Hey guys! Today I want to share with you how I made the presents I gave everyone this year!

But first, since I claim to be a food and fitness blog, let’s go over some food and fitness, shall we?

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with trying actual recipes for brussels sprouts-you know, instead of just in the microwave. We made Christine‘s Garlic Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts. They were delicious-the balsamic gave them a wonderfully sweet tang, which was definitely different than I’ve had before. We had these with leftover Christmas chicken. And ketchup. Duh.

 

This morning I woke up way too early for a spin class, and followed that with an interval treadmill run. I did the same workout last week after spin, and the good news is it felt much easier this week! I did one mile at an 8:00 pace, since this is about race pace for my 5k and I just need to get used to pacing myself at that speed. Then, I did 10 rounds of 2 minutes at 7:30 and 2 minutes walking. I covered about 5 miles in total.

Post workout breakfast-pumpkin spice Siggi’s! How cool is that?? I wish I had discovered this in my crazy pumpkin phase!

Aaaand lunch-after a much needed nap-leftover chili with added spinach.

And leftover blueberry coffee cake.

Ok-now for the crafting!

I used this article for the instructions, but I’ll elaborate a bit more.

What you need-canvas, mod podge, sandpaper (optional), black paint, brushes, foam brush. Not too hard-one stop shopping!

First, chose a picture and crop or edit as needed, and print to fit the canvas size (I used 8×8 canvases). This step was especially hard and frustrating for me because our printer flat out stinks, and 5 different ink cartridges had to be cartridges. The fact that that thing even has 5 cartridges says enough about it!

Cut the picture, preferably with a paper cutter, to fit the canvas exactly. 

Rub the canvas with sandpaper, and then use the foam brush to brush with mod podge.

Place your picture on the canvas and let dry for about an hour. 

Once dry, use the foam brush to brush the top with mod podge.

The avocado was my tester photo:

Then, paint the sides of the canvas with black acrylic paint and let dry. 

There are several different types of mod podge-for the tester photo (the avocado), I used matte finish, but I used glossy finish for the actual gifts. They have various other types of finish-even sparkly finish! I think I liked the look of the matte a little better, and would probably use that in the future. Here are the finished products!

Overall, I was very happy with how they came out! My roommate and I are thinking about making some food pictures for our walls.