Father's Day

Although Brian doesn't wear a tie to work, nor often at all when not at work, I thought this was a fun way to decorate his father's day cake.

And this was one of his gifts from Tessa.

Dyed Rice

I was trying to figure out what to do with these glass bottles I kept from my grandmother's farmhouse. I had them in our upstairs guest bathroom, but with Tessa joining the family, we decided to kid-ify that bathroom. With few other places to put these bottles, I decided to keep them in the bathroom, but to add color to them. I read about dying rice and pasta and thought that would be a fun way to add color.

I measured out the rice in the jars, then put that rice into a glass bowl (use glass or metal or else you'll stain your plastic). Add about 1 tablespoon rubbing alcohol per 1 cup of rice. Add drops of desired food color. Mix until all rice is coated and the color you want.

I then covered cookie sheets with one layer of plastic wrap, then with about 3 layers of newspaper (I was afraid the dye would leak through the paper and I didn't want to ruin my cookie sheets!). I laid the pans in the sun to dry, which they did rather quickly.

I kept them out there for a few hours, then transfered them back into the jars. I love it and the colors match perfectly to our new frog themed bathroom!

Lemon Wreath

I saw this idea on some website (I need to keep better track of those things!) and thought it looked fun for summer. I bought the wreath from the $1 store, the whole lemons from target (came in a box of 8), leaves and lemon slices from JoAnns (leaves came in a bag of 5 stems and were on clearance, the lemon slices came in a bag of 5).

I wrapped green ribbon around the wreath, completely covering it. Then I hot glued the whole lemons around it, adding the slices and leaves. I added a ribbon loop to hang.

Toilet Paper Art

I started with these:

And ended with this:

I flattened toilet paper rolls and cut each roll into about 8 strips, each being about 1/2" wide. I laid out how I wanted the flowers to look and painted them accordingly. I bought a 1/3 yard of brown burlap fabric (for $1.33). I hot glued the points of each petal to the burlap. I then framed the picture, keeping the glass off (which will be the subject of another craft project - stay tuned).