Before and After at The Creative Chick Parade

Before:  old bad art canvas from when I tried to paint and I had no idea what I was doing














      After:  cork message board






  Today is the last day of The Creative Chick Parade.  We would like to sincerely thank Diana from The Girl Creative for coming up with this super fun blog hop style party and for inviting us to participate. We had a blast!


Today's theme is Before and After.  There are a lot of things that could fall into this category so link away!  We hope you have a great weekend.  

Recipe Round Up at the Creative Chick Parade

photo from Bev at Food.com

Good morning bloggy ladies and gents.  Today is the day we share our recipes at The Creative Chick Parade.  Do you have any dishes that have been a hit lately? 
I have to say cooking is not my forte.  When my boys start to eat a bigger variety of foods I will probably be more interested. My husband loves to cook but he and I will typically eat the meals he makes and the boys will want simple veggies, noodles and sauce or a plain chicken breast.  They aren't real big on foods mixed together yet! 

I had no doubts when looking for a recipe in going to my mother-in-law, Cheryl.  She always has a good recipe up her sleeve and enjoys cooking. She's still working full time as an RN at age 65 and can probably run circles around everyone at the surgical center.

The recipe she recommended is a grape salad.

8 oz. cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Mix these together in a medium sized bowl or 9 x 13pan, then mix with 1 large bunch of seedless red grapes taken off the stems and washed.
TOPPING:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped nuts (pecans or your choice)

I found a similar recipe with the picture shown at Food.com.

Please link up a recipe you have up your sleeve! Your link will also show up at these lovely blogs who are part of the parade.

The Girl Creative


Beat Until Fluffy

Blog Guidebook

Brown Paper Packages

Dear Madelyn

Dilly Dally and Flitter

Fingerprints on the Fridge

Girl.Inspired

Moody Girl Projects

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

Sew Much Ado

The Trendy Treehouse

Furniture Fix Up: Creative Chick Parade

I got this cabinet for FREE on Craigslist!  I went to look at it expecting to pay $20 or something like it, thinking I was getting a great deal!  When I got there the seller was SO happy that someone was actually following through that she gave it to me for free!  I was excited.  I didn't love the way it looked, as is, but I was only using it for fabric and toy storage in my studio, so I didn't mind too much.  Here's what was "wrong" with the cabinet:

It's pretty heavy, so there's real wood in there somewhere, but the top (and maybe even the sides) were covered in some sort of laminate.  I got the paint in the Home Depot Oops! section for $5 (a whole gallon) and have a TON left over!  Without further adieu, here she is:

I haven't drilled the new holes for the knobs of the outside top drawers.  But, you get the idea.  So, what do you think?  I really love her ;)

Check out the other furniture projects the other Creative Chicks are debuting ;)

The Girl Creative

Beat Until Fluffy 

Blog Guidebook  

Brown Paper Packages 

Dear Madelyn

Dilly Dally and Flitter 

Fingerprints on the Fridge 

Girl.Inspired  

Moody Girl Projects 

Sumo's Sweet Stuff 

Sew Much Ado  

The Trendy Treehouse

Sew What Sharefest: Creative Chick Parade

   

I refashioned this shirt for my little boy, Holden, who is pretty much obsessed with tools.  He has a billion play tools and he'll tell you "Tools dangerous.  Gotta be careful."  It's pretty adorable if I do say so myself ;)

My mom bought him this shirt as part of a set and lucky for me, she specifically told me I should cover the wording, as I'm not big on little kid's shirts saying things, especially not things implying that my sweet, little angel ( ; would do anything wrong!  I was thinking of different animals I could use to cover the wording when I looked down and saw Holden's play hammer.  It was perfect!  The colors matched so well; it was kismit!

I traced the hammer onto scrap paper.  It wasn't quite large enough, so I made a "seam allowance" outside of the tracing to make it bigger.  I pinned the tracing to a piece of black jersey knit.

I pinned the template and the jersey to the front.  I wanted to keep the template on the shirt so I knew where to sew.  I sewed on the actual tracing line of the template (inside my "seam allowance").

After I stitched over my paper template, I ripped the paper (very carefully).  Afterwards, I thought it might have been better to wait until you've stitched a few more times (though I didn't test this theory, so it might be better to take it off first).  

I stitched around the hammer a few more times.  I added a couple of zigs and zags in a few spots to make it look a little rougher.  I trimmed some of the jersey so it was more even around the stitching.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.  I think Holden will love it too, but since I'm the queen of finishing at the last minute, he's already asleep :(  I'll get back to you with a picture of this shirt in action.  I think it'll be one of his favorites!  (Sorry for the bad picture quality, my studio is in the basement - bad lighting is an understatement!)

 

Link up your sewing posts ladies...We can't wait to see what you've been up to!

Don't forget to visit some of the other hosts of the Creative Chick Parade and see what they've been up to!

The Girl Creative  

Beat Until Fluffy 

Blog Guidebook  

Brown Paper Packages 

Dear Madelyn  

Dilly Dally and Flitter 

Fingerprints on the Fridge 

Girl.Inspired  

Moody Girl Projects 

Sumo's Sweet Stuff 

Sew Much Ado  

The Trendy Treehouse

Day One of Creative Chick Parade: Mod Podge Mayhem

Welcome to Day One of The Creative Chick Parade!  Our first project theme is Mod Podge Mayhem.  I have to admit I haven't used Mod Podge very much and the few times I have my projects turned out a little rough...

BUT  ...

This project turned out great in my humble opinion:)

Here is the secret:   THE PAPER HAS TO BE COMPLETELY COATED ON THE BACK WITH MOD PODGE...WE'RE TALKING SOAKED. 

If you do this it will be less likely to pull away from the surface you're attaching it to. 

I took pictures while I was making it so hopefully my pictures will be worth 1000 words because I want to go finish the rest of my projects! :) 

I painted the bushel basket style basket inside and out with two coats of acrylic craft paint.  I used the entire bottle of paint. 

While it was drying I measured the width of the raised wood strips on the basket and cut strips to fit in 4 papers I liked.  I used about half (not exactly) of each sheet of 12" x 12" piece of scrapbook paper.   There were 16 slats so I choose 4 papers and did them in a consistent pattern.  You could do them all different if you want. 

Don't go lightly on the Mod Podge..I can't stress that enough.  I used about 5 coats and then sprayed the whole thing with a clear matte sealer.  Make sure the Mod Podge is completely dry before you spray the sealer.  I kind of wish I had the handle because I think it would look great if the wood piece were Mod Podged.  For now I will use it to hold my fall mums. 

We want to see your Mod Podge projects! Remember this is a blog hop style party so if you link here your link will show up on all the blogs participating.  Let's get this party started:)

The Creative Chick Parade

Hi, Everyone! I'm writing to tell you about an event we're participating in called The Creative Chick Parade.  It's going to be five days of link parties with 5 different categories. 

There are several lovely blog friends participating and I've listed them for you at the end of this post.  We'll all have the same link party codes on our sites so if you post at one, it will show up on each participating blog's page.  What a great way to gain exposure of your projects!

And.....for an added perk many of the blogs will have giveaways  each day.

The categories are:

Mod Podge Mayhem

(any project using Mod Podge)

Sew What Sharefest

(sewing projects or tutorials) 

Furniture Fix Up

(any furniture you've repurposed, improved, refinished)

Recipe Roundup

(food, food, food!)

Before and After

(a room re-do, closet reorganization, item transformation)

We hope you'll get inspired by these categories and have fun coming up with some posts to share.


Here is a list of the participating blogs:


The Girl Creative


The Trendy Treehouse


Sumo's Sweet Stuff


Dilly Dally & Flitter


Moody Girl Projects


Sew Much Ado


Girl.Inspired


Blog Guidebook


Lucky Star Lane


Beat Until Fluffy


Dear Madelyn


Brown Paper Packages


Fingerprints on the Fridge