Prettying up my blog

This afternoon and evening has been spent trying to 'pretty' up my blog. I must say, this requires a lot of time and patience. Wasn't someone just saying something about being lazy? Oh, nevermind, I forget who that was. Anyway, pardon the weird look it may have for a bit. I've actually been trying NOT to spend an inordinate amount of time on the computer today. It's SUCH a lovely day here in Iowa! The kids and I flew kites, threw a frisbee, played in the water, and then I left them to water color paint my hosta leaves (after they'd trimmed them off), while I tried to wrestle with blog stuff and not burn dinner in the process. Dinner was successful. I'm still wrestling, and I'm about 3 minutes past when I told the girls they had to come in and get clean. Since I happen to notice at dinner that the hosta leaves weren't the only thing that got painted. Ahem. So, I'd better get to it!

La, la, la, la, la. Speed ahead about two hours now. My dishes are still dirty, as is much of the house, but the kids are in bed, or in their rooms really is a better description, and I'm magically back!  Thought you'd enjoy a photo of what 'painting plant leaves' looks like. 

 

Really rather cool looking and creative, if I do say so myself. After I sent those two off to the shower, I had to head outside and scrub off my front walk. I really despise water color paints. They are so difficult to get off everything! I banished them from the house after someone got paint on the shades, floor, chairs, and of course the table, but that goes without saying really. 

This reminds me of my 3 year old. Last summer, when she was two, I was mowing the grass in the back yard. My husband was 'watching' her (I feel everyone nodding their heads now). He sent her out onto our back deck to water color paint a coloring book. At some point during this adventure, I looked ahead at the row I was cutting to see my daughter sitting on the bottom stair watching me. I looked at her and had to stop mowing. You see, I was laughing so hard it would have been dangerous to continue. Luckily she was only wearing undies, because she was ENTIRELY covered in dark blue paint! Wow, how could I be mad? It was too funny and I didn't have to clean it up. Well, back to the present. I did manage to get most of the paint off, or lightened to the point of it not being too noticeable on my walk way. Sigh.

Sandwich wraps

For some reason I just could not sleep this morning. I hate it when that happens, but it does have some positives. I do enjoy the quiet mornings when my house is still and I can do whatever I want. Like type without a little person interrupting every other word (literally). And this morning I have a cake order, which, since I resigned from my 'steady' cake job way back in December, have been few and far between. I have to say, I rather it like this way. I almost forgot what it was like to plan it all out. And the house smells wonderfully of cake. I will have to post a picture when I am done. This morning it is a cupcake 'cake' that will look like a large purple and teal flower. Fall usually finds a resurgence in cakes, with a quiet time around the Christmas holidays, then to pick back up in the spring before virtual silence in the summer months. Do kids with summer birthdays not eat cake? I don't know, my birthday is in the winter, as are my children's and most of my friends. My husband's is in the summer, but he doesn't really like cake...Maybe it's ice cream cake they eat?

Well, anyway, I am completely off the topic I intended to write about. Today I wanted to share this cool project I saw at  Chico & Jo . It's a sandwich wrap. I know, that's what plastic baggies and ziplocks are for. The problem for me, is with two kids, I use SO many baggies! It's crazy, and the girls are always grabbing some to put their 'treasures' in and carry around for five minutes, before I step on them and then put them in our play room to be forgotten. Well, that is, until a year later, when they've long since been tossed or reassimilated and suddenly they want to know where did I put those?? How could I have gotten rid of them? This is when I pretend I have NO idea what they are talking about; or blame it on their Dad, they usually believe that one.

So, yes, sandwich wraps, super easy. You know all of those plastic bags you get from the store? I tend to save them for trash bags or padding in packages, because in Iowa (or at least in my city) you can't recycle these in the curbside recycling program. Instead you have to go back to the store and recycle them. I think I mentioned in a previous post, or two, that I'm kinda lazy. Please. Don't make me go to the store for bottle returns AND plastic bags. It's just not happening. So, yes, I have quite a few bags, though now that I make my own shopping bags, I've found there are times that I have to purposely take a plastic bag because I need one for a project. This particular project requires 3 or 4 plastic bags, 1 one-gallon Ziplock bag, parchment paper (please don't use waxed paper, it will melt), some fabric (14x14"), thread, SEW on velcro (don't EVEN try to use the self adhesive kind--I've heard, though I can't say where, that this is a complete disaster and that you end up having to remove your sewing machine needle to clean it. Not to mention the multiple thread ripping, fabric jamming episodes you incur...Sigh. SO glad that didn't happen to me, wink, wink...) Did I mention lazy already?

Once you have all the proper supplies, place a piece of parchment on your ironing board, or in my case my granite counter top. Perfect for the lazy person, because I don't have to go get and set up the ironing board. Bonus! Now take your plastic bags, cut off the handles and all wording on the bags. Make a nice pile of 3 to 4 bags this way. Next, if you'd like to put words on your wrap, this is the time. Cut out letters from the leftover bag pieces and write something! I'll show you mine in case you're saying, huh?  (As you can see, I spelled the word "AUDREY" and  "REUSE" on the plastic)

When you place your letters, be sure to put them in the middle. As you heat up these bags (not yet!), they will shrink a bit, and you will be trimming the edges. Now, take your ziplock, cut it to fit, I just remove the zipper top and open an edge and then flatten it, and place on top of your bag and letter pile. Lastly, place a second sheet of parchment over the top of all of this. Okay, now you can iron. I go for medium high heat, you'll have to see how your iron handles it. Your goal here is to melt the plastic together to form one thick piece. You may want to open the windows while doing this. I haven't noticed major fumes, but I imagine there are some. Once you have this done you need to trim your plastic to a 12x12" square.

Now, place your plastic square face up on top of your larger (14x14") fabric square, (fabric is laying wrong side up--so wrong sides together). You now can do a double fold of the fabric at the edges. So, fold the fabric once so that it meets the plastic edge and then fold that part over so that it is now on top of your plastic. Pin. Do this all the way around. (you don't have to try to skip the pinning part...I already tried for you. It doesn't work). You are ready to sew the edges. When this is done you just have the velcro to attach. Cut two strips EACH of the hook and loop. Make them about 1 inch in length.  Lay your wrap down, plastic side up, in the diamond position (point up toward north, not flat side). Take a piece of velcro, let's say the hook one. Turn it lengthwise and pin it to the 12 o'clock position (at the point). Next take your other hook tab, turn it the opposite direction (horizontal) and pin it at the 3 o'clock point position. Flip your wrap over. Take your loop pieces. Pin one on the fabric side at 3 o'clock (horizontally again), and then pin the other one, lengthwise, at the 6 o'clock point position. So, two tabs on each side; one at each of the points (loops on same side, and hooks on same side). You want the 12 & 6 o'clock tabs to hook together and the two 3 o'clock tabs to hook together when you're all done, making, uh, a wrap. Okay, let's see a couple more pictures!

 

Oh, and one more thing. You may have noticed that my wrap doesn't look exactly square. Let me assure you that if you follow the directions, yours will be. Something about being lazy...oh, well, ya know I didn't quite measure it exactly as written, and guess what? If you don't start with a square, you won't end with one either. One of those little known math facts I'd ceased to remember in my haste.

So now you're set! Go make a wrap. And if you're so inclined, make a bag for all of those animal crackers. Which, I think for my next bag, I'll either extend the velcro strip, or I'll add a piece to the corners, as well as the middle.

Life is short

I have some fun projects to chat about, but honestly, the last couple of days I have spent thinking about how short life can be. Sunday evening my husband's Uncle was killed in a motorcycle crash. His Aunt is in the hospital still. I hope she will be alright. I think about this relatively young person (just 55), and all the things he had left to do in his life. His only grandchild just 4 years old, with a sibling on the way that he'll never meet. His wife of  33 years, now left to forge ahead by herself. Just in this last week or 10 days, there have been 8 other high profile deaths on our interstates. It's hard to imagine how life goes on. Having recently lost my cat and best buddy of 15 years, it's so hard to imagine the magnitude of pain I will feel when my parents, or heaven forbid husband or children die before me. Thinking of it now brings tears to my eyes. So, I hope everyone is sure to give their families an extra hug and kiss and remember to say 'I love you'. A small, but simple thing will make a world of difference. And please remember not to drink and drive. The above mentioned uncle's life was cut short due to the carelessness of a woman that chose to drink and then get in her car.

Fabric bags

This week I've been working on a new bag for my super nice neighbor. Since my original dabbling into plush, fuzzy, girly gift bags for my newly minted 3 yr old last winter, I've started making more. I was determined to create something nicer than my first attempts, well, something more sophisticated perhaps. This is the very first 'real' bag that I made. Pretty good really, but when I look closely there is lots of room for improvement.

Since this bag, I've made several others. Mostly as gift bags for my kid's friend's birthdays. I decided though, that this latest one would be more thoughtful. Things like smoother seams, quilting, and better alignment. It came out really well, though, I admit it looks pretty similar to the first. However, my trained eye can tell the difference.....wink, wink

My neighbor really likes Americana, so I was looking for fabrics that would fit the bill. Unbelievably, I walked into the fabric section of Wal-mart and found 5 yards of this fabric for $5! Perfect. So, I took this home and proceeded to rummage through my fabric stash to find navy liner fabric.The photo below shows the outside of the bag, the liner, thread, edging, and fabric for an interior pocket.

 

Here is a look at the pocket after I sewed it to the lining:

 

All in all a successful project with very little work for my seam ripper. Now I just hope my neighbor likes it.

Crayon Roll

Yesterday crept up on me. I knew I'd be seeing a friend and that her middle child just turned 3. I had been wanting to make him a superhero cape, but time got away from me. I just didn't find time to run out and buy two yards of boy fabric. Now, don't get me wrong, I have LOTS of fabric, but I have two girls. Boyish patterns are hard to come by in our house.  I did, however, make a quick crayon roll. It turned out pretty well, despite my problem of not reading directions. It's a really bad habit, what can I say. It reminds me of the time my Mom let me make an Angel Food cake all by myself. I must have been about 10. Did you know that you're supposed to separate the whites from the yolks in an Angel Food cake? Yeah, I didn't know that; and I didn't find out until after I baked the cake, because, yep, I didn't read the directions, just the ingredient list.

Well, anyway, I realized AFTER I had embroidered said child's initial on the roll that I should have sewed the crayon part on first. Hmmmm. Took me a few minutes to figure out a good solution, because if you've ever embroidered something, it just isn't going to work to take it out. Even if you manage to take all of the stitches out, your fabric will look terrible. Now that I've done this once though, I think I got it. I even stole away for a few minutes last night to drool over all of the offerings at JoAnn Fabrics. I picked up some cool ric-rac and strapping for my next project. For now, here's the first attempt.

I'll have to post the superhero cape I made last week (which the crayon roll used the left over fabric from). It turned out well. I did actually read the directions for this one. I think I'm more cheap than lazy. I didn't want to waste the money I'd spent on two yards of fabric just because I didn't read the directions. Though, I guess I did have one mishap with the cape. Well, that's a story for tomorrow.

Fresh from the garden

So yesterday I mentioned that I am thankful for many things. One of those being my garden. This is the first year that I have had a real, honest to goodness garden. All of my gardening years have previously focused on flowers and the odd tomato, pepper, and asparagus plants. This year we saved up to put in a 30'x14' retaining wall behind our garage and put in our garden. The kids and I were super excited to get it planted and then we had to wait. We planted corn, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes, sunflowers, strawberries, sugar snap peas, yellow squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, and watermelon. It's been overly rainy this year, so the tomatoes haven't been so good, nor the corn, but we are managing to get a modest harvest. What fun the girls have had searching for the peas and squash hiding among the vines!

I've been really happy with what we've grown so far. It's a great feeling to know that we can feed ourselves. I'm already drooling over seed catalogs for next season. I can't wait to try some new plants and rearrange the garden, now that I know how the sun hits each spot and for how long. We're looking forward to the strawberries producing too, as well as the new blueberry and raspberry bushes we planted this spring. Each day brings something new.

Time Marches On

As mentioned in my post a few hours ago, it's been awhile since I posted anything. Almost 7 whole months! Whoa! In that time lots has happened. Here in central Iowa, we ice picked our way out of one of the snowiest winters on record. Marched through an average spring and have now endured the rainiest summer on record. If you're a Midwesterner, or especially an Iowan, you're likely keeping track. This summer has been worse than 1993. That's bad.

We're lucky where I live though. It happens to be on a hill. We've weathered the storms without incident, but others have not been so lucky. I think tomorrow, I'll share how lucky I have been. Till then..

Do Over

Well, gee, here it is August 15th, 2010. What, has it been about 6 months since I created this blog and actually posted something? Mmm, yes. Okay, let's have a do over. I'll try to post if you try to read. I have lots to post, really. It just seems that at the end of the day, I have no time left. I try to squeeze in some craft time for me, but alas, it doesn't always work this way. So, I'll catch you tomorrow, or maybe even later in the evening. Stay tuned...