the big reveal!

I know you have been waiting so patiently, dear readers, for the big craft surprise! Well, you will have to wait no longer! Here's the scoopity scoop...

I decided to make multi-purpose PLACE MATS!! (WOW!! nerd alert!) I am having the family over for Valentine's Day and decided to make place mats as part of the table decoration since my tables tend to look quite bare at celebrations. So, I also thought I could make them more useful by backing them with a different holiday themed material so I can use them twice a year instead of once a year. So, I figured I might be doing Halloween for a little while since Thanksgiving is so close to John's birthday and Christmas is quickly taken up my mom and Al. So, my creative little brain headed off to JoAnn's and found some cute Valetine's Day and Halloween (60% off too!) fabric.

Part of my Christmas present to Brad was a date-a-week jar where I put in slips of paper with things we can do together. I was getting super annoyed with us sitting on the couch watching tv and not doing anything. So now, every Sunday we pull out a slip and we have a planned activity for that week! Most of them are things we can do at home for free, or things that are super cheap...and I love it! Maybe I made that present more for me than for him. But, I digress. Luckily for me, last week was 'do a crafty project together'! So, Brad helped me cut, de-pin, and flip inside-out the place mats while I took care of the actual sewing part. He was doing this while watching some war movie, so he wasn't totally girly that night!




And after million hours (making 15 of these bad boys was not really fun! After one, I was kind of regretting this little project!), this is how they turned out...







Not too shabby. They certainly aren't fancy, but will bring a little color to our Valentine's pizza dinner! They were VERY easy to make, just tedious and slightly boring.

The big news now is that I applied to have a craft booth at a craft fair in Keller with one of my friends. Hopefully we get accepted because I am excited to get it all organized and see how it turns out!

And because mom will be upset if she doesn't see a pic of John, here is one from last night when we came home from the mall. He had worn himself out playing in the play area and running around like a crazy man and fell asleep in the car. I carried him inside and he was still sleeping as we tried to change his diaper! That is one tired little boy! Wish us luck as he gets tubes put in his ears tomorrow! I bet he will be talking in no time now. :)