Whirl wind couple of weeks!

I was going to blog earlier today while I was at work but I got started on putting up pictures of various events from the past couple of months.  Okay, let's be real.  I haven't put pictures on Facebook since before April unless it's been from my phone.  I'm not sure why or how it happened but I couldn't read any RAW files from my camera.  It was stressing me out, for sure!  There were some pretty BIG events in those images- events I couldn't get back.  So, anyway, I got them all fixed up this past week.  As it turns out, I just needed to download something from Canon.  YAY.

So, what have we been up to?  Pretty big stuff!

We got back a little less than a week ago from the happiest place on Earth.  We went for Anna's birthday and we took a friend with us.  I used to babysit Riley when she was a baby and she was the PERFECT friend for Anna to have with her!

Prior to that, I spent the week cleaning, packing, doing laundry and I had a few projects up my sleeves for the girls.  I made them tie dyed Mickey t-shirts.  They were SO cool!  So, I thought I'd do a quick tutorial.  What you need is a t shirt, sharpie markers in your choice of colors, rubbing alcohol with a high alcohol content (mine is 91% I think), a medicine dropper and a dish that is big enough that the item you're tracing fits inside it but not so big you can't get it in the shirt and a hard book that you don't care about messing up.  I used a black yearbook for this because you can't see the sharpie marks.

First print out a shape.  We did a Mickey shape for obvious reasons.  Put a book in between the layers of the t shirt so that the sharpie doesn't bleed through.  Then put dots all around the outside of the shape.  I used 3 different colors on each shirt. I did pink, blue and purple on Riley's and it was AWESOME.  Anna's (below) is green, purple and blue but hers was a little dark.  I wish I'd done blue, green and pink instead. 

There shouldn't be much space between the dots of sharpie.  AND, be very careful you don't get sharpie anywhere you don't want it!  When you're done, you get to do the fun part.  I'd seen this on pinterest before in various ways and Anna had made a shirt with circles on it at school last year.

The next step is to insert the bowl or dish in between the shirt layers.  You can take out the book once you get it in there.  I had see this done with dixie cups but that wouldn't work here because of the size of it.  Initially, I used the biggest bowl we had since it was the same shape as the opening of the dixie cup BUT I only had 1 big bowl so I used a baking dish for the second shirt and it worked fine!  Use the medicine dropper to drop alcohol onto the sharpie marks and you will see it start to change pretty quickly.  It's cool to watch!  The bowl/dish is there to catch any alcohol that may drip through.  Wait till the shirt is completely dry before moving it or your sharpie may spread to places you don't want it to.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of this because I was moving FAST that day. When they are dry, you can wash in cold and it should be set from that point on.

With Anna and Riley's, I also wanted to personalize them a bit more.  I printed out an A and a R onto iron on transfer paper and cut them out.  I did a small Mickey on the front of their shirt (in the pocket region) and a larger Mickey on the back.  So on the small one, I ironed on their first initial.  Then on Anna's, I added "Birthday Girl" under her Mickey on the front and the year went on both of their shirts in the middle of Mickey's head on the back.

This is what the front of Anna's looked like.

...and the back.

We got a lot of complements on them.  And, the girls loved them!  I think they wore this shirt twice while we were gone.


I've got some more updates to do but it's about the trip and I'm sure it will get lengthy so I'll leave you with this for now!  What other ways do you think you could do tie dye t shirts?  I'm thinking Christmas trees might be cool!