Posts related to sewing and projects
Feb 14th was the feast day of St. Valentine. We “celebrated” by having a special dinner and putting out a few special decorations.
I made a pretty little garland from some glitter covered cardboard hearts and some pink ribbon. I bought the hearts at the dollar store for…$1 (duh) and I had the ribbon already. So a lovely little decoration for cheap!
For dinner, we had a heart-shaped meatlaof, mashed potatoes and broccoli.
John and I made Valentine cards for Daddy too.
The idea was originally to make a boomerang of poster board and just decorate them. But with a boy, I’m thinking he could fashion a boomerang from wood or other substance, then decorate it and USE IT! This would be a great craft when studying Australia.
April is National Knuckles Down Month so celebrate by trying your hand at one of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite games–marbles. Practice the true shooting technique: turn your hand palm up with all of your knuckles (except for your thumb) touching the ground. Place the marble between your index finger and thumbnail and flick it. Then, test your skills with a homemade course made of jar lids (to hit) and tissue tubes (to roll through). Or use chalk to draw a three-ring bull’s eye on a paved surface and assign each circle a certain number of points. Mark a shooting line several feet away. Then players can take turns trying to score by landing their marbles inside the bulls-eye.
Decorate white t-shirts by cutting apples in half, brushing fabric paint on the surface, and pressing the fruit on the shirts. You could even take a bite out of an apple to personalize it further. Accent the apple prints with black seeds, green leaves and brown stems.
Additional idea: Wear them to go picking apples.
Peel a large apple, red or golden delicious seems to work well
Coat the apple with a mixture of 1/3 cup lemon juice and 1 tablespoon salt
Using a knife, carve eye sockets, nose, mouth and ears
Stick cloves in eye sockets and rice teeth (be creative, especially if this is a Halloween decoration)
Place the apple on a cooling rack in a warm, dry place for 2 weeks, shaping the face as it shrinks and harden.
This year WILL be the year of accomplishing some projects (I hope) that have needed to be accomplished for a LONG time. I can be such a procrastinator, it is terrible.
For example; this morning I super-glued broken tops back on 2 bookends that have been broken for literally SIX years! I have carted these broken bookends around through two states, one apartment and two houses. It is silly little projects like this example that need to be finished. But I have two completely fixed and functional bookends that don’t even look like the tops were broken.
Today I also actually put away our Christmas decorations on the last day of Christmas even!!
Yesterday I went through Dave’s closet and got rid of everything that does not fit or does not like.
So I pray I can keep this roll going and get lots done this year!
Dave collects and has a private library of maps. He owns a website called Broer Map Library where he has maps he’s scanned available to the public online. It is because of this that we have about 35,000 flat sheets of maps in our home and my in-law’s home. Our goal is to obtain a large format scanner so tat we can scan all these maps and others as we come across them and make them available online for everyone. Large format scanners are very expensive brand new and much cheaper used, but come with their own set of problems.
Until a large format scanner is obtained, we have thousands of less than useful maps that we have decided to “recycle”. This morning I’ve begun bundling 6 random maps into a roll and tying a string around the roll. Eventually, I plan to “fancy” these up with craft paper, twine and a cute label so that I can potentially find specialty retailers willing to sell them for wrapping paper and other crafts. But firstly, as an experiment to determine the usefulness of this whole idea. This weekend we are going to sell “pre-fancied” rolls at my mother-in-law’s church yard sale. I’m going to sell individual sheets for $1 and rolled sets of 6 for $5 and see how things go.
The ground is absolutely covered with at least an inch and in some places considerably more ICE. The temp got high enough yesterday that the ice melted off the bushes, trees, power lines (at least around us), but then all that water on the ground froze overnight.
I don’t have anything pressing to do outside today, but I really did want to go to Bible Study. But I have to think intelligently about that…I’m pregnant and really don’t want to fall on my fanny and the Bible Study is entirely made up of old ladies who probably also will not wish to fall on their fannies either. So will we even have Bible Study today??? And do I have the leader’s telephone number? NOPE! Gotta rectify that little fact. I will wait to see how the weather looks in a few hours and decide, I guess.
Yesterday I had a good day sewing. I started and completed a little curtain for the bathroom. I mended two substantially ripped clothing items for Dave. And I finished two little doily things I told my mother-in-law I’d finish like back in May. I got frustrated with the machine and never finished that project thus the multi-month hideous from sewing. I have five more doily things to finish for her and then all my sewing projects that were in queue will be complete. And I will feel totally free to begin working on baby projects like the homemade fabric-based toys I want to make for those baby’s first few months.
The heavens are sending down freezing rain today. It started overnight so by the time we got up there was 1/10th of an inch of ice covering everything. That didn’t sound like much until Dave went to scrap his windshield after letting the truck run for 15 minutes and ended up breaking the ice scrapper. And all I can hear outside is the sound of little tiny pellets of rain/snow hitting the windows and the roof.
So it is an inside day today! No running errands for me. Hmmm, a whole day and zillions of little projects all calling my name and me with a bad case of the lazyies. I am recovering, slowly, from the first trimester tireds, but every once and while I’m still pretty beat.
The other day I started a list of mini-projects and bigger projects that I really need to be working on while I can, before the baby is here. Oh, good golly. Does anyone ever actually have their home & belongings in tip-top organizational shape? That project list just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger as I walked from room to room. My mother might be coming out for a week or so after the baby comes and I have this inner compulsion to have everything “perfect” before she gets here. Thankfully, I’m blessed with a lazy gene which occasionally trumps my “gotta have everything perfect” gene because otherwise I’d drive myself crazy.
So to get back to today. I could sew the bathroom curtain that I’ve been meaning to tend too for like a year because I’ve had the material that long. And I have been meaning to get the sewing machine set up in a semi-permanent location here in the office so it is available for me to sew little baby projects. Plus, there is a hallway curtain that has been needing attention also.
Last night I made yummy hamburgers. I have a tendency to turn hamburgers into hockey pucks when I cook them on the stove top, but this time I did good! I used a fatter hamburger (80/20 vs 90/10), then put in 3 tablespoons of horseradish and 1 tablespoon of worcestershire sauce. And I flattened about an inch of the center of the hamburgers so they wouldn’t get thick in the middle, as they tend to do during cooking. They were so juicy, tasty and didn’t even resemble hockey pucks. We had those with broccoli and “American fries”.
I’m dilly-dallying sitting here on the computer so I am going to get off and get busy doing something.