oh happy tape

When I first saw happy tape, I knew that I needed it. I didn't have any particular project in mind, but I knew that the possibilities were endless. I'm what some people might call a stationary collector. I love to shop and buy stationary things, but never what to use up what I buy. I have embarrassingly large quantities of post it notes, post it flags, note pads and pens. So it really came as no surprise when I had my happy tape for more than a year before I first used it. There were so many things that I wanted to use it for, but I didn't want to waste it. Then I was upstairs in my daughter's room and I thought that there must be a way that I could brighten up her room a little bit more. So I broke up my happy tape and went to work on her closet door. I just love how it turned out. Now I want to order more colours so that I can do the closet in my son's room too!

Update: The tape has been on Claire's closet for over two years now, and still look great.

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou

nursery wall art

When I was pregnant with my daughter I really wanted to decorate her room with some handmade artwork. Since paper is my favorite medium to work with I sat down, pulled out my paper collection stash, and started playing around with the different colours. We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, so I didn't want to use all pinks or blues. (Looking at it now I suppose this print does look a bit girly though!)

I broke out my cricut, and a few of my favorite cartridges, and started cutting out numbers. It took me quite a while to find the right size that the numbers should be (which of course varied with every cartridge). I played around with the layout quite a bit too. In the end I'm so pleased with it (although I wish that I had placed the 0 a little bit higher on the page.) It hangs over Claire's bed, and I'm just putting the finishing touches on an alphabet print that matches the number print.

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou

Keep Calm and Merry On Printables

I love the latest round of Keep Calm printables that I've seen floating around. My favorites are the Thanksgiving ones seen here. BUT, since I live in Canada and Thanksgiving is already over, I decided to make a few Christmas ones. I couldn't decided whether on not I preferred the white tree or coloured tree, so I made them both.

To download click on the picture and then right click to save it. Enjoy!

I'd love to see pictures of your Keep Calm poster hanging up- leave your link in the comment section.

Hungry Caterpillar

I found this blog, Meet the Dubiens, and I'm in love with it. She is so crafty and she's always posting loads of ideas and things to do with small kids. Some of my favorite crafts that she does are the ones that use her kids hand prints. I think that it will be great to look back at these crafts in a year or two and see how much the kids have grown. 

I've been trying to do some of these with my daughter, Claire (2 1/2 years), and she loves them. We started with the Hungry Caterpillar. I stamped Claire's thumbs to do the body and head, and then I used her pinky to do the antennae. I should have tried to make the antennae longer so that it looks a little less like a bunny, but I was afraid I'd mess it up. Claire didn't seem to care. I hung it up so that she could see it from her seat at the kitchen table, and she was so excited when she saw it. She started shrieking "It's the Hungry Caterpillar. Claire made that."

Go check out Jill's blog. It's awesome. We're working on the turkey hand print animals next!

Painted leaves

I'm a little late posting this one now- but these are some fall leaves that Claire painted to help decorate our house for fall. We usually just paint with one colour at a time so that we don't end up with one big mess of brown paint. I love having Claire's works of art displayed around our house. However now that Halloween's over we'll be working on Christmas things. I love love love Christmas, and I can't wait to start working on our Christmas crafts.

Happy Halloween

I was so excited when I saw this post with a Curious George pumpkin carving- I knew that we had to try it.

 There's probably a way easier way to do this but I wasn't sure what it was. We pricked the outline of George with thumb tacks (the pushpins hurt our fingers too much).

 

 We had picked up a cheap little pack of pumpkin carving tools and just carved out in between the lines that we had pricked. It was super easy, and didn't take that long to do.

 I was so happy with how it turned out- but most importantly Claire loved it!

 Man it's hard to get a picture of the kids together. Simon can't quite sit by himself yet, and Claire defiantly doesn't like to hold him! My little chicken and Thomas the Train.

Mini Rustic Apple Tarts

When I first made this recipe, it was for one large tart. It also called for the apples to be sliced, but I found that there was too much juice in the apples which made the tart very soggy.Since I was making these for a playdate I decided to make mini apple tarts and they were a huge hit.

Rustic Apple Tarts

4 large tart green apples, peeled, shredded (squeeze most of the juice from the apples)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp light brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tbsp butter, softened
9" one crust pie pastry, unbaked (In the interest of time, I used a Pillsbury crust!)

Combine brown sugar, flour, cinnamon in small bowl. Cut in butter. Set aside.

Toss together apples, lemon, and granulated sugar.

Roll out pastry and cut into 2 1/2 inch circles.

Place pastry circles into a mini muffin pan. Drop a dollop of the apple mixture in each muffin cup. Top with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar mixture.

Bake at 400 degrees F until pastry is golden brown and apples are tender, for about 25 minutes. Cool tarts on wire rack 10 minutes, serve warm. 

My sister and I came across this post on Bakerella's site, and we decided to make the apple tarts into apple pie pops. Now I want to try this with other kinds of pie too.