Handy Mommy to the Rescue

Since being a stay at home mom, I find that I have really taught myself how to do many things around the house.  Today I taught myself how to remove my kitchen faucet and replace it with one I found on clearance at Lowe's.

Now I will give you a little background.  We had a house built in 2006 by some people that I will just say are incompetent.  I could go into a full tirade on this but will save my energy.  Our house is structurally perfect, but there are many little things that were done in a cheap and quick way.  Luckily, my dad lives two miles away and is our handy man.  Well, our kitchen faucet has been dripping for about a week.  It is to the point that when I try to go to sleep I can hear it and then obsess on it, resulting in little sleep.  Yesterday, I decided I had enough of the dripping!  I watched my son get onto the bus and off to school, I loaded the girls into the car and we headed over to Lowe's in search of a new faucet.  I was excited to see they had several on clearance and one I really liked.  The girls agreed that it was the one, with Emily claiming that she liked that it was sparkly and Hayley said she liked the "squirter."  So we paid for our faucet and made our way home. 

After picking Joey up from school and making the kids lunch, I decided I was going to attempt to replace the faucet myself.  I am an A type personality, so I read the directions thoroughly, grabbed all the necessary tools and went to work.  Within one minute, my three trusty helpers decided that helping me was more important than eating lunch.  Since I want all my kids to learn they can do things themselves, I decided to let them help.  After some arguing over whose job it would be to hold the flashlight, Emily won out (though I was hoping for Joey, my oldest).  Joey and Hayley then decided they needed their own tools and made their way to Joey's Little Tikes tool bench and gathered a pair of plyers, a screwdriver and the hammer. 

Let's just say the hardest part was trying to figure out how to get the old faucet out.  This was only difficult because with "all my plumbing" exerience I decided it must come off from the top.  For those of you attempting this in the future, it comes off from under the sink, which makes perfect sense after seeing how it is installed. I used the installation directions and worked backwards to finally remove the old one.  From there it was quick and easy.

One funny little thing did happen with the kids.  As I was unscrewing the pipes and such from underneath, I was laying on my back under the sink, little bits of dust and such fell into my eyes.  I told the kids I need some goggles and started to make my way to the basement to find some.  Emily said she would get me some.  Within 30 seconds, she came back with a pair of Disney Princess swimming goggles and put them on me.  They were uncomfortable to say the least, but I wasn't going to tell Emily that since she was so proud to have had such a great idea.  In the end, they worked perfect and nothing else fell into my eyes. 

It was actually much easier than I thought and it was fun to have the kids help me out!  Now I am searching the house for other projects to do.  My dad is out of town, but I just think he may be impressed I attempted it myself when he returns!

Crafts with the Girls

I am always on the look out for little craft activities to do with the kids.  Some days I do take the time to make some elaborate craft item, which can take more time to prep than to actually put together (that is the teacher in me), but other days, like today I try to find something quick and simple.  While at WalMart yesterday, the girls and I decided to see what Halloween things were already stocked on the shelves ~ hard to believe that Halloween is quickly sneaking up on us.  We ended up buying both girls their costumes.  Hayley, my four year old, is going to be Jessie from Toy Story and Emily, my two year old, is going to be Minnie Mouse.  As a Disney fanatic I can say, I was quite excited they both chose Disney characters.  In addition to the costumes, WalMart also had a lot of Wilton Halloween supplies out.  As you may have noticed from previous posts that I really love Wilton cake decorating and candy making materials.  In this section, I found our quick craft for today a candy necklace kit. 

Both of my girls where their dress jewelry all the time, so I figured this would be great.  Not only did the kit come with enough materials for 8 necklaces, but it was only $3!  You can't beat that.  This morning when we took the kit out of the box, what was even better was that each necklace was in its own little bag, so I did not have to do any sorting or organizing.  I just took one bowl for each girl and poured one bag into each bowl.  Ta - Da!  The craft was all set up.

Hayley picked up the ability to string the candy beads pretty quickly.  Emily, being only two, needed a little assistance to get started but then was able to do a few on her own.  Of course, her attention span is a little shorter than Hayley's, so as soon as Hayley was done her own, she then helped finish up Emily's.  The funniest part was that neither one of the girls even thought the beads could be candy.  They were so proud of the necklaces, they wore them while we went to pick Joey up from school.  When Joey saw the necklaces, he said, "You made candy necklaces without me?"  That was when the girls realized they were candy and began munching away.  It was a good thing I made one for Joey and brought it along because all three kids ate their necklaces before getting back home. 

So if you are looking for a quick, fun little activity that really helps the kids develop their fine motor skills, here is one for only $3.  We'll be making them again tomorrow, since Hayley discovered the 5 leftover packages that we haven't put together yet and has asked no less than ten times if she can make another necklace!

Halloween Gift Bag

Before getting into the details of my project, I'll let you know it has been a very busy week here.  My son, the oldest of my three children, started kindergarten this week. It is so hard to believe he is old enough to go to kindergarten.  It seems like just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital!  He had a great two days and keeps telling me he loves kindergarten, which is a huge relief!  On top of that, my husband has injured his foot and can't walk, and just after that, my car made an extremely loud sound, which turned into a $1,000 repair.  It's been quite a week to say the least!  So, to relieve my stress, I decided to work on a little Halloween project . . . . yes, Halloween again.  I am not sure why I am so into Halloween already, it's barely September!

For Halloween I decided to get my nephew some Boston Bruins diecast cars.  My brother and his family live in Texas, so we have to purchase New England sports merchandise here and ship them out.  I figured this would be one gift, my nephew would not already have!  Rather than just wrap the cars in wrapping paper, I decided to use my Circut cartridge Tags, Bags, Boxes and More and create a small gift bag.  I actually cut the bag at 5.5" in just black cardstock.  Then, I used the Cricut Cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up for the Jack-O-Lantern.  It was the perfect size for two toy cars!

My Pink Stamper Winter Challenge

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I am a huge fan of Robyn's work at My Pink Stamper.  I have learned a lot from her site and have been very inspired by her creations.  This week, she is having a Winter Challenge (check out her site to see the details).  I've decided to create a Winter card using my favorite Cricut cartridge ~ Everyday Paper Dolls, as well as the Tags, Bags, Boxes & More and Lyrical Letters cartridges.  It is hard to believe that summer has past so quickly and here in NH we are heading toward fall and winter!  Here's my creation, enjoy!

By the way, did you enter a project in the challenge?  If you didn't, you should!  You can win a set of Robyn's new stamps called "Winter Punnies."

Disney/Pixar Cars Cricut Cartridge Review

My brother and sister-in-law just sent my son a few little school things for Joey's first day of kindergarten.  So I had Joey help me design and make a thank you card using my Cricut machine.  I found the Cricut Cars Cartridge a few months ago in the clearance section at WalMart, which was very exciting.  My son is absolutely a Cars fanatic ~ he has a Cars bedroom, probably has collected every single die cast car from the movie, and has had a Cars themed birthday for his last 4 birthdays.  Needless to say, this Cars cartridge has come in very handy.

One of the best things about this particular cartridge is that it includes just about all the characters, other than specific piston cup racers, from the movie and for most characters there are at least two different versions you can create.  In addition to the characters, there are a lot of accessories including street signs, road pieces, and different popular sayings and symbols from the movie.  For example, if we look at the character "The King," you can create 3 different versions of him, his name, the Piston Cup and the Dinoco sign.  Each character comes with several accessories, which I love!  Now the only negative I find with this cartridge is that the characters are extremely detailed, which means cutting out a lot of very small pieces and finding where they fit in.  This means in order for me to be able to create them, without making myself crazy, I have to make them large, since my smaller Cricut machine does not cut as precisely as a Cricut Expression would (I am hoping to upgrade to one soon!).  So with that in mind, the card I created is very large to accommodate the large vehicle my son chose to decorate his thank you card.

In order to create this card, I also used the "Mickey Font" Cricut cartridge.  I created a license plate with the word "Thanks" on it.  Surprisingly, the Cars cartridge did not come with the license plate option. It seems it would fit in perfectly.

An Early Halloween ~ Part 2

It is hard to believe that we are rounding the corner to fall.  Our summer in NH has been one of the best I can remember in a long time.  As I mentioned in part one of my Halloween posts, with three kids, I have to create cards (or anything for that matter) when I have time and feel inspired.  Surprisingly, the other night I was feeling inspired to create some Halloween cards for my nephews.  Maybe it was the cool fall-feeling night or that I noticed the days are definitely getting shorter, but either way, Halloween was on my mind.

In my last post, I gave the directions to make a quick Halloween card using the Cricut Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge without making a paper doll.  This cartridge is worth purchasing, just for the numerous accessories!  For this card, I created a paper doll dressed as a ghost as the main image for the card and accented it with other accessories from the cartridge.  I also used the Cricut Tags, Bags, Boxes and More cartridge to create the tag.

Materials:

Cricut Machine

Cricut Cartridge Tags, Bags, Boxes & More

Cricut Cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up

Black cardstock
Purple cardstock
Flesh colored cardstock
Yellow cardstock
Provocraft "Trick or Treat" patterned paper
"Happy Halloween" stamp
White gel pen
Yarn

1. Create a 5x7 card using the black cardstock
2. Cut a 4.5"x6.5" rectangle from the patterned paper
3. Using the TBBM cartridge, cut a 2" circle tag with hole from the yellow cardstock
4. Using the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge, cut a 4" doll from the flesh colored cardstock
5. Using the PDDU cartridge, cut at 4" out of white cardstock a ghost costume
6. Using the PDDU cartridge, cut at 4" out of purple cardstock a trick or treat bag (you will need to select Headwear, shift, Frankenstein)
7. Using the PDDU cartridge, cut at 4" out of black cardstock a cat (you will need to select Accessories 2, shift, Frankenstein)
8. Using a gel pen, color the cat's eyes and outline its features, as well as outline the words "Trick or treat" on the purple bag
9. Put all the pieces in place on the patterned paper and attach it to the black card