Makin' it Monday: DIY Lucky Penny Sweater Clips

This past weekend, going on into today, was chalk full of wedding anniversaries and birthdays! My uncle's anniversary was the second and my parent's anniversary was yesterday! (Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!) Yesterday was also Emma's Birthday!! She's one of the best friends I could ever have and truly the raddest of the rad, I'm beyond stoked that we're good ol' kindred spirits- even if we live so far apart now. And it's my oldest sister's birthday today! So many exiting things! I should be eating copious amounts of cake!! Haha, love and congrats to all y'all!

So, birthdays and weddings aside, today's post really all stemmed from Robin giving me her wisdom teeth and me wanting to make sweater clips out of them. She had two whole ones and two that were split in half, cool beans to be had all around. And since I find it a little unlikely that you all have a wide array of baby/wisdom teeth laying around to make sweater clips from, we'll just go with lucky pennies! I happen to have a LARGE collection of lucky pennies that I feel weird about cashing because, well, they're lucky. So I keep them in a skull and always in my boots. Occasionally I go for long walks and leave them laying about for other people to find who need a boost of luck. Is that weird? Oh well. Onwards with the tutorial!

One. 

As always, gather the ingredients! 

Earing Bases (I got mine at Joann's)

Pennies, or anything you want really.

Hot glue

Necklace Chain

Wire-cutters

Two. 

Plug in your glue gun. Take note, the warning on my glue gun does not say "may burn" no, no. It says "Will Burn." Take heed of these warnings dear readers, for they are so terribly true.

Two and a Half.

Cut down your earings! You don't want them poking you, that'd be just down right irritating. The earing on top is uncut, just for size comparison.

Three.

Take your shortened earing bases and carefully place the ends of your chains (which you should cut into your desired sizes prior to this! You can have as many chains as you want really, I have two for this one)  are around the point and touching the base. 

Four. 

Secure the chains in place with some hot glue. Be careful for your fingers! Make sure that the glue doesn't get too high up the earing, you've got to get the backs of the earrings on!

.

Five.

 Pick out your pennies! I'm always so amazed at how different they all are! And I've got pennies on my hand from the 60's! It always baffles me that some things last so long and have been probably meaninglessly apart of so many different lives and discarded without thought. Golly.

Six.

Attach your chosen pennies with some hot glue.

'

Viola! You have a sweater clip that will bring you buckets of luck! Of course I didn't have a cardigan on hand because that would be too logical, but I still think it looks sweet!

And with that, I leave you!

Love and Lots of Luck xo

Makin'it Monday: Found objects hanger thing!

What are these things really called? I have no idea! But I made one! I was out on a walk and found these two peices of wood, which of course I picked up and threw in my bag, because that's just what I do, and instead of hanging them from my ceiling (which is what I normally do) I decided to make something out of them! I had these old nails laying around since forever ago- they were the nails used to build out house so they're from sometime around the 1830's! How cool?! Anyways, here's how I did it!

These are all the materials I used! 

(minus the glue, really.)

I hammered in my three nails, one was a bit stubborn and required some glue to hold it in there.

And so I went and put some glue down on my wood, and it turned bright purple! This photo doesn't quite do it justice, it was florescent. What is with that?! It was too weird. So I wiped it off, and went for the probably better alternative, hot glue!

After getting that situation all taken care of I carefully attached my Lichen covered wood.

Then I came upon the realization that I needed to hang this bugger up! I wasn't really sure how to go about it anyway proper, so I took some metal thread and thumbtacked it to the back, and while that did work, it would tip forward and nothing would stay on the nails. So that was a bummer, and then I realized I could just but something to prop the wood off of the wall to prevent that from happening, so I stuck on two more thumb tacks, and they worked like a gosh darn charm! 

And that's how I made that! I was so proud of myself, really. I've got a few necklaces hanging from it now, but since my camera is making every single picture of it blurry, you'll just have to to use your imaginations!

I'd also like to give a shout-out to my super rad Dad!
It's memorial day, and while for most people it means parades and super sales- we use it to remember those who've served, and those we've lost. He's gone through two tours in Iraq, and has been proud to serve his country throughout the years. He's truly an amazing man, and I couldn't be more honored and lucky to have him as a father! 

Love and Creative Kisses xo

Makin' it Monday: Wish Necklaces!

There's no way I could keep doing food-related monday posts. I was planning them out, and it was going to be filled with pies and cookies and brownies and so many delicious things- but I need to lose weight! So I tried figureing out a good solution, which really just ended up being more DIY posts with the occasional yummy treat. (Plus, everyone who would eat anything I bake happens to be gone for this week!) It's my good friend Emma's Birthday in two weeks, so I've been thinking of presents to make for her and send as a package of awesome. So what better thing than a necklace full of wishes?!

Step one.

Gather your ingredients!

1 small glass vial with closure

1 seed-y dandelion

String, Twine, Chain, anything to use as your necklace chord. 

And a clasp for your necklaces is optional

Step two.

Capture some wishes!

Step three.

Find the middle of your chord.

Step four.

Wrap and secure around vial. If there's no way of getting your chord to stay on proper, you could either hot glue it, or rig a wire through the cork, or what ever closure you have!

 Step five.

Attach to necklace clasp, or knot to close!

And now, you have a necklaces full of wishes too! 

I may have made a few of these, because they're just so fun to make, and so pretty to wear! On a previous excursion I picked up more than a handful of glass vials, and have been trying to figure out things to do with them, so pretty stoked to have a few used. Now I have three different sizes to figure out something for! I see some serious crafting in my near future...

Love and Strawberry Kisses xo

Makin' it Monday: Pancakes

You can ask anyone who knows me, pancakes are my favorite food. Of all time. While in NYC the old gang all gathered for dinner. We were discussing food, and my friend Ariel did food impressions of different people and we had to guess them. Needless to say, it was hilarious and mine were, of course, pancakes. I suppose I could even have a spin-off blog and only discuss the deliciousness of pancakes, and different kinds of pancakes. I happen prefer mine with apples or blueberries.

There are a great many things you can do with pancakes. So I thought I'd whip out my Mother's Joy Of Cooking to peruse the ways of my pancake master making mother.

This book has not seen better days, it's seen the BEST days! 

There are so many pancakes to make!!

Above is the first page on pancakes, and below is one of the many reasons I love my mother. The recipe in the book makes 14 pancakes. I'm but me. She figured out how to make three pancakes.  Which is a recipe I divided in half (except for the egg, I just used a whole egg- no sense in dividing it!)

3 Pancakes:

1/2 c Flour

 1/2 c Milk (I used almond milk)

and the remnants:

1 egg

1/2 tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 tsp. Salt

Beat them together until everthing is all mixed and mingled

Out Stove-top clock has been stuck at 9:37 since sometime in the 90's. This stove however is amazing, and has lasted us for so long!

Sadly I can never get pancakes to flip nicely.

Delicious. These pancakes are slathered in Butter and Honey!

They look burnt for some reason, but my taste buds give you promises that they were not. (I may have gobbled them down too fast to take another picture.) In any-case, enjoy!

Love and Pancake filled Kisses xo