Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Clay's Hobby

Clay first started collecting knives when he was 10, I think.  For the last couple of years he has saved his hard-earned money to purchase knives, and he has also received a variety of knives as gifts.

Lately, he has started making his own knives.  He found directions online for how to make a knife from a railroad spike.  Who knew?  A knife from a railroad spike?


BEFORE

I am not exactly sure of the knife making procedure, but I do know that it takes a good bit of time.  This is one of the reasons that Clay gets up early to complete his chores and school--so that he can get to his hobby.  I know that some of the steps involve fire and a grinder.  Clay has also constructed his own tools that he uses in his forge.


AFTER

That's quite a transformation!  I think that he has shined and ground this knife even more since I took this picture.  The knife is really sharp!


BEFORE AND AFTER

What a cool hobby!

Monday, January 2, 2012

More After Pictures

When I shared pictures of Sam's completed room yesterday, I forgot a couple.  The first two pictures are of his closet.




Sam's desk

As I was taking down the Christmas decorations last week, I moved furniture and my rug around to vacuum.  Then I decided to try a different furniture arrangement.  We have lived here for seven years, and the den furniture has not moved!
Here are some pictures of the new set up.  I really like it.


That little bench in front of the coffee table was made for me by Sam.




Here is my schoolroom while I was moving the schoolbooks out of the storage room into those white cabinets.  The white cabinets were full of my scrapbooking supplies that I moved back into the storage room!




This is my fantastic new table that Jimmy and Clay built me for Christmas.  I love this table!  It is the perfect height, and gives me such a large work space.
It's covered with the things we brought down from the sewing room.


All cleaned off now!
To the right of the table are shelves holding our stuff.  The boxes have labels listing their contents.


This brown entertainment center stores scrapbooking supplies on the left.  The brown chest on the left also holds scrapbooking stuff.  The right side of the entertainment center and the white chest of drawers holds sewing supplies.


The boxes underneath the crafting table hold small scrapbooks, stuffing, bows, fabric, and the sewing machine cabinet (white).  We roll the sewing cabinet out when we need to sew.


Another picture of my supplies.  I know that my containers are not matching nor are they color-coordinated, but I just used what I already had.



Another gift from Jimmy--a pegboard.  I love this!  I had so much fun hanging all of those things on the pegboard.



This is another wall in the storage room--The shelves hold more of our stuff as well as the ribbon holder Jimmy made me several years ago.  I use that table when I am making bows for presents.


One last picture of the crafting end of our storage room.

Monday, March 14, 2011

A Rainy, Dreary Monday

a little bit of spring cheer

Today's weather has been so dreary! It has rained and rained all day. But on the bright side, we did not have to leave the house today. The children's piano teacher is taking Spring Break this week, so we didn't have piano lessons this afternoon. We were able to complete all of our schoolwork, and I even read a little bit extra in both Core K and Core 5 of our Sonlight reading. However, we are now behind in one of our Core 5 books, because it is MISSING! I have no idea where that book can be. I keep all of our current Sonlight read aloud books in a basket in our den. We misplaced another Sonlight book earlier in the year, but it was a read alone for Julie and Clay. After looking for it for several days, I finally just bought it for the iPad. Of course, we found the book the very next day on the bookshelf that I had looked through multiple times! I sure hope this book turns up before tomorrow!

To brighten the afternoon, the girls (mostly Leah) made tissue paper flowers. We placed them in two vases, and along with our spring placemats, now our table looks really springy. I guess I
need to take the Valentine's decorations off of the light fixture hanging above the table. Leah also made a pipe cleaner lei. I found a link to the decorations at The Homeschool Classroom. I cannot figure out how to link to the exact post, but you can go to The Homeschool Classroom (where I will have an article about helping your homeschool day run more smoothly on March 24), and scroll down to the post about spring crafts. Cute ideas!

I hope you have had a good Monday too!

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Fingerpaint in a Bag

This is a fun activity that is super easy to set up. Children of all ages (even my teenagers) enjoy this!

Supplies: gallon sized zipper bags and paint

Squirt a small amount of three or four colors of paint into each bag.

Zip the bag closed.

Give to your children to "fingerpaint" away.
No mess! No clean-up!

This will occupy them for a long time (at least 20 minutes)!

Display the beautiful finished product!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Domino Christmas Ornaments

Since I am not crafty, I am always on the lookout for simple and cute crafts for my children to do. I found this idea on my friend Kimberly's blog, Raising Olives. Click here for the link for directions. We followed them exactly like Kimberly described, except we cut our ribbon 15 inches instead of 12.

I bought the dominoes at WalMart, and I found the ribbon and Zips (glue product) at Hobby Lobby. I had a collection of stamps on hand from my former scrapbooking days (I hope to get back to scrapbooking some day), and I keep Sharpies in a variety of colors.

beginning to stamp the dominoes

our supplies

coloring in a stamp

some of the finished ornaments

a couple more finished ones

There were 28 dominoes in the box. We plan to package each ornament in a small gift bag filled with candy, and the children are going to give them to their church family friends as a Christmas gift.

A fun and easy craft!