Spring Has Sprung!

Well, I have been so busy keeping my other resolutions that the blog has sort of fallen to the side. I lost a bunch of weight already, and have also been in a frenzy of organizing and purging and planning new projects... Don't worry, though, I have all sorts of craftiness to share!

I finally finished and sent the Giftmas goodies for my DearSis and all her awesome family. I know, I know, I know... it's March. Last year the gifts went out in May (I think?) and I didn't even have a good excuse, so I figure I'm ahead of the game!

Also, instead of some handmade and some store bought, this year I sent all handmade gifts. Hand knitted skirts for her 3 girls,

a car caddy for the nephew,

a crocheted scrubbie mitt for my sister (which was one of the fastest things I made, so I forgot to take a picture, of course) and just a gift card for BIL - by that point, I couldn't stand making anything else. Sorry, bro. You'll get homemade brownies next year. In July. ;)

So, here it is, the first day of spring, and love is in the air! The baby lambs are frolicking in the fields, and I'm starting to see calves in the pastures and smell the scents of spring. (I seem to forget every year that the first few days that are nice enough for me to open the windows are also the first few days that are nice enough for the farmers start spreading manure.) In the spirit of love, rather than manure, I whipped up this nifty little gift pillow today!

It has a zipper down the side, and is actually two small pillows with a heart-shaped space in between for your gift to hide.

To make this, you will need:

• 4 pieces of appropriately sized fabric, 2 for lining and 2 'pretty' pieces for the outside (we'll look at how to determine the size in a minute)
• batting or fiberfill
• zipper, velcro or other fastener
• needle and thread (You can hand sew this if you want a small one, or use your sewing machine for a bigger one. A zipper foot isn't necessary, but might make your life easier.)

See? Not too complex. Of course, I made it harder than it had to be. Cuz that's what I do. Make sure you read all the way down, and check out the "What I Learned" section before attempting!

The first step is to determine what size you want your pillow to be. I had a 7" zipper on hand*, so I determined that one side of the pillow needed to be at least that long. So I made a half-heart template, making sure that the outside straight line was seven inches long. I just used a paper plate to trace the curve, cut out my template, and made a few snips here and there until it looked just right. Make sure to leave an even seam allowance!

*Had I thought just a little more, I would have realized that it could have been any size had I used Velcro instead.

The pillow itself would have been more even, and the opening seam would have been almost completely hidden, like I wanted it to be. Of course, I went right ahead and used a zipper, not even thinking about the fact that a) I have only ever sewn in a zipper once before, and b) with my limited sewing skills, there was no way I was going to be able to successfully hide a zipper in a seam. But hey, live and learn, right?

My fabric was a really soft and slinky remnant that I had picked up somewhere, perfect for a pillow, but scary for me to work with. I debated for a while, and finally decided to use the freezer paper stenciling idea and just adapted it to my needs. I cut the pattern pieces out of waxed paper, then carefully pinned and ironed the waxed paper to the fabric before cutting the fabric. Worked like a charm!

I just left the waxed paper on while I sewed the lining and outside pieces together, of course remembering to leave a small hole (in the same place on each half) for turning and stuffing.

I pinned the zipper in place on the wrong side of one half of the heart. I aligned the two hearts, and pinned the second half to the other side of the zipper. Then I flipped the pillow over and topstitched the zipper in place, and all around the outside edge on both sides.

Then I stuffed* it. Not too firmly, remember. I turned and pinned my stuffing holes, then ran another top stitch all the way around to connect the other sides, making sure to catch the raw ends of the stuffing holes in my stitches. Unzip, et voila! A nifty pillow with a semi-hidden zipper to stash your love notes, or... y'know... other things.

No judgement here.

*All of the lint is from my stuffing - I used shredded socks. Seriously! Gives the pillow a nice weight, and is soft and comfy. They were bleached within an inch of their life before being consigned to the shredding bin, fyi, because I know my imaginary readers are all like "Ewwww..." right now.

What I learned from this project:

• Waxed paper is awesome.
• I could have sewn the zipper in at the same time that I was sewing the lining and front pieces together, and saved a few steps and a lot of time. I will do that, or use velcro to close the pillow, next time.

Making Christmas #1- Colored Corn

This is a fun little project.

I have seen multi-colored popcorn in the grocery store before, but I wanted specific colors. I searched the internets, but couldn't find a great tutorial, so of course, I figured I'd make one myself :) That's kind of what I do.So, if you've ever wondered how to dye popcorn, this one's for you. And just in case you were wondering, this only dyes the kernels, the popcorn will still be white.

For step one, you will need:

• popcorn
• glass jars with tight-fitting lids (I used pint canning jars, which held about 1 cup of popcorn each)
• food coloring in desired colors
• water

Fill the jars with popcorn. Make sure to leave about an inch of headspace at the top of the jar -or more, if you are using larger jars! The popcorn will swell, which can make it pack tightly in the jar and it will be difficult to get out if you haven't left some room.

Add water. I just ran enough water in the jar to cover the popcorn and fill the jar, I didn't measure it.

Add food coloring. I used about twenty drops for my pint-sized jars, but if you are using larger jars adjust the amount accordingly. You're going to want to add enough to make your water pretty dark.

Now just let it sit for about 24 hours. I shook mine occasionally, and turned it upside down for a few hours at a time, just to make sure the food coloring got everywhere once the popcorn started sucking up the water.

On to step two!

For step two, you will need:

• paper towels
• baking sheets
• oven

This is pretty straightforward. Just drain the colored wate

r (I saved mine for making another batch down the road) and spread the kernels on a baking sheet lined with paper towels. Then dry the kernels. I used the oven, set at its lowest temperature (170) for two hours, checking every twenty minutes or so. But you could also air-dry it, if you have the time and patience!

Now you have Christmas colored popcorn! Package it all pretty, and enjoy!

October Project #2 - Feeling Green

Kermit, I hate to argue with a talking frog, but it's actually not so hard being green - if you mean being green in the trendy, over- and often inaccurately- used common phraseology, that is.

I'm sure actually being green-colored would be pretty difficult. Just look at the Blue Man and what he goes through. But I digress...

This counts as a finished project because its something that I've been meaning to do for a while, but never seemed to find the time/money to do before. Thanks to my kiddo, though, I did!

Thing 1 brought home an energy-saving kit from school. It's sponsored by our local utility company, although I can't quite figure out why, and the only thing that they wanted in return was for us to fill out a brief survey about the products (like what was the flow rate of our old shower head vs. the new one, things like that). I'm all for free stuff, and stuff that will save me money, and stuff that helps to reduce our impact on the planet, so I took about an hour out of my time after the kids came home, and installed and tested all of the energy- saving items they sent us, including:

• a low-flow shower head
• a shower timer
• two 60-watt CFL bulbs
• a faucet aerator for the kitchen sink
• a glowing night-light
• a refrigerator/freezer thermometer

The longest part of the process was testing the flow-rate of the shower head and the faucet aerator, and removing the old aerator from the sink (that thing was on there tight!).

Oh, and I took a while talking DHubs out of immediately switching back to the old shower head.

He's generally supportive of my DIY urges, tendency towards frugality (okay, I'm cheap) and "hippie stuff", as he and the boys call any attempt I make to be more earth-friendly - in that he doesn't complain too loudly and restricts himself to head-shaking and loud sighing- but if it interferes with his established habits, he tends to draw the line.

And my man loves his showers.

But when I showed him the flow test results, and how it meant that we might cut our water bill in half, and promised to put back the old shower head, if after a month he decided he really hated the new one, he stopped looking at me in that special way he has that says "Woman, you are insane."

The fact that I could install everything (and talk DHubs into using it all) in less than an hour - including downtime to fetch the pipe wrench and search for the WD40, and flow-testing! - conclusively proves that it's actually pretty easy to be green.

So do it.

Seriously.

Don't listen to the frog.

Just as an example, here are some of the figures that we worked out about what we'll be saving using our new stuff.

• Low-flow shower head - Our old shower head, which I think is actually an older low-flow type, used about 2 gallons per minute. Not bad, right? I thought so. Until we installed the new one, which weighed in at using only 0.5 GPM. Seriously. So... four people taking 10 minute showers (4 people X 10 minutes X 2 GPM) would use 80 gallons of water a day, vs. the new shower head @ 20 gallons a day (4 people X 10 minutes X 0.5 GPM ), which would save us 75% of the water we would normally use on showering. Wow. And it took me ten minutes to figure this out and install it. This is the one that came in my kit, but there are plenty to choose from online, at any of the big-box stores, or your local hardware store (try there first!) for pretty reasonable prices. I used it this morning, and I actually like it better than the old one, which I often adjusted to half-strength, anyway.
• Shower timer - this may not actually save us any money/water, because I had already instituted a kitchen timer in the bathroom to limit shower times to 10 minutes (I'm not cutting down to only a 5-minute shower, and I don't expect anyone else in the family to, either!), but it may reinforce the idea so I'll take it. It's kind of fun to try to beat the hourglass, too. If you don't have a bathroom shower timer already, using one works wonders to make everyone aware of just how long they're in the bathroom.
• 2 60-watt CFL's - honestly, I'd much rather have gotten LED lights. This actually took a little thinking because it was hard for us to find two places in the house where we didn't already have CFL's installed. Luckily though, I had run short on cash a while back and got some standard lights when the CFL's in the hall died, so we replaced those. I believe the booklet we got with our kit said that a CFL uses 1/10th the energy of a standard bulb, and lasts nearly five times as long. I didn't bother with the math.
• Kitchen faucet aerator - I've actually been wanting one of these for a while. We had one on our sink in Florida and I loved it, more for the spray/flow feature and the fact that you can direct the flow wherever you like, than for the water-saving feature (we had a well in FL, and for as long as I can remember growing up in MI, so the water bill here was quite a shock!), but the water savings were quite impressive as well. Without any aerator on the sink, the water flow was nearly 4.5 GPM! With the old stock aerator (looks like it came with the faucet) it was about 3.5 GPM. With the new aerator, we are down to 1.5 GPM! Considering that I hand wash my dishes, and that the kitchen sink is the main hand sink for the house, this will make a huge difference in our water usage. I'm also looking into smaller (because this thing is bulky!) aerators for the bathroom sink. The only drawback? Takes a little while to fill the pasta pot and the dog's water dish.
• Glowing night light - We haven't really used night lights for a few years, and we already have one similar to what we got in the kit (it's a flat night light with a blue-green glowing panel, rather than a bulb), but I'm hoping to convince DH that we can use this instead of leaving the hall light on all night. We'll see.
• Refrigerator/Freezer thermometer - I'm not sure how this will save us money or energy right now, but I like being able to see that my refrigerator is 40 degrees and my freezer is 28 degrees, instead of trying to guess where on the dial is the appropriate temperature.

So, to sum up, skip the night light and CFL bulbs (go for LED's instead, replacing them gradually as the old bulbs wear out) but definitely install the shower head and sink aerator. It'll take ten minutes, and save you a bundle. Next 'green' project? I'm switching to these....

Feeling Crumby

I know I promised to post one finished project each week in October, and I thought at the time that maybe that was a bit too ambitious, but the only way we can grow is by challenging ourselves, etc., etc., and so on and so forth. So the plan was, after a whirlwind weekend planning and executing a fun birthday celebration for Thing2, I would set myself down and finish one project before the weekend (and the whirlwind planning and executing of an anniversary celebration for DearHubs and myself).

Well, the Universe had other plans for us, and the evening of Thing2's birthday, we were blessed with a completely useless transmission in DearHubs relatively new used car. So the rest of the week was spent getting the car diagnosed, priced, and making the decision to buy a new used car, and looking for another vehicle. So please, be sympathetic and understanding, and accept instead of the glorious finished project that I had hoped for, a small, quick how-to.

How To Make Your Own Bread Crumbs

Does this seem obvious? Maybe it does, but it took me a little bit to figure out the fastest, easiest, neatest and quietest way to go about this.

But, you say, why would I bother? Bread crumbs can be bought at the store cheaply and much faster than making my own.

True, but as I tell my kids, just because you can buy something doesn't mean you have to, or you should. And besides, maybe you are out of breadcrumbs and don't want to waste the gas to go all the way to the store for a 99 cent can of breadcrumbs. That's actually how I started making my own breadcrumbs in the first place. so if you are interested, here's the quick, emergency method of making your own breadcrumbs.

You will need:

• Bread - of any kind. I have used hot dog buns and sub rolls; potato, 12 grain, and rye bread; and just plain old sliced white bread. Whatever you have is fine.
• An oven, toaster, toaster oven, or microwave.
• A heavy duty plastic bag (I have an old Malt-O-Meal cereal bag that I use over and over again for this purpose - the plastic is tough and durable, and much better than even freezer bags. )
• A rolling pin, or glass, or bottle. Or even a rubber or wooden mallet.
• A sieve or colander with larger holes.

Step One -Toast your bread. If you are using rolls, fitting them in the toaster might not work out so well, so you will want to use the oven, toaster oven, or microwave method.

• In the toaster - Toast the bread to a light-med brown, then leave it in the toaster until it's completely cool. The residual heat in the toaster will dry the bread out nicely in just a few minutes.
• In the oven or toaster oven - break your bread into chunks, place on a tray, and bake at about 350 for maybe ten minutes. Not so long that it burns. Turn off the oven and let the bread remain inside while the oven cools. (This is actually my preferred method for making bread crumbs - when I have enough stale bread that I feel I'm ready to make crumbs, I put the pieces I've collected on a tray and leave it in my oven while it preheats to cook something else. After the dinner is out of the oven, I pop the tray back in and let the bread dry some more while the oven cools down. Works like a charm, and doesn't use any extra energy!)
• In the microwave - again, break up the bread into chunks, and place on a plate. Microwave on high for 30-second intervals, rearranging as needed, until the bread becomes firm and crumbly.

Step Two - place your bread in your bag, and seal it well. I mean really well. If you think you've sealed it just fine, check again to make sure. You do not want to move on to the next step until you are sure you've sealed your bag well.

Step Three - or as I like to call it, relieving stress! Crush the bread with your rolling pin, glass, wine bottle, or mallet. Very satisfying. If your bag isn't sealed well enough, you'll find out! Crush thoroughly, but don't pulverize the pieces of bread. You want crumbs, not dust.

Step Four - Pour the bread remains out of your bag, into your colander (which should have a bowl or a tray or a plate underneath). Shake the colander gently, or stir the bread bits with your hand to encourage the crumbs to fall out. When the crumbs that are falling out get bigger, and few and far between, you're done. Mix with your desired herbs and spices, then store (or use, if you're in a hurry!) your first batch of homemade bread crumbs!

Wondering what to do with the bigger bits left over? You can re-crush them to use for crumbs, if you like, but I store them and use them as stuffing!

Please excuse the awful cell-phone picture, my camera seems to have wandered off.

And now, because I am not shy about sharing the wrong way I do things as well, let me tell you some inefficient and unhelpful ways to make bread crumbs that are not nearly as fast, easy, quiet, or neat as this.

• The first time I tried making bread crumbs, I just shredded the stale bread as small as I could with my fingers and stored it in a jar. I thought it was dried out enough, but when I went to use the bread crumbs, I had a jar of mold. Eww.
• My next attempt, I toasted and dried the bread, broke it up into bits with my fingers, and threw the larger bits into the blender to break up. The result? Flour, more or less. Eww.
• Having figured out a successful system for drying/toasting the bread, I thought maybe grating the bread with my hand grater might work. It actually worked well, the times I did do it that way, but - this method left random larger chunks in with the bread crumbs where the bread would break instead of grate; it was messy as all get-out; and also too noisy for my DearHubs. Apparently he needs to hear as well as see while watching championship baseball games on television. Pfft. Plus it takes forever.

While this isn't technically a finished project, I hope it helps at least one person out there. Off to wait for the tow truck to pick up the old new car...

Doggie Beds

We recently decide to crate-train our dogs. Even though both are seniors, its been working really well (for us, anyway - the dogs don't seem to be as thrilled about it!) but the crates themselves - well, they're just ugly. And the plastic liners in the bottom of the crates were uncomfortable for my poor arthritic old dogs.

I finally decided to do what I could about it. I had priced some of the beds and cushions available, and they were either prohibitively expensive or too hard to wash and take care of. So, my pups used their ratty old dog bed and a fleece blanket.

Beautiful, huh? I had been puzzling over what to do about the problem for a while when I came across this while cleaning out a closet :

If you're not quite sure what it is, it's a foam mattress topper. We used it for the old guest bed. This one has actually been around for a while, so I didn't feel too badly about cutting it up.

I used my super- precise measuring method of looking at it and guesstimating, and cut it about an inch smaller on each side than the tray that fits in the bottom of the crate.

I also had a pretty, unmatched old top sheet that I had been keeping around, trying to find a use for. It's just a twin sheet, but it was more than enough fabric for both dog beds. I folded it in half horizontally (right sides together) and cut using the same measurements as before (that would be none) but I left an inch or so extra on either side for seaming, and cut down the whole length of the sheet to the fold. You will have some excess fabric if you do this, like so:

That extra length will be useful later on. After I cut the fabric, I simply pinned it, and stitched up both sides from the hem to the fold. Essentially, I was just making a big, long pillowcase. (These are the longest seams I have ever attempted, and they were harder to keep straight than I thought they would be, even with pins!) I turned it right-side out, lay the foam in the plastic tray, slide the plastic tray and the foam in to the case, folded the edge under the tray and slid it back into place under the crate.

Ta-daaaa!

It was greeted with muted enthusiasm, but I think it looks great.

*Edit - I used an old cotton sheet, but I will be replacing this cover - probably with some cotton duck or upholstery fabric - down the road. The sheet didn't stand up well to the dogs 'nesting' habits. On the bright side, though - my larger, more arthritic old pup now loves her padded crate and lays in there even when she's not told to.

The Misadventures of the Sweatshirt Pillow

I hate to just put stuff in a box and store it. I think that the things that are special to us should be out and used. My kiddos have a few items of clothing that are really special to them, and I am always trying to think of ways to reuse the really special ones and keep them around as long as possible. Although I'm not averse to a T-shirt quilt, I hadn't quite gotten up the courage to attempt a full-size quilt - little bite-sized projects are much more my speed - so I thought that this would be a fun way to keep Thing 1's Phillies sweatshirt (from the first game he and DH went to, when he was a wee boy of only 5!) around and useful. This isn't really a tutorial though, more like showing what can go wrong, going wrong.

What I learned from this project:

Sports memorabilia is a rip-off. This thing was so badly made it almost ruined the project, and I'm pretty sure DH paid almost $30 for it at the stadium. Grrr...

I was originally going to sew the armholes and neck closed and make a case for this small pillow Thing 1 likes to keep on his bed. But, as I planned the project, I noticed that:

• The logo was not centered on the sweatshirt
• The logo was too close to the neck for me to be able to sew the neck closed
• DH paid way too much for this p.o.s.

So, I had to improvise. I like improvising, so I was okay with that. I decided I would cut the seams out (faster than picking them) and use any excess fabric to sort of wrap around, under the neck, thereby closing off the neck hole and preserving the logo. Which is, of course, what DH paid $30 for when he bought the stinking thing.

Well, then I ran into another problem - the shirt was made for a child, so there wasn't much extra fabric where I needed it, and sewing around a stretchy circle (neck) was a bit above my skill set at the time. So, I decided to sew a square salvaged from the sleeves underneath the neck hole, and sew the sides together and be done with the darn thing. So, I cut off the sleeves and that's when I saw this:

The shoulder seams weren't straight at all! When I lined them up straight, the sides were crooked. When I lined up the sides, the shoulders were crooked! I almost cried. This had started out as a quick, easy project to finish before Thing 1 got home from school, and was shaping up to be impossible - and I had already cut apart his favorite sweatshirt. Sure, it was too small, but it was still his favorite.

Well, I managed. I had to cut out the shoulder seams and deal with the logo being off-center, but it was done and on the bed when Thing 1 got home from school that day. Barely. But he doesn't notice all the things that make me nuts about it, and when he gets tired of using the ratty old pillow inside it, I can just stuff it and sew it shut. Or maybe by then I'll have decided to tackle that T-shirt quilt.