Pinterest | I Tri and Craft

November 8, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Seven Days of thanks ~ Week 1

Last year I did a “Days of Thanks” blog posts during the month of November leading up to Thanksgiving. I really enjoyed finding something new each day to be thankful for. I wanted to participate again this year, but come Nov 1 I felt stressed about the idea.

I shouldn’t feel stressed about being thankful, that seems counterproductive. I was stressing about having to remember to write something and post it everyday. What if I don’t have time (I was at home on maternity leave this time last year, and now I am back at work) to write about it before the day is done and I am crashed out, asleep, exhausted? What about the days that a “thankful” post will interfere with another post I want to write? Will I end up doing a post about my kids everyday? or maybe about my coffee?

Those thoughts, and more, were going through my head as I was up with a sick baby at 4 o’clock in the morning.

So I decided it would be better to do a recap of the things I was regretful for during the week.

7 Days of Thanks Nov 1-7

Nov. 1
Our humidifier. When Sid woke up in the middle of night having a hard time breathing, I was thankful that I already owned a humidifier. His breathing was back to normal by the time the sun came up.

Nov. 2
Pinterest. I am thankful to be able to share creative ideas with millions of strangers. I found the idea for these Mummy Juice Boxes on there. Ian took them to his school Halloween party, and all the kids loved them.

Nov. 3
Brothers. These two are amazing.

Nov. 4
Ian’s love for LEGOs. It is no surprise our family loves LEGOs. I love being able to pass on my childhood favorites to my kids.

Nov. 5
That second cup of coffee. Yep, I did it. I posted about my morning coffee. But it is so necessary and everyday I am thankful for that cup.

Nov. 6
Preschool. I am so thankful that someone else is teaching my kid. I could never be a parent that home-schools their kids. Way too hard for me. How do I teach this left-handed kid how to write from left to right.

Nov. 7
Face Time. I don’t have an iPhone, but my mom does. My baby cousin is away at college, a freshman, and we all miss her terribly. It is so great to be able to see her face when we talk to her. Baby Sid get’s so excited he tried to eat the phone. OK, so maybe he was giving her kisses.

What are you thankful for?

June 16, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Happy Father’s Day to one and all, but two most of all

I would first like to wish a Happy Father’s day to my Dad.

Because, let’s face it, he is half the reason I am here.

I really wanted to post a picture of us, preferably from when I was little, but I don’t have my hard drive hooked up right now. So hopefully I will have some time to later.

But I wanted to take a moment to tell you I love you.

“Dad, I love you”

I would now like to wish my husband a happy father’s day. You have given me these two wonderful boys that have made you a father and me a mother. For that, there are no words to express how thankful I am.

There is no greater sound then when I hear you and Ian laughing at whatever game you are playing.

Ian & Dad just chillin’

I don’t really see the point of buying my husband something for father’s day. It would be different if the kids wanted to get him something, but they are too young still. I do however love the homemade gifts they give.

Typically the kids make something in school, but my boys are not in school yet, so I had to help them.

I saw this Hand Print art on Pinterest.

Left: Pinterest picture
Right: Our attempt

Have I ever told you how much I love hand print art?

Well, I will tell you now.

“I LOVE hand print art, more than chocolate covered peanut butter.”

Since Ian went on his first fishing trip with his dad recently, I thought it would be perfect. Plus I could add Baby Sid’s hand print as another fish.

Turns out, I should really think these things through before I begin.

Since Ian was ready to paint, I didn’t want him to change his mind, and I quickly painted his hand and put it to canvas.

Ian & Baby Sid’s hands

I had let Ian pick out the color of the fish. Again, should have thought that trough first.

fished product

Since the water was blue, we should have done a contrasting color. And yes, I should have painted the water first, which was the major problem with this picture.

My mom helped me with Baby Sid’s hand print, but I should have waited until he was asleep. Cause his is the one on top and it looks bigger than Ian’s.

I think they looked more like birds then fish.

Ian was very happy with the picture, but the perfectionist in me couldn’t quite enjoy it.

Ian really like making his hand prints, so while I was trying to finish the painting he was making more hand prints.

I decided to use these hand prints and make something else.

Of course I found the quote on Pinterest.

Even though the painting didn’t turn out the way I saw it in my mind, Ian gave it to Dad anyway. Ian was very proud of the picture and really liked it. It just won’t be going up on the walls of the living room.

Happy Father’s Day

April 17, 2013
by Dawn Marie 1 Comment

A Superhero Birthday Party

Here is the long-awaited post about Ian’s 3rd birthday party.

I let him pick out his theme and this year he wanted Superheros. So I quickly started pinning ideas to my Pinterest Board.

I kept checking with him to make sure he didn’t change his mind about the theme. Every time I asked him what kind of party he wanted he would throw his fists in the air and shout “SUPERHERO BIRFDAY PARTY!”

I originally thought about taking some pictures of him in his superhero costumes and making a comic book for his invitation. Due to my limited time and his unwillingness to pose for pictures, I decided to make a newspaper cover as his invitation.

I used pictures I had previously taken of him. The hardest part was thinking of what to write!

I wanted the kids attending the party to decorate their own capes. This was a battle between my mom and I, she didn’t want a bunch of kids gluing stuff while in her house. I had originally thought of iron-on but then someone would have to man the iron. In the end we decided it was the best option.

I also decided to go with inexpensive so we used all felt for the capes, masks and decorations.

I think we ended up with 24 capes (big enough for a 7-year old), 24 masks and all the shapes for about $40. Which is less than two-bucks a cape! The most expensive thing was the binding web. We made the capes too large and trimmed them to fit each child. She used this pattern for the portion around the neck.

I printed out the shapes and my mom cut them all out, and the webbing to fit. She went a little overboard, but it allowed for each kid to have as much on their capes as they wanted.

This is one little girl’s cape

This kids placed the shapes and then a friend of mine, or my mom, ironed them on.

When making decorations for a party I usually find a digital scrapbook kit I like and use it. I could not find one for superheros. There were some available, but none that I liked. So I just used pictures that I found on Google. I tried to only use ones from Marvel or DC, but I can’t really say for sure where I got all of them.

What party is complete with out party hats?

I used Photoshop to make these and bought the string at the fabric store. It is elastic thread.

I wanted a night-time city scape behind the food table, I got the idea from this post and this one.

Of course Ian needed to help.

I just used a cardboard box and some poster paint.

I wanted some hanging decorations and saw this post that used pinwheels. I usually make decorations for the table dishes but decided to use the circles for the pinwheels.

I was so pleased with them that we used the same concept for a baby shower.

My Aunt made this wonderful cake! Ian was so excited about it.

I saw these suckers all over Pinterest, this post has a printable template, but I just made my own.

I printed them on card-stock and used a hotglue gun to glue the masks on.

I really like the idea this mom had about adapting the game “pin the tail on…” I photo-shoped a picture of Ian on a comic book city and had a poster printed. I did cut out little masks, but we never got a chance to play.

I used this posts idea about making a banner with the Superman logo that says “Happy Birthday”

(please excuse my mom’s gold mini-blinds…)

I loved the boxes in this post, so I decided to make my own. I was just going to make a few for decorations, but of course my mom said they had to be filled with candy, which meant I had to make 40 of them! They all had to be cut out, folded and glued together!

I made three different styles. They are my new favorite thing to make.

The gift bags we just got at Party City, we added a few things that we found along the way, plus a bottle of bubbles!

I made the food labels using the same circles on the pinwheels and on the party hats.

This Avengers Scene I downloaded from Spoonful.com. They had a number of printables that I didn’t get a chance to use. They had some great masks, like the Hulk and Ironman, but I didn’t get them made.

The other thing I wanted to do but didn’t get a chance to, was to turn my mom’s front porch screen into a red telephone both door. I just ran out of time.

The Birthday Boy had a great time.

Happy Party Planning

April 4, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Pinterest Thursday April 4th

On the first ~~Tuesday~~ Thursday of every month I will post about something I found on Pinterest that I actually did! Sometimes it will be about a craft project, sometimes about food and sometimes about a ‘miracle’ cleaning product.

This months Pinterest Project is a cleaning solution.

(Pinterest has switched to Javascript for embedding pins. Wordpress doesn’t support Javascript so I can’t embed the orig pin. I am still trying to figure out a way around this problem. So you won’t see my pin, but I do have links to the blog post and my own images.)

I HATE cleaning my tub.

I don’t mind cleaning, I just hate cleaning the tub.

The bending over, it’s back-breaking, the scrubbing….

So I was pleased to see a pin that claimed to be “The Best Shower/Tub Cleaner” with out scrubbing.

Plus it only has two ingredients; dish soap and vinegar. This post says to use Blue Dawn Dish Soap, which coincidentally, is the kind I have. It is my favorite dish soap. Some pins/posts about this mixture say it has to be blue Dawn, I can not attest to that, as I have not tried any other combo.

The science behind it.

Blue Dawn contains surfactants as cleaning agents; including sodium lauryl sulfate (or sodium dodecyl sulfate), sodium laureth sulfate, and lauramine oxide (lauryldimethylamine oxide).

A surfactant is used to remove oils from the surface of something, like your dishes or tub. It contains two parts, the hydrophobic tail and the hydrophilic head. The hydrophobic tails want to hide from the water, so the molecule orients itself by pointing the tails inward forming a sphere, with the hydrophilic heads outwards. This orientation allows for the oil soluble tails to trap oils and wash them away with water.

Vinegar is made with acetic acid and water making it a moderately strong acid. As a cleaning solution it is great at dislodging dirt and grim that is basic.

And by basic, I don’t mean simple, but basic in acidity. Dirt, grim, hard water, mineral build up, soaps and detergents are usually basic. So chemically vinegar works great on these alkaline stains.

As you could guess the combination of the surfactants in Blue Dawn and the acidity of vinegar should take care of any type of grim lingering in your tub or shower.

But does it work?

OK, don’t judge me.

Here is my tub before. For the record, the green stuff is bath tub paints, which if not washed off immediately, is a little difficult to clean. You should have seen it when we moved in, it was much worse.

Directions

use a 1:1.2 ration of Blue Dawn to vinegar.

Heat the vinegar, do not boil, just heat it enough to enable the soap to dissolve into the vinegar.

Pour hot vinegar into spray bottle and then add the dish soap.

Shake it like a Polaroid picture to mix. Careful not to shake too hard, it could suds up.

Then spray to your heart’s content.

Just remember that which goes on, must come off.

Let it sit. For as long as you can stand it.

But remember it smells like vinegar, lots and lots of vinegar. If you have a bathroom fan, use it!

Other sites say do not use water, just wipe off with a dry cloth.

That did nothing for me.

I had sprayed it on a dry shower/tub and I had to scrub, which was exactly what I did not want to do.

I had one of those green scouring pads. I used it with water and lo and behold, my tub came clean!

Now, I will admit, it was not as miraculous as I had hoped. But it still worked great, and each time I use it to clean the tub it works better and better.

You don’t have to confine it to the tub/shower. You can also use it on the sink, you just want to make sure you can rinse whatever you clean really well.

Happy Pinning

I Tri and Craft

thoughts from a mother of boys, a marathoner, a triathlete, a crafter, a wife, and a scientist

Category Archives: Pinterest

Seven Days of thanks ~ Week 1

7 Days of Thanks Nov 1-7

Happy Father’s Day to one and all, but two most of all

A Superhero Birthday Party

Pinterest Thursday April 4th

(Pinterest has switched to Javascript for embedding pins. Wordpress doesn’t support Javascript so I can’t embed the orig pin. I am still trying to figure out a way around this problem. So you won’t see my pin, but I do have links to the blog post and my own images.)

The science behind it.

But does it work?

Directions

7 Days of Thanks Nov 1-7

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(Pinterest has switched to Javascript for embedding pins. Wordpress doesn’t support Javascript so I can’t embed the orig pin. I am still trying to figure out a way around this problem. So you won’t see my pin, but I do have links to the blog post and my own images.)

The science behind it.

But does it work?

Directions

Share this: