It's BACK to SCHOOL time!

There are 7 days, there are 7 days, there are 7 days in a week........Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday.....Saturday! WOW! So sorry to get a Barney song stuck in your head on a Monday!

So, yes! There are 7 days in a week but there is also 7 Days until my kids go BACK TO SCHOOL!!! Honestly I do have mixed feelings about this. I loved spending the time with them yada, yada, yada, but I won't miss the "he touched me" "she looked at me" "I had it first" "can I have a snack" "can I have a snack" "I'm hungry" "can I have a snack" ALL DAY LONG!

So in the "BACK to SCHOOL" spirit, I created these Teacher/School Themed Magnets! They will be perfect for Teacher Gifts!

These are easy to make using bottle caps, neo magnets, high quality digital image and epoxy! I have seen so many back to school teacher gifts on the various blogs I follow. I talking amazingly great ideas but they were food related and I heard that when teachers get homemade food gifts they get thrown away....I would hate for that to happen. Making cakes, cookies or candy at home isn't cheap after buying all the supplies not to mention the time and mess! My sister works at an elementary school as a substitute teacher and she told me they use these large white "smart" boards and are always looking for magnets. I came up with these and they only $12 in my store and come in a nice tin box perfect for gift giving!

Our oldest moved out this past week to share a house with some friends and starts college next week. I have turned her room in to my new office/workshop. I have so many new ideas I can't wait to try when I get some "time to myself." My own website should be up and running in the next week or so which means I will be selling on Etsy as well as my own website, so exciting!

I hope you like this idea! Please follow me and leave your comments, I'd love to hear from you!



I love my link parties, here's who I'm linking up to this week!

Homemade Caramel Candy Apples...fun but MESSY!

So, my mom gave this cool looking caramel/chocolate melting thingy shaped like an apple. I couldn't wait to try it! Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of the caramel apples, when I grew up we always had those ones with the hard red, barley candy on the the outside...you know the ones that we so hard you almost broke your teeth trying to bite into it! Well, I don't have a candy thermometer or the want to get burned by hot molten red candied lava so I opted to try caramel ones! Here's how it went.....

So this is my really cool looking melting apple pot. Looks easy enough, right...considering it came with NO instructions. I figure pour in candy, press melt button..DONE! Not so much! When you take the top off their are 2 compartments, kind of like a double boiler but I wan't sure if I was supposed to add water or not. Well I chose to and I ended up putting in too much so when I put on the melting bowl all the water spilled over onto my countertop! JOY!

Make yourself a vampire in Photoshop

Halloween is just arounds the corner....well I know it's still August but the Mall already has the costume shop set up and the grocery store already has Halloween candy for sale! Next week they'll probably have their Christmas decorations for sale! ANYWAY, for those who know me I have, lets say, a "thing" for Vampires! Yes I love Edward Cullen, Damon and Stefan Salvatore too! What can I say...they're HOT! =) Oh, a back to my post - I found this cool tutorial online which gives you instructions on how to transform your picture into a vampire picture!

Here is the one I did of myself and my son Anthony. I didn't know too much about Photoshop at the time, this was done about 2 years ago, but I found it pretty simple to follow. I hope you give it a try and let me know how they turn out!

Step one: Open your image and duplicate the original layer.

Step two - Select one of the eyes, either using the Marquee or Polygonal Lasso too, then press Ctrl+Shift+J to copy the selection to a new layer. Then do the same with the next eye.

Step three: Add a gradient overlay effect to one of the eye layers. These are the settings I used below.

Step four: Copy and paste the effect to the other eye layer. Whatever settings you used, you should end up with something similar to this.

Step 5: Now go to the 1st layer copy (the one created is step one) and select a small area on a tooth like the one you see below. Press Ctrl+T and adapt it to make it fit the original tooth.

Step 6: Do the same for the other tooth. You may have to use the blur tool blend the colors to make it look more realistic.

Step 7: Now select the Sponge tool, make sure the mode is set to "Desaturate" and paint all over the subject's face, avoiding eyes and mouth. Use the appropriate flow percentage so that you get a pale skin, but not a black and white photograph.

Step 8: Finally grab the Burn tool, select the "Shadows" range and paint over eyes and mouth.

And here is the final photo!

FLUSH the toilet....PLEASE

Why is it that kids NEVER flush the toilet?  I don't understand!  99% of the time I go into the bathroom after one of my 6 (yes, I'm CRAZY!) kids I find a nice prize in the john for me!

I created this "FLUSH!" vinyl decal using my Cricut machine and now when I go into the bathroom I only get a surprise about 45% of the time.  Hey, baby steps!  =)

Linked up to:  http://www.skiptomylou.org/