transported while they were under the influence. All I can say is, don't do drugs, kids.

One of the newest additions to the alcove area was a shelter built by a man named Charles Willard. In the 1920's, at the age of 65 after his beloved wife passed away, Willard discovered the area and constructed a stone shelter there as well as started an orchard. In the picture below, you can see how he used the cliff face as a natural wall to build upon, basically using the same technique as the Sinaguans to build their cliff dwellings. Likewise, in the top left part of the picture, you can kind of see a concrete box on top of a mound of stones; this is what Willard used to collect rain water to use for drinking, cooking, and bathing. Pretty ingenious.

After we had thoroughly explored Willard's shelter and the alcove of pictographs, we gave ourselves a little tour of the visitor's center museum and took off. We had also wanted to make it to Palatki's sister site that was located 4 miles away called Honanki, but it was too late and they were closed by that time. However, we had a great time at the Palatki Heritage Site! It was interesting to learn about the native American culture in the area and to get a feel for what it must have been like to live in Sedona thousands of years ago. We loved our experience there, and will most likely return to visit Honanki in the near future!

Mount St. Helens Day Trip

   

C and I lived in Washington for a few months in between the time we graduated from BYU in December 2014 and the time he started professional school in Arizona in August 2015. During this time, we got to visit many different parts of Washington and enjoy living in such a beautiful state.

One of our favorite places that we visited was Mount St. Helens, the infamous mountain known for its volcano that erupted in 1980. It was only a 3 hour drive from where we were living, so it was a very do-able day trip for such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We normally only drive to places that are 1 to 2 hours away as its hard to travel long distance with a baby, but this trip was totally worth it!

Let me just say, driving from the west park entrance of Mount St. Helens into the valley at the base of caldera, was AMAZING! The blast in 1980 had leveled hundreds of acres of forest and had dumped hundreds of tons of soil onto the valley beneath it. As you drive into the park, you see that the landscape is pretty much the same as it was after the eruption in 1980. There was much of the mountain that was still bare, and on the mountains outside of the volcano, hundreds of leveled trees looked like spilled toothpicks in the distance. It was awe-inspiring, fascinating, and somewhat eerie, all at the same time.

Cameron and I first stopped at the Weyerhouser free visitor's center, which had a very impressive museum. They had a moving video and exhibit that demonstrated what it was like for people who had been caught in the volcano's eruption and what was being done by Weyerhouser after the eruption to harvest the fallen trees. We had a picnic in the sun (notable, because there are hardly any sunny days in Washington), and enjoyed the cool summer day. Ella enjoyed playing in the grass, but didn't know what to think about it at first.

Outside of the visitor's center was a small hill in which you could climb for a scenic view. From there, we could see how the volcano had caused a giant landslide into this valley. Now, a river snakes through the new land and is home to wandering elk.

After leaving the visitor's center, we reached Johnston Ridge Observatory, named after the scientist killed on the ridge during the eruption. We didn't have much time at the observatory's museum, but instead, we spent our time hiking. There are miles of trails along the base of the volcano and up onto the volcano itself. My husband had hiked up to the top of the caldera when he was in Boy Scouts, but that was a multi-day hike. We only had time for about a 5 mile roundtrip hike, so we chose to start on the Boundary Trail #1 from the Johnston Ridge Observatory towards the Truman Trail #207.

Our led us east of the observatory up onto a ridge where we could see into the caldera better. It was very scenic along the path: towards the east was a hillside covered in red flowers and fallen trees, remnants of the 1980's blast, and towards the south was Mount St. Helens, in all its natural glory.

Eventually, the trail led to the side of a steep mountain with a narrow trail snaking along its edge, a section of the path called Devil's Elbow. We started to take it and maybe went 1/4 mile on it, but I was afraid of its sheer gravely drop offs (I'm not afraid of heights, but I kind of am), and how late it was getting, so we decided to turn back.

On our way towards Mount St. Helens, we had seen a little mom & pop restaurant called Patty's Place in Toutle, WA that advertised good ole' American food and Elk Burgers. We decided to stop there on our way back home and try an Elk Burger for ourselves for dinner. They were a little pricey, so we split one and had a peach cobbler. We sat on porch outside and overlooked the river below. It was a very beautiful evening with a slightly chilly breeze (summer can still be cold in Washington!), but it felt great to sit down and enjoy the evening after hiking. The food was great, and the elk was a tastier, leaner version of beef. Inside the restaurant were pictorial memorials to Harry Truman, the grumpy old man famous for defying authorities and staying in his home with his cats  during the eruption instead of evacuating. We left Toutle and made it home by midnight!

Overall, we had an amazing trip to Mount St. Helens, one that I would easily travel across the country for if we had the opportunity! We had actually gone into the wrong entrance to the park (there are multiple, and they don't connect, so choose wisely lol). We had meant to visit the Ape Caves (a series of underground tunnels carved out by the flowing lava of the volcano) which is on the south side of the mountain, but didn't realize that we would have had to drive another few hours to get there. Looking back, it worked out really well for us, and we had a fun time anyways. We will have to save the Ape Caves for another trip. ;)