Paper Houses

Last week my sister and I embarked on what turned out to be one of the most fun crafty projects I have ever done! It was harder than I thought it would be at first, but totally worth the effort. Check out our paper mini-houses, made to look like our real houses!

Have you ever seen anything cuter than this? The yellow house is like mine (see the real thing here) and the brown looks like hers.

Can you imagine a whole village of these little guys?

The project took us a few hours one afternoon. We used Martha's templates to get us started but added our own twists like the vellum windows, a window box, and mini wreath and trees. My sister also has a dollhouse that looks like her real house so she had some supplies like the Christmas lights lying around. We used scrapbook cardstock for the house and roof and mostly used hot glue to hold it together. We used some E6000 to add the glitter to the roof and stuck the glitter to the ground quickly after we painted the base so the wet paint held it in place. The last step was hot gluing on the details (notice the little rabbit in the front yard!) and cutting a hole to place a battery operated candle inside the house.

Too freaking cute!

Updated House Tour

I have officially been a homeowner for over a year! T.J. and I celebrated our homeowner-anniversary a couple months ago, on July 13. So much has changed in our home in the past year, so I thought it was high time to completely update the "House Tour" tab.

While most of the pictures can be seen by clicking on the House Tour tab above, or here, I have included some highlights below... because what is a post without pictures? :-)

         Rooms from new angles:

Homemade Laundry Soap

My mom has been raving about this homemade laundry soap she recently made. Check it out.

 

Apparently it is very easy to make and only costs 28 cents a load. Just two ingredients plus hot water. I have yet to try it but she says it is wonderful. It smells good and works like a charm at getting clothes clean. Here is the recipe:

4 cups hot water

1 bar fels-naptha soap shredded (see picture above for this soap)

Heat and melt in large pot

1 cup arm and hammer "Super Washing Soda"

3 gallons hot water

Mix all ingredients together, keep in covered containers. 

Use 1 cup of the mixture per load.

Mom says "save your jugs".