Pinterest is my new weakness, y’all. I see so many neat things on there daily, and there is not enough time, energy, or money in my world to do all the things I see on there that I would love to do.

Oh well.

Anyways, I saw this idea on Pinterest as well, and of course had to try it.

What you will need:

– Various scrapbook paper pages

– yarn or string of your color preference

– scissors

– tape

– some sort of stencil/outline of the animal of your choice

– a pencil to trace with

Fortunately, I have plenty of scrapbook paper left from my teaching days. I used to have my students use it to cover/personalize their writer’s notebooks for the class. All ready I’ve used this stuff for several things… except actual scrapbooking.

For your animal, you can really choose whatever you want. Evie’s room is a jungle/safari theme, so originally, I was going to include lions, giraffes, and monkeys too, but quickly changed my mind when I thought about tracing and cutting them all out to hang on a string. Elephants were big, sturdy, and less complicated to cut out, so they won the competition this time.

Instruction wise, this is pretty straight forward.

1. Get your stencil, get your chosen scrapbook paper, and start tracing. (I don’t have the sturdiest hands, so if you are like me and would be bothered by seeing some of the tracing line, trace it on the back!)

2. Cut out your shapes.

3. Attach to yarn/string. I used tape. I suppose you could use glue or something fancier, but considering today was a no-nap day for Evelyn and she’s been a major grump, I didn’t have the time or energy to think up anything more complicated.

4. Hang it wherever the heck you want to.

I will say that this project took me a lot longer than I thought it would. Evelyn didn’t really help with that, but it turned out okay in the end.

One of the scrapbook pages I came across has ABCs on it, so I used it to cut out the letters of her name and put it between the elephants.

(As you can see, this paper was only slightly injured by its skirmish with the seventh graders. Most of the piece I used had not been as lucky.)

I am hoping to put this lovely cross-stitched piece that Evelyn’s Great-Nana made for her up between the two pieces above the crib to help finish the look. We’ll see how it looks when Jared is able to help me put holes in the wall. 😉

Evelyn’s room is on its way to being stylin’!

So, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn how to crochet and knit. It’s one of those things I’ve wanted to do for years but never seemed to have the time to sit down and learn.  That whole being a teacher and grading papers every day thing got in the way of a lot of those kinds of resolutions. 🙂

I’ve been half-heartedly getting the hang of knitting, but it definitely takes a little longer and I need to practice more before trying to really figure out some of the patterns. But crocheting seemed more doable to me.

So, I’ve been eying this website called Craftsy because they have some fun classes for all sorts of various crafts/hobbies you might have. When Jared got me crochet hooks and knitting needles for Christmas, I took the opportunity to buy a class on sale to help me with my crocheting.

So, after a hard week’s work of learning between taking care of my little Evelyn, I have created a friend for her:

(By the way, the person behind the class/cute creations can be found on this website. She posts some of her things for free and has some great patterns and instructions for beginners like me!)

I have been so happy by how quickly I made this little bird and plan on making a few more before progressing on to the next item in the class- a bear!

Don’t worry. If I make it that far, I’ll be posting pictures. I won’t be able to help myself.