Monday, March 27, 2017

Spring Cleaning

What a mess!  We just got back from Disney World and I'm able to see my house through fresh, haven't been home in over a week, eyes.  And it is disgusting!  I spent the week leading up to our trip making our cute match-y shirts for Disney, packing and preparing.  And previous to that I was my usual messy self.  So, as upsetting as these pictures will be to my mom, here is what my house looks like currently:

















Pretty awful, right?  So this week while the kids are off of school and we have absolutely nothing going on, I'm going to attack the mess.  The weather is semi-warm, the windows can be opened, and I've got that cleaning itch that comes around very rarely.  These terrible pictures, out there on the internet for everyone to see, are my way of shaming myself into action.  Hopefully, by next week, most of these rooms will be in much better shape!

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Easy T-Shirt Stencils

Our family is going to Disney World for spring break and we're going to be that family.  The one with the matching shirts.  I know, it's bad, but there were several non-obnoxious factors that went into this decision.  1-Ease of finding one another in a crowd. 2-Cheap shirts means that I don't feel bad about writing Tim's phone number on them in permanent marker. 3-Cheap shirts!  4-We now already have Disney shirts so I don't have to hear any requests to purchase Disney shirts for a million dollars at the park.  So here's how I made them.

First I printed out (I know, archaic) a coupon for Michael's.  Turns out I didn't need the coupon as their shirts were on sale for $2 a piece.  We are planning on hitting three parks so I bought shirts for the four of us in three different colors.  I then allowed each of the kids to choose a Disney movie to theme the shirts with.  Henry chose Big Hero 6, Sofia chose Frozen and I chose The Little Mermaid.  I then found silhouettes of the characters from each movie and printed them out and taped them to the window with freezer paper in front and traced them with a pencil.


After that I used an x-acto knife to cut the stencil out.



I then ironed the shiny side of the freezer paper onto the shirts.


Some of the shirts had detail work, so I ironed the smaller pieces of freezer paper inside the stencil after ironing the main part on.


I then used little foam stampers to fill in the stencil with fabric paint.



After letting it dry a little while I applied a second coat of paint.  You can't see it here, but when I held the shirt up you could see light coming through the areas that didn't have a thick enough coat of paint.  Then I just peeled the stencils off and let the shirts dry fully.


I did this whole thing assembly line style, so I cut out all the stencils at once, then ironed them all on at the same time and then painted them all simultaneously.  Here is the final product:


The pictures weren't perfect, there did end up being a bit of bleeding under the stencils.


But it's good enough for me!  I'm looking forward to being that goofy matching family at Disney!