Waiting at soccer practice, dance, pre-school, nap time, or doctor’s appointments, there are lots of short periods of time when a mom can sneak in some creative time. They don’t come at regular intervals nor do they last long but if you are organized and have all you need in one place you will be surprised at how often you can get a little creative. This art kit tutorial will show you a quick way to get your creative side flowing!
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For this version of Mom’s Tiny Art Kit I used an inexpensive pine box and I added a little wood burned mandala to the outside of it. Never tried wood burning before? Check out my basic wood burning tips to get started! Feel free to use a shoe box, a recipe box, or even a zip-close plastic bag if that is what you have on hand right now – anything can hold your tools and be easy to carry around.
You can draw on your container, paint, or stitch on it. You can even just decorate it with washi tape. The important part is to set aside a few supplies just for you that will be easy to carry around.
Whether you draw, doodle, paint, watercolor, or stitch, generally, you can fit a few supplies in a small container for most creative endeavors and have them at hand when the occasion arises.
For example, if you are used to working large watercolor paintings, cut some watercolor paper down into 4″ x 4″ pieces so that you have a smaller canvas ready. It’s easy to fill the canvas quickly and much easier to carry around. This also works if you are simply trying out different art supplies and don’t want to work on a huge surface. I’ve learned from experience that 4″ x 4″ is just the right size for experimenting and learning.
Smooth Bristol 4″ x 4″ paper is perfect for doodling with pencils or markers. But if you are just looking to get creative and not sure where to start, pick up a Zentangle or Zendoodle book and get to doodling.
If the kiddos want to use your art kit, you can make them an extra special one of their own. Even some blank paper and a few crayons will feel special to them and they can create right along side mom if they want.
We’ve rounded up some of our favorite products to use in making our art kit and art-on-the-go ideas. Do you have more to add to our list? Tell us in the comments below!
Dress up your boring old coffee up with a cute knit cozy! This free knitting pattern is perfect for beginning knitters looking to take it to the next level. It’s an intermediate knitting pattern, but it’s so quick to work up that if you miss a stitch or get lost, it’s easy to start over! Trust us, we know the struggle. Once you knit one of these coffee cozies, you can make one in all your favorite colors and for all your friends! Uhhh…can you say girl gang coffee cozies? Way cooler than matching jackets.
Ideas to personalize even more? Embroider your favorite design on a piece of felt and sew it onto the cozy. It’s the easiest way to show off your mood daily with custom phrases sew onto each cozy.
Small, quick knitting projects like this one are a great way to learn new stitches and skills, especially if you’re hoping to expand to bigger projects like sweaters! you can learn a few of the stitches and skills you need for the bigger projects before investing in a pattern and yarn.
Are you going to try making one tonight (yes, it’s that quick to finish one)? We want to see how yours turned out and what types of yarn you used! Share them on our Facebook page so we can be jealous of how awesome they turned out!
Have a different go-to pattern for knit cozies? Share the link in the comments below. We’re always looking to expand our collection of knitting patterns.
St. Patrick’s Day is coming and we Americans do love to celebrate it! It’s an Irish holiday but non-Irish folk love jumping in on the fun. We wear green (so we don’t get pinched – never did understand THAT connection as a kid), we drink green beer (uh…ewww?) and let’s not forget the green shakes at McDonald’s. But do we even know what the heck we are celebrating? Probably not but who doesn’t love an excuse to do something fun, right? So to give you a little context, let’s go into some history. St. Patrick’s Day originated in Ireland obviously – would it surprise you to know they think we are ridiculous (and doing it wrong)?
St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on March 17. The extent of the holiday when I was a kid – wear green or get pinched, hope mom makes corned beef and cabbage – was very limited. Looking back, I had ZERO idea what it was all about.
When I raised my boys (they are in their mid-twenties now) not much had changed other than an influx of all manner of ridiculous green shamrock-themed decorations. When I was nearly done raising said boys I thought it would be a brilliant idea to start over from the beginning and have a girl. Imagine my surprise when she woke up one St. Patrick’s Day morning and blubbering through tears of disappointment that she had checked all over the house and there was not one sign of the surprises the leprechaun was supposed to have left for her when he visited during the night. Ummmm, excuse me? Who the heck came up with that in the intervening years between my first stint at parenthood and my second? I refused to give in to the pressure (I also don’t have an Elf On A Shelf either so there!).
So what is St. Patrick’s Day about really? St. Patrick’s Day is a Catholic celebration occurring on the day of St. Patrick’s death. Lenten restrictions are even put on hold for the day. According to legend, St. Patrick was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave, but escaped and made it back home to Britain. After becoming a priest, he returned to Ireland to convert the Pagans to Christianity.
It seems the Irish communities in the US celebrated St. Patrick’s Day more vigorously than their fellow countrymen back in Ireland – perhaps it was a way to alleviate homesickness? The color green has long been used as a national color in Ireland and the prominence of the shamrock is said to have come from St. Patrick’s use of the three-leaved plant to explain the Holy Trinity to Pagan Irish.
Now you may be surprised to hear that the Irish in Ireland find our American celebrations well…lame, disgusting, perhaps repulsive even. It runs from their frustration at our inability to spell the shortened version correctly (it’s St. Paddy’s NOT St. Patty’s) to the heavy focus on drunkenness and even the use of leprechauns. Did you know the leprechaun is based on derogatory caricatures of the Irish from 1800s? Ouch! Even if that is not really the case, they are often seen as creatures with less than stellar behaviors.
And what about the menu? Most Americans will tell you that the traditional foods to eat are corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes. However, that is NOT what they are eating in Ireland. In fact, when I mentioned corned beef to a friend of mine one year who was born and raised in Ireland she was positively disgusted at the mention of anyone eating corned beef! Of course, not all Irish feel that way but traditionally very little beef was eaten in Ireland – they ate mostly pork. Having arrived in America, they had difficulty finding the usual salt pork they had in Ireland but found corned beef – salted beef – to be much more readily available and cheaper as well.
While I am not Irish, I do love corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes so I make it all anyway – the American way. My corned beef recipe was given to me by my momma some 25 years ago and I still make it to this day! I’ve photocopied it to help preserve it from wear and pass it along.
It’s seen better days (complete with doodling by passing children), but the recipe never fails! Her corned beef recipe is a family favorite of ours.
YUM! Slice the meat and lay it out, add smothered cabbage with onions and boiled potatoes. Check out the recipe below! And don’t forget, the leftovers make incredible sandwiches – especially the Reuben. Rye bread, corned beef, provolone cheese, saur kraut and thousand island dressing – fry it like a grilled cheese – DELICIOUS!
Delicious and easy corned beef recipe that's been in my family for years. Serve with smothered cabbage and boiled potatoes. Then turn the leftovers into a delicious Reuben sandwich!
Course
Main Dish
Cuisine
Irish-American
Prep Time20minutes
Cook Time3hours
Total Time6hours20minutes
Servings8people
AuthorMarti Wills
Ingredients
4poundCorned BeefUsually packaged with seasonings
2wholeOrangessliced
1wholeLemonsliced
1/4cupBrown Sugar
1wholeOnionsliced
1tablespoonPickling Spice
Instructions
Open the corned beef and rinse well. Place in a pot and cover with water. Bring this to a rolling boil - boil for 20-30 minutes and skim and throw out the foam on top of the water.
Add the remaining ingredients to the pot of water with the meat. Simmer for 2-3 hours - until it is fork-tender. You can do the simmering in a crock pot too.
There will likely be leftovers. Turn them into a delicious Reuben sandwich by placing slices on rye bread, add Provolone cheese, melt it, top with sauerkraut and spread Thousand Island Dressing on the top slice of bread.
Brighten up your home decor with some DIY knitted pillow cases! New throw pillows can be so expensive and it can be so hard to find that perfect fit for your style. Well, if you knit, this is the solution for you! This free knitting pattern is perfectly modern and can be made to match your personal style! Download the free knitting pattern, pick out your colors, and get started.
The best part about making your own DIY throw pillows is if you get sick of the colors or paint your walls and update your style, you can always make new ones! It’s being crafty great?
MATERIALS :
Caron® Simply SoftTM (Solids: 6 oz/170.1 g; 315 yds/288 m; Heathers: 5 oz/141.7 g; 250 yds/228 m)
Contrast A Pagoda (COL0014) 1 ball
Contrast B Watermelon (B9604) 1 ball
Contrast C Chartreuse (39771) 1 ball
Contrast D Charcoal Heather (H9508) 1 ball
Size U.S. 7 (4.5 mm) knitting needles or size needed to obtain gauge. 18″ [45.5 cm] square pillow form.
I’m a huge fan of knitting patterns for the home because you can only have so many scarves, right? When I first started knitting, everyone got a scarf for Christmas. I was so excited to just have finished projects and sweaters were so hard. Even socks seemed impossible to finish. Knitted home decor projects, on the other hand, were a breeze! Making a pillow case or a basket was fun and I needed that stuff around the house (and you know I had the yarn to spare). A pillow case is basically a scarf sewn at the edges, so if you’ve mastered patterns and scarf making, you can definitely make this pattern!
This knitting pattern is listed as intermediate, but you can definitely tackle it if you’ve been knitting the basics for a little while.
Everyone is all of a sudden wearing green, drinking beers, and talking about leprechauns – that’s right St. Patrick’s Day is coming! And we have just the St. Patrick’s Day craft for you if you love celebrating the holiday but maybe aren’t exactly….Irish. We all like celebrating the holiday, even if your roots aren’t exactly located in Ireland. Embrace it with this St. Paddy’s Day free embroidery pattern that shows off your pride.
This adorable free embroidery pattern makes the perfect simple St. Patrick’s Day wall art for your party! The best part is that it’s so easy and quick to make, you can throw this together the night before and hang it up just in time to celebrate. Take a look at the steps below and get started!
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Put your pattern sheet under the cotton and trace the words with your fabric pens. Make dashed lines to trace to look like stitching. Iron away any wrinkles before adding to the hoop.
Add your cotton to the embroidery hoop and stretch to fit. Trim the back with scissors. Go over the writing multiple times with the markers to get the look your desire.
Cut four hearts from felt with the die and your Sizzix. Use a needle and thread to gather up the hearts as shown below.
Note: The Sizzix and dies makes this super easy, but if you don’t have those things handy, just trace hearts on the felt and cut them out by hand.
Pull the thread through and make the hearts look like a shamrock. Cut a stem from the felt as well. Add the stem with the needle and thread.
Knot off the thread on the shamrock and either sew or glue into place on the hoop.
Use tacky glue to adhere jumbo ricrac all the way around the outer edge of the hoop. I used clothes pins to hold into place while the glue dried. The extra width on the ricrac should hang over the front of your hoop art.
Once dry, add a second row of ricrac with the tacky glue. Again hold with clothespins until dry.
Cut two more hearts as well as a small rectangle from the felt.
Use hot glue to secure together in a bow shape.
Add to the top of your hoop with hot glue.
Ta-da! And you’re done. Your adorable St. Paddy’s Day wall art is ready to be hung up right by the snack table. This embroidery hoop project will work with any phrase as long as it fits! Just write out your favorite saying in a document, print it, and repeat these steps. You can even make multiple since there’s no embroidery required!
Who doesn’t love wings? At my parties, the wings are always the first to go. I swear it’s like they get inhaled as soon as I set them down. The classic, spicy, and barbecue are always favorites, but when you get sick of making the same old wings all the time, this Baked Honey Sesame Wings recipe is a perfect alternative! Just sweet enough to make your mouth water, they’re a definitely a go-to in our house for family get-togethers and viewing parties since they are so easy to make and seem to be a crowd pleaser. I mean, wings you can make for the family in under an hour? It’s a win.
Is your mouth watering yet? Because mine is and we literally just ate these.
I love this recipe because it’s so simple and practically mess-free (let’s be honest, that’s a BIG bonus) and the extra coating of sauce gives this wing recipe a real punch of flavor. Be warned: bland food lovers, this is not for you. However, if you like giving your taste buds something to jump for joy for – oh, they’ll be jumpin’!
One of my favorite reasons for making chicken wings at home is because it cuts down on chowing down on fried buckets. Making your own chicken wing recipes at home is so easy, so delicious, and you have so much more control on how much sugar, fried, and whatever else you’re feeding your family. Score!
The plates are always clear when I serve this baked wing recipe to my family, but I’d love for you to test them out and tell us what you think in the comments!
Preheat oven at 400 degrees.
Line a cookie sheet with heavy duty aluminum foil.
Trim chicken wings to drumettes.
Place flour, salt, pepper, and lime zest into a gallon size storage bag. Add wings and shake to coat with flour.
Combine the ingredients for the sauce in a shallow bowl. Divide the sauce into two seperate bowls. Refrigerate one.
Remove the wings from the storage bag a few at a time and roll in the sauce.
Place wings on the foil lined cookie sheet.
Bake wings for 45 minutes.
Remove the remaining sauce mixture from the refrigerator. Take baked wings and coat in more sauce a few at a time. Return wings to the foil lined cookie sheet.
Place wings under the broiler for 3-5 minutes. Watch them closely and turn once while broiling.
