elastic laces

This is what you do when you're lazy and you want to buy your two year old cute shoes with laces, but you don't want to tie them for him two hundred times a day.
{sorry some of the pic's are blurry, I was trying to do this with a two year old and a puppy running circles around me... guess I shouldn't have been working on the floor}

1. You'll need some elastic and a needle and thread.

2. I cut my elastic about a foot long and Jackson wears a size 8 shoe. You may need to adjust the length for bigger sizes.

3. Thread the elastic through the holes like this:

4. And then like this:


5. Keep going and end up like this:



6. Then take the "tongue" and pull it through the middle of the elastic:



7. Your shoe should look like this:

8. Now you're going to stitch the two ends of elastic together. Make sure you stitch well so it won't come apart when you stretch it open for those chubby toes. (Jackson has really wide and chubby feet)

And there you have it! Cute chucks without the laces! Like my model's cute chubby legs?

Wall art under $10

I found these semi-ugly wall hangings at HL on sale for $3.20 a piece (they were $15.99 reg.). I bought three of them thinking that I could transform them into something pretty. (They had these weird crowns on them with some little sayings, not my style)


So I brought them home, taped around the edges with masking tape, and painted a couple coats of some latex paint that I had laying around. (You'll see why I had that paint laying around in a future post.)

Then I looked around for some inspiration. Etsy is a great place to find some (inspiration). I drew out my picture and painted with acrylic paints.

I thought I would make one picture using the three seperate hangings.





I like the way it turned out... especially since it all cost under $10. Now I just need a house to hang them in. Hopefully we'll get that call soon.