DIY Notebook Makeover

Today I want to show you how you can turn an ordinary spiral notebook into a really neat personalized notebook.

All you need are a cheap spiral notebook, some scrapbook paper, pliers, a small hole punch, scissors, and a pen or pencil.

Start with the spiral notebook (any size). I chose a small memo notebook.

Take the pliers and carefully unbend the wire at one end of the notebook. It helps to make it curved. Then simply spin the wire until it twists out of the notebook pages leaving the pages completely undone.

 

Using the cover page as a template copy the shape and holes onto a piece of scrapbook paper. Cardstock works the best, but I've also glued a thinner piece to the cover when I didn't have cardstock paper on hand.

 

You can get creative and also use the cover to make decorative divider pages, too.

Another thing you can add are envelopes for storage. I found a great envelope template here that I shrunk in size to fit my notebook.

Here's one that I made out of cardstock scrapbooking paper.

Next, line everything up and punch holes in all the pages you are going to add to your notebook.  It helps to use a pen/pencil and copy the location of the holes from your cover page as a template. Notice the punch is smaller at 1/8" circle size not a standard hole punch size.

Once everything is punched,  just line it all up in the order you want it and fish the wire back through the holes. Continue to twist the wire until it reaches the opposite end. Then using the pliers gently bend the wire down to stop the pages from unwinding.

All done.

You can get really creative by adding tabs, pockets, divider pages and more. Plus, this works on any type of spiral notebook, so long as you can bend the wire and put it back once you're done. It's a wonderful way to decorate all those $.10 notebooks from Walmart during Back to School sales that so many of us bought.

I'd love to see how you decorate your notebooks. Feel free to share by leaving a comment below.

DIY Tutorials to Keep Your Clothes Looking Like New

Keep your clothes looking good and lasting longer with these wonderful tutorials.

By taking a couple minutes and searching the web you can find solutions to almost any clothing problem. Sweater that shrunk in the dryer, a button that fell off, a popped seam, etc.



Learn How to Re-Attach A Button


How to Sew a Torn Seam


Altering or Fixing a Hem


See How to Remove Food/Drink Stains from Clothing


Fix a Separated Zipper


Fix a Sweater that Shrunk

DIY Halloween Costume Tutorials

Today I thought I would share a couple wonderful Halloween costume tutorials. Just in case your young ones haven't already decided what to dress up as for trick or treating.

1. Lego

Source

2. Donut

Source

3. Alice in Wonderland

Source

4. Octopus

Source

5. Hot Air Balloon Ride

Source

These were a couple of our favorites. What is your favorite, most creative costume?

Personalized Game of Guess Who

My kids had received 2 games of Guess Who, a while back, in a kid's meal from one of their favorite restaurants. They played it once and then it was left sitting for a couple months. Normal unfortunately for kid's meal toys in my house.

I was trying to find fun activities for my kids while we are on vacation next week and wanted to surprise them with a personalized game for them to play.

We had a portable version of the game, but you could easily do this with the regular size game and it would work much better. These pictures are so tiny, but I made it work.

I made one with all our immediate family members. I also made one that has a bunch of Harry Potter characters because we are big Harry Potter fans.

I collected all the photos I wanted to use in a folder on my computer than selected the ones to print. Then I chose "Contact Sheet" or "Index" on the print settings. I will print out a bunch of thumbnail size pictures. I still needed to shrink them a bit so I printed the page out 55% instead of 100% size. You can obviously make the photos whatever size you need.

Hope this inspires some of you to create your own personalized games for your family.

Pics of the Week - November 7, 2012

Good morning everyone! Every Wednesday I share my week in pics. Just for fun.

This past weekend we made quite a bit of progress on our front porch. Our front porch posts were actually rotting away and needed to be replaced and the concrete was cracked in a couple places. So in exchange for a bunch of work one of hubby's friends paid him in vinyl decking (his business). Bonus!

The pic above is of the framing that took an entire weekend with lots of supervisors. LOL!

Here's how it looks with the vinyl deck boards finished except right near the front door. We needed to add a small step to close a gap under the door so no more critters got in the house. Don't get me started on the critters. Yuck!!!

The porch looks really long from this angle. Bowling anyone?!  I'm really thinking about changing out the wrought iron table and chairs in the pic. Maybe get a cute little bench to sit on or even just paint this set another color. Any suggestions?

We are still working on the porch, and next we are going to add a railing to the entire front and one side. Leaving the driveway side open.  I will post a pic when it's all done. Then lots of landscaping. Go figure I love gardening but hate landscaping.

Anyways, while hubby, my dad and I were working on Sunday my kids decided to ride their bikes. Here is my youngest on her brother's bike. It's a bit big for her, so not 5 minutes later I'm administering first aid. Just a scraped up hand - no biggie. Thank goodness.
 
I hope your week is going along well. Bye for now!