Crafts

Dyed Valentines for Kids

February 12, 2013

I don’t know about you, but we’ve been working hard on our Valentine’s over at Casa La Allen. It is Finn’s 1st official V-Day at school this year and he is responsible for bringing a Valentine (or as I like to say “Valentimes”) for each one of his classmates. Making Valentines involves a lot of stress and excitement for Finn, because he’s a ball of anxiety just like his mom. He was desperate to learn exactly how we were going to make Valentines for all his buddies having never done it before. Not to worry little man, mom’s got you covered. We have a decent amount of craft and art supplies around our house, and all I knew was that we were going to make these things ourselves, obviously. Finn’s has a limited attention span when it comes to arts and crafts and I wanted him to feel like he contributed to each one of these Valentine’s. So I thought of the easiest thing I could possibly think of; painting coffee filters with water colors. It’s hard to screw this up (even if your 4) and it has a pretty cool tie dyed effect. Gus was even able to help [...]

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Tutorial : Macrame Lawn Chair

August 6, 2012

Macrame Chairs! Hello everybody and welcome to the first ever Henhouse video tutorial. I know crazy, right? I’m not super good at these sorts of things so please let me know if I am missing any vital information. In the below vid you will see the looping method that is key to weaving a macrame chair. I tried to make the pics as thorough as possible so you would get the trick. Video Tutorial Here are a few other vital tips. Pick up a macrame tutorial book from ebay or etsy. They don’t make them anymore and this is probably the easiest place to find them. What’s that you say? “Where do I get all the other supplies I need?” Well my friends, the answer is simple, this macrame superstore has everything you need including cord, giant plastic crochet hooks and even aluminum chair frames. Cool Patterns! Lastly, if any of you crazies attempt making your own cool chairs you gotta show me how they turned out, I’d love to see your results. Hope you enjoy this one! Related posts:Sunburst Afghan RemixTutorial : I Made an Ombré Pedal Ca…Macrame Chairs!Tutorial : DIY Grommet Curtains

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Tutorial : Present Poms

July 11, 2012

Poms! Hey e’rebody! I don’t know about you but I have a TON of wonderful people in my life who have July birthdays. If you didn’t know, July is a super trendy month to have a birthday ;) I was having trouble wrapping some gifts earlier this week for Finn’s 4th birthday. Bows were in short supply so I decided to whip up some yarn poms and use them in place of bows. I’m loving the way they turned out. I’ve been totally crushing on the poms my friend Crystal makes for ALL Knitwear hats. Her poms are super cute, so cute that they have infiltrated my brain. I luvre them. So, when I was trying to wrap presents on the fly with kraft paper (aka brown paper bags) I went straight for the yarn bag to try and spiff it up a bit and ended up with these cute pom bows. In case you don’t know how to make a pom, I thought I’d share a quick tutorial with you. Now you can liven up your July bday gifts too. Trace and cut out two donuts I mashed together a few different tutorials but took the most [...]

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Macrame Chairs!

June 22, 2012

Hey-O Happy Freitag (that’s German for Friday) everybody. Guess what I am doing right now? Sitting in the waiting room of a hospital while Jeff gets a knee surgery for a torn Meniscus. We’re calling him “Young Menisc” from now on. He totally injured himself a few weeks back when Joel and Katrina were in town. I guess casually drinking beers in the backyard can result in knee surgery a month later, so be warned. Anyway, I’d like to share with you my new favorite craft project: macrame lawn furniture. This combines two of my favorite things; sitting on chairs in the backyard and craft projects, so you can see why I was drawn to it. It really all started a long time ago. My Grandpa’s craft was making macrame chairs out of colorful cord and discarded aluminum frames. He actually gave us two of the chairs as our wedding present, a totally sweet gift. We use them all the time and totally love the crazy patterns. My Grandpa has since passed away but his chairs remind me of him every time we get them out :) My Grandpa’s patterns are a bit more serious than mine, or at least [...]

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Sunburst Afghan Remix

May 17, 2012

So, I couldn’t resist making Beak & Cam’s baby an afghan, just like the sunburst blanket I made for Elsa when she was borned. Believe me, I tried to resist, I knew it was going to take a lot of time and I probably should’ve started back in the cold days of winter. It’s totally my duty to bestow blankets on all the cool babies of the world. I couldn’t let Cam’s baby girl not have some sunburst lovin’ too, so here we go! You probably wouldn’t have guessed it but my first post ever on the blog was about the granny square afghan I made for Elsa, and to this day it is the most popular post on the blog, crazy huh? I guess I got some good SEO vibes on that one. Anyway, since I always get tons of questions on it, and since I can’t remember all the details, I thought I’d get more into for this version of the Granny square. For all you crochet nerds out there. My pattern is 90% based off the one seen here by priscillascrochet.net but in the fourth round I double crochet in each crochet from the 3rd round. In [...]

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