reindeer names sign

I love the reindeer name art that is floating around blogland, they are so cute, light, and cheery! My dear, sweet husband went out into the cold brought in some wood scraps, cut the wood down to the size I wanted (8 x 14"), and even sprayed on a light coat of heirloom white all so I could make one of these cheery signs!

While he was working away, I wish I could say I was laying next to a fire reading a good book instead I was helping kids with homework and making dinner. I still swooned because he was giving me the gift of a quick and easy nighttime project. You see, I had this silly movie on the DVR from the Lifetime network about a mom who had two choices of prom dates back in high school; she chose the nice guy, who would dance with her, and didn't have a lot of money. Over the years she gets bitter and complains about her life losing sight of the blessings she has. The two wonderful girls, a husband that adores her, etc. She gets hit on the head and climbs through her dryer (I know, I know...I actually watched it.) and magically ends up in the life she could have had. Loveless marriage, headed to divorce, and lots of money. She sees the errors of her ways wishing she had a different life and wakes up in her real life with renewed appreciation. Nicole Eggert from Charles in Charge plays the mom. It's silly, but it was a good message and I love having things like that on while I work on a project after the kids go to bed. Micah teases me about it, but he helped a girl out with a project. Now that my dears, is love!

While dear sweet Nicole was getting her head clunked, I whipped out a stencil on my Cameo. I adjusted the names so they would line up on both sides.

Using a black sharpie, I traced the letters.

 

For the O in Rudolph, I painted 2 coats of a bright cheery red. Before the painted dried on the second coat, I sprinkled some of Martha's glitter in garnet to add some sparkle!

After I shook off the excess glitter, I painted the other letters with three coats of black craft paint. A few command strips on the back (I seriously adore command strips! How did I survive without them!?!), a quick pop up on the wall, and done! I love quick and easy projects!

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My Eucharisteo: 2

Happy Friday! I can't believe I am writing that! Where did the week go!?! Does anyone else feel like this week flew by? I didn't even scratch the surface on all I wanted to do. I'm making a pre New Year's resolution to be more organized with my time. I have to admit that since I've started staying home I've gotten sucked into this frame of mind that I have ALL this time which makes me less productive that when I felt like I had less time. This mama needs to get it together! Anyways....
here are some of my blessings...

Not to be out done by his brothers Kell took a funny pic with Mama, too. My silly boys warm my heart.

We were blessed during Thanksgiving week with amazing sunny weather! Since the kiddos had school conferences they had early release days. These long sunny afternoons called for time at the park. My friend, Jessica, snapped this picture of me & Kell playing. Thanks, Jess! I absolutely love this photo!

This little muffin man is the cutest garage helper ever. That chin! Those cheeks! He's just way too delicious!

We "Griswold" our Christmas tree every year. It's SO much fun climbing up the mountains in our truck, hiking around looking for the perfect (HA! More like never perfect and super wonky) tree, and enjoying some amazing family time. Kell was a little dunzo with the snow so while the guys hiked up a steep hill to look for our tree. I took advantage of the time by taking a selfie of the two of us.

I love it when inspiration strikes! I came up with this super fun Lego head wrap job for one of Ash's friend. Can you guess the theme of the party!?! Ash was SO excited to give his friend this present.

Here we are on our way to a fun filled Thanksgiving weekend adventure! We had the best time with Micah's Aunt, Uncle, all the cousins, and their kiddos. I adore watching all of our kids grow up together.

Nothing is cuter than a little Thanksgiving play. These two dudes were the sweetest pilgrims ever! My favorite part was when they sailed on top of a rolling cooler powered by Uncle Josh. *We decided this summer to just call all the big cousins aunts and uncles. It made things WAY less confusing for the kids.

Oh Christmas Tree...completely bald in the back. We drilled holes in the trunk and hot glued extra branches in to fatten her up. Yes, the Dolen's craft their Christmas trees. It's part of what makes us so special or crazy. Take your pick.

There is something so special about watching my boys play. I know that I will treasure the sounds of imagination running wild for the rest of my life.

Ahhh, my love. How I adore you even with Elvis lip in what could have been a cute picture of us. Micah is the worst photo bomber ever! It does make me laugh...most of the time. We've been on quite the roller coaster ride these past couple of years, but we're still smiling and Elvis lipping so I'd say that's a good sign.

We got some dry ice in an Amazon Fresh order and my awesome husband thought of putting pieces in varying water temperatures. The boys were enamored with the steaming cups. Sometimes I forget that there is so much magic in the world, moments like this remind me.

My mom treated me to a fabulous night out! We went to the Pioneer Woman's book signing.
While we waited 2 hrs in line we both started getting tired. My family jokes that I go to my crazy place and become the Mayor of Crazy Town when I get tired. In these moments, I am hilarious or so I think. We started coming up with all these weirdo things that we could say when we got up to the front of the line. Oh how we were cracking up! Don't worry, we didn't say any of those things.

Ree Drummond was cute, funny, and utterly charming.

Here's the 3 of us besties. We thanked her for taking the time to sign our books and chatted a bit about how tired she must be. She said something about being punchy. On the way home I decided that I will no longer be the Mayor of Crazy Town but instead I will be the Princess of Punchy Palace. Much prettier dontcha think and it's Pioneer Woman inspired so you can't go wrong with that!

Hope you are taking the time to enjoy the blessings in your life!

diy pottery barn inspired noel wall art

 

Welcome! I am so excited to be part of Crafty Night Owls' 30 Days of Christmas series!

 

I have been checking out Pottery Barn's NOEL wall art for quite a while. In keeping with my love of rustic industrial design, I decided I'd give the old Pottery Barn look a little industrial twist. Here's how I did it!

To make your own you'll need chipboard letters. I got mine at Hobby Lobby.

To add a little industrial twist I used to your classic silver thumb tacks to make create a faux rivet look.

After all the tacks were in place, I arranged my letters to my liking.

First, I used epoxy to glue my letters together. Then I cut out little connectors from a cardboard box we had in our recycling. I played around with this a bit to see where I thought they would give the most support here so I glued those on the back, too.

The Dolen family Christmas colors are a variety of metallic colors silver, gold, nickel, bronze, champaign (is that considered a metallic?), red, and touches of green. To keep with my colors I first sprayed everything gold.

Once the gold was dry, I sprayed a coat of nickel.

After the paint was dry, I rubbed the tacks and a few other spots with some steel wool to give it an aged look.

I glued a sawtooth hanger on the back.

I hung it in our dining area and I have to say that I'm loving thrilled with the way it turned out! I hope you like it, too!

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pottery barn inspired merry sign

We always decorate the front of the house but we never think of decorating the backyard even though that's where I look out the most. So the strategic backyard decorating has begun. If I can see if from a window it, needs little holiday flair! To begin our backyard decorating I whipped out this MERRY sign.

My inspiration was this PEACE sign from Pottery Barn. This bad boy is $129, mine was free! Like any DIYers worth their salt we have a stash of scraps. I love having this stash! When the mood strikes we are ready to create! In this case, we have a couple of old fencing panels that are perfect for rustic signs! We already taken the panels apart so the pickets would stack up nicely. You're probably picturing a junk yard with fencing panels and messy stacks of plywood right now. Our yard doesn't look like it belongs on the show hoarders, I promise. Now our attic...we need to clean that out.

I grabbed 3 pickets and headed to the garage. My sweet husband, who was working on his own projects kindly, took a minute to chop down the pickets to the size I desired and even cut smaller pieces to connect the boards all together on the back. I love that he's always so supportive of my projects even when we disagree on whether or not I should leave a gap in-between the pickets. I didn't and he now admits that it was a good call. Sometimes we have a hard time visualizing one another's projects. I guess it's because I am looking through my pink glasses and he is looking through his blue glasses. (If you are in our small group, you'll think that is funny or if you have read the book Love & Respect.)

A quick round of staples to attach it all together and I was ready to paint!

I used my Cameo to cut out a stencil of the word merry in cardstock. *I get those stacks of cardstock from the craft store when they are on sale. I typically don't love all the paper in the stack so I use those for stencils. It's way cheaper than buying single sheets and there is no waste!
I used Martha's Green Gold craft paint to trace around the letters. Then I filled in the letters with Craftsmart's Bright Red.

I have to say that looking out the kitchen window and seeing this sign makes me feel VERY merry!
Are you a backyard holiday decorator?

family game night: bingo!

We have been on a major BINGO kick around here! Ash is in kindergarten working on those tricky teens. 13 is often called 31 (which is totally normal so if your kiddo is doing this too, don't worry about dyslexia quite yet) and number bingo is the perfect way to practice his number recognition.

Our big boys have five years in between them. One of the nice things about bingo is that older brother doesn't have an edge on the younger one. It is a game of chance! Of course Micah and Gray heckle each other a bit which adds a lot of laughter and fun. Another way we make it fun for the whole family, we grab some change out of the change jar and the winner of each round gets a coin. Typically, the last game of the evening gets the biggest prize.

We also own Alphabet Bingo which can be played as a letter recognition game or to practice the letter sounds. (A little kindergarten teacher note: PLEASE do not add "uh" to your letter sounds. Drop the "uh" and you have the sound.) I bought our bingo games here.

Ash gets a list of words every Monday to learn and since we are on the bingo kick I thought it would be fun to make some blank bingo cards so we could mix it up each week. If you laminate your cards you can write on them with dry erase markers making it super easy to change up your game!

You can download our bingo board here.

Here are some other bingo ideas:
Shapes
Colors
Math Facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)
Vocabulary Words
Foreign Language Vocabulary Words
Fractions

My Eucharisteo: 1

I just finished the One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp book study with a small group at my church. It was an amazing study! It really forced me to slow down and look at all the gifts that God gives me each day (big & small) and to remember that it is a choice to see or ignore these gifts. When I choose to ignore all the gifts He gives me, I am being ungrateful to the worst degree.
Ann uses the word eucharisteo (meaning thanksgiving). It's a beautiful word, a word that I want my life to be about....giving thanks to God. Not just in November because everyone is supposed to give thanks around Thanksgiving but in every moment of everyday. So I'm on a quest for Eucharisteo, my thanksgiving in all things.

Part of the study is that you make a list of 1,000 things you are thankful for. One thousand is a lot and I'm still working on my list but I am SO thankful for starting! The 1,000 list does amazing things for your soul, it really does! Whether you do the study or not, I would strongly encourage you to make a list of 1,000 things you are thankful for. Try to find something to be thankful for in every situation, even the yucky hard stuff! It's often the yucky hard stuff that brings the most blessings, IF you are willing to find them. Let's face it, it's not easy to be full of eucharisteo when things aren't going your way, but I promise you there is something (even if it's just a little something) there to be thankful for.


A few of my Eucharisteo things....(as I typed, I sung it like Maria in the Sound of Music)

The dishwasher that washes our dirty dishes.

Garage dates with a man who loves me & doesn't mind that this is how I dress out there.

Red cups & monthly coffee dates with a dear friend.

3 healthy boys that create all the dirty laundry. *I was feeling like the laundry never ends which it doesn't but I was being a bit dramatic. It made it better when I realized there was something to be thankful for here.

My kids know their Grapes (great grandma & grandpa)

All the time I get to spend one on one with this little muffin man is such an amazing gift!

Legos lessen the age gap between my big boys.

Family Night making pizza and playing number bingo.

Being a mother that can always feed her children.

Trying to get a nice picture of the two of us turns into this weird picture with Gray. He makes me laugh.

Just another boy mama moment. The caption should read....What are you doing to me!?!

Ash asking to take a silly face picture with me only to see that we chose the same silly face. Is it odd that I found that touching?

Happy Friday!!