Make-It-Monday and a Galaxy Paint Tutorial

Instagram seems to be the hot spot for all the new catch-phrase "holidays" made by its many followers; the latest I came across was "make it Monday." I thought, ooohh ya that's a great way to make Mondays a little more fun! I had already made over a few flower pots that I received for free via my aunt that I will share photos with here as well. When I get stressed or need to keep myself busy, painting objects has such a soothing effect on me, so I look around the house for things I can make over with paint..anything. I think I have gone a little crazy though, its like crack to me and I start craving it. I may have opened Pandora's box. One day my kids may even wake up painted...

So here is the flower pot BEFORE...as you can see its pretty outdated, I mean the thing screams 90's right?

I had a sample size of enamel paint laying around and all I did was paint two coats (letting dry in between) until it was completely covered.

I had three of them and after they were all painted over I had some gold paint and just experimented with it a bit on each pot. So that's that for these babies onto my next venture...

A while back I needed a way to keep my 2 year old (at the time) son occupied with a simple toy that he can put objects in and out of. All I did was grab an empty baby wipes case, and small objects like bottle caps, fake coins, etc that would fit into the slot on the top. It was quite a hit with him, he uses it to this day and loves sticking things into it and dumping it all out when its full. So I got bored and wanted to give it a little makeover so that it will be "new" to him all over again. This is a very forgiving paint process and "mistakes" can very easily be fixed/covered.

To do this you will need:
**If you want the "toy" for a toddler, an empty baby wipes case (mine was from huggies) and have it spray painted black all over. Otherwise, you can do this with just about any other object that will take to paint.
-paint brushes
-craft paints in black, gold, turquoise, lavender
-makeup sponges
-an old toothbrush (not pictured)
OPTIONAL: mod podge (to seal when done)

To start, you will be placing random little splotches of the turquoise and lavender around on one side to begin.

With one of the sponges, begin blotting and spreading around the color. WARNING: at this point it will start looking chaotic and weird and you will mildly panic and wonder what you got yourself into (if you are at all like me anyway). Just keep at it I PROMISE it will get better looking by the end!

I looked up images of galaxies from the Hubble Telescope as reference. Try to blot up as much as the paint as you can to give it that "cloudy" effect.

Next step is the gold paint. Squeeze a small amount onto the same sponge you used for the first step.

Start to dab along the edges of the places you already did with the same technique, trying to make it as "cloudy" as possible.

Next, get the black paint and squeeze a small amount onto a paper plate or something you can wash. Dip the sponge into the black and blot it out a bit before using it. Now is the time to go over any areas you may not be happy with and control the shapes a little better and soften any hard edges.

Here's the fun part; squeeze out a little bit of white paint onto an old toothbrush and using your fingers, rub it over the bristles causing it to flick specks of white "stars" all over it. (Make sure to do this step in a covered area so as not to get splatters everywhere)

You can get the paintbrush and with the tip dabbed in the white paint, dab more "stars" or "comets" as you please.

When its dry, you can coat the whole thing in mod podge to seal and protect the masterpiece you just made. ;)

And then find little things to fit in and watch your toddler keep busy while you get a chance to breathe and maybe possibly to to the bathroom without an audience.

He is 3 years old and STILL loves this thing. I tell ya, they had it right back in the day where the simplest things were the best toys. No need to spend money on expensive toys that pretty much do the same thing and leave little to the imagination.

I hope I was a help and that your galaxy painting is a success! If you use this tutorial, be sure to send me a pic so I can see how yours turned out! Make Monday fun and get creating!! :)

The Happening Collective's First Workshop

It has been a crazy couple of months! We have been busy packing and getting ready to move into our temporary home for the next 6 months and we have also had the misfortune of having our only family car break down on us which it NEVER gave us a single problem before! Thankfully we were able to replace the problem cheaply but on top of that it just seemed one expense after another that came at us and we found ourselves without a penny extra to spare. This posed a problem for me because I wanted tickets to the very first workshop by The Happening Collective! They did a chance to win tickets on Instagram but a girl I knew won instead. So I figured that would have been my only chance to attend until just last week, the girl who had won messaged me and asked if I would like to have the tickets because she was unable to attend. I said HECK YES I DO!!
The Happening Collective is done by two lovely cousins, Sara and Kalie and their aesthetic is very cool and modern and trendy. I had the pleasure of meeting these two at the Glitter and Spice Workshop last year and was so excited to hear that they collaborated to do this and could not wait to attend! This first workshop consisted of "Macrame and Succulents." We created hanging succulent planters with macrame and, in my case, a doily and mason jar. Everything was Black and white, with pops of neon green, pink, and yellow.

These were "goodie bags" for us ladies who attended.

How cool is this BOXED water?! I mean seriously..I had so much fun drinking out of this!

This is what was at our table, a snack box with our names on it, our name tags, and delicious munchies inside the box.

Materials needed/gathered to get started! We had the choice between 3 different macrame styles and of course I, being in love with all things vintage like doilies and mason jars, chose this one.

Just an itty bitty adorable succulent! It was waiting for me to transplant him into his new home.

Collette Budd from BrierRose Design gave us some instruction on how to properly plant and care for our succulents and thank goodness she did because I realized why I can't seem to keep mine alive!

Welcome to your new home little guy!

Isn't it cute?? We were given natural wooden beads to use in our macrame so I painted half of them an aqua color and left the rest natural. I thought it looked kind of beachy, which my house has MUCH of and this will fit in quite easily almost anywhere in the house.

Ok and now for the GOODIE BAGS! I giggled when I looked through it, these ladies are so witty and cute and showed much of their personalities in the contents!

Gardening gloves (which I needed!), a little notebook and neon pencil, a highlighter, the spoon was from BRD, and so was the seed cup, but the squirt gun had a tag that said, "You ain't cool until you wet your plants!" I thought that was so funny and clever and I used it to water some other succulents I already had and it is definitely a LOT more fun watering them now!

Be sure to check out and follow The Happening Collective on:
instagram: @thehappeningcollective
Twitter: @whatsthehapsco
Facebook: facebook.com/thehappeningcollective
etsy.com/shop/thehappeningco

Be sure to check out this video of the workshop as well! :)

A Much Needed Date Day and Retail Therapy

Hello all! I would apologize for the distance between blogging but I'm not sure anyone noticed lol. Motherhood has been kicking my rear lately, I mean bad. I have had more bad days in the last few months than I care to count, and have many many times failed at everything it seemed.

Do you ever have times where you let your feelings completely take over to the breaking point? Ya, that's how its been for me. I even did what I swore I would never do and was getting angry with God. But God is SO patient with us, even in our anger. He humbly reminds me what I need to do to fix it all, even after I'm complaining and whining about why I have such trouble being a mother while "everyone else" sails through it so seemingly beautifully. I know that is a gross exaggeration but it sure feels like that sometimes.
So in hopes to take a breather, I asked my husband if we had the funds for a date day and praise the sweet Lord, he said we did. My sister and mom grabbed our kids while the mister and I ventured down to Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga. I would go as far as to say its my favorite place to shop that is somewhat nearby.

 It was a gorgeous warm, sunny day in Southern California and I wore a sleeveless, lacey black maxi dress with a belt and he put on his favorite short sleeve button-up and we drove down and grabbed tickets to see "Heaven is for Real" (such a good movie) and if anyone chooses to go see it, bring the tissue box.. I bawled. I literally left the theater with red eyes lol. Luckily, I had some cash on me left over from Mother's Day and was able to get mah shop ooonnnnn...

Got me 4 cute tops from Mode Plus, my favorite affordable plus size store. I would compare it to forever 21, Ross, V-genertaion.

Ok, i'm not gonna lie I have no idea what happened to this picture between me taking it and uploading it..boooo. Anywho, this was the first I grabbed, an eyelet, coral peplum top. I can't wear it until I find a matching tank to wear under it though, the bottom half is too sheer ><

Loved this tank that I almost missed as I walked out. It has a cute bow detail on the back too.

This one is so pretty, very light and sheer and I LOVE the print.

This one is a black, floral print peplum(ish) top.

And last but not least, I grabbed these sunnies that were only 9 bucks. I lost my other favorite cheapie pair that I once owned from the Target dollar section. They were cute and certainly did the job.. but these are satisfying replacements. :)

For LINNER (a combination of lunch and dinner) we ate at P.F. Changs..which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to eat. The last time we ate there we had ordered the hot and sour soup which is something I'm pretty sure I could live off for the rest of my life. So we ordered it again..along with egg rolls, sweet and sour chicken, and Pad Tai. Oh it was good... REAL GOOD. That mustard they serve, is stinking HOT. I just dabbed a bit on my finger and tasted it and a hole almost burned through my tongue where it landed. I dared Albert to try but he was too chicken.

I cannot tell you just how MUCH I needed this day!! It was such a welcomed break from the craziness that was taking place from the kids and packing and fighting in our marriage. At the end of the day we sat on a bench for a few while an older man (in his 70's but very healthy looking) just started chatting up a storm with us. He was so sweet and just talked to us about his life and history, he is a Navajo Native American and talked about his parents marriage of 64 years before they passed and it was so neat and interesting to hear him just talk about life and before he left, he told us we will beat his current marriage record of 51 years. :) I sure hope so! <3

Now, I leave you with a question (that no one seems to ever answer when I ask them on here lol), what kinds of things do you like to do on a date? What is your most favorite date that you have taken? What did you do? I would love to hear about them in the comments :)

Easter Egg Experiments and Red Cabbage Dye

It's almost here!!! Easter is my second favorite holiday next to Christmas. Easter is a celebration of our risen Lord who conquered death for our sins by rising out of death on the third day. The egg has been comparable to the Trinity of God, there are 3 parts to the egg; the yolk, the whites, and the shell. All 3 are different parts of the egg but all 3 are one together to make up the egg. The same is with our God; God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In many cultures (not just Christianity), the egg symbolizes rebirth and new life and painting and decorating them have gone back centuries. Historically, in Christianity they would paint the egg a deep blood red to represent the blood shed by Jesus on the cross. The tradition was carried throughout the years and variations were made of the way we decorate and paint them. So now that you have been given a brief history of the "Easter Egg," lets move on to the egg dye experiments!!
I looked up a few "dye recipes" using what I happened to have on hand (and tend to prefer) which was food coloring. I also mixed up a few of my own and experimented with color intensity. All the dyes require some white vinegar which helps "bind" the color so that it will stick better to the egg.
I had seen posts all over Pinterest about "natural dyes" using different foods and spices and one in particular had me all over wanting to try it and that was this gorgeous shade of blue that came from red cabbage. So I began to look more into it and to my disappointment, there wasn't much detailed instruction or tips on it. So I am going to do my best to maybe help anyone else who wanted a little more instruction on creating the beautiful blues you will soon see.

Things you will need:
spoons
plastic cups
hard boiled eggs
*For the food coloring dyes*
Food coloring (I used Target's brand)
Gel food coloring (optional for purple and hot pink or teal shades)
white vinegar
*For the Cabbage dye*
Salt (I used sea salt, but I'm not sure if that makes any difference good or bad)
1 Head of red cabbage
white vinegar
a pot for boiling the cabbage
mesh strainer
baking soda (optional)

Ok so to begin, I found its best to use disposable plastic cups to hold the egg baths, clear is best so you can see the dye. Here I mixed the dyes using food coloring and I made sure to write down the colors on each cup because its easy to mix them up otherwise. I measured 3/4 water in each cup and 1 Tbs of white vinegar and mixed in the drops of food coloring. To get a bright saturation of color, use more drops (I recommend at least 16-18).

This one was a "Jade" recipe using 17 drops of green and 3 drops of blue. This one was in there for a total of 6 minutes.

This was a "Spearmint" recipe using 12 drops of green, 7 drops of yellow, 3 drops of blue. As you can see, its almost identical to the last one with maybe only a tiny bit more green shade. Also 6 minutes.

This was an aqua/turquoise recipe that I used some teal GEL food coloring I had on hand and did a good squeeze and added like 5 more drops of blue. This was soaking for 6 minutes.

This was a recipe I was experimenting with. I was trying to go for a more robin's egg blue and used 15 drops of blue and 3 drops of yellow and this was soaking for 6 minutes. The longer they soak, the darker/more saturated the color will be on the egg. (Can you tell I like blues?)

I realized I had an ombre going, which i LOVED! these are the same green recipes but each egg soaked for a different amount of time. the lighter shades were in for about 4 minutes down to 3 or 2 minutes.

As you can see I had 2 purples in there. Purple dye is SUPER tricky to work with. It tends to look almost blue, and will even develop blue water spots. I just used solid purple dye on these (like a good hard squeeze of it) which was a gel food coloring. the darker purple was in there for a good 10 minutes and needed constant mixing and turning. The lighter shade was about 5 minutes.

My full batch of food coloring eggs! (Btw, I let my daughter do a HOT PINK egg but its not pictured. That is also tricky to work with and tends to settle if not constantly stirred. the more saturated and bright you want it, use LOTS of PINK GEL food coloring, and mix the egg and let sit a good 6 minutes or more. keep checking it until its the shade you desire.)

Aren't they pretty? :)

OK-so now the cabbage dye experiment!! Let me first warn you, boiling the cabbage is RANK!! I mean like grandpa farts mixed with baby diapers rank! So make sure you have the windows open to ventilate as much as possible, unless you enjoy that kind of smell lol. First up, when I looked up how to make the dye, when it came to the cabbage they said boil the whole head. They did not specify whether to chop it up or just throw in the whole head. I figured the dye would extract better if it was chopped up. So make sure you chop up the whole head into small chunks before throwing it in 2 quarts of water in the pot.

Bring to a boil and you can boil it from 30 minutes to an hour. I did 40 minutes. you will start to see the dye as you mix it occasionally and the water WILL reduce some but don't panic. After it has boiled, pour out the cabbage through a mesh strainer into a bowl. You will notice it has a purpleish violet almost fuchsia color. Add 4 TBS vinegar and 4 TBS salt and mix well.

This worried me at first, because I wanted BLUE eggs, not purple. So I researched a bit about turning the dye blue. They said according to the acidity of the food, you will have purple or blue dye and to turn it from purple to blue, all you need is a bit of baking soda. They said do add TINY amounts until you see it turn blue. I never took Chemistry in school because I never got a high enough grade from biology required to take it but I always was intrigued by it. Safe to say, I was VERY excited about all this lol. In fact, I was so excited I took a blurry picture when trying to catch the reaction of turning blue.

Can you see the blue in the foam? This was after adding just a pinch. I added pinch by pinch until the mixture turned completely blue. *TIP--before I changed the chemistry, I put aside a cup of the dye to experiment with. If you want the cornflower blue and best saturation, I suggest using the original dye without the added baking soda. You will see why in a minute.

This was after it turned pretty blue I was so excited!

Here you can see the difference from the original to the altered. Another interesting result, adding the baking soda created gas and caused the liquid to become more buoyant, causing the egg to float instead of sink like all the others did.

This was the result of the egg soaking in the BLUE mixture for ONE HOUR. as you can see, it hardly took to the dye. I read that to get best results its best to let soak overnight. So I did, and let me tell you, I was so disappointed!! It didn't change much from the picture above, and only changed a shade or two darker and after drying was very streaky.

This was the original cabbage dye and this was after only an Hour. It was saturating more and more evenly. I let this one soak for about 6 hours more and the result was beautiful!!

Isn't it gorgeous?? Something interesting I have learned is that as it completely dries, it seems to become more blue even though it looks more purple when you first take it out.
I tried soaking a few more, one overnight, one for about 4 hours, and another for about 9 hours.

The teal one was over night, the next deepest was 9 hours, the next lightest was the 6 hours and the lightest was 4.

The original cabbage dye (with no added baking soda) produced the BEST results. The longer the egg soaked, the more deeper the blue and saturation. And like I mentioned earlier, as the egg dries it turns more blue. So don't panic if they look purple after immediately removing them from the bath.
Since I fell so in love with these results, I wanted to have eggs I could keep forever so something you can do is soak a RAW egg and after it completely dries, blow out the egg ( I used this method ) and you can keep them forever! :)
I had SO MUCH fun doing these and I hope you do as well! Have you ever used any of these methods? I would love to hear your results in the comments below or any tips or tricks you may have. If you try this method please let me know how it turned out for you!
I hope you have a BLESSED Easter and remember what it's really about! Praise The Lord for His victory and His incredible sacrifice! God Bless! <3

**Extra tips**
-The dyes do tend to stain fingers and clothes so you may want to wear an apron to protect your clothing (I did) and/or gloves to protect your hands.
-If you want the blue hues from the cabbage dye, DO NOT ADD the baking soda, but if you would like to just see the experiment of it pour aside an extra cup and you can see it transform first hand. It would also be a fun experiment for kids to see as well.
-I would occasionally stir the eggs in the baths just to coat more evenly and make sure the egg is completely in the bath with no parts exposed, you can use a metal spoon to help it stay in if that's the case.
-You may want to protect table surfaces as well by putting an old towel or tablecloth down.