When I was a kid and I was experiencing  a hard time, I would think of some future event in time to help me get through it.

By the time this test if over, track season will have started. I can make it. 
When this paper is due, it will be Thanksgiving break. I can do this. 

I lay in the PICU, staring at my bloody knee. When my knee stops bleeding, my son will be awake.
When my knee scabs over, my son will be out of the PICU and will be able to open his swollen eyes. 
When my scab gets dry, my son will get his feeding tube out. 
It sounds weird (and super gross), but it helped. 

We watched him fight. We watched him work so hard in physical therapy, even though he was scared and it hurt his body to move. It was the worst thing I had experienced. I would take the pain. I would take everything. It was torture. 
He showed me what it was to be brave. To do something when you don’t want to or think you can’t.  You do it anyway. 

And now.

He is perfect. He was alway perfect, of course. All the bones are healed. All the cracks, bruises and scrapes are repaired. The human body is even more marvelous that I realized. He jumps higher, laughs louder and tells even more silly jokes than before. I asked him last night if he remembers his stay at the hospital.
Not really, he tells me.
The remaining mark of his accident is his right front tooth is slight lower the left one.
To celebrate today, we took him to his favorite restaurant. We got him his favorite dessert, cheesecake (good choice!). We bought him a Paw Patrol toy he has been eyeing and doing extra chores to earn. Labor Day will forever be a special day for us. Not to remember the tragedy of the accident, but to remember how blessed we are, that family is the most important thing, and that THIS KID IS AWESOME. 

Happy Labor Day, 

The post One Year Later appeared first on Whistle and Lively.

I am loving nautical stuff right now. I am in the middle of redecorating my bathroom with nautical decor and its so fun. I am pretty sure that is the only room I can get away with it since I am super decor-challenged. I saw this cute little stool at a thrift shop for 5 bucks a few weeks back and I thought I would see what I could do with it. You can’t do nautical without stripes! And you can’t do stripes without FrogTape Textured Surfaces®, which I will show you how to use in this FrogTape how-to.

What you need: (affiliate links)
– Surface for project
– Frog Tape Textured Surfaces
– Paint
– Permanet Vinyl (optional)
– Transfer Paper (optional) 

I loved how the gray white-wash turned out. I think I will definitley be utilizing this paint techinque again in the future! It makes painting a breeze. Before I began, I gave it a good sanding with my palm sander. Then, I covered the whole stool with a white wash paint mixture with light gray paint. I did 2 parts water, 1 part paint, and two coats. After it dried (it literally took less than a minute), I sanded it just a tad to distress it a bit.

  From here, I taped off my stripes. You can do any width you want, I went with a thinner stripe. To make things more accurate, I measured each side of the open space between the tape to get more accurate lines. 

What makes FrogTape® so amazing is the PaintBlock®. It forms an inpenetrable barrier, so the lines are perfect every time. I have used this product a few times, and everytime I am amazed at how pristine and sharp my lines are. To begin, be sure to dampen the tape. Take a slightly wet washcloth and firmly run it along your tape edges. Then, attach the brush top and work the PaintBlock® in cirlces along your tape line.  Make sure to be thorough. It also helps to brush it cleanly and not leave globs to dry. Let it dry for 15 minutes.  

Once it’s dry, you are free to paint! I did two thin coats. You don’t want to make it too thick.

When you are done painting, let it completely dry before pulling off the tape. Then comes the fun part! It is so satisfying pulling of the strips and having a perfect line. It’s kind of like pulling the plastic off the screen of a new phone.

So satisfying.

To give it a more nautical look, I wrapped hemp cord around each leg. Start by putting a dab of hot glue on the back of one leg and glue the end of your cord. Contintue to wrap until you have wrapped a few inches. Add a second dab of glue to hold the cord in place.

To finish it, I cut an anchor shape on my Sillhouette cutting machine out of gray permanent vinyl and applied it to the top of my stool.

This was a super fun weekend project. Now I have a stool that fits my nautical-themed bathroom (well, soon-to-be nautical-themed bathroom), and it was made so much easier with FrogTape®!

So what can you do with FrogTape® if you knew you would have perfect lines every time?

The post Nautical Stool Refinish appeared first on Whistle and Lively.

So that’s what I did.

To begin, download this feather bundle. I used the large and medium-sized feathers. Since I wanted the two feathers to be different colors, I had to cut the large ones first and then the medium ones second on a different color of paper.

Add the feather bundle to a new project,  group it’s pieces together (when you ungroup, for some reason the feathers are in pieces, too) and delete the rest the medium and small ones. Make it as large as you want, my entire feather was about 5”, which ended up being about  3 1/2 inches long when I trimmed off the stem. I also grabbed the side and made the feather a bit wider.

Next, you want to add a hole so you can add your feather to a chain later. Click the circle tool and add a small circle at the bottom of the feather.

Next, click and drag a box around the feather and group the circle and feather together.

Now, you need to copy and paste three times so you have four feathers. Since you will be gluing the feathers back-to-back, you need to flip two of your feathers horizontally so they will match up.

Now you are ready to cut! I cut on the Patterned Paper setting, but turned the speed way down to 3. Because these feather are small and delicate, they come out much better if you slow your machine down.

After your large feathers are cut, bring up your feather file again and add it to your existing project.  Delete all of them except the medium one. Position it over your first large one and adjust it until it is the size you would like.

Then, delete the large ones, and repeat the circle and copy/paste instructions. Remember to flip two feathers horizontally so they will match up when you glue them.

Once you have your feathers cut, you can glue them back to back. Match up the ones that go together and glue them with a glue stick.

After mine were glued, I trimmed off the stem and a couple of the more fragile, wispy pieces near the end.

Once everything is dry, you can put your earrings together. Start with a chain. Mine was 11 links long. No matter what length you choose, make sure your chain has an odd number of links.

Take a jump ring and attach it on the middle ring. The two sides of the chain will hang down.

Attach your jump rings to the ends of the chain (3 jump rings total). Attach the earring to the middle jump ring, and attach the large feather to one end of the chain, and the medium feather to the other end.

Just like that!

These earrings are so fun for summer!

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