Fakin' It

Christmas in July: No Sew Knotted Yarn Scarf Tutorial

Last Christmas I tried to make Christmas gifts to save some money but I wanted the gifts to be nice. Last summer I bought a knotted scarf at a craft show for $25 and thought, I could make this! Then I saw some on Etsy for $45! Thus came the inspiration for my handmade Christmas gifts.

 
They are super adorable on and you can customize the length and colors to suit your friends/family's taste. The green, white and purple one in the middle is a child's that my daughter helped to make.

 
 Ready to get started? Wait until the yarn goes on sale. I bought all of the yarn below at Joann's for $28. What you see is what's left after making 5 scarves. Definitely enough to make at least 5 more which would average out to $2.80 per scarf. Remember I paid $25 for the one at the craft show. Pretty amazing huh?

It is very important to get different widths and different textures. The white yarn has a thread of gold through it, the dark green has sequins, the purple is feathery, and the turquoise has pom poms. 

 
 
It takes about 30 strands to make a scarf. It can be less for a child's scarf. Lay out pieces flat. They should be about  8 feet long for an adult and  6 feet long for a child.

 
 
Make the first knot at one end. Make sure to pull it tight. Then use your fingers to "comb" through the rest of the strands to make sure none are bunched up.

 
It's up to you how much distance you put in between knots. I do about a hands width. Continue making knots at even intervals until you reach other end.

Make a fist at the top of the last knot and trim off any excess that is hanging past your fist. Do this for both ends to make them even.

 

Voila! It is that simple! Here is L modeling the new scarf. I really want to go buy more yarn in our school colors to wear for the upcoming football season.

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CONTEST: My Facebook friend list and my new Google friend list has really been growing this last week and I want to keep the momentum going.  Once I reach a combined total of 100 followers I am going to hold a giveaway for all my new friends which will include a knotted scarf made by me and a Target giftcard. So be sure to go to my side bar. Let's be friends!!

Patriotic Father's Day Sun Dial

Happy Father's Day to all the amazing Dads and Grandpas!

We have been studying Astronomy over at my other blog Scout Mom which gave me the idea to make a sun dial. Since Father's Day was just around the corner and my DH is an outdoorsy guy, I thought this would be a great gift for him. Then he wouldn't need to come back inside to check the time. My boys said that their dad's favorite colors were red and blue and since fourth of July is also coming up, we decided to make it a patriotic red, white and blue.

 
Supplies needed include a terra cotta pot, wood circle, wood stars, dowl rods and E-600 glue.

 Center pot on top of wood circle and trace the smaller circle at the bottom of the pot.

Move the wood circle to the top of the pot right side up and drill a hole big enough to fit dowel rod.

We spray-painted the pot, circle and dowel red and then the stars white. We let that dry overnight before continuing.

Day 2 it was raining so we had to paint in the garage. We used blue and white acrylic paints.

  
The blue stripes on the disc represent north, south, east and west and also 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00. The 12:00 stripe should be facing north to get the dial to work correctly. Turn the pot upside down and squirt E-600 glue around the top edges then press the circular disc down on top.  Slide the dowel down through both holes and fill in the space with a little more glue to hold that in place. Next you need to put a stipe of glue on the back center of each star and place them back to with the dowel inbetween.

 
Whether your Dad is your HERO, or you think he is a Super Star, this will make a great gift!

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How to Make Bookmarks by Recycling Food Boxes

I love that my kids are so excited to join the library summer reading program. The kickoff was today but we were pretty busy so it is the first thing we are going to do after we get up in the morning. My oldest C will actually be volunteering at the library once a week. How is it possible that I have a child old enough to be doing volunteer work without me?

Tomorrow is trash day and we had a lot of boxes in the recycling bin this week. I decided to combine our trash and love of reading into bookmarks for all those summer books we will be checking out.

 
These are the boxes I started with but we were having so much fun, I went and got more.

To make cutting simpler, I tore open the sealed edges and flattened the boxes. Then I just picked an image or a part of image I liked and cut it out in the shape of a rectangle. I did not keep all the bookmarks the same size.

Once I had all my pieces cut, I punched one or two holes, depending on how I wanted it to look, and then threaded through a piece of ribbon.

Since my youngest, L, was my main helper with this, she got first pick and chose Kung Fu Panda. He came off some fruit roll-ups and I think he turned out pretty cute.

 I am completely in love with the Diet Coke bookmark and of course keeping it for myself. I might even have my hubby laminate it at work so it doesn't get too bent out of shape.

 
 All in all we ended up with 20 bookmarks. I used yarn on most of the others so I wouldn't use up all of my ribbon supply.

Have a great week! I'd love to hear what you or your kids are reading this summer! And I'd love it if you "liked" my blog in the upper right corner.

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Bulletin Board $2 Upgrade for Summer

We have this ginormous (it's a word! maybe) bulletin board in our kitchen for all the kids' stuff. It is such a beautiful mess that I am not even going to show you but I can guarantee that there is not one square inch of free space up there. If bulletin boards were meant for organization, then we went terribly wrong somewhere but I am about to rectify that.

I have had this, what I thought was  nice, framed bulletin board in my basement since the fall. I bought it for a class project but we went with something else instead and I of course never returned it, yada yada yada...

I have seen a lot of people covering their bulletin boards lately in blog land and thought " I can do that!" (now Chorus Line is playing in my head). Oh if only I could focus on something for more than 2 seconds! What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the Goodwill. So I was at the Goodwill for the first time ever and found the cutest valences for only  $1 which has nothing to with this story but thought I would share. I also found a super cute striped brand new bed sheet for $2. Do you see where I am going yet?

Plain bulletin board + fun green and pink striped bed sheet = fabulous summer organization!!

 

To fully appreciate my awesomeness you should probably see what I began with.

 

There it is: my $20 bulletin board and my $2 sheet. I agree that $20 is a bit much for a good bulletin board. And this one is not even good. I totally got ripped off. Look at the inside! It is foam core with the tiniest sliver of cork glued on top.

  
Luckily my anger was tempered by the beautiful day. So beautiful in fact, that I ironed outside. 

 
 
To cover the board, I simply laid the cork, I mean foam core, in the middle of the sheet and cut around it. I used double stick tape to hold it in place. I had originally planned on using my husbands staple gun but that foam was too thin and flimsy.

Yeah I know, I see the big wrinkle lines too. I never said I was great at ironing. Oh well, I'm gonna cover that up anyway. 

 I found these cute little printable calendars at The Teacher's Corner. I just trimmed them down and then matted them first on pink paper and then on green. I used a hot glue gun to adhere the pink and green ribbon which I already had in my stash. I also used the glue gun to stick on the scrapbooking decorative flower. 

That's my son C's hands holding it on the wall for me because I asked my DH every day over the weekend to hang the bulletin board up for me but... You can't tell in the picture but I wrote on my calendar with pink and green pens. I will use the bottom half of the bulletin board for grocery lists, or prayer cards or whatever else I want because it is MINE and no one else's.  

Have a great week everyone and thanks for stopping by!  

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Scout Mom - Presenting My New Cub Scout Blog

Our boys go to a small private Catholic school and when we started there was no Cub Scout Pack associated with the school. My hubby, an Eagle Scout, and a few other families decided to start our own pack. My husband is the Cub Master and I am a Den Leader as well as his assistant. It has been amazing watching our pack grow over the last 3 years but I feel like I am running out of ideas.

I have done lots of searches for blogs featuring Cub Scout ideas and there is just not a lot out there. I have found some by Cub Masters which are primarily  written journals but I am a visual person and need pictures. I decided to try to fill that empty space out there in blog world by starting a second blog. I am calling it Scout Mom. I will keep Fakin It going also because my kids love when I get consumed by my lap top and they can sneak off and get into stuff they are not supposed. I don't want to deny them their fun!

Since I have a pretty good following here, I have decided to lure some of you in with a Cub Scout Activity and hope that you hop on over to my new blog Scout Mom.

This is a fun game we did for our Blue and Gold Dinner. I cut enough blue and gold fleur de lis for each family to get 24. As you can see I used my Cricut but you could just use a circle punch to keep it simple.

I counted out the shapes and put 24 in a snack baggie and then put the baggie and a straw in each cup. Each family got their own cup. They had to form a single file line at the table. Dump the shapes out. The first person in line had to use the straw and "suck" up the shape to drop it into the cup and then go to the end of the line. Then it was the next family member's turn. The first family with their cup filled won! We found small prizes on clearance at the Scout Shop and it was fun to see how competitive the families got.  

 I would love to hear what you think of the new blog. Comments and ideas are always appreciated ! Thanks!

Yours in Scouting

Scout Mom