St. Patrick's Day Reverse Applique Shamrock Initial Tee

If you've been around my blog long, you know that crafty shirts are one of my favorite things to make for my boys! I have made them for almost every holiday, birthday, and special occasion for the past few years. This year I decided to some cute shirts for St. Patrick's Day...but they needed to be church friendly since St. Paddy's day falls on Sunday this year. So I picked up a couple green polo shirts from Target and added a cute, but subtle shamrock to each of them using a reverse applique technique.

The first step is to decided what kind of design you want. I decided to go with a smallish clover with each of the boys' initials placed inside the clover. I found a clip art clover, opened it up in photoshop, added the letters on top of the clover, and then printed out the page. 

To get the shirt ready, decided where you want your design to be. Then pin your fabric of choice to the inside of the shirt with the right side of the fabric facing the shirt. Sounds kind of confusing, but the picture on the left should help a little. Then turn your shirt right side out and pin your design to the shirt making sure that all of the design fits where you pinned the fabric inside. 

The next step is to sew around the edges of your design. For my shirts, I sewed around the clover and also around the outside of each letter. 

Once you finish sewing, simply pull up the paper to reveal your design. 

Now, comes the fun part! Using a small pair of scissors, carefully cut out the inside of your design as close to the stitching as you can get without cutting it and without cutting through the layer of fabric underneath. I usually start in the center of the design because it is easiest to separate the shirt from the fabric. For my shirts I had to go around the inside of the clover and also around the outside edge of the boys' initials. 

And this is what the finished project looks like! You can also start out easy with just a solid shape so you don't have to deal with cutting around the initial. I think they turned out pretty cute for a basic polo, a scrap of fabric, and a little bit of time!

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Pallet Chicken Coop: Part Two

Things have been crazy busy around here. Between our attempts at starting a farm, my attempt at getting healthy, and all the things that the boys have had going on at school, I really haven't had any time to be creative or crafty! I seriously miss it...but sometimes everyday like comes first. Anyway, our chicken coop project is pretty much complete. The chickens are actually already living in it! These are some pics I took of the rest of our construction of the coop...I will try to add another post later this week with the run so that you can see the whole finished project. If you missed the first part you can check it out here: Pallet Chicken Coop: Part One. And I totally messed up on the name, so the first one says Pallet Chicken Coop and the second one says Project Chicken Coop....oops!

We used two glass front kitchen cabinet doors that we found at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for the front windows of the coop. Jason cut two holes out of the front of the coop to accommodate the windows.

We added some cozy nesting boxes inside for the when the chickens are ready to lay eggs. I read online that the chickens like for it to be private and dark, so I'm thinking about maybe adding some burlap curtains at some point...it just depends on how much poop they get on everything:)

We added a tin roof with some sheets of corrugated metal.

Jason installed the windows using the hinges that were already attached to the windows.

We added some access doors on the back side of the coop behind the nesting boxes so that it would be easy for the boys to gather eggs.

This is what it looks like with the doors closed.

A closer look at the nesting boxes.Jason added a door on the side of the coop so we can clean it out and access the food and water that he put underneath the coop.

After the whole coop was built with the pallets, we went back and filled in all the gapes with pieces of plywood from the inside. It was pretty easy to do and covering the gapes makes sure that the chickens will stay nice and warm. After we were finished assembling we added all the finishing touches.

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I painted the whole coop with a mixture of lime and water...kind of like a whitewash effect. We added a door for the chickens to use made from a recycled kitchen door.

I painted the windows, doors, and some of the trim a bright yellow color. It was leftover from our patio project from a few years ago. 

I'll try to get one more shot of the finished project and share the other details that we added to the coop to make if really functional and hopefully really easy to maintain. 

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February Recap Via Instagram

Jason started working on our garden at the beginning of February. Our neighbor came over and with his tractor and broke up the ground a little for us.

I worked on lots of Valentine's Day crafts.

 I bought new sunglasses that kind of make me look like a bug:)

 We worked on Valentine boxes for school.

We had family pizza night and the boys got to make their own mini pizzas.

 We headed to North Carolina for a little ski trip during Mardi Gras holiday.

 We ate at a fun crepe restaurant in downtown Asheville.

 We hit the tubing slopes...

 ...and had a blast...

 ...even though most of the snow was man-made!

 We ate yummy Mexican food to warm up after tubing.

 We hit the ski slopes early the next morning...and Eli really enjoyed eating the snow that stuck to his gloves:)

 Grant and I cheesing and skiing:)

I worked on a cute dinosaur shirt for Eli to wear on Valentine's Day.

 Jason worked on the garden some more...

 ...and we got baby chicks!

 Eli and I had a quick Monday of coloring...

 ...and laundry.

 I started using a fun new app called runtastic (that I LOVE) to track my time and distance while jogging.

I babysat Eli's friend for the day.

 For a couple of days we had a farm in our front foyer complete with chicks and veggies:)

 Girls Night Out painting pottery was a blast...and then we went for fro-yo:)

I tried out a recipe for pineapple salsa that ended up tasting pretty good!

 I had a cruddy day and just vegged on the couch watching stuff on my dvr.

 Somebody was good at school and got two treats from the treasure box.

 The county came and paved our road...and the boys had a blast watching all the big equipment.

 I spent my day helping at the book fair...this time of year is always so busy at school!