Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

iBlog Book Giveaway

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Happy Mother’s Day sweet friends!

I am so thankful for my sweet mama and the awesome job she did with me and my eight siblings. The older I get the more I realize what a sacrifice she made and incredible job she did. I would not be the kind of mom I am today with out her guidance and love as she helped mold me.

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I am also incredibly grateful to be a mom. My three sweet kiddos make me laugh everyday as they are a joy and light in my life. As they are still young, I know Mother’s Day can be a big task for the dads out there. Thank you Matt for making me feel so loved today. It’s been an amazing day.

me and kids

Homemade pancakes out on our deck,

homemade cards that made me teary,

a little family thrifting,

a picnic lunch at a new park,

and now I am blogging.

I am so blessed.

Now on to some exciting news for today… I am honored to be a part of a new e-book. It is my first public work to be out there to buy, and I cannot believe it. I was so blessed to be chosen to collaborate with 29 other bloggers to make iBlog.

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It is a new e-book all about blogging. With nearly 400 pages and 38 chapters it is a how-to manual on blogging. A few of the chapter titles are: Getting Your Blog off the Ground, Building Your Brand, How To Get Traffic, How To Get Subscribers, Guest Posting, Link Ups, The Power of Attending a Conference, How to Write a Blog Review, and Time Saving Blog Tips are just a few of the many awesome chapters!

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The chapter that I contributed is Blog Design 101. You know my amazing husband helped me write this, but it is something we are both really proud of. I have been holding off to reading this e-book until I had a good chunk of unpacking done. I think I will finally get to start it this week! I am so excited!

Will you read it with me?  With the content being everything you need to know about blogging, I know I have a lot I could learn. I am honored my name is mixed together with so many incredible bloggers on this production.

Today, I get to give away three copies of this book! I am so excited! If you would like to enter to win one of these three copies of iBlog simply let the rafflecopter widget load and enter as many ways as you want. I will release the winners to this giveaway this Tuesday. There isn’t much time to enter, so enter now! Happy Mother’s Day!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you don’t want to wait, you can buy your iBlog e-book today for $7.99. To help support me, please buy it from this link. 🙂

If you haven’t entered my Mohawk Rug giveaway there is still time. Finally, the winner to my “how many boxes did we pack” is Cheryl Gannaway. Her guess was 108 and our final count was 114 boxes. Great job Cheryl! I will be in touch!

I hope you are having an amazing Sunday with your families. I am off now to go back and hang with mine.

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An AMAZING gift!

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I showed you all what I MADE for my mom and mother-in-law for Mother’s Day, but I have not shown you what my AMAZING husband made me.  Brace yourself for this amazing-ness. 🙂

I saw a pin of a large mirror in a gorgeous wood frame on Pinterst forever ago, and I fell in love with it.  Since we have been married, we have just had a big plain mirror leaning up against my dresser in our room.  It was definitely NOT baby proof, but since is  was the only body length mirror we had, we just kind have dealt with it. At times I have had to steer all my kids away from it as they were banging on it, with fear that it could have fallen on them.  During these seasons of our lives, my bedroom door has remained closed all day…everyday.

Here are pictures of baby CALEB playing with our mirror…

For Mother’s Day, I asked Matt if he would make me some version of the pin I had seen.  He FAR out did himself!!  I not only got a safe mirror…it is stunning and oh so beautiful.  The best part would have to be my husband’s heart behind it.

He wanted to make it perfect for me, and he did.  There were many a steps, where I was ready for him to cut corners.  For instance, when the mirror didn’t fit into the frame (one of the two was slightly warped or something from being a perfect rectangle), I was ready for him to just glue another piece of wood behind the mirror.  I thought it could just sit on top.  He wanted it to rest inside the frame, so he hand carved and chipped at the trim until the mirror fell into place.  LOVE.

He designed it.  He bought supplies.  He measured and constructed it. He went back and bought more supplies.  He painted it.  He sanded it.  He stained it.  He chizzeled it.  He touched up painted it.  He touched up stained it.  He waxed finished it.

I am one blessed girl!  Thank you boo for this amazing gift, but more importantly…thank you for the gift of YOU!

He would say it’s not perfect, but to me…it couldn’t be any more perfect!  I am in love with it and my husband!

My Mother’s Day Gift…drink coasters!

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For Mother’s Day I made my mom and mother-in-law drink coasters.  I have seen some of these pins on pinterest and been dying to try them out!  One of the pins that inspired me was  Lindsay at “The Cottage Home”.  Her tutorial is beautiful and done with scrapbook paper!  Go check it out!

I fell in love with these things and went crazy making them!  As I saw how cute they were, I added more coasters to my “make” pile!  All of a sudden, I was making over 45 coasters and they were for Mother’s Day gifts, birthday presents, my end table :),  and random gifts!  Who doesn’t like random personal gifts!?!  I thought I would share my process with you!

Start with getting tiles at your hardware store.  I got these from Home Depot for $0.16 each!

Next step, pick your pictures!  I picked mine out, edited them, and in some cases added some words/phrases.  I also cropped them the size I wanted them to be in Photoshop, so when I uploaded them to Target’s website to print I got them back the exact size I wanted.  It made cutting them out a LOT easier!

You then use Mod Podge to glue each of your pictures onto the tile.

Let the Mod Podge dry completely between each coat.  Lindsay recommended three coats of Mod Podge, so that is what I did!

After the Mod Podge has dried, spray a clear acrylic varnish spray to them.  I did two coats of this step.  I really want them to be water proof!

The final step is to glue felt squares to the back in order for the cute coasters to not mess up your tables.  I used spray Elmer’s Glue here.  I had it and thought it would be quicker.  Note to self (and you), don’t cut corners.  I think a fabric glue would have been better!

Here are a few of my coasters on display in my house!!  If you ever come to my house and have a drink, DO NOT feel like you have to use these things.  We really aren’t “coaster” people with our furniture.  Nothing we have is nice enough to require them, but they were too cute to not have a set for ourselves!!

Lastly, if yours are a gift too, wrap them up and make them look pretty!

As you can see, they are so cute and make such an inexpensive, personal gift!  I hope you give them a try!  If you don’t want to try it yourself, but want me to make them for you visit my etsy store, dancingzebrasart, and place an order here!