Made By Me Monday: Wrapped Earbuds

I know I'm not the only one who has neatly put their MP3 player earbuds neatly in your pocket or bag and to only take them out later and they're a knotted mess.  This not only has happened to me everytime but the worse time was when I accidentally washed my earbuds in my gym jacket and it took me FOREVER to untangle them. See...

So of course while perusing Pinterest I find a DIY on how to prevent your earbuds from tangling by wrapping the cords with embroidery thread.  Hmmm....makes sense since it will make the cords thicker and the rubber won't "stick" to each other. The one site that intrigued me was Kiss Me Awake's post that does a friendship bracelet type of weave AND she included a video tutorial!  How cool is that? 

I had never weaved friendship bracelets before as a kid so I felt a little intimidated trying this one out but after watching the tutorial it actually helped out a lot. I got my supplies from my toy store Joanns and got going a few days ago.  Once I got started it got pretty easy to do and started coming out pretty cool. I had hoped to finish the whole thing today but I still have one side of the earbud to finish.  These kids kept demanding my attention LOL...well my lil manapua kept running a fever since I think he's starting to teethe and has been super grouchy and only wants mommy. 

Go and check out Kiss Me Awake's tutorial on the how to and here's how mines turned out so far.

Made By Me Monday: Lei Me

The craft of the week that I made were LEIS!  Our good friend's nephew that we've known since he was in fifth grade just graduated from Heald College the other week.  So of course the Hawaii tradition is to make leis for the graduate whether they be made with real flowers or artificial items.  Since we can't really get the kind of fresh flowers we can get back home in Hawaii, I make do with artificial items.  I only had a week to make several leis so I went with a fun fur yarn lei, ribbon lei, and a net stuffed lei.

I'm fortunate enough to have my mom ship me items that I can't get here in Oregon (which is quite often because she LOVES me ;p) and a few months ago when I was on a lei making frenzy she sent me several packages of net tubing for stuffing items to make a lei.

For this particular graduate I knew one of his favorite alcoholic drinks so I bought mini bottles of Maker's Mark Whiskey, several packages of saimin, and bananas.  Why the saimin and bananas?  Weird combo yah I know.  I had originally wanted to stuff the lei with whiskey and travel sized packets of Tylenol or Advil as a joke in case he had a hangover after his graduation party.  It seemed a little boring to have just have those two items in the lei.  So I asked my hubby what hangover relief items could I put into the lei and he said SAIMIN. Oh DUH why didn't I think of that. 

Then a few nights later on Facebook the graduate posted that he was preparing to hydrate the night before his party and I jokingly said to keep the Gatorade handy.  So he replied saying that bananas help with easing his tummy (why? I really don't know), so that gave me another idea to opt for the bananas instead of the Tylenol or Advil. So here how this lei turned out.

The second lei I made was a fun fur/fuzzy yarn lei with kukui nuts and shells.  This was my first time making this type in particular since I've only done the whole strand of just yarn. I like it a lot so I'll for sure make more of these in the future.  Here's how this one turned out.



The last lei I made is one I've learned how to do from all the way back in high school some *cough* 15 years or so ago *cough*.   This ones so simple and relatively cheap on the materials.  I chose to make a four stranded lei of red, yellow, green, and black (Rasta in colors).  I could easily make this in several hours but for some reason my two kids demand my attenion LOL. Here's the end result.

AND here's the graduate rockin' the leis.  CONGRATS JOSH!!

Made by Me Monday: Sponge Water Toy

Today marks the first installment of "Made by Me Monday", it will be posts about things that I have made craft wise, food wise, and such. Hopefully this will be a weekly thing so that kind of gives me the incentive to try out one easy craft project a week.

So the first easy craft project that I'm going to share are the cheap and easy sponge water toys. I found it on Pinterest via Makeandtakes website. This easy craft project ONLY needed THREE materials that you can easily find at your local dollar store. I already had two of the three items at home and I bought a 10-pack of sponges from the local dollar store. I have yet to take pictures of the lil booger in action with the sponge toys. This past weekend would have been perfect but it was too hot for him to play in the backyard since we don't have good shading. I'll have to update this post when I do have pics of that. In any case here's the how to.

SPONGE WATER TOY

Supplies:
Sponges
Zip ties
Scissors

Directions:
-Cut sponges lengthwise into threes.
-Gather sponge pieces and wrap zip tie around them in the middle
-Pull on zip tie to tighten.
-Snip off excess portion of zip tie
-HAVE FUN!!