Hand Stamped Jewelry

About a month ago I bought a set of metal alphabet stamps to make a necklace for my mother-in-law.  I posted a picture of the finished necklace on facebook and soon had many requests to make more!  A couple of these were custom made Mother's Day gifts for new moms and grandmas or end-of-the-school-year gifts.  Here are some pictures of my work!

In the beginning I did a lot of practicing to get my letters and words spaced even and straight.  It also took some experimenting to find the best stamping set-up.  I started on the wood workbench in the garage, but learned fast that the workbench was absorbing a lot of the vibrations from hammering and I wasn't getting a deep enough stamp.  So I moved to the garage cement floor and got better results with less hammer strikes. 


I have many more ideas I can't wait to try so I'm sure another post is yet to come!

A Rainbow Birthday!

My sweet little Bean just turned three!  How did that happen?  Time is going too fast!  Lil Bean requested a blue cake for her birthday.  I thought that was a little boring, so I showed her a picture of a rainbow cake, and, well, she was sold!  

I enjoyed mixing the colors into the cake batter.  When the cakes were done baking I trimmed off the golden brown edges to show the pretty colors inside.  Then I iced the top and left the sides exposed!

Rainbow Birthday Cake

Rainbow Birthday Cake

This cake was so pretty.  And so easy!  Hands down the easiest birthday cake I've ever made for one of the kids.

To celebrate Bean's big day, we had our toes done with Grandma 'Zona.  What a treat!  Bean was a little nervous, but Monkey is counting down until her birthday so we can go again!

And, no birthday would be complete without taking treats to school!  The kids got a kick out of these rainbow cupcakes.  I kept them simple and put just a little icing on top.

Rainbow Cupcakes

Happy Birthday to my Little Bean!!

Spring at Feathers and Fingerprints!

Spring time around here usually means more time outside, a busy schedule, and this year, hatching baby ducks! The kids had so much fun checking on the eggs every day and watching as the ducklings began to pip and hatch. For a couple days the ducklings stayed at our house and followed the girls around. Now they are living at hubby's work where they will join his education program. Here are a few pictures of the ducklings in the first few days after hatching. Enjoy!

Checking eggs for cracks.

Ducks parading through the kitchen!

Going for a splash in the back yard bubbler.

Three little ducks went out one day...

Hall Bathroom Project Reveal!

We worked really hard to complete our hall bathroom renovation in just two weeks! Most of the work was done on the weekends since my husband had a couple of trips out of town for work.  You can see our progress here, here, and here.  

Drum roll please...

BEFORE {Previous Owner Status}

BEFORE RENOVATION {2 weeks ago}

AFTER

The vanity, tub, tiles, and fixtures are all from Lowes.  Ryan and I did all of the demo and construction with some much needed help keeping the kids entertained from my mom and good friend Amanda.  {THANK YOU Grandma Jane and Amanda!!!}  There is still work to be done but as it is now the bathroom is fully functioning!  And fully functioning is good enough for me!  I'm off to enjoy the rest of my spring break!  Here's to hoping it stops raining soon!

Hall Bathroom Project; Days 3 & 4

Our hall bathroom has made quite the transformation!  We spent two days last weekend getting started.  If you missed those posts you can go back to see the before pictures here.  To see pictures of me rocking the tile hammer on day 2 click here.  Construction temporarily stopped while my husband went out of town for work.  He got home on Friday evening and work resumed first thing Saturday morning.

I cut tiles in the front yard all day.  The skies threatened us but luckily the rain held off.  Ryan marked tiles, handed them out the bathroom window to me and I cut them and handed them back.  

We managed to finish the wall tiles and before going to bed I grouted the area behind the vanity.  This allowed us to move the vanity into place before starting the floor tiles on Sunday morning.

Ryan starting arranging the floor tiles first thing Sunday morning.  I stayed in bed as long as possible trying to rest my tired and aching body.  But, there is no such thing as sleeping late in this house!  Before long I was back at the saw cutting floor tiles.  We finished the floor by early afternoon.  I have never been so happy to clean up after a project as I was to clean the tile saw to give it back!  Even after two days of use that saw still scares me a little!!  After we put the kids to bed Sunday night we grouted some more.  

I still have a few things to do before I post the big reveal.  I need to grout the mosaic tiles and the floor trim.  I'd like to frame the mirror, but I can't decide on white paint or dark stain.  What do you think?  You can see a little of our vanity and how dark the wood is in the picture above.  I also need to find some kid friendly towel bars or hooks and we need a new shower curtain rod and a new light fixture.  I've been so focused on getting the bathroom back to working order that I forgot about some of these things!

Hall Bathroom Project; Day 2

Less than two weeks ago we gutted our bathroom.  The floor tiles were putting up a good fight so we took a trip to our local RSC and rented this bad boy.

I put the kids down for a nap and got to work.  And yes, they slept right through it!  I think the loud attic fan saved me.

Did I mention it was 80 degrees and I had to wear long sleeves to protect myself from flying shards of tile?

Here you can see the layer of concrete the previous owners laid on top of the concrete slab.  We still haven't figured out that one...

We moved the new tub into place and fixed the concrete floors.  You can also see the new sheet rock is up.

The new tub is an inch wider than the old tub so the top layer of concrete had to be chiseled back to fit.  Then new concrete filled the gap and leveled the floor.  You can see our new built-in shelf on the right.

This is where the old vanity was.  The floor had to be filled in to accommodate our new longer yet narrower vanity.

Just for fun let me back up and show you what the shower looked like before the sheet rock went up.  There you can see my husband in our master bathroom shower.  His hand is on the shelf we built into the wall in our shower.  We kinda forgot the back tile was glued to the back side of the drywall on the hall bathroom shower...  Oops...

This is the end of a very long day 2.

Here's a sneak peak of some of the new tiles.

Stay tuned!

And Footprints, too!

Six years ago we bought a house.  For six years we dreamed of ripping out this hall bathroom.

I took that picture on a visit before closing.  It still grosses me out.  We hated that tile and vanity so much that we painted it.  We had already gutted the master bathroom and weren't ready to go through that again so soon!

The paint was a great short term solution.  It really brightened the small bathroom.  It just couldn't stand up to the torture of three kids.  It was peeling off the counter and floor.

The bathtub was in pretty good condition, but it had a big chip that was starting to rust.  So it had to go, too.

Last weekend we finally pulled the trigger.  Goodbye ugly vanity!  Goodbye peach and brown tile! 

This is our little helper.  She's wearing googles.  Safety first.

You are probably wondering why the title of this post is Footprints.  Well, to get this...

We had to do lots of this...

Which also left this...

My little Eureka Maxima vacuum has been working overtime.  I can't say enough great things about that vacuum.  It outperformed our shop vac, that's for sure.

Here's another view of our living room during the first day of demo.

We are making major progress and I'll have more updates soon!