Monday, February 28, 2011

Hellooooo Out There!

You've probably noticed I've been MIA lately. The last two weeks have been a little bit chaotic and a little bit relaxing. Let me explain what I mean...

Chaotic because:
With three children in the house sickness spreads like wildfire. We've been sharing coughs, fevers, and sniffles. Also, teething and loose teeth have been making my children very cranky. By the time bedtime rolls around we're ALL exhausted. Teething...A is getting molars and M is getting her "big girl teeth". She hasn't lost any teeth yet and she has a dentist appointment tomorrow to see if they need to be pulled.

Relaxing because:
For the last week we haven't had any school. We L-O-V-E the "year round" school year. Having week long breaks with a sprinkling of 3 and 4 day weekends spread throughout the year is wonderful. Because of this I will periodically be MIA.

PS. I haven't forgotten about the tutorials-the dress in particular-and I have a couple more recipes that I'll be posting about soon. I hope your Monday is going well and you don't have a case of the "Mondays". Have a great week!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made a little something for one of my tiny Valentine's. She took it to school with her, but I was able to get a couple of pics before she left.




This cute little mailbox was made out of a repurposed Cascade Complete All in 1 Pacs, Phosphate Free, 48-Count Containercontainer. I spray painted the lid with Krylon Fusion "Fairytale Pink". Then wrapped the container with some sparkly white scrap fabric which I hot glued in place. And then decorated it with some felt I had in my stash. The flag was cut from a red paper plate that I "laminated" with packing tape.

Total cost: $0.00
How cute was that for her very first Valentine's Party? Pretty adorable.

I hope this makes it on the "to do" list for some of you for next year. xoxo

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

It Wasn't the Best...

It was actually the worst

I'm talking about my Versatile Valentine's Dress. I got the least amount of votes, so I was eliminated in the first round. Darn! Even though I was eliminated, Amy is doing a feature on me at her site today. You can check it out at Naptime Crafters. It was hard finding a picture of me that I liked that I wanted to submit to her.

As sad as it was to see I was the very worst entry, I'm not going to let that bother me. I've got 3 new projects going right now. When I get them prioritized and finished I'll be posting them. 

Here are some hints to what they are:
Tutorial for dress.
Valentine mailbox.
Child size house.
(In no particular order)

Have a great day/week! And I'll talk/type to you soon. :-)

Friday, February 4, 2011

Versatile Valentine Dress

Today the voting begins for AMERICAN CRAFTER so make sure you go vote. If you don't vote at least go over and check out Amy's Blog it is filled with all sorts of fun projects and cute pics.

Here is my entry for the contest this week... I'm hoping it's good enough to continue on.

Theme:



As you can see this one dress can be worn MANY different ways. Making it perfect for everyone, every occasion and every body type.

We've all done projects with the kids in mind, this is something for the GROWN-UPS.

Valentine's Date

Casual and Conservative

Flirty and Fun

Color block Beach Party

This is the back view of the first picture showing the twist down the middle.


Here is a close-up of the strapless, I'm hoping you can see the straps and how they are wrapped around many times and then tied in a knot at the side.

Here are a few ways my inspiration shows how to wrap it:

 And here are some suggestions for styling:


This dress is a skirt with extremely long straps attached that you wrap and tie many different ways. It has only one seam around the waist, making this a very simple and quick project. From the beginner sewer to the seasoned seamstress this dress can be done in under an hour. My inspiration, Butter by Nadia, was $246. My final cost was less than $40. That leaves me $200 to go spend on shoes right? ;-)

I'm off to make a cream colored one and a red one. Oh and a blue one and... and... and. By the time I'm done with all of them I should be able to have a tutorial for you (I warn you now though-if I do a tutorial please excuse my sewing terminology, do-dad and thingamajig and other silly words will probably be in it.)

Have a wonderful weekend and keep your fingers crossed for me.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

A new place for spices...

This post was prompted by my husband's comment the other day about my Christmas gift from him- "I can't believe you haven't posted about your spice rack yet."

So to show him some love, here you go. :-x

Here is the before shot of my "spice cabinet"

Packed in nice & tight and I ALWAYS needed the one in the back. So I would have to unload half of the spices in order to get the one I wanted.

After hearing me complain about this for a while he told me to pick out a spice rack for Christmas. Well, that was easier said than done. I wanted a spice rack that didn't take up too much space, could fit on that shelf if I wanted it to, came with empty-not labeled containers, and held more than 24 spices... the search began. I thought I would never find one that would fit the bill.

I came across a couple that I liked but didn't love. And by now you know me-I don't like to spend a lot of money on something unless I absolutely LOVE it.

Then I came across this...it was what I was looking for.
But even on sale-NO WAY!-this was well out of my price range.

Then we got to brainstorming...what about regular test tubes and a test tube holder. And that is just what we did.


We ordered the biggest test tube we could that would fit in the holder.


Josh made labels on the P-Touch while I filled the tubes. I wanted clear labels, but they pretty much disappeared when we put them on. So...


I also made a dummy sheet to go on the inside of the cabinet door.


So far it works great. I love the industrial look so much that I don't think it will end up in the cabinet after all.


Also, I have plenty of test tubes left over. I think I might double up on some of the more frequently used spices. And maybe I'll add some sprinkles and sugars from my baking supplies as well. Let me know if you would like the website he purchased these from and I'll post an update. 

PS. If you were paying close attention to the pictures you may have noticed the kiss on my thumb. That was done with my Konad set. You can find the tutorial here. My nails are ready for V-day.

UPDATE: The website that Josh used to order everything was www.lcmlab.com
17 mm Brushed Aluminum Test Tube Rack
16x150 mm Pyrex Glass Test Tubes - Single
Cork Stoppers (Size 5) - Single 
Total cost about $50

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Blizzard of 2011


The weather guys are calling this blizzard the biggest in 10-20 years. Well I know how old I am and I don't remember having this much snow in my lifetime. 

My mom used to tell stories about having so much snow they could sled off the chicken coop. It was drifted up to the roof so they would climb up and just go for it.

The snow began falling last night and it hasn't stopped yet. It's scheduled to stop around midnight tonight. They were off by a couple of hours on when it was supposed to start, so my guess it will end well after midnight.

We're heading outside to play for the day. Stay warm!

The hot chocolate will be ready when you come in. :-)