Silhouette Adventures-Soccer Mom

It's official! I am a SOCCER MOM!

With 3 of my 4 little monkeys playing soccer this Spring I am fully engulfed in the soccer mom way of life! I am pretty much living out of my car at this point (at least Tuesdays & Thursdays), and for the most part I'm LOVING it! If I could only find a way to equip my car with a fridge stocked with cherry cokes I'd be in heaven!!
I come from a soccer loving, soccer playing, soccer watching family, and I've been waiting for this day since my first baby was born!! There was a time growing up when I think almost all 5 of my siblings and I were playing soccer at the same time (give or take one or two)...my Momma was the ultimate Soccer Mom...she's forever my HERO! We LIVED at the soccer fields and I don't know how she did it with all the practices and games...I'm saying she's amazing!

I decided that since I'm full out embracing the "Soccer Mom" thing because who are we kidding it's AWESOME that it was time to properly outfit the minivan...aka the green monster as the true Soccer Mobile that it is!

So, naturally I busted out the Silhouette and my vinyl and got to work!

The Silhouette store being one of the awesomest places ever of course already had a soccer ball shape with the words Soccer Mom, which I slightly tweaked to fit my fancy and I ended up with this bad boy.
And because that wasn't enough to fit my crafty mood I went back to the Silhouette store and found myself some awesome stick people decals (which I've been coveting on other people's cars...too cute!) and check us out as a happy, soccer stick figure family!
Ha ha...LOVING IT!

So here's the Green Monster Before:
And here's the Soccer Mobile After:
An improvement I'd say!
Thoughts??
I got these bad boys on the van today just as we were heading out to soccer, so ya you better believe we got to the games in style!

Silhouette Adventures-Easter Basket Fun

Despite the snow, or the rain, or the cold temps, it's SPRING and Easter is fast approaching! I saw this super fun twist on the Easter basket, and decided I'd give it a try. Besides I was just itching for a reason to play with my Silhouette!

So here's what the amazing Kierste over at Brown Paper Packages created, that I LOVED!
However as I mentioned she is amazing, and sadly as I dragged myself from Target to Target (yea like that was a sacrifice) it quickly became apparent that I was not the only one in Love with this idea. I hit a total of 3 Targets only to find that each was sold out of these pails.
Oh no, correction each store had one lonely pail left on the shelf which would have been fine if they weren't all the same color and if that color wasn't Pink.

I was feeling a bit defeated until I decided to stroll down the Easter isle to pick up my Easter candy (and not procrastinate for once), and I stumbled on these little beauties!
How cute are these pails??
I actually think I like these a tad better, though they cost slightly more, besides I found I was really digging the fun designs and lively Spring colors of these pails!

Aslo, they are a little bigger which is good for the Easter gifts I have in mind for this year. I don't load up their baskets, but I do like to think out of the box and pick gifts that are a little different. More educational or hands on for example. I like to go for things that aren't just stuff. They have enough stuff.
(Ha, don't get me wrong I do throw in some goodies here and there).

I let the kiddos pick out their pails, and vinyl color choice just to give it that little extra personalization touch.
With pails in hand, I gathered up all my vinyl and got to work.
I found a cute font and some fun Easter shapes, after about half an hour of work here's my finished Easter Pails!
Of course a butterfly for Bean.

A little Easter Chick for my chick magnet Landon.

An Easter bunny for my little Momma.

And a fun egg for Carson.

In the pics the names are a little harder to read but, all in all I think they turned out pretty cute,and most importantly they did get the kiddo seal of approval.

Now I'm just having a hard time getting them to leave the pails alone until Easter...I think I'm going to have to hide them early...

Here's the before once again...just in case you forgot (because I'm so looong winded)

and here's the after...

So I'm curious, what kinds of Easter gifts does the Easter bunny typically leave at your house??

Silhouette Adventures-Cocoa Mug Revamp

Do you like my Sweet Hot Cocoa Mug?
Here's the story on my Mug Revamp:

I'm taking a brief hiatus from organizing, to do something a little crafty...I need every now and then to stop and just take a minute to create. It's my outlet...my stress reliever

although massages are good too

First I have to say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Target (are you with me?)

My daughter has dance class on Wednesday's to which parents are not allowed to stay and watch except for the first class of the month (I never knew dance classes were SO strict), which is not good for me since it's in the next town over and thus too far for me to go home and come back. There is however a Target down the street which is the closest target to me, so yea I don't get to go as often as I would like, which is both good and bad. I naturally put two and two together and decided that Wednesday would from here on out be my Target Day!!! I have had to cut it down to every other Wednesday though because I kept buying things instead of just looking, but in my defense, it's hard not to.
Can I just say that I love looking through the dollar bins...sometimes I don't find much, just little toys for the kids, but every now and then I find the coolest things. Like this cocoa travel mug for example.

Not only does it have this awesome pink band around the center to keep your fingers from getting burned, or the mug from slipping right through your hands, but it's otherwise a completely blank canvas for me to create upon! And so I shall!

I thought this would be the perfect project to kick off my Silhouette Adventures.

The Silhouette Machine is a fairly new tool for me, I just got it this Christmas as a gift. I was a Cricket girl, but lost my Cricket when we were robbed this summer, which is a story for another time. The important thing to note is that I am new to the Silhouette, have not had much practice with it and all that it can do, (which is a lot,) and my "adventures" are just that, adventures into figuring out what the Silhouette can do, and how I get it to do them.

I decided the best route here was to use my Silhouette to cut out some super cute vinyl shapes to prettify my mug! The mug is not dishwasher safe, and can only be hand washed so careful washing is the key here.

One of the reasons that I decided to go with the Silhouette rather than get anther Cricket was the ability of the Silhouette to be free of cartridges. The Silhouette has a vast library of images that you can browse and buy (for a dollar or less usually), but you can also use images that you already have on your computer or that you create yourself. With Cricket cartridges at $80 a pop this was a very appealing factor to me. I hit the Silhouette Store and found some pretty sweet images for my mug, and I got to work cutting them out with black vinyl.

I cut out my vinyl, made sure my mug was dust free and ready to go, and got to it. Here's what my newly prettified mug looks like now

I wanted to carry the design all the way to the top of the mug but with all the edges it started becoming a bit difficult, still it's an improvement I would say. I used a tougher vinyl than the normal just because I knew my mug would get wet, so we'll see how it holds up. For the time being though it looks a lot prettier, it makes me happy and all I need now is some delicious gourmet hot cocoa to warm me up while I work. Where is my favorite place to shop for delicious gourmet hot cocoa you ask? Well of course it's the Ticket Kitchen! If you haven't checked out this shop then you should...it's fantastic and I'm not just saying that because she's my boss...it really is fantastic!


Just a thought you could get any travel mug and do this same thing to it and it would make a pretty cool gift for the coffee lover, or hot cocoa addict in your life. Just a thought!

Happy Crafting!