Mother's Day is right around the corner, here's 5 quick DIY gift ideas for mom and grandma...

One of the best round-ups for mom... I would love all of these. 

You're already together.  Find a photographer or DIY.

To do it all on Mother's Day, here's how:

Take a photograph of the youngest generation

With a frame of choice, take a picture of each mom holding the frame with a white sheet of paper inside of it.

Then the rest is photoshop or image editing. You can use Pixlr for free. Just import pictures on different layers, "free transform" in Photoshop and hit the CTRL key as you drag, or "free distort" in pixlr, match the corners of the photograph into the corners of the white in the frame. Upload to a professional printer to purchase prints.

To do it Prior to for a more legitimate feel:

Purchase enough matching frames to do what you want. You can always get cheap frames and spray paint them. 

Get a picture of the youngest generation. Print it up and frame it. Then schedule pictures going up a generation to the next, and print up the photograph and frame each time until you get the end result. 

Image from Moose Photography

If you can find resin animal heads to mount on a wall, spray paint them white like in this tutorial (and this photograph). 

Or you can really crafty and do a Papier Mache version, like of a Unicorn.

Make it white for a simplistic look, but you can decorate them any which way you'd like. Add flowers or rhinestones.

How cute are these? This takes the gift of fresh flowers to another level.

Tutorial Photo Source Here

You can also use adjustable duct clamps like this one.

DIY Mother's Day Journal

Happy Easter.

Here are some DIY crafty ideas for Easter Break and things to make the kids for school. 

In school, for whatever reason, kids tend to use pencils and pens a lot. Pens usually doesn't happen until an older grade, but with 3 kids in elementary school, I can vouch that the right pen or pencil can trend in the classroom.

Pencils seem to be the top party favor due to it's inexpensive nature. Doctor up some "drab" pencils with some crafting elements.

In the picture above, I used a glue gun and glue eye balls to the little puff balls and then glued them to the tip of the pencil.

Here, using a glue gun, I glued little roses to the tip of the pencil.

I was thinking a good idea might be to glue these roses to thumb tacks to put in erasers to carry from pencil to pencil, and if your kids' classroom maturity could handle such things, it's not a bad idea.

Now for pens, I have a little more room to get creative. Pencils, you have to keep the pain on it so that you can sharpen it, but pens, you can dress them up in almost anything.

In the picture above, I bought a pack of cheap gel pens with the lids. I liked the idea of a black (or matching) soft part to give me a great line to end with (as opposed to going down directly to the pen itself).

Then I took washi tape and taped vertically from the rubber edge to the top. Don't worry if any hangs on the top. Then I repeated until the pen was covered. In other attempts, I've used decorative duct tape as well, but if you want glitter, the washi tape sticks better to itself.

Then I found a flower bunch at Walmart that had butterflies and little flowers. You can use any silk flower bunch and mix and match colors with tape. I cut the flower off the stem. Now at the bottom of the flower, where it attaches to the stem, there's a little tip there like a nipple. I cut that to about 1/4 of an inch or straight flat depending on where I'm gluing it.  In the picture above, I left a little bit since I was stacking flowers.

Then I kind of arranged the pieces of flowers on the top of the pen to get an idea of exactly what I'm putting on there and where. Then, using a glue gun, I glued the flower pieces. I finished it off with the butterflies.

I decided to make Easter Sunday a picture day for the kids. The school takes awful pictures of each kid individually, and I'd rather have one picture of all 3 of my kids to give to inlaws and my mother. So Easter Day is our picture day.

With that said, I wanted something pretty for their hair. 

Using a glue gun, I glued the flowers to a hair clip. I found the hair clips at Walmart in the sewing section. BUT the problem is the glue doesn't stick to the clip well, so make sure you glue under the clip too and across like a thread of string.

This would look really nice placed over a light (like electric tea candles). Maybe cut it out on card stock.

CLICK FOR THE SOURCE

You may have some leftover Peeps. Turn them into Rice Crispie Treats...

You basically replace marshmallows with peeps on the recipe, or add a little butter to the Rice Crispies and Peeps. In this recipe, Michelle mashes them all together for a Spring Time Rainbow of Pastel, but you can separate them by color if you wish. For the full how-to, check out Baking in the Burg

You can also make Smores with them.

Easter cupcakes can make the Holiday a little more special.

This morning, my kids woke up to see the cupcakes I made for this post, and they screamed, "Happy Easter Cupcake Day Mommy!" They know Easter is next week, but it felt like a Holiday to wake up to these cupcakes.

The best part is they are Failproof. I'm kind of icing incapable, so when I say Fail Proof, I mean these cupcake decorations are easy, unless you let the kids help you. The kids can do this, but nothing is ever easier with kids.

Strawberries in Chocolate Frosting reminds me of Chocolate Covered Strawberries from our local homemade chocolate place. They are so good.

Bake strawberry flavored cupcakes as instructed on a box of cake, top with chocolate frosting and a strawberry.

For chocolate frosting tube look, I spooned chocolate frosting from a tub into a sandwich ziplock bag, and then I cut a small hole in the corner of the bag. It's messier, but so much faster than trying to use a knife.

A lot of versions of this are spinning around the interwebs, but this one is easier and doesn't require purchasing too many special things from specialty stores.

Frost cupcakes with white icing. I suggest to decorate the oreo off the cupcake first in case you mess it up and have to eat it, but take an oreo cookie, separate it like in the commercials and put it back together slightly off to make a mouth. You can probably skip this step. Then take white frosting and dot two eyes on the O's of Oreo. Place chocolate sixlets on top. Place oreo on the cupcake off center.

Then put marshmallows around the cupcake.

Easy to make rose cupcakes. It looks like more effort than it is, but it still is easier than trying to make a rose with frosting if you are me.

Tube green icing around a cupcake. For tubing, I spooned green icing into a ziplock sandwich bag and cut a small piece off a corner.

Then take a fruit roll-up and unravel it. Cut it into four strips. Take the thinnest strip and start with that. Roll it across horizontally a couple times, and then start making petals by leaving a little swag as you wrap around. With roll up, you can smoosh pieces into place, but be careful not to smoosh the flower. Keep wrapping the strips around the flower making bigger petals as you work your way around.

Cut off any access carefully at the end, but it can have like 1/4 inch stub.

Smash it into the center of the cupcake, carefully.

Frost chocolate icing around cupcakes. You want it on there thick. Here I used the ziplock sandwich bag trick mentioned earlier.

Then take two snack sized twix bars and carefully place into the frosting just a little bit. Give yourself some room between the edge and center. Just put it in just enough to hold. You want to be careful because if your cupcakes are soft, they will break the cupcake in half and droop or fall off.

Then place two marshmallows toward the edge, and frost some eyes, a nose and a mouth. You can probably also use the eyeball method in the sheep one, or purchase eyeball sugar decorations.

Frost the cupcakes in the color of your edible Easter grass, and then break the Easter grass into small pieces and smash randomly around the cupcake around the edge.

I tried keeping them long and wrap them around for more of a nest look, and they don't stay in the icing well enough for that. If you can twist the long pieces into a nest like birds off the cupcake and it stay together off the cupcake, then you could probably place it onto the cupcake that way, but I'm here to tell you birds might be smarter than humans in I would die if I had to build a nest.

Then place jelly beans in the center.

This recipe yields as much as you'd like. It's pretty simple. No need to measure anything.

Ingredients

Bananas
Sweetened Condensed Milk
Redi Whip

Instructions

1. Peel and Slice the Banana
2. Drizzle Sweet Milk over it generously
3. Top with Redi Whip

Go ahead and Pin this to your Recipes Board