Mother's Day

Germany celebrates Mother's Day on the same day as the USA.  So whilst my family and friends in the UK have long said goodbye to this special day, yesterday was my turn to have a nice day with my husband and children. I received flowers and a few gifts but the most special ones are those that are hand made or produced!! =)

Jacob our oldest gave me some of his International Baccalaureate (IB) exam pieces.  I was really happy because I'd had my eye on a couple for a little while!! =)

Here are the pieces.  I love this first one.

It's a tree 'growing' from a book.

The roots and book in more detail

The leaves made from leaves of a book!

You will notice that the wall is very bare there.  This is where I would like hubby to build me a home library and I think this art piece would go really well on display in there.  I'll keep you posted if  when it happens!! =)

I was also jammy in getting this rose from him which he has made from wire.  For now it's sitting in an old olive oil bottle until I find something that will house it better.

My second eldest son, Heber also got to thinking how he could use his talents to make his mother happy on mother's day.  I knew something was brewing with the smiling entrances and exits into the living room and playing his guitar in the basement when I'd sent them to bed! (usually they at least stay upstairs!) To confirm my suspicions, our youngest who's 5 couldn't keep a secret for too long and told me Heber had a surprise song for me. haha

Well I waited all day to see this come into fruition and it was worth the wait.  

I hope you like it ... because I love it!! What a treasure this boy is!!

Some of the lyrics are 'I would have made you breakfast in bed, but I would probably eat it first!'  Very typical of our son who has the best appetite ever!! He also sang he was very grateful for me and the things I have taught him and what would he do without me?   SOB SOB right there!!! haha

Our third son, Matthew is really the most thoughtful out of all of our family and always budgets well to give to others in our family.  He is such a lovely young man.  The words in his cards are really personal and well thought out.

Then there is Thomas our 4th son.  He was so great in singing to me in Relief Society with the rest of the Primary kids and some Young Women.  As I use my iPad (which now has a new screen - click here to see my post on that!) in class so I have access to German and English scriptures, manuals and google translate, I had a camera to hand to get this sneeky shot of him!! Oh he's a character!! He provided the other sisters with a lot of laughs - but I was bursting with love for this little boy!!

 Hope you all had a great Mother's day too!

How to grab a button for your blog

As I am fairly new to blogland, I have so many questions.

I am grateful for the more experienced bloggers out there for sharing their knowledge with the rest of us. This evening I wanted to 'grab a button!' from this blog.

This is the button I wanted.

 which lead to the search of 'How do I grab a button?'  If this is something you are also asking yourself click here to view the blog Kanelstrand simple living for human beings.

The blog post on this topic is clear and precise and it works!! Here's a preview of what one of the information boxes look like.

Even I could follow the steps and successfully grabbed the button!! =)

Hope this helps!!

Scripture Hero Posters

We bought a scripture hero poster from a church bookstore whilst on holiday in the US.  My older boys wanted two but I insisted that we only had wall space for one.  So we bought one ... this one.

These posters are great for constant reminders of real hero's, great righteous examples. I wanted to frame it so that it wouldn't get all dog eared and torn.  I purchased this frame from IKEA.

You can view it on the Ikea website here.  Once we placed the poster in the frame we noticed that the mat inside the frame was going to cover the scriptural reference and the other writing.  I could have removed the mat - but it didn't look as good.  I WANTED IT ALL!! The mat, the font, the picture.  

My hubby looking on could see the down turned mouth I had whilst trying to figure out how to make it work.  He was is a genius and gave me the idea to call on my friend who has a vinyl cutting machine to print out some text and scripture for me.  Here's how it turned out!

Well I was right - we only had enough wall space for one!! Well I was right until we changed their beds and had a move around in their bedroom.  Guess what? I needed another poster!! haha.  My oldest son chose Enos.  

Here's the poster ....

Again we were in the same situation that the writing on the poster would be covered by the mat in the frame - so we already had the solution and here's how that turned out.

I really love them and so do my teenagers, infact my 5 year old had requested one of his own too!! They look GREAT in their room.  We have each of them above their beds and hope they remind them to be good men, to follow every command with exactness like the sons of Helaman and like Enos, remember to pray, knowing who to turn to for a remission of their sins.  I love my sons ... all four of them and hope that they are successful in that they can stand with confidence in the presence of God.

Scrabble FAMILY decor.

Last week I spent the morning with a friend who was helping me with my latest craft idea.  We spent most of the time catching up and discussing other projects we would like to do.  We had almost redesigned her whole garden in our heads.  It's great when women get together and inspire each other.

This project caught my eye whilst scanning the vast cyber space of Pinterest.   It was love at first sight!

I need to learn to take pics of things I create in their stages ... I get so caught up in what I am doing that I always forget.  Basically to make this I had one large plank of wood.  It measured 15cm wide.  I used that as my starting point.  To make the scrabble tiles I marked out a square of 15 x 15 ... so easy!! I cut the wood to size. My husband has a work bench with clamps so that helped keep the wood in place.  I used a hand saw but if you are comfortable using power tools you have that choice too. I needed 6 for F A M I L Y.  As I did a 'good' job of cutting the wood and didn't need to cover much  up ... well no more than would hide comfortably in the corners that over lap each other - I decided to keep the wood finish rather than painting.  I did think about painting the wood cream in colour to look more like original scrabble tiles, obviously I didn't follow through with that idea.

Hubby helped me to line them up and screw them together.  We used two screws for each side so that they would be more secure and not twist as it hung on the wall.  We secured some picture hooks on the back and attached some craft wire to hang it.

I made sure all of the other jobs were done first so that the vinyl wouldn't be damaged whilst screwing the wood together and turning it backwards and forwards. Then it was time to add the final touches with vinyl. My friend had cut the vinyl for me on her vinyl machine thingy!! (I am very technical!! haha) It is very easy to apply.

Hope you like it!! I have put it in our family room in the basement.  Not everyone gets to see it down there, but I think it's the prefect place for it!

Rainbow birthday card

I have been so busy lately, that I have had no time to write! Yesterday I made a card for a friends birthday.  It is very simple, just using buttons.  I love using buttons on cards.  Here's a picture of it ... I hope you like it! x