Odds & Ends part 2

After some much needed sleep last night, here I am again late in the evening typing away on my laptop.

I want to share with you two easy crafts I have been working on. I have been trying to come up with some things to entertain Anabelle during the 5:30-6:15 dinner making hour. Often she is cranky, hungry, and wanting to be held. This is challenging when you are trying to get dinner on the table, so I needed a fun activity that I could give her to keep her happy and busy. I was going to buy some refrigerator magnets the other day, you know the alphabet ones that every kid has. Well I was thinking that the alphabet isn't really that exciting to an 18 month old, and that they should make animal or people magnets. A few days later I was at Hobby Lobby and I saw these painted wooded animals and thought *hey that would make a great magnet*

So I bought 10 different animals at $0.67 each and 2 packs of magnets at $1.99 each and for a total of $10.68 Anabelle has a new set of animal magnets. All I did was use super glue to secure the magnet to the wooden animal.

She played with them today and they were a hit! Check it out I got my video up and running again-yay!

My next craft has to do with Easter decorations. I know just a couple of weeks ago I was so excited to be done with holiday decorations, but now I am bored with my plain decor and I am ready for Easter stuff-lol! Last year I took Anabelle to see the Easter Bunny and get her picture taken. I was thinking how cute it would be to have an Easter themed picture frame that I could put her bunny picture in each year. So I bought an inexpensive 8x10 frame with a plain mat to fit a 5x7 photo and also 1 sheet of Easter themed scrapbook paper. Then I took out the mat, covered it in glue, and then covered it with the Easter paper,

folding the extra over the edges.

Just an easy way to dress up a plain mat and make a cute frame for my Easter cutie!

Today Anabelle and I went to Hobby Lobby to get mini shades for our new chandelier. We found some cute ones for $3.99 each, we needed 6 total. Then after we left the store I thought *I wonder if Garden Ridge has them for less?* So we decided to stop and check. They had mini shades in 3 packs for $6.99 each. So we bought 2 of those, next week I will be returning the Hobby Lobby shades. I love a good deal! So the total for the project is :

$10 for the chandelier

$15 for parts and bulbs

$15 for shades

Total $40 Not too bad!

Here is the old light:

and here is the new light, big improvement right?!

Here is my best buy of the week.

We got them at Trader Joe's on Monday and they have been cheerfully greeting me every day since. I bought some daffodils last week and they died pretty quickly, but these hyacinths still look great after 5 days. They smell heavenly and remind me that spring is just around the corner!