No-Sew Coffee Cozy

I’m attending a women’s retreat this weekend and was asked to coordinate a craft during the afternoon free time. What fun! 

Now what to do?

I needed to find a craft that was inexpensive, easy, and useful. I landed on coffee cozies.

Women have been asked to bring a travel mug to use for the weekend for coffee and tea, so as to cut down on waste and expense. With 160 women attending the retreat, that is a lot of coffee mugs!  Enter the coffee cozy. Think of it like a charm on a wine glass—a unique way to personalize and keep track of your own coffee mug over the weekend.

Now I know that I say this about many of the crafts that I do, but I mean it when I say that this one is EASY!

Materials Needed:

• pinking shears
• fabric scissors
• felt
• hot glue gun and glue

Steps:

1. Measure and cut a piece of felt using pinking shears. There are templates out there like this one, but I didn’t use one. Most of the templates are rounded, which works wonderfully for a paper cup, but is not the right shape for a travel mug.
2. Glue the ends together. Wrap the piece of felt around the coffee mug and glue together.
3. Decorate. I kept mine simple with a monogram. I glued the felt letter onto the cozy. You could dress yours up with buttons, fabric, or embroidery floss!
4. Pour a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Cheers,

Melissa

Ahoy, Me Hearties!

Pirates are big at our house. Jack was a pirate for Halloween one year, we’ve hunted for pirate treasure several times at our cabin, and we’ve got countless books about them. So when I found this pirate Valentine from Prudent Baby , I knew it would be perfect for Jack to give to his classmates.

The video is great and shows you exactly how to make the eye patches. They even have downloadable cards that you can print out and attach them to. How easy!  I would have used the cards, but I didn’t think that the skull and crossbones seemed preschool appropriate, so I made my own. Nothing fancy, just used a Word document and formatted it so that it had four cards on a page. I printed on cardstock and attached the eye patches like they showed in the video.

Then I put Jack to work signing all of the cards.

And convinced him to model the eye patches for me (only by promising him that he could make his best aarrrggh face!)

Since I figured Jack’s teachers might not want to wear a pirate eye patch, I printed off this adorable card that I found on Skip To My Lou’s Blog. Now this one, I literally just downloaded and printed.

I attached the gift card exactly the way they described on Skip To My Lou’s blog.  I used a hole punch to punch holes and then wrapped bakers twine around the card. I used a little tape on the back of the gift card to hold it in place. Pretty cute, right?

Cheers,

Melissa

Shortbread and Hair Ties

The Craft Club has struck again. This time, tasty shortbread and super cute and trendy hair ties.

The Sour Cherry Shortbread recipe came from the Macrina Bakery cookbook. I can take zero credit for this endeavor. Our club host made the dough ahead of time and another clubber cut, baked, and packaged the cookies. I did nothing. Except taste them, of course. And they were absolutely delicious.

We packaged them up with cellophane and put a sweet little label on them.

Won’t these make a tasty treat to give to our sweeties on Valentine’s Day?

 

Now, the reason that I didn’t help with the cookies is that I was busy making hair ties. Have you seen these around?  They’re everywhere.

    

           Anthropolgie                                    Nordstrom                                                    Etsy

These hair ties are the modern day scrunchie. Just take a look next time you walk down the street. I bet you’ll notice these little numbers in countless pony tails or being sported on wrists as a sort of functional, yet totally cute bracelet.

Anyways, the price tag on these hair ties, in my opinion, is outrageous. They are double sided elastic that has been tied in a knot. That’s it. And places like Anthropologie are selling them for way too much!

So, here’s how we made our hair ties.  You don’t need to be crafty AT ALL to make these. Truly. If you can use scissors and tie a knot, then you can make these hair ties.

Materials Needed:

• Double sided elastic. You can buy here.
• Sharp scissors
• A lighter
• Cardstock or cardboard

Step One: Cut the elastic into 8-9 inch pieces.

Step Two: Use the lighter to seal the ends of the elastic to prevent fraying.

Step Three: Tie a knot. Fold elastic in half. Loop around one finger and tie a knot.

Step Four: Cut a piece of cardstock and place 3 or 4 hair ties around it.

Step Five: Marvel at your craftiness. And have fun giving them away!

And there you have it. Shortbread and hair ties. Are you in?

Cheers,

Melissa

 

Family. Fun. Aloha.

We spent a week in Maui with Tom’s parents in the middle of January. It was awesome. Rather than try to write about it, I’ll let the pictures tell our story. Prepare for a photo onslaught!

A morning spent at the Maui Ocean Center exploring the fish and sea life native to the Hawaiian Islands.

Lots of time spent poolside practicing our swimming, cannonballs, snorkeling and tricks.

An afternoon spent oohing and aahhing at the Humpback whales on a whale watching adventure. Absolutely breathtaking. I’d totally recommend it.

Many afternoons building sandcastles, chasing waves, and playing in the sand.

A night out exploring Lahaina. Cheeseburger in Paradise, the Banyon Tree, and the most amazing shaved ice with a scoop of ice cream in the bottom.

A Luau. Hawaiian shirts, hula dancing, and tasty food and drinks.

A memorable week spent in a beautiful place!