Happy Birthday Banner

I have had this project done for a while, but have had a hard time getting a picture that was good. I finally decided to just use what I had and post this!

Here is my Happy Birthday banner! This banner is the perfect decoration for a birthday - simple and classy!

I really love this, a lot! So much so that I decided to make some for my sisters for Christmas (if you are reading this act surprised). The ones on instagram were the ones I just finished making for them.

This is really an easy project, the only thing I sewed on was the ribbon! The rest I used my cricut and by stampin up die cuts.

Here we have a close up of some of the pennants, this was taken before I changed out the ribbon on the top.

I am not sure if you can tell but I ruffled my ribbon that connects the pennants. I had originally just sewn fabric on like bias tape, but then I saw something on pinterest and it just stuck with me and gave me the idea that I should ruffle it. Or course I cannot find it again, but I like the result I came up with. You can see it here where I ruffled one for my sister.

And here are some of the letters I used. I used a different fabric for each letter. I used the remnants from my birthday quilt so they are kind of tied together! I cut the letters with my cricut - pretty much the only thing my cricut cuts now days!

I was really on a roll when I started making these and wanted to make a banner for everything! Luckily I didn't, but I did make a congratulations banner for baby showers.

I did blue letters on one side and pink on the other with a yellow ribbon connecting them. These pennants are a little bit smaller, which is good because congratulations is a long word!

Here is a close up of the congratulations one, you can sort of tell the difference in the sizes here - these are about 4" where as the birthday ones are almost 10".

And because I took so many pictures of my banner I am going to share some more with you - they are not the best but they can give you a better idea of what it looks like.

This will tell you how long I have had this, here I have it hanging in my old house - and I moved just over a year ago!

I tried to take this one with the curtains open - that did not work!

 This picture is not that great, but it does give you a glimpse of my birthday quilt! I am going to try and get some pictures taken of that and post for you next week!

If you are interested in one of your own, I would love to make one for you. Just send me an email of what colors you want and I will let you know the prices (roughly $1 per pennant).

Enjoy!

Simple Job Chart

School is starting around here next week. For everyone else that is. I started my kids a week or two ago because I want to take some longer vacations during the year.

But I have a five year old that is starting Kindergarten this year. This boy is not very motivated when it comes to getting jobs done, but he loves to do school - go figure. But I am a person who likes to have the basics done every morning, so I knew that I needed a job chart or sorts to help him out.

I have seen a bunch of different ideas on pinterest and I am sure I saw this one as well, but I honestly don't remember. If you came up with this idea thank you for letting me steal it - I take no credit for it!

I did not want to buy anything to make a chart because I did not want to wait until the next time I am close enough to a store with something cool enough to use. So I went through all my stuff and found these awesome cardboard pieces left over from another project. I think these turned out pretty good.

We decided that Thing #4 needed the job chart, but we made one for Thing #5 as well because we knew he would want one too. I had Conan draw the pictures because he very talented that way. I then just wrote what the job was on a clip to help with learning our letters this year. All he has to do it move his clip from one side of the chart to the other.

Easy Peasy. The jobs my 5 year old has to do everyday are get dressed, make bed, eat breakfast (sometimes this one takes the longest!), brush teeth, morning job (we rotate through the different jobs that have to be done daily in the house), and read scriptures - he actually has Thing #1 read him a scripture story everyday from our scripture reader.

If he gets all of his jobs done in a certain time frame each day he gets a sticker, and after so many stickers a treat. Sometimes a sweet treat and sometimes an extra privilege.

I have to say that so far it is working great. We have gotten all our jobs done last week!

This is Thing #5's chart. He just has to get dressed, make bed, eat breakfast and brush teeth. I usually have one of the other kids helping him out and teaching him how to do the jobs correctly.

A couple of things that I like about these are they are sturdy and won't get bent too much, they can carry them around to help them remember what they we going down to their room to do, they can see from the picture what has to be done and don't have to keep asking me what other jobs they have and I let them color the pictures to help them be excited about the charts.

Like I said this has been great so far, I hope that it keeps us!

Homemade Laundry Soap Review

I don't know about all of you, but I have jumped on the 'make your own laundry soap' bandwagon thanks to pinterest. We do a lot of laundry around here, but I have noticed that it is getting better now that Thing #1 and Thing #2 are now doing their own laundry. I think the seeing how many loads it takes for just their clothes makes them not just toss everything into the laundry. It is kind of nice.

I have done it before, but then I got lazy and well I am sure you all know how that goes.

But I decided that I would make it again. I followed this recipe for liquid soap. She gives great instructions and it was super easy. The kids even helped me measure all of the water. I know there are a bunch of different recipes out there but they are all about the same. I am also a little bit partial to Fels Naptha soap because it was what my mom used growing up for stains.

I also made some dry soap because I wanted to try it as well, and now I use it as an extra when the clothes are extra dirty - so it pretty much all the boys loads this summer! I just used 2 C borax, 2 C super washing soda and 1 bar grated Fels Naptha Soap. Mix together and your done. And I had this awesome container to keep it in. I used this container when I had babies and was making baby wipes - yes I was that mom. But in my defense it was the only thing we could afford when we had our first and it was just one of those things that stuck. Anyway we decorated it with all those stickers from the dr.s office.

I do add some of these to every load just to help it smell good. It is not that it smells bad, but more of there is just no scent. And I like my clothes to have a little something smell so that I know they got washed.

I will let you know how long it lasts. My last time I made this it lasted 4 months. So we will see this go around - now that it is summer we seem to have a little bit more laundry floating around.But it is a great deal!

Oh and I also found this miracle whitening recipe here. I have noticed that my whites are a little dingy - I even used oxy clean, but this is fabulous! My whites were uber white!! And I washed one of Conan's old shirts that was a little yellowish (thanks to a few years on well water) and guess what . . . white again! I have decided to just wash my whites like this every couple of months.

Have you tried this yet and what do you think? I am really curious about what others do and work works best for this laundry soap business.