Chore Chart Tutorial

Did you know it can take a couple of hours to write a simple tutorial and get it all purty and easy to understand, and it only takes about 1 second to delete it? Yep, not that I know this from personal experience or anything. (AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!) Ahem, excuse me. Now that I got that out of my system. Let's try this again.

Last week I made a new chore chart for Michelle. She's quite the little helper around the house, but once in a while she needs a little guidance and motivation. Don't we all? In the past I had printed up a list, laminated it, and she used dry erase markers to check off her accomplishments as they were finished. Unfortunately, we didn't have a set place for it and it was always getting lost. It wasn't pretty either, and I find that with girls, pretty is usually a better motivator. 

After quite a bit of internet searching and a couple hours of staring off into space, thinking and lots of digging through craft supplies, I came up with this. 

Sorry, photography is NOT my gift. 

I wish I could say that was all it took, but there was some manual labor and decision making in the process. Since this was to be Michelle's chart, I enlisted her help in the decision making. I showed her several options: pockets, tack board, magnets, dry erase, flaps, etc. She opted for a magnetic chart so my next job was to find something the magnets would stick to. Cookie sheet to the rescue! I found this lovely, rust covered beauty hiding in the bottom of my stove drawer and knew it would do the job perfectly. It even had a hole on one of the short sides to run some ribbon through for hanging it. 

My idea was to have the chores listed on one side with a week's worth of squares next to it and for her to use magnets to "check" off the job, but she suggested having the magnets list her chores and she moved them to the "finished" area each day. Good idea, let's go with that one, it requires a lot less magnets. Then I needed something big enough to list the chores on, but small enough to fit on the cookie sheet. I found some chipboard circles that looked like they would work well. 

Now I did this the hard way. I used Photo Shop to print colored circles in the right size with her chores listed on each one. Blue for her morning chores, pink for the evening ones, and brown for the weekly chores. I realized after doing this that I could have simply printed the chores onto colored paper with space between the words and then punched them out. I do happen to have a circle punch that is the same size as the chipboard circles. Stampin' Up is pretty good about making their products work like that. 

Anyway, after they were punched out, I glued them onto the chipboard circles. 

I happened to have enough magnets left over from my stash of goodies from Japan, (well, almost enough) and they had adhesive already on one side. I simply peeled off the paper and stuck them down, but I'm sure you could find magnets here. Not sure what you would use to adhere them though. I used a glue dot for my one oddball and it seems to be holding. I would recommend not getting magnets that are super flat. The height helped me hold on to them for the next step and they make it easier to grab to move them around the chart. 

The next step was to mod podge the tops and sides of the circles. Make sure you get the sides pretty good as that helps seal the paper on there. The cookie sheet worked as a great drying rack for me.

Now it was time to work on the cookie sheet. Once again I enlisted Michelle to help make decisions about color and placement. I used my wishblade/silhouette (more on that in another post) to cut out the letters and glued them down first. I used mod podge to glue all the paper down to the cookie sheet and to each other. 

Once the mod podge was dry, I covered the whole thing with more mod podge. I was extra careful around the edges and tried to keep my brush going in the same direction. That kept the brush strokes down to a minimum. You can see some wrinkles in this photo, but they all disappeared once it dried.

In the first photo you can see a ribbon going across above the striped paper. I attached that with scor-tape after everything was dry. One thing I would recommend. Don't use this for at least 24 hours. We didn't wait that long and the magnets left little black marks on our striped paper the next morning. They don't leave any marks now so I think the mod podge just wasn't cured enough. 

I did print out a couple of blank circles in case we forgot something, and Michelle realized the first night that I forgot about feeding Freddie, her fish. So, if you notice the two blank looking ones in the very first photo, they actually have FF printed on them, you just can't see it 'cause she used a ball point pen. I need to write it darker and then mod podge those. 

Since we all like before and after photos:

rusty cookie sheet+paper and glue=super cute chore chart

What do you think? I like it for a couple of reasons: it matches her personality and tastes, it looks nice in her room, I can see from a glance how she's doing on her chores since it's right inside her door, and it will be pretty easy to update it when her chores change.

Well, now that I've finished this tutorial (again), I am going to go work on my next project--a chore chart for me. Don't laugh. I have chores too, I like lists (especially checking things off of it), and I have some pretty new paper that would match my office just beautifully! No sense hiding it in a drawer. :o)

Till next time...

happy crafting and God's love and blessings!

Woo Hoo! Back to Blogging!

Well, hello there. Thanks for stopping by my little blog. It's been a while hasn't it? I needed to step back for a bit and re-evaluate my time and energies. The blogs were definitely at the bottom of the priority list. Things seem a little less crazy now, and I thought it was time for a bit of a change. I really needed to sit down and figure out what I wanted to do with the blogs and what purpose I had for them.

My initial reason for blogging was for family and friends to keep up with what was going on in our lives. Being a military family, and then retiring away from my family, I thought this was a good way to keep in touch with them. Then along came Facebook. It didn't seem quite so necessary to have the blog since most of our friends and family are on there and we do a pretty good job of keeping up with each others' lives that way. We've even gotten in touch with cousins, second cousins and childhood friends through Facebook, which has been great. However, after going back and reading some of my first posts on our family blog and reliving those days, I realized that the blog was like a diary of sorts and that some day my children may love to go back and remember. I know I do, so I'm going to try and keep the family blog going. I renamed it in honor of our "new" home, and continue to tweak the design of it a bit.

I started this craft blog soon after the family one so my crafty friends could see what I've been up to. I was originally posting both craft projects and cakes on here, but more and more friends, and friends of friends were asking if there was a place they could go to see my cakes and show them to others, so I decided I needed a separate blog for that. Hence Tammy's Frosted Memories was born. Now I have 3 blogs, and that seemed to be a bit overwhelming for a bit. Overwhelming enough that I stopped blogging altogether for a while.

I thought about no longer posting to this blog, and moving my crafty projects over to the family blog, but soon decided against that. I'm sure some of our friends and family who read the "Berried Treasure" are only interested in seeing pictures of us and how we're doing, while there are others who are only interested in the crafty projects and really aren't interested in the family stuff. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try and remember to take pictures of projects as I work on them and post tutorials here. That way not only do you get the inspiration of the project, but the know-how to do it yourself.

So, all that to say, "I'm back!" Who knows, maybe this will also encourage me to get many of the projects on my to-do list done so that I have something to blog about. In fact, here's a sneak peek of my first tutorial.

 A rusty old cookie sheet turned chore chart. I remembered to take pictures while I made it. :o)

Oh, one other thing. I'd really like to change the name of this blog. It sounds too much like I'm trying to do something illegal, and since I'm no longer a Stampin' Up! demo, it doesn't really fit anymore. And, I'm just in need of a change. Any ideas? I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Our New Menu Chart

Last weekend I had the urge to get crafty, and I knew exactly what I wanted to make. I've seen a lot of  menu charts on Pinterest lately and thought it was a fun and pretty way to plan out our menu for the week. For me, figuring out what we're going to have is the hardest part of cooking, and so far, this has made it much simpler! YAY!

There are lots of ways to make these, but the basic idea is to have your "go-to" menu items on slips of paper, along with some blank ones for new recipes and a simple Sunday-Monday chart to mix and match the papers on. Some are super complicated with main dish, sides, desserts, etc., but I knew I wouldn't keep up with that. It had to be super simple for me and it's usually just the main dish I have a hard time coming up with so I stuck with just that.

Anyway, I actually took pictures of the process for this in case someone else would like to make one of their own. Sorry for the poor lighting in the pictures, I was working late into the night. If you click on the picture, you can see the details better.

Step one: gather supplies.
I used Photo Shop and a digital scrap book kit I got from Just So Scrappy to make some clip art to use, but you could easily use any paper and stickers you may already have. The main part of my chart was the chipboard backing piece from one of Michelle's large art pads. I saved it a while ago knowing I would find a use for it someday. :o) I also had some 5x7 galvanized metal flashing pieces left from another craft project. You can find these at a hardware store. I pulled out a clipboard to add to the side for notes and/or grocery list, but ended up not using it since there wasn't room.

 Step Two: assemble
I used double-sided tape to adhere the flashing to the backing piece, then I used more tape to adhere cardstock over everything. You can see that I used some of my super skinny tape around the flashing and the wider stuff everywhere else. My backing is 12x18 so I had to use 2 12x12 pieces of cardstock cut to fit and pieced together.

 Here it is before the cardstock. The left side of my board is now magnetic!

 Then I played around with the arrangement of things before gluing anything down. Here I tried keeping the days of the week all together.

 Here I cut them out and played around with different layouts. I also used my Big Shot to cut out two small envelopes to hold my menu items.

 Here it is almost finished. I edged the whole thing with some ribbon, including the line where the two pieces of cardstock meet. I used glue dots to stick some buttons onto magnets to hold my menu items to each day's file. I hung a post-it pad sideways under the notes section (that's the only one I had on hand, and that's how it fit) to write down which cook book I may find a recipe in or if I have an idea for a new side dish or dessert that I'd like to try.

 Step three: hang up and use
Here it is hanging on the side of the fridge. I strung a ribbon between two eyelets to hang it from. I did find that the flashing made it slightly heavier on that side, so I'm using two hooks to help hang it evenly, and the magnetic pencil holder on the bottom helps to keep it straight as well. I printed three rows of clip art buttons down a sheet of paper and cut the paper into strips. I then wrote down most of the recipes that I make all the time (spaghetti, tacos, enchiladas, etc.) and have a bunch of empty ones to fill out as time goes by. Now, on Saturday, I simply take off last week's menu and pick out some new ones, using the button magnets to hold them on. It's also super simple to make changes in the middle of the week if need be.

So far, so good. I made this 2 weeks ago, and it has made dinner time much easier for me. I take a peek at it at night to see what meat needs to be taken out of the freezer or whether I need to get things into the crock pot first thing in the morning. I think having a list of things already written down makes it easier to make decisions. In fact, it's been so easy, I may try adding one new recipe a week to the rotation.

What do you think? I like that it's easy, organized, and looks nice too. I actually have been working on several other projects, but I'll have to post them some other time. It's getting late, and this mommy is tired.

Till next time...God's love and blessings!

Christmas Projects-Part 1

Every year I make ornaments for my niece and nephews. I try to use a different medium each year. This year I used Sculpey modeling clay. With all the modeling I've been doing in fondant and gumpaste for my cakes, I figured Sculpey shouldn't be too difficult. It was a bit different, but it was a lot of fun. I didn't get any individual shots, but here's a group shot of all the finished ornaments.

My photography skills are terrible. I wish I had a better shot, especially of the gingerbread men. They had a bunch of different candies at their feet. Maybe I'll get my sis to send me a picture of Tyler's. I have two nephews who don't celebrate Christmas so I just made them snowmen without the candy cane. I felt bad that I spent all this time on these, but didn't spend a little extra time to wrap them better when I shipped them out. My sister said she had a bit of repair work to do on a couple when she got her box. Now I know. Wrap better!

Anyway, I will close this here. I'll try and post pics of a couple other projects I did for Christmas later.

Till then...God's love and blessings!

Still trying to catch up

Welcome 2012! 

Here's a quick look at two more cakes I did in 2011.

Here's a wedding cake. I made close to 1,000 little flowers for this cake. I also decided that I do NOT like working with red velvet cake. It's just so soft and does horrible things to fondant. If I ever try it again, I will try covering it with ganache before the fondant. This was the main cake. I also made 4 sheet cakes with matching flowers on them for the majority of the guests.

This cake was for our church fellowship supper in November. It was a pretty quick one to do. I like working with chocolate clay for the vines.

Looks like only a couple more and I'll be caught up on the cakes I did this last year. Hope you enjoy seeing them. I really enjoy making them and learning new techniques. Such a fun, and yummy, hobby. :o)

Till next time...God's love and blessings!

--Update--I seem to be getting a bit of traffic on this post from pinterest. Thanks for looking. I recently started a blog dedicated just to my cakes. If you're interested, please visit Tammy's Frosted Memories. Thanks!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!! It will be in a couple of hours anyway. We were supposed to go to church tonight to ring in the New Year, but it was canceled due to a snow storm. I was going to work on putting away Christmas decorations, but Mike told me to go play in my office instead. :o) So, here I am with unexpected time on my hands and thought I'd use it by updating the blogs a bit and maybe planning out some projects for the new year.

This is a cake I did a couple of months ago. It was a blast to do. Although, I modeled the plumber several days in advance and had his back-side staring me in the face every time I went in the kitchen. :o) Looking at the pictures, I realize I still need to work on my modeling skills. There's a lot of wobbly lines and stuff, but I do see an improvement in the covering of the cakes in general. They don't look quite as bumpy as before. I also got a lot of practice using luster dusts on this one. The pipes and metal items are all gray fondant covered in a silver luster dust. That was hard to do without getting it all over. In fact, I think I'm still seeing a slight shimmer to my work table. ;o)

This gentlemen was retiring from plumbing and is a Vikings fan so I had to work purple in there somewhere.

I love Angel's idea for the dirty hand print on the towel. 

I made cupcakes to go along with the main cake. The tools are molded chocolate.

Well, that's it for tonight. I wish I could say I will do better at blogging consistently in 2012, but there is so much going on in life, and frankly, this blog takes a back seat to the more important things. I will do my best to set aside time to blog, but I'm not guaranteeing anything. Till next time, I honestly pray that you will feel God's love and blessings in 2012.

Michelle's Birthday Cake

Blogging consistently is really not my thing. Maybe I need to set aside a certain time each week to update the blogs. Anyway, here are some pictures of Michelle's birthday cake from September. I had a fun time making this cake. I think the caterpillars were my favorite.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I have a basket of mending that has been waiting patiently (or not so patiently) for the holidays to get over so I could tackle it. Guess now is the time. I'll do my best to post the plumber cake tomorrow.

Till next time...God's love and blessings!