Etching Dishes

I LOVE ETCHING DISHES!!! It is pretty much the bomb diggety. I mean how cool is it to give a gift that is personalized that they can take with them to a party and if it is left there, they know who brought it.

So hubby and I had already bought my brother in law and my new sister in law a dish set that they were wanting for a wedding present. But really... you know me... I can't not do something personalized. So I made them etched dishes.

I never posted it, but this is the shirt that I made for my sister in law using my heat press machine:

Front:


Back:


So I took this design (the front anyways) and etched a small Pyrex dish to coordinate with the shirt:


I loved how it turned out... I mean seriously... I need to etch some of our dishes! Isn't it pretty!!!


My awesome and very talented sister in law drew this last summer:


So I turned that... into this:


I love love love it!


I think they were pretty psyched that I took the time to make them something. For the picture one I couldn't capture every detail, it had too much and would have taken a lot of time weeding it, but I just love how it turned out!

What do you think? Do you want to run out and try it too? Just remember to weed the positive, not the negative of the vinyl or what ever other material you are using to protect the glass. Also, the etching cream does run, so be careful if you are doing the sides of the dish... otherwise you will have to use some creative license to fix it... just sayin' I learned from experience.

Anyways, can't wait to hear what you think!

TTFN~
Julie

Happy 4th of July!

Hope that everyone is having a great time with their families! Mine will be coming over tomorrow evening, so we are looking forward to sharing some family time together. Aside from that, it will be a pretty low key day!



Enjoy it with your loved ones!

TTFN~
Julie

Hanging In There

So much has happened in the past couple of months I really don't know where to begin or even that I will share everything that I have been going through... Lets just say that for the first time in my parenting journey I didn't have the answer, know where to get it, or have an easy solution.

With Kindergarten starting in 55 days I figured it was better to solicit help sooner than later... we are on that current step now. Because of all the changes we have also started doing a behavior chart. I don't remember ever needing this as a kid, but on the other hand my mom had a "Tail Blazer" so I pretty much stayed in check, or my mom took away the Nintendo...
Last week I hastily drew a behavior chart. It was kinda fugly (no joke) but I needed something fast and it served its purpose.

This week I wanted to do or get something I could easily reproduce or re-use. So I turned to my silhouette and the trusty pen holder.

Like seriously it is the best thing invented for this machine, ok maybe not best, but I love it! I use a regular cheep pen, screw it in the thing and then change the setting to sketch and let it do it's magic.

So I took the pre-done Chore Chart on the online store, and changed it to fit my needs. I had to add a row so that there would be one for each day... Then I had to find a font that would work for me. Ultimately I created "Laci's Behavior Chart" that has a line for each day of the week, and then columns for the following:
* Morning
* Nap
* Homework
* Cheer (Thursday)
* Dinner
* Bed Time
* Extra



She can earn a star for each square, and then the "extra" column allows us to reward her if she has done REALLY good at something or surprises us by cleaning up herself, you get the idea.

You can see from above that she lost her star for bedtime the first night of this chart, she kept getting out of bed and coming down stairs. For boxes where she misses one we put an X in there so that she knows she missed it. But this is why we have the Extra column, so that potentially she can get all the stars. On a normal week she can get 37 stars, but there is no cheer this week, so she can get 35.

Anyways, so it takes about 11 minutes to sketch the thing out, but I love it, and really I can set the thing to go and then walk away.

Here is what I came up with:



Last week it worked great, she got two out of three rewards. She was able to spend the night at Grammy's and go see Brave in the movie theater with her Aunt Jennifer. She is off to a great start this week, and hopefully she will earn an extra star this week so that she can get all 35 and get back Pouch Juice or a Movie to Watch.

If she gets 26 stars by Friday evening she can spend the night at Grammy's.
If she gets 32 stars by Saturday evening this weeks special treat would be to go for (1) hour to Chuck E Cheese.
If she gets all available 35 stars she can either get back Pouch Juice or a Movie to Watch.



Anyways, for anyone else going through this kind of thing, what are your suggestions for rewards? I want her to want to earn them.....

Being a parent is difficult sometimes, can't wait until this phase is over!

TTFN~
Julie