Displaying Perler Bead Creations

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Trevor has loved Perler Beads since we were first introduced to them when he was 2. He has made a huge number of items over the past nine years and kept all but the very few he's given away. Storage is getting to be a problem. It was not easy, but I convinced him to go through them all and separate out his favorites and get rid of any that were broken, poorly melted, or simply not special. 

Then we used straight pins to arrange those favorites on a corkboard frame. 

We hung the frame right next to the shelves of games and toys. 

The plan is that as he makes new creations, he'll display them on the corkboard and get rid of one of his previous pieces that is not as special. Or, we'll eventually end up with a second corkboard hung above the first, as he's really going to struggle replacing an old favorite. 

Do your kids have a lot of Perler Bead creations? How do you store / display them?

Homemade Pizza

Every once in a while, I get a hankering for homemade pizza. Actually, I get a hankering for homemade pizza frequently, but every once in awhile I do something about it. I really should make it more often. It is delicious, inexpensive, and is on the table faster than some pizza deliveries. 

I've been making my own pizza since around age 10 and I have always used the same recipe. It is tattered and grease-stained now from 3.5 decades of use. I don't remember where it came from, so unfortunately I can't credit the source. Mom, do you remember?

I follow the recipe exactly EXCEPT that I don't divide the crust. I love thick crust pizza, so I just use all the dough. I've tried it as written and it's wonderful, so if you prefer thin crust, follow the recipe. It only takes about 15 minutes to assemble the pizza...

... then it bakes for 25 minutes. Piping hot and delicious in 40 minutes. 

I really should make it more often. 

'Sorry for Your Loss' Cards

I've had to make quite a few sympathy cards recently. They're always a struggle for me, as I'm sure they are for most people. I almost always put butterflies on sympathy cards, as you can see here and here.

For my first card, I used cream and black, a few punches, and a simple sentiment. I like it.

Sympathy Card (affiliate link)

I ended up repeating that design to make an identical card, then used a butterfly stamp set to create the vertical card. 

I hope those are the last sympathy cards I'll need to make for a long, long time. 

Trevor at Eleven

As promised, here is Trevor at 11. As usual, I made my list of adjectives before looking back at previous layouts so that I wouldn't be influenced by how I'd described him before. Of course, the list is pretty similar year by year.

Trevor at Eleven (affiliate link)

Trevor mentioned the other day that we need to have Grandpa make us more numbers. (He originally made 1-9, then made us a 0 and an extra 1 a few years ago.) I love that Trevor thinks we'll still be taking his birthday portraits at 22, 33, 44, etc. I'll count myself lucky if he cooperates through age 18! 

Trevor at 10

Every year, I create a birthday layout for Trevor using adjectives to describe him. When I made Trevor at 9, I thought it would be fun to use a word cloud for his 10th birthday that incorporated all the words I'd used to describe him each year. So that's what I did!

Trevor at 10 (affiliate link)

I made the word cloud using wordart.com/. I typed in my list of words from each layout, then chose the font and balloon shape. The words that appear the largest are the ones that I repeated the most over the years. Once I was happy with the design, I printed it and cut it out. It was so easy and I'm really happy with the layout. 

And yes, Trevor is 11 years old. This has been sitting on my desk 3/4 done for a very, very long time. In fact, I finished up the Trevor at 11 layout right after this one. I'll share that tomorrow.