DIY Courses to Get You Motivated

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You know all those home DIY projects you'd do if only you didn't feel absolutely overwhelmed by the thought of tackling of them? The hardest part for me is always deciding which one to start with so I never get started at all.  Just getting to the point where you’re ready to start can often take so much time and effort! It’s frustrating.  It feels good to get to the end of a project and have accomplished something. What you need is for someone to pull together everything that you need to get started, to make it as easy and painless as possible.

Good news – when the Ultimate Bundles team created The Ultimate DIY Bundle, they had you (and me) in mind! 

The Ultimate DIY Bundle is your instant go-to library for a whole range of carefully curated DIY and crafting eBooks and eCourses. No more trawling through the internet looking for good-quality, easy-to-follow information and advice: it’s all right here! For the crazy low price of just $34.95, you get access to a carefully curated library of over 85 eBooks and eCourses from the world’s leading DIY and crafting bloggers – enabling you to pick a project and jump straight into it with confidence. It’s the perfect tool to skip the information overload and throw yourself straight into a new activity.



Hurry though! The Ultimate DIY Bundle will only be on sale for 6 days – from 8am EST on Wednesday, January 21 until 11.59pm EST on Monday, January 26. You can buy with complete confidence because you’re covered by the Ultimate Bundles 30-day money-back guarantee. That means you have a full 30 days to enjoy all the eBooks and eCourses in the bundle, and if you don’t think they provided enough value, you’ll get a full refund.

Even better yet, the Ultimate DIY Bundle comes with 4 awesome bonuses, worth over $118. That’s 3x the price of the bundle alone! These include…

~A free $15 Store Credit PLUS 8×10 Art Print from Hope Ink ($43 Value),
~ a free online class from Craftsy (up to $60 Value),
~ free $15 store credit to Fawnsberg.com, 
~and a free sewing pattern PLUS a Premium Video Class from UpCraft Club ($19.99 Value).

So, don’t miss your chance to grab The Ultimate DIY Bundle, and get 85 incredible eBooks and eCourses for just $34.95. All you need to do is take action by midnight on Monday, January 26!
This amazing deal ends in just…



Pick up your copy right now, before it’s too late. Or, learn more here.



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Epic Black Friday Sale for Crafters!

This is a sponsored post and contains affiliate links.

So excited to share this incredible deal with all my creative and talented readers this morning! Craftsy, your one-stop shop for crafting and hobby ideas is offering now through Monday all Classes for $19.99 or less!.  It's an incredible deal.  No matter your interest, I'm sure you can find something that tickles your fancy (I love their photography classes).  Head over to find something new for you or a friend to learn...

Come back and tell me what you're going to learn!

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Love our #Disneyside

I was selected to participate in the #Disneyside blog campaign

and received promotional items to use for free. 

 No additional compensation was received..

I count myself extremely privileged to have been able to participate in the recent "Show Your Disneyside" blog campaign.  One look around the blogosphere, Pinterest, or social media and it would seem it wasn't a small group of people participating, but it was exciting to be chosen to be involved, nonetheless.

There was a huge build-up around the shipping of the party packages, and while there were no dream tickets to Disney World stuck in side, I was ecstatic when it all arrived in a brand new American Tourister carry-on roller bag!  Without evening opening it up, I would have been happy.  Mine is black with red interior, but they have so many fun colors designed with your favorite Disney characters in mind.

Inside the suitcase was EVERYTHING a person could imagine needing to throw a great Disney-theme party.  If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you might remember me mentioning that we'd already scheduled a cousin's Valentine's day party for the week that my Grandmother died.  What a blessing to have a cheerful reason to be together after many days of solemnity.

Here is a glimpse at how we celebrated our Disneyside:

Yummy Treats

Decorations

 Crafts

These are super cute printable party favor boxes.
Minnie Mouse
Mickey Mouse

We played a bunch of party games and had some dinner, but my favorite part were the Valentine's boxes!  I was so disappointed to find out my son's school doesn't allow decorated boxes so each cousin was asked to bring their own Disney-themed box and Valentine's to hand out for everyone.  

Looking for ways to celebrate your #Disney side?

Visit Disney Side Celebrations

or my Disney Pinterest Board

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My (P)interesting Family: Magnet Giveaway

Looking for a simple craft to do together over the holidays, my sisters and I decided to add our own spin to the ever-popular glass magnets.

After checking out the list of essential supplies and our slightly useful (much more realistic) tutorial, be sure to come back here and enter this giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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My (P)interesting Family #2: Magnets

Christmas time brought a second attempt at my family Pinterest crafting together.  If you'll remember from our scarf project, we are 100% real, 80% crafty, and only about 50% successful.  The same rang true this time around.  Having admitted that, I have no shame in showing you what we deemed to be essential supplies for our night of crafting...

Not pictured:
1 husband & 1 brother-in-law willing to make a McDonald's
when it's freezing cold & late at night.

This particular night of craziness started as a little bit of an afterthought.  We knew we wanted to do something while all 6 of my sisters were home for the holidays, but tired sick kids and the hustle bustle of other activities appropriately took higher priorities.  It wasn't until our 3rd day together when half the group had gone home that we finally decided to pull everything out.  The next day when the others found out they'd missed it we realized we've actually hit onto something we all want to be a part of.  Trust me that that rarely ever happens!

What did my (P)interesting family make for their second project?

  Glass refrigerator magnets

The supplies you'll need:

• A variety of decorative glass pieces (both kinds we used came from a dollar store)
• Scrapbooking paper
• Adhesive 
• Scissors & Paintbrush
• Heavy magnets

The directions seem like they would be pretty self-explanatory:

 Find a design you like, cut it out in the size/shape of your glass, glue it on the glass, and glue the magnet onto the back of that.  For me, however, it went more like this...watch your sisters quickly and efficiently find adorable designs, cut them, glue them, and ooh/ahh while I move my odd-shaped foggy glass over paper after paper, get frustrated and just start cutting, realize that was dumb because now your magnets look really dumb, and have to start over again.  All while everyone is laughing because you really are struggling with a project that your kindergartner could do. (Honestly, after two projects I think my super-talented and uber-crafty sisters are beginning to wonder how I can possible be related.)

My sisters' magnets turned out very cute.  Kimberly, who you all know from past giveaways with the Masked Fairy, is going to sell her pirate themed ones next summer at Renaissance faires.  One sister is using hers in her office and loving them.  Those of us with kids will probably not make the large glass ones again simply because they're not holding up as well when they're being played with and fall on the floor, but the marble ones make me smile as I glimpse them throughout the day and remember that ridiculous night I binged on shakes and fries with My (P)interesting Family.

Kimberly showing off her great idea and perfectly crafted magnet...Grrr :)

Want to feel like you were a part of our night of crafting?

Enter my giveaway for a set of 4 custom-made magnets.

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My (P)interesting Family

My husband, kids, and I have recently packed up and made a big move from Utah where we've been for the past 10 years to Iowa where I spent my childhood.  All the ups and downs that have come with that are stories for other days, but one really positive thing to share is how much fun it is to be living close to my family again.  This week I joined my mom and 3 of my 5 sisters in our very first family Pinterest crafting night. Here's a look at the finished product...

...and here's a look at how we made it...

First, I feel the need to  leave a disclaimer that the photo above looking all polished and nice is a far cry from our actual lives and crafting.  Everything I've shared with you on this blog has been honest and real; I see no reason to change it up here.  We were 5 women in a somewhat messy house juggling scissors, t-shirts, and 10 kids ages 0-6.  It looked a lot like this...

Since it was our first night of crafting all together, and we hadn't yet thought about putting it up for all the world to see, I don't have photos of each step for you to see, but the project is really easy and adding photos might actually be insulting to your abilities.  So for now, let's do it this way...

You need:

• 3 old adult-size t-shirts in the colors you'd like your scarf to be
• Good scissors

You need to:

• For each t-shirt, fold in half and stretch out flat and smooth
• First, cut off the hem and discard
• Then, going straight across the bottom of your folded shirt, cut 3/4"-1" strips so you end up with a large loop of material
• Continue doing this as far up the shirt as you can (if you're lucky you'll make it all the way up to the sleeves, but if your shirt has printing on it, you'll need to stop when you come to that).
• Between your 3 shirts, you want to end up with approximately 32 strips cut out.

• To form your loops, first stretch your strips out as far as you can, causing the material to curl up around itself
• Then hold in one hand and wrap around until you have something that looks like one of these...

• Decide on the pattern you want your colors to be

• Then using your t-shirt remnants, decide which color you want to use for your ties, and cut out 30 3"-4" strips.
• Stretch these to curl in the same way you did your large strips.
• Start tying your loops together.  A double-knot will work, but I triple-tied mine for added security
• It's up to you whether you trim the ties after they're knotted or leave them long. 

This is a project we thought would take about an hour, but in the end it took us a little over two to get past our indecisiveness in color choices and wrangling babies.  And a short break to play a game of cat's cradle, of course,,,

Tell me you can resist when you've got your loops laying out in front of you!

The last step, of course, is to wrap your new scarf around your neck and wear it!  We all decided to tie ours into a long loop, but you can choose to leave your ends untied as well.  Here are our finished products...

Our first family Pinterest craft night was a lot of fun with only a little bit of stress.  Since none of us would really call ourselves scarf wearers, we left knowing we needed to be brave and wear them really soon or they'd end up in a drawer.  I'm proud to say I wore mine on my son's field trip today and totally rocked it on the playground.  It's been keeping me warm (and looking cute) all day.  Now, I think I'm in charge of next month's project...that promises to be (P)interesting...

Want to Win One?

Because it ended up being easy and so much fun, 

I'm going to make a Looped T-Shirt Scarf to giveaway.

Link over to the giveaway post to enter!

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