Ultimate Blog Challenge Day 31!!!

I'm taking a look at the blog archive, here on my right sidebar and I'm amazed. 30 posts in July. 31 including this one. I did it {breathing a sigh of relief}. I am officially out of my mind. I sat (almost) every night until 2 am to write posts (and take care of the kids and work, but that's the usual), which means everything's possible.

What a crazy month! But also so satisfying.

I broke my pageviews record, I have more than 500 likes on my Facebook page (I knowit doesn't seem that much to many of you, but for me it was a big deal), I "met" lots of other bloggers (and their great blogs) and I even got my first bloggy award (thanks again Madisson :) )

But honestly, without even a pinch of sarcasm, the best thing about this month was to know that it is possible. I don't have to stare blankly at the TV every evening! If I clearly define my aim, I can focus on it and achieve it.

So I'm focusing again, only this time the aim is different.

New goal: Start selling on my Etsy stop that I opened a long time ago (and never listed anything on it...). So let's meet here again on August 30th, same time, so see if I achieved it as well :)

Now It's Your Turn! Our Pinterest Group Board

Wednesday is here, and it's time again to check out what you've been up to lately.

Remember? You pin your pictures to the Pinterest Group Board, get views from hundreds of followers and maybe even get to be featured here next week.

How to pin your photos to the group board?

1. Follow me on Pinterest
2. Leave a comment, here or on any of my Pinterest pins, with your Pinterest user name.
3. I'll follow you back
4. I'll send you an invite
5. Accept the invite
6. Start pinning!

Begginers, here's a detailed explanation:
- You have to follow me on Pinterest (and I have to follow you), because these are Pinterest's rules for group boards. If the board admin wants to invite people to the pin to the board, they have to follow each other. You can only follow one of my boards, btw.
- You don't have to be bloggers. As long as your pictures are somewhere around the WWW, you're good. Flickr, Picasaweb, Instagram etc. are all fine.
- Your pin doesn't have to be a tutorial. As long as it can be an inspiration to someone, that's fine.
- If you have a non-English blog, that's OK. These days, with Google Translate, we can just translate the page to another language.

All right then, shall we see today's features?

Amy from Ruby Alice Designs with a simple explanation (and a link to a tutorial) on how to paint chevron walls. Now I want to paint chevron pattern one of the walls in the kids bedroom...

Chevron Walls @ Ruby Alice Designs

These mocha breakfast muffins by Ashley from Joyful Thrifty Home look so delicious (and they're quite healthy as well). Going to try them this week!

Mocha Breakfast Muffins @ Joyful Thrifty Home

Michal is making sweet papier mache figures. I couldn't find a link to Michal's blog, so I linked instead to her Pinterest page, where she pins her creations, not only papier mache ones, but also sewed items, scrapbooking stuff and even an awsome sushi costume that you must have this Halloween.

Papier Mache Figure from Michal

If you were featured, feel free to grab a button!

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That's it for today, don't forget to pin your best works into the board!

Camp Mom - Summer Activities for Kids. Nature Day

Summer vacation to me is like a cute monster. On one hand, it's scary. On the other hand, it's cute and I can't wait to see it up close. I'm now an experienced mother (crazy!), so I already know that the more you plan ahead, the more difficult this vacation will be. But if you don't plan ahead, well, good luck to you!
So some of the days I plan ahead and some I'm just being spontaneous. Those planned days are our Camp Mom days,  and the kids really love them ("Mommy, what are we doing today in Camp Mom?").

First Camp Mom day this year was nature day. Since it's really really hot here, I had no plans to go to "real" nature. Instead we brought nature to our backyard.
We opened the day with a nature scavenger hunt. They had to find things like a big flower, a small flower, twigs, something living (which we didn't touch), something that smells good, something pink and more.

Then we picked flowers in different colors. The goal was to make paint out of flowers. We talked about how people painted before you could just go to a store and buy paint, and we tried to brainstorm methods of paint making. We also added dirt and leaves to our experiment.

Then we crushed everything...

I searched online and found that mixing flowers with egg yolk should work. I thought about trying to cook the flowers, but that would make too much mess, and our house is messy enough as it is, so we didn't cook.
Instead we just mixed the flowers with the egg yolk and even though some didn't work well, some were great and we could actually paint with them!

Now to what I loved most - we made mud soup! We just mixed soil with water and whatever else we could find. The Girl loved dipping her hands inside, The Boy mainly gave us instructions from a safe distance and The Baby wouldn't even go near... And I thought we're going to have a nice family mud bath :)

We used the mud and some twigs we found to make a bird nest.

And if we're going to have birds, they need to eat something. So we took an empty milk carton, cut openings, stuck in a stick (so that the birds can stand) and painted.

After it dried, we filled with birdseed and hung it outside.

At the end of the day, they each got 5 minutes with mommy and daddy's camera (that's really special for them!) and took pictures of nature as they see it. I'll skip the pictures of the house, the cat and all the blurry pictures, and show you just one picture of each.

Him.

Her.

Enjoy the rest of your vacation!

Sweet Surprise - My First Award!

I love surprises. Especially those sweet little ones, like reading through my Bloglovin' feed on a Saturday afternoon and to find out I've been awarded my first award!

The Versatile Blogger Award is an award to bloggers by bloggers. Each blogger that has been awarded, nominates up to 15 other blogs and then tells the person who nominated him 7 things about himself.

Madison (and her mom Amanda) from the sweet blog Growing up Madison nominated me, so first of all - thank you!

Now it's my turn to choose 15 other blogs to nominate. It's not an easy task, considering I have more than 200 blogs in my feed...

1.

  One More Mushroom

2.

Pink Friday

3.

Mini Moz

4.

Ikat Bag

5.

Colorful Way 

6.

Shanty 2 Chic

7.

Laura's Crafty Life

8.

My World of Wool

9.

Essentially Eclectic

10.

Pink When

11.

Craft & Creativity

12.

Happy in Red

13.

A Typical English Home

14.

Tada! Creations

15.

Suburbs Mama

And here are the 7 things about me:

1. I love sewing the most. No, wait, I love knitting the most. Or maybe crochet. No, definitely felting. No, no, pottery! Oh, well, I love them all!

2. I speak, read and write Chinese.

3. I hate fish. I think I only ate fish 5 times in my life...

4. When I was young, I wanted to be an actress. Then a singer. Then a lawyer. Then an interior designer. Then an anthropologist. Then a writer. Then a toy designer. Then what?

5. I love traveling to new places with new cultures, new languages and new people. I almost always prefer to go somewhere new instead of going again to a place I've been to, even if I love this place.

6. I moved 19 times since I was born. I counted.

7. One day, if possible, I want to live on a desert island with the man and the kids.

Pacifier Clip Tutorial

Here's another quick gift for a baby shower. It's perfect with the diaper cake I showed you before, but also as an extra gift or when you just need a small attention gift. To me the pacifier clip is one of the most useful items I could get. The first 18 months are full of pacifier dropping. I keep mine in my diaper bag and whenever the pacifier goes in the mouth, the clip comes out of the bag :)

If you have a sewing machine - good for you, it's a 10 minutes job (and you'll spend most of the time on choosing the right combination of ribbons). If you don't have access to a sewing machine, no worries, you can definitely sew it by hand.

Shall we begin?

What you need:Sewing machine (or not...)
Scissors
Ribbon - 2.5 cm (1") wide and 30 cm (12") long
Ribbon - 0.5 cm (1/4") wide and 25 cm (10") long
Clip
Thread

It's so hard to choose the combination of the ribbons!

Slip one end of the wide ribbon through the clip from front side of the clip to back side of it. Fold edge twice and secure with a pin.

Moving to the other end. Fold the narrow ribbon in half to form a loop. Fold the edge of the wide ribbon twice and insert narrow ribbon under.

While still holding the edge, move the loop over the fold and secure with a pin.

Sew on both sides. I like to either use a zigzag stitch or a double straight one.

That's it. Told you it was quick :)

Now make ten more, because it's so much fun and it's always good to have some at home, just in case...

Best Mobile Apps for Bloggers Part I

These days, when we all carry with us tablets and smartphones, you (almost) don't need a computer to run a blog. Lots of apps, some are better, some are not that good, will help you with everything you need to get your blog going.
I tried to list here the most interesting and important apps (at least I think they are :) ) for bloggers. All of these apps are available for android and iOS and all are free, unless otherwise stated.

1. Facebook Page Manager - A must if you have a Facebook page (not a personal profile, but a business page). With this app you can manage your Facebook page, see and reply to messages, upload pictures and check your insights.

2. Twitter - Everything you love (or not) in Twitter you'll find on this official app as well.

3. Pinterest - Oh, Pinterest... As if all the hours we spent in front of the computer weren't enough, now comes this great app. You can pin, search other pins and boards and basically do almost everything you can on the website.

4. Instagram - Need I say more?

5. Bloglovin' - The website that took Google Reader's (RIP) place in a praised mobile version. Add blogs to your list and read them on the cleanly designed feed.

6. Google+ - I admit, I'm not a huge fan of their app, but in tough times, when I can't work on my laptop (summer vacation with three kids anyone?...), I use the app instead. Google+, by the way, is well worth a series of posts. What used to be an inferior social network is now one of the most important networks for bloggers.

7. Stumble Upon - I love the idea behind the website. You mark pages with like and dislike, and Stumble Upon will show you other sites you might like. The app does just the same :)

8. Hootsuite is an app that helps you manage multiple social media accounts. You can post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other networks with just one click. I'm still learning this app, but I know of other bloggers that use it and love it.

9. MailChimp is a website and an app that will help you create newsletters and manage your subscribers. The app is very convenient (although I only used it to manage subscribers so far) and similar to the website.

10. Guidecentral is an app that features all kind of tutorials. You can also find the tutorials on their website. Pinterest addicts beware, the potential for addiction is high here as well... Currently only available for iOS, but android version is on its way.

And a few words about apps for writing posts -
My blog is a Blogger blog. Unfotunately, I don't like the Blogger app. I tried to use it a few times, but sometimes the posts I write on my smartphone don't show up later on my laptop, sometimes I only get the html of the post etc. So I rarely use it, but I'd love to hear from you if you had better experience with it.

Regarding Wordpress app - since I'm not a wordpress user, all I can tell you is that there is a wordpress app for mobile :).

If you're a fan of apps I didn't mention here or if you have any comments and insights on the above, please let me know. I'm working on a second part for this post and I'd love to give credit to anyone that will help with it :)


**** Update - Second part to this post is now up! ****

Giveaway Winner!

Remember our Crafty Giveaway?

Well, we have a winner!

And the winner is...

Laura Pierce! Congrats Laura!


I already emailed Laura, if I don't hear back from her in the next 48 hours, I'll choose another winner (using the rafflecopter).

Thanks everyone for entering this giveaway, I promise another one soon!

UBC Day 24. Now It's Your Turn!

Wednesday is here, and it's time again to check out what you've been up to lately.

Remember? You pin your pictures to the Pinterest Group Board, get views from hundreds of followers and maybe even get to be featured here next week.

How to pin your photos to the group board?

1. Follow me on Pinterest
2. Leave a comment, here or on any of my Pinterest pins, with your Pinterest user name.
3. I'll follow you back
4. I'll send you an invite
5. Accept the invite
6. Start pinning!

Begginers, here's a detailed explanation:
- You have to follow me on Pinterest (and I have to follow you), because these are Pinterest's rules for group boards. If the board admin wants to invite people to the pin to the board, they have to follow each other. You can only follow one of my boards, btw.
- You don't have to be bloggers. As long as your pictures are somewhere around the WWW, you're good. Flickr, Picasaweb, Instagram etc. are all fine.
- Your pin doesn't have to be a tutorial. As long as it can be an inspiration to someone, that's fine.
- If you have a non-English blog, that's OK. These days, with Google Translate, we can just translate the page to another language.

All right then, shall we see today's features?

If you don't know Melissa and her blog Daisy Mae Belle, run over there now. I love her crafts and the little stories behind them. Check out this beautiful chair (and visit the blog to read about her mother :) )

Gali from the Israeli blog Tafoor Alai brings us these cute warm pajamas, that I don't mind wearing even now, during the summer heat…

And MammaNene from Serger Pepper will show you 10 great serger tips for beginners. I think it's time to go and fix that rusty serger that I got from my mom!

If you were featured, feel free to grab a button!

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Reminding you that our crafty giveaway ends in less than 24 hours! Don't miss your last chance to win all these amazing goodies!

That's it for today, now go and pin your best works into the board!