ABC-board thingy ... with tutorial

As promised finally a proper post again. I am sorry for so much quietness. After my last proper post first my little one was sick. Then there was so much to do that there was hardly any time for blogging at all. And then the Japan-thing happened ... and I felt so weird. Whenever I sat down to write a post I could not ... somehow whatever I was going to write felt so unimportant ... I guess I was just in a very strange mood.

I actually got a few things that I wanted to share already for a while. I war not quite sure where to start ...

So first I show you something that I made for my daughter. 

She is 5 and she know all the letters already for a while. She just started to read properly a bit ago. But even though she knew all the letters she could never remember the alphabet. I was not too worried about that - but still I figured if I could make something where she could SEE the alphabet that might help. She has an alphabet poster ... but I wanted something that would show the alphabet in a row. So I made this quick and fun project

I made an ABC -board

Or what would you call it?

A rail? Or ... I am a bit lost about a name.

Anyway, it was fun. And quick. And you do not need much. And - it worked. Ever since I hung up that thing in her room she knows the whole alphabet. In order! :-)

Am so proud!

And happy!

So if you happen to have a kiddo that is about to learn the ABC and want your own ABC board thingy ... I wrote down how I did it.

This is what you need:

- wooden letters

- acrylic paint

- a long wooden board

- glue

And this is what I did:

1. I used really cheap self-adhesive wooden letters that I scored in the 1Euro section of one discounter. But you can of course use really fancy ones, too. 

If you use big letters I would recommend sanding them. But to be honest - I did not do that. Do not tell on me! 

2. After you did - or did not - sand your letters ;-) you paint them. Easy! And fun!

After you put a coat of paint on them let them dry. 

3. If you like your letters that way you can already hop on to step 4. But I wanted to make mine a bit more colorful so I added some more paint and ended up with this:

That was SO MUCH FUN!

Let dry again.

4. Get your wooden board and - depending on what it looks like - you might want to put some paint on it, too. After it is dry you glue the letters in place. 

And that is it! 

DONE!

Admire your work a bit more .... ;-)

By the way, this project is really easy to customize.

You could hang the letters pretty much any other way you can think of. 

I actually had this idea that you could make letters and put them into colorful circles to the wall. Kinda randomly scattered around. It would of course not help with learning the alphabet - but it would sure be a really cute decoration! If you like letters that is. 

I do! :-)

And you could play "I spy" with letters ... I figure that would be fun ...

Oh, and here is another treat for you. I found this a while ago and thought it was cute. 

Printable ABC-Poster

To me it is not much use yet as my daughter is not learning English yet. 

But once she is I think I will print it. So cute!

Hope you enjoyed this!

Have a lovely day!!!

I am sharing this here:

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Cute online advent calendar for kids

If you need some things to do during advent for your kiddos - check out this

cute online advent calendar

Each day you open a door and it leads you to fun printables, craft ideas and such. I am sure I will not do all of them with my daughter. But definitely some. Today there is a cute snowman "find the difference" picture which I know little bear will love. There is other stuff, too! 

I know where I will be clicking each day ... ;-)

Cutest Free Sewing Clip-Art Set

Picture from Tricia Rennea

Is this cute or what?

If you like this - or my blog banner - you have to go and check out 

Tricia Renneas blog.

She has all sorts of cute printables on her blog. And she offers many of them for free. Like the set above. (It is available in another color scheme, too.) So go on over and check her out! 

She has not only cute clip-arts - there are also coloring pages (little bear loves them), templates for sewing or embroidering, paper dolls ... I am loving the patterned papers, little notes and labels. If I had a color printer ... well, I would be printing ALOT off her blog. ;-)

I may be a bit biased as she made my lovely blog banner - which I still adore after so much time! - but you have to go and see for yourself. If you do like cute little images you will certainly not regret it!

Have a great Sunday!

Get inspired for Christmas

Just a really quick post ... if you want to get into the Christmas spirit 

- I know it is early. But you gotta start early to make all those presents! - 

go and check out the

Inspired Ideas Christmas E-Magazine

I always love things with pretty photos. And there are many of them in there! And a whole bunch of cute crafty ideas with instructions! I really had fun going through them and can not wait to actually make some ...

Awards for your kids (and others)

While I am still trying to sort out my computer ... (GRRRRR) and am not able to upload any photos ... here a link that I just RE-discovered. (So at least there is some good in having to tidy up my computer.) If you want to print out awards for your kids there is a great site where you find all kinds of reward templates for free. You can add a name and other stuff as well. There are even "romantic" ones there ... oh, I should have rediscovered them before Valentine's Day! Love this one and this one. On second thought - my husband might probably not be AS thrilled as I would be about an award ... well, maybe it would depend on what I write on there ...

Cute worksheets for kids

Last week my daughter was sick and had to stay home all week. So I REALLY needed something new to at least keep her busy for a bit. While going through my many saved links I came across this site of free worksheets. If you don't know it yet and your kid is into worksheets - mine is and I have no idea why - check it out! It is full of different cute worksheets and all sorted by theme and age.

We did some arithmetic (because we speak German I can unfortunately not use the language worksheets so we had to focus on the numbers). That was great because the last couple of weeks she is totally into adding things.
These dog counting worksheets were a big hit with my daughter. They even have a couple foreign language worksheets. Imagine my joy when I found these German number worksheets!

Btw, if you put the printed out worksheets into page protectors your child can fill them out again and again with a dry erase marker.

Making word clouds

Today I want to share another great find. On this site you can make totally cool "word clouds". You just type any text or words into it ... and it generates a word cloud. You can change the font, the colours, and also have several options to change what it will look like. I made the cloud above just in a matter of a few minutes to illustrate what I mean by "word cloud". The theme ... well, I am usually already really tired when posting anything because it's rather late ... and therefore this was all I could think of! :-)
But you could easily do other stuff. I am really excited to have found this. I think you can make really great looking gifts using this. Or stuff to decorate your own home. You could make some art (picture) using favourite lyrics or a poems ... or another meaningful text ... or just put some other words together that fit a certain theme ... pair it with a photo or picture ... I really can't wait to have a bit more time and play around with this!
Oh, there is a gallery on this site, too. So you can get some inspiration there ... if you are not yet convinced ... :-)
By the way, I found this site thanks to this blog.

Email button

I just found a nice tutorial on how to add an email button to your blog:
Just something I made

If you don't have an email button yet but would like to have one - check it out! It is not only a totally simple tutorial on how to add one - but there are also several cute graphics to choose from! And of course you are very welcome to try my new email button! :-)

Make your own font

I have not been able to post anything the last days. Work was just crazy ... the last two days I stayed up very late - TOO late - to prepare a presentation I had to hold today ... and now I am simply tired. Normally I would say, well, at least it's weekend now ... but I have to work tomorrow, too. :-(

But today I found a really cool site I just had to try - and share with you! And I think I'm going to play around with this site the next couple days! Check this out:
With yourfonts.com you can make your own fonts!!! You can make a font with your handwriting or ... whatever you want! Endless possibilities! And it is free! I love free stuff. :-)

I just tried it with my handwriting and it is really cool to type on your computer and see your handwriting appear! :-)

New blog picture

I added a new picture on my blog - the one with the mouse and the cupcake. I think it is so totally cute! I got it from Tricia-Rennea and her beautiful blog. She has so many really cute pictures and very nice lists and other printable stuff. You can find the mouse and cake picture here.

Thanks, Tricia, that I am allowed to put the picture on my blog!

Sugar Cookie Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

I just found this site - and it looks so cute! It would be perfect for my daughter when she plays with her play kitchen which she got for christmas!

Sugar Cookie Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!