egg-celent

4 years later, and these eggs still get a lot of attention...

Click here for the original post and how to for these fun surprise eggs, made using plastic eggs!

another giveaway!

The lovely Maria Grimes is giving away one of her beautiful clay cupcakes, like the ones she made for the Spring issue of inspiredideas! I think I'm going to make a few this weekend...they are just so wonderful, aren't they? And the instructions make them seem incredibly easy.

Click here to enter the contest.

Nose to the Chalkboard

My latest obsession...chalkboard paint. I have a small area between the dining room and kitchen that I've always wanted to use chalkboard paint. For less than $10 a can for the paint, it's a great deal to transform an ordinary space. I ended up painting the top portion of one of the walls with white paint to outline the images. I'll leave the bottom portions for the kids (and me) to doodle to our heart's content. We even have a "Question of the Day" that we've pretty much answered everyday. You can barely see it beneath the magnetic board.

I need to paint a fun exit sign above the door to the garage and I want to use more of the white outlined images here-and-there.

Wanted a bistro-like image in this space. I think I'll do a plump chef orchestrating from the "Take Note" hand to the left of this image.

You can usually find the wizard, a.k.a. Chris, in the basement, so he is "IN" for help with solving tech and home repair issues.

On Sunday, we had our neighbors over for Shayne's 21st birthday. My little artist buddy Adriana had fun doodling. I wanted to cry when I saw that she had written her "I love you" sentiment. What a cutie and I love her too! Then there's Cole with his Minecraft love and I don't know if he was too happy that all of his work had been erased. We'll see how long Adriana's images stay up ;-)

giveaway!

You've just got to head on over to sweet Tracey Fisher's blog...she's giving away a set of the fabulous Springy Pencils that she created for the Spring issue of inspiredideas! Aren't they wonderful?

And, hey, if you're not the lucky winner, you can make your own set using the instructions found in the Spring issue. (Wouldn't this be a great teacher gift?!)

chalk wall

I have wanted to paint this wall with black chalk paint forever...

Maybe it's because last week was my birthday...

Maybe it's because Rich is such a sweetheart...

But I finally got my wish!

And Alfredo and I are having the best time drawing a spring flower garden, inspired by the printable doodle Pam made for the Spring issue of Inspired Ideas...

Spring in print...and for ipad!

Now Available in Print &

iPad ready!                

     

Birthdays & Bunnies

Today is my best friend Claudia's 40th birthday! Wish I could be there to celebrate with her. I miss you :(

Below is the collaboration project that I did with Marie Patterson. If you know Claudia, her ear tends to lean towards naughtiness. I hope she loves her new art piece.

Moving along to Easter, here is a picture from Marsha A. who is a big Breen collector. Look at that cute tree. I like that big ornament with the rabbit head and carrot. Very festive and thanks for sharing!

super alfredo!

We were in Joann's last week when I spotted this fabulous shiny fabric labelled for dancewear/swimwear. Forget that...we knew instantly, it would make a fabulous super hero cape!

The fabric doesn't fray so I just cut as evenly as possible when you have a 5-year old helping. I just kept it a rectangle for simplicity's sake. On one top corner, I sewed a star button. In the other corner, a loop of elastic. I thought about putting a magnet or velcro closure, for safety, but I decided this arrangement is fine, between the elasticiy of the cape and the button loop.

I told Alfredo that we could make some for all his friends that he runs around with (literally) after school. (For about 30 minutes after school lets out, on nice days, a bunch of friends race and chase and hoot and holler around the churchyard) But my very nice little boy said what he would really like is if I could make a cape for each of his classmates. So nice! So yesterday, that's exactly what we did. It only took a couple of hours. We made them in red, blue, and gold. The gold ones were backed in black so they looked extra cool.

The only thing is that this fabric isn't cheap...it's about $16-$20/yard. I can make 4/yard and I had a coupon for 25% off the entire purchase...so they ended up being about $3.50 each. Not bad, if you're just making a few...but 20?

He took them in this morning and he is so excited to share them. He's going to give them to his teacher and she'll decide how/when to distribute them. I sure hope they like them.

p.s. I asked the teacher about the closure and she said that she'd make sure they were closely supervised. If I were making these for a younger set, I would definitely use velcro or a magnet.

Smart

Girl in a Coma's Smart~ Great tune!

more from the spring issue...

 

 

I'm so proud of this Spring issue...it's my favorite of all the issues we've published so far!

I want to thank all of the contributors for all the love and care they put into their projects. I couldn't have done this without you. And I want to especially thank Kerrie More for her excellent proofreading, Pam Keravuori for her fabulous doodles, including the fun title banners and printable, and my sweet friend Lorraine for cheering me on.

To buy this issue for only $3.99, click here.

Spring Preview

Enjoy!

Spring Inspired Ideas!

Are you ready to get your craft on?

I think this is the best issue yet

(but then again, don't I always say that?)

Click here to subscribe to the
Spring 2012 issue of inspired ideas!

I hope you love it!

Fun Portraits

Reasonable and unique, Fall Down Tree on Etsy will create your family portrait in an animated style.

hello, 41!

Happy birthday to me!

You know how much I love celebrating my birthday, right? Well, Alfredo and my friend Lorraine (whom he calls Aunt Tootsie) did some plotting and have arranged a wonderful birthday afternoon. It was the cutest phone conversation ever...I wish I'd somehow managed to record it.

I will, however, bring my camera to record the day's events.

Happy 41 to me!

When in Doubt, Pinkie Out

This post is for my husband, who seems to think silverware placement has no rules.

Lucky

Cole and I made these lucky leprechaun candy favors for his class. I have seen the rainbow Twizzlers paired with the chocolate coins, but since I had to make 30, I went with the candy gold gum. I bought the little pouches of gold gum at Cracker Barrel. JoAnns carried the small cellophane bags and the small orange boa packs. The small bags fit the 5 Twizzlers perfectly. We cut the Twizzlers strands into four equal pieces and sprinkled the gold gum in the bottom of the bags.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

color run...

We are so doing this...

 

a kitchen garden...

Did you see Susan Branch's delightful kitchen garden, complete with instructions on how to build your own?

Oh, it's so adorable...you've got to head on over and check it out. It makes me want one more than anything.

Party Time

Don't you love it when you stumble across an amazing website? If you want fun, whimsical party favors and products, check out The Sugar Diva. They have so many cute paper and favor items all in adorable colors.

claudine!

So, the whole guest blogging thing was kind of a bust. So I thought I might show you some stuff...

Maybe you already know this but my friend Claudine Hellmuth has some really cool kits over at HSN. I bought them all and I love them so much. The packaging is amazing and there is so much stuff, I can't get over it.

Chalkboards

I'm so into chalkboards right now that I painted a small section of the kitchen with chalkboard paint earlier this week. It's a small enough area where repainting would take less than an hour. My kids are having fun doodling and posting the "Question of the Day" on it. So far, the questions have been: What is Your Favorite Decade?, Who is Your Favorite President? and What is Your Favorite TV Show? Once you start erasing that chalk, it gives the walls a zinc-like finish.

Love the lettering on the picture above. There's a great website that creates custom wedding chalkboards at customweddingchalk.com. Even Paper Source has wedding invites & gift tags with a chalkboard motif with their Bistro Slate stationary.

Welcome

Ding dong! Nothing says, "Welcome friends!" like a pretty wreath. Unfortunately, our storm door prevents me from placing one on our front door, but I can always admire what other people have hung on their doors.

where is she?

The short answer is...crazy busy. And on top of busy...poor Alfredo has the flu! How anyone can be so pitiful yet so adorable at the same time is impossible to know but I think he's going to be sick for a while. Just now he said "My head feels like a bag of pudding"....see what I mean? Pitiful yet adorable. And this morning when he threw up all over the sofa, the first thing he said was "I'm sorry I ruined your nice sofa with all my throw up"...pitiful and adorable. (and sofa not ruined)

The long answer is a bit harder to cough up. I've sort of gone off blogging. I don't know how or why...I suppose I could wax poetic about it and come up with some valid-sounding reasons. Busy is part of it, for sure.  But I'm always kind of busy (aren't we all?)

So here's what I'm thinking of doing...until I get back up on the blogging wagon (or is it off the wagon?) What if I do a few series of sort of themed guest spots? Wouldn't that be kind of fun? And what if we start it out with collections? Just shoot me an email  {amy (at) inspireco (dot) com} with pretty photos of your wonderful collection(s), information about your collection, etc. and a little bit about yourself. Then, next week, there will be a veritable parade of wonderful blog posts. Another theme announced each week...

p.s. Isn't that the most gorgeous jacket you've ever seen? I'm pining for it for my birthday but it's a bit of a long shot since my husband thinks it's ridiculous to buy clothing from an illustration. It's from J. Peterman, of course. I am a sucker for J. Peterman.

Crocheted Cruciferous

These beautiful crocheted vegetables are created by Japanese artist Jung-jung. Unfortunately, I don't see any links to purchase her work here :(

Great Quote

Love this quote

Tea Time

Last night, Chris and I went shopping at World Market and came home with this pretty Japanese tea kettle set. The set came with a box of jasmine tea, but I prefer the Genmai-Cha tea. It's actually brown rice tea. I'm partial to this tea because it reminds me of my mom making cha-cha rice whenever we were sick. Cha-cha rice is basically a rice porridge made from sushi or sticky rice. You just cook it longer, with more water, and tea. A great comfort food when your stomach is uneasy.

Salamandar & Frog Festival

It's only taken 20 years, but I finally tried my hand at royal icing. I saw a Martha Stewart show where she and a guest made the most beautiful sugar cookies. That show aired when Shayne was just a baby! I always wanted to try it and now I can scratch it off my bucket list. These cookies will be sold at the 3rd Annual Salamander & Frog Festival this Saturday. Cole's teacher, Mrs. Spring, requested baking help from the parents and provided the cookie cutter. Proceeds will help support vernal pools, which are very cool :)