Crocheted Woodland Animals

So a friend of mine had TWINS and I saw pictures of the cutest woodland themed nursery she was doing for them. She’s also into essential oils so when coming up with a gift, I knew I wanted to incorporate those into some aspect of the gift. I’ve been super heavy into the crochet spirit (it seems like I always am this time of year!) so it was a no brainer to find some things I thought she might love!

First, I found this AMAZING fox pillow that’s made by graphghan or intarsia crochet! DON’T let the fancy name or the intimidating look of it scare you! I PROMISE this is like so easy once you get the hang of it! I got the pattern HERE from Etsy.com It was very well written and I would most definitely buy from this designer again! You can also check out her blog, it’s adorable and she’s got some amazing free patterns out there and an intarsia crochet tutorial!

That is her picture, for some reason I didn’t get a finished picture of just the pillow myself!

Next, I happened across these amazing and FREE boxy woodland animal crochet patterns! She has 2 older kiddos and I didn’t want to leave them out! Here they are all nice and cozy sitting together 🙂 And you can see my fox pillow in the background!

You can find the patterns for each by clicking on the names!

Crochet Bear

Crochet Fox

Crochet Owl

I used I Love This Yarn! by Hobby Lobby and I have to say that I’m VERY impressed with the quality of their yarn for the price! I used to love Caron Simply Soft, but I found it too limp on a lot of projects and it was getting the fuzzy look way too early. To make them diffusers, I added a small pouch of rice to the bottoms and then filled the rest of the way with stuffing.

I got the eyes from here

And last but not least I made a baby book! This was by far the most time consuming of all the items I made for her! I didn’t get a really good picture of it and I wasn’t all that happy with the way I did the lettering; I should have just done it the way she recommends. Overall, I was very pleased with the pattern. I just wish there was a way to make the lettering look better!

You can find the pattern here

Disclaimer: There may be affiliate links contained in this post. If you purchase through these links I receive a small percentage. Please know that even if I include affiliate links, I still love these products, and would not recommend them unless I truly thought you would like them too!

DIY Smelly Play Dough with Essential Oils

Can you tell we like to make stuff?! Ha! For boys, my kids sure like to keep busy making and doing. This is TOTALLY cool with me because, well, they get it honest! 🙂

This afternoon after some park time and a trip to the library, the boys asked to make a video! They LOVE to sit and watch videos of other kids doing toy reviews and all sorts of things so I decided I’d let them help me make some play dough scented with some of our FAVORITE essential oils!

How pretty are these colors?! And they smell so delish!

Here’s the recipe if you didn’t catch it!

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of salt

2 tablespoons of cream of tartar

2 tablespoons oil (we used grapeseed)

1.5 cups boiling water

Food coloring – optional

Essential oils – optional

DIY Lotion Bars with Essential Oils

Hey there! Crafting and prepping for the holidays is in full swing here! I’ve got this super fun and easy recipe to make your own lotion bars for yourself or some lucky family and friends! These only require a few ingredients and about 30 minutes of time (longer to fully set).

What you’ll need:

• 2 oz Coconut oil (Like this one here)
• 2 oz Beeswax (Like this)
• 2 oz Shea Butter (Like this)
• 1 Tbsp Argan Oil – optional but I highly recommend for your beauty regimen- (like this)
• 30 drops Frankincense Essential Oil (from here)
• Silicon Mold (like this) This is optional but a great way to dress it up for gift giving!
• Raw local honey, or (this) if you don’t have any available but I HIGHLY suggest checking out your local farmer’s market and supporting them if it’s available to you!
• Kitchen scale – looks like mine is out of stock but there’s this one that’s similar and a great price!

I’ve created a short video to show and tell you exactly what you’ll need to do to make these!

I hope you all enjoy!!

Disclaimer: There may be affiliate links contained in this post. If you purchase through these links I receive a small percentage. Please know that even if I include affiliate links, I still love these products, and would not recommend them unless I truly thought you would like them too!

Itsy Bitsy Spider Free printable craft

Hey there! It’s been a slow rainy day here, blah! But, we’re making the best of it and it doesn’t get much better than FREE fun and crafts! Here’s what we’ve been up to…

Cutting is a little frustrating for my 4.5 year old, so of course, I know that I need to make it fun for him! He’s always loved the Itsy Bitsy Spider song and movements and we acquired this book from a grandparent along the way. It’s super cute but totally not necessary for this craft! My son also isn’t much into coloring so we skipped that part! Here’s the link to the free printable for this spider! It’s on education.com and I have no affiliation with them, just love their stuff! I actually did end up signing up with them because my son was needing more work in addition to our Letter of the Week preschool curriculum, BUT you can totally just print a few pages a week for free just by getting a free account! Super simple and so worth it!
Have a great day!
☔Jessica

Halloween and Pumpkin Themed Homeschool Week

It’s the week before Halloween and we’re getting all prepped for our 2nd full week of preschool here! Primarily, we are doing the Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler and we absolutely LOVE it! I LOVE being able to print my own lessons and she’s got the week all planned out and detailed for you! It’s totally FAB! I JUST got her book Homeschooling 101 in the mail today and can’t wait to dig in a little more and get our mission statement and our WHY written down to refer back to!

Even though this is only our second full week, we had previously worked on some letters and had 3 weeks done just randomly, so we’re actually on our 5th letter. Typically, this would be Uu, however, since it’s Halloween, I’ve decided to put Uu off until next week and do Pp this week! I’ve got LOTS of pumpkin stuff in order!

So… Here’s a sneak peek into what we will be up to this week!

Books are

• The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis
• Itsy Bitsy Spider by Kate Toms
• Corduroy’s Best Halloween Ever! by Don Freeman
• Mouse’s First Halloween by Lauren Thompson
• The Itsy Bitsy Pumpkin by Sonali Fry
• Where’s My Mummy by Carolyn Crimi

With each book, there will be a craft to follow on my instagram account I’m sure, so be sure to follow me there!!

I just got this Writing Without Tears book after looking into what other homeschoolers are using and loving. My 4.5 year old doesn’t LOVE writing, so I’m hoping this can help us both 🙂

I got these wonderful pages from http://www.education.com and after printing several free pages, I decided to get their plus account and even got 10% off! It’s really a great site and you’ll see us doing lots of supplemental pages from them.

These cute pages are also from education.com and are for cutting and pasting practice. Tucker loves to craft and cut and I thought the spider page would be cute to do after reading our spider book. The octopus is for recall because last week we did the letter Oo! The cutting pages are behind these and just lines for the kids to follow!

Again, just a few more pages to help with those fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. These are all from education.com. I’m not sure that I will have him cut out all of the pieces to Frankenstein as I have a feeling he’d get upset because they are pretty difficult for his age, but he will have fun dressing him up and gluing them!

This big coloring book is HUGE, like difficult to store because it’s so large and awkward but it’s super cute and we love coloring in it! It’s got some great dot-to-dot and number coloring pages in it that I’ll use to fill some time with the boys this week.

This packet is one from http://www.education.com as well and what kid doesn’t love to talk about themselves?! It’s like 20 something pages long, and I’ll be doing most of the writing in it but I’m excited to get him to start dictating things for me to write. I also look forward to looking back on these in the years to come!

And LASTLY, a few crafty things I’m thinking about doing this week…

• We already made the banner in the first picture today because Tucker was so excited!
• Carving a pumpkin
• Painting the pumpkin seeds and using in art projects
• Pumpkin stamping with potatoes
• Mummies made from toilet paper

Hope you enjoyed seeing our goals for the week! Remember to follow me on instagram to see all of our crafty stuff!!

❤ Jessica

Our Adventures in Homeschooling…

So I’ve spent months and months digging, planning, and searching out a great curriculum to get started with for homeschooling my 4 year old and my 2 year old has happily joined in on the fun too. I spent so much time trying to decide what to use and purchase, I was driving myself crazy! I finally reached out to a friend who has been homeschooling her kids for awhile now and decided to just try my own thing at first… well, that didn’t go so well… I was disorganized and just couldn’t mentally prepare for some reason. So, I decided to use the “Letter of the Week” program from http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com. I purchased her kit and started printing off all of the lessons and my kids are LOVING them! We got started a few weeks before we PCS’d so school kind of went on the back burner for awhile but we’ve reviewed the 3 weeks we did prior to moving and we’re gearing up to start a full week next week!

I’m a hopeful organizer, so I have these ideas in my head but I rarely spend the money to carry them out, even though they would make my life SO MUCH easier! Anyways, I wanted to link this AWESOME and FREE desk name printable with the alphabet AND numbers 1-10! We’re working hard on capital and lowercase letter recognition and sounds. My 4 year old hasn’t always been interested in letters or numbers so I never pushed, but now he’s ALL about it with this program! You have got to check out Erica’s stuff!! Here’s the link to her post about the name tags!

Enjoy and I’ll be sure to post my latest crochet items soon 🙂

❤ Jessica

Crochet Addiction!

So I seem to go through phases of different crafts. I’ll get obsessed with crochet for a month and start several projects and only finish a few (whoops!). And then I’ll get into a sewing kick and do the same. Well, right now it’s crochet that I’m completely enthralled with. Over the next few weeks I’m sure I’ll be posting lots of crochet projects I’ve started (and hopefully finished!)

The first one here is a baby blanket for my nephew who is due in November! I’m going to be an aunt for the first time, eeek! I added the letters which were free. They are the moogly alphabet on ravelry. The bumble bee was an addition too and can be found here http://craftycori.com/2014/06/buzzy-bee-baby-blanket-with-matching-hat/

The pattern for this is here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/181367191/intarsia-deer-crochet-pattern-bambi-baby You can check out this lady’s etsy site and her website is amazing too! She’s got some super cute stuff! I bought the fox pillow pattern too so be on the lookout for my finished product soon 🙂

Gentle Baby Whipped Body Butter

You’ve probably noticed that I’m into essential oils lately! And there’s SO

MUCH you can do with these oils! I mean, seriously, the possibilities are endless! My sewing machine has been packed away for a few months (I’m mad at it haha) and it’s been way too nice outside to feel like crocheting. So, what’s a crafty girl to do… craft with my new passion, of course! “Gentle Baby™ is a soft, fragrant combination of essential oils designed specifically for mothers and babies. It helps calm emotions during pregnancy and is useful for quieting troubled little ones. It is also soothing to tender skin. Many of the essential oils in this blend are used in elite cosmetics to enhance a youthful appearance.” From http://www.youngliving.com.  It’s also been out of stock, for like ever! So, when it came back in stock I HAD to get my hands on some! I’ve been seeing all these neat whipped body butters and creams so I knew just the thing to make with this! This is so simple and soooo heavenly! Here’s how I did it!
You’ll need:
-small jar with lid (glass is best)
-Gentle Baby oil
-organic coconut oil
-hand mixer
-bowl to mix in

Instructions: put a few scoops of coconut oil into your mixing bowl. My glass jar was reused from some foundation so it didn’t take much coconut oil at all! Mix with hand mixer until it’s creamy. This usually takes about 3 minutes or so. Add 5 drops of Gentle Baby and mix for a few more seconds to incorporate. Poor into your glass jar and you’re done! It will take about 2 days for the coconut oil to set again and when it does it will be light and fluffy just like a body butter! Enjoy!

Oil Diffuser Necklaces

Since starting my oily journey, I’ve began making diffuser necklaces! They are a great way to wear your favorite oil around with you all day! Plus, they are pretty too!

I give these free at my oily classes when people sign up! It’s a great way to send them home with something unique. I also let them use a drop or two of their favorite oil from the night 🙂 They have been a big hit!

The Oil I’ll NEVER be Without!

Believe me… I wouldn’t have believed it myself until I tried it! Joy is an amazing blend of oils that has changed my life and helped me be a better mom and person like I want to be! I apply it to my wrists and over my heart every morning and can feel my emotions beginning to balance. I more than love this oil!

It comes in the premium starter kit along with 10 other amazing oils!

Are you ready to have more joy in your life?! What are you waiting for?!

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