Pin of the week: Finger knitting!

For this weeks, Pin of the week. I did some crafts with my daughters that ultimately lead to Elena knitting ALL day. I highly recommend this one. The pin itself is on my pinterest sight but here is a pic of it.

Link to the pin

Elena, my 6 year old, is always bugging me about knitting but she is not my most coordinated child. I worry that trying to do actual knitting with backfire on me. Elena does not do well with failure. So I have been looking for alternative ways to teach her. This is brilliant. Its from Flax and Twine. 

I sat down with Elena and within minutes she was hand knitting like there was no tomorrow. 

 

Elena picked it up like it was nothing.

 Even started teaching her little sister.

So here is how you do it.

To start with all you need is:
1. yarn

Elena picked pink with silver accent. My girl does loves pink and glitter. Kiera pick a similar glittery one, but my girl puts a spin on it and picks teal with Silver.

2. Your Hand

Start by going under the pinkie, over ring finger, under middle and over pointer. It looks like this...

 Then turn it around and go under pointer, over middle, under ring and over pinkie. It should look like this.

Do it again... and again, until you have two loops on each finger

Then grab the bottom loop and pull it over the top loop and off your finger.

 Do this again

 And Again

 This is what it will look like after the first pass. Not pretty, but wait, it gets better as you do more

 There is what it will start to look like. Pretty cool.

Here is Elena's final scarf. She is soooo proud and has been knitting like crazy. I have created a monster. She got excited at walmart yesterday when she found the bargain bin of yarn.

 Here are my crazy girls, messy hair and all, with their scarves.

Needless to say, everyone will be getting scarves as a gift from Elena this year. I think I will teach her how to crochet next.

Senior Gato

We, the Family I mean, have recently been adopted, Yes I said adopted, by a cat that keeps hanging around. We haven't named him, but he is at the front door every morning as we leave to go to school/work. The kids are so cute, "Hi Cat!" So, I think we will feed him and if he chooses, he can be our outside cat. He is very friendly, and sweet. Here is the new addition to the fam damily. :)

The picture was taken outside with no flash, so I did the best I could, but he is cute!

Cat Eyes Tutorial

I have been doing my eyeliner like this for a while now and it can be intimidating. So, in my daily routine, I took pictures and am now sharing how I do it.

First, you have two options, start completely bare on the lids and only have liner on the eye, or add shadow first. In my experience, if you do the shadow after you do the eye liner, it gets on the liner and you have to do touch ups. Its a pain.

For this tutorial, I went with the bare lid.

1. Start with the liner tip at the outer edge of your eye and sweep it upward. You can go up as far as you like. Do the same to the other side making sure they are even.

2. Next line your eye as close to the lash line as possible. 

3. Next, starting near the inner corner of your eye, draw a line to the initial line. Ultimately making a triangle. Check again that both eyes are even. 

4. Fill in the triangle.

5. Check again that they are even. I have done this enough in my life that I can pretty much do it in my sleep, however, q-tips are an amazing invention that you can use to clean up the line. 

This is what the finished product looks like. Hope you like my tutorial. Please share! Please pin!!!

Its kind of hard to see the detailed flip at the ends of my eye, but I like the way this looks. 

Be sure to pin!

Pin of the week

I probably pin about... ok, I pin alot, I really couldn't tell you how many I pin and repin. so I thought that could be a great weekly post. so I here by declare saturdays, pin of the week day! I will post some pictures (with my new  tripod!) of a pin I used to make something cool and we just see what happens, good or bad, hopefully more of the former! So, at home with all four of the kids, and I am going to attempt to make something, wish me luck!

New look, New Start.

So, I have been working on the look of my blog. I like the background, not sure of the logo. But its a start. I keep thinking I am not using this how I should. I want to try to post everyday, be it pictures, updates on weight loss or exercise, or me just ranting because life was crazy that day. I think it can be therapeutic and help me get this jewelry party started. Anyway, I thought for starters, I should post something about Pinterest. I am on pinterest on a daily basis. I love it for the inspiration. I find craft tutorials, words of wisdom, funny pictures, fashion, and even recipes. So, If your on pinterest, please follow mine. I have a pretty good following on mine already. I even had someone email me and ask me my opinion on Christmas gifts because they loved what I posted. Which was odd and sweet all at the same time.

New years resolutions, crafty and otherwise

Ok so it's that time if year, I have decided to make a list of specific goals to improve my life that are realistic and attainable.

1. First and foremost, without neglecting anything, I am going to focus on me
1. I am going to make conscience choices in my food. Starting with eating breakfast when I first wake up to stir up my metabolism. Drink Water. Get back to eating small meals every four hours (this change alone helped me lose 50 pounds before, I think I can do it again). 
2. I am going to exercise. I have been making excuses for too long. First it was, I am still recovering from having Nevin (she is one, I think that excuse flew the coop about 6 months ago). Then it was I am tired. Yes, I work all day and then have to care for my four children, but that will not change (unless I win the lotto) and exercise will help me be less tired. 
3. I am going to make sure that at least an hour during the work week I focus on making jewelry and one hour of taking pictures of my jewelry. Then I intend to spend two hours (give or take)  on the weekend, making jewelry and putting the pictures on the web. I really have to get my true passion back up and running. 
4. I am also tired of having heaps of laundry to do every weekend. I have a theory that if I washed, dried and folded a load every night, there would be less to do on the weekend and more time to spend with the kids or working on my jewelry (I just know I am going to get a "I told you that" from my mother). 
5. Clean house more. I am notorious for putting off cleaning till the dishes in the sink over take the kitchen. I hate doing dishes and have to stop doing this.
6. and last but not least. I have to quit smoking. Its killing me, and I know it and my kids are getting old enough to start questioning why I am smoking. For me, for them, for life, I have to. Not to mention, its too damn expensive. I have to accept that I am not a kid anymore and if I don't make this change it will end me. There I said it!

I think if I can follow these goals, I will be so much happier and productive. I think the fact that I am so inactive is over flowing into the rest of my life and causing me to be lazy. I figure if I put it on the blog, which I am going to update weekly from now on, then its out there, even if no one reads it. I know its there and I will be more successful if I spell it out plainly. I know these resolutions will change as they do, but there are certain ones that I will not change no matter how much I have to white knuckle it. I will let you know in a week how it goes, and hopefully have a new tutorial for who ever actually reads this. 

Breakfast with santa at Johnson elementary!

I got the opportunity  to do a small craft show at Johnson elementary. Great crowd, good holiday fun!