How to Make a Child Leash

Happy Easter everyone! (All three of you!) This weekend we're up at my parents' place, hanging out and watching the same exact Mecum Car Auction show that we watched last night. As I have several built-in-baby-holders for a couple of days, I should be able to get online in peace for awhile.



So I was online trying to find some blogs about sewing a child's toolbelt (yay, I have thrifted almost all the kids tool toys I need!), when I ran across a tutorial on how to make a child leash. Hmmm. I'm not sure I feel about this one. Joel's not mobile yet so maybe my tune will change next year, however it just doesn't feel right to me. Although on the other hand, I do have the tendency to want to call him "Licorice" (my deceased pet rabbit's name). I also keep catching myself almost saying things like, "Not now, Joel. You just ate; now it's the humans' turn to eat. Mommy and Daddy are hungry too!" (as if he isn't human). I think Joel is going to grow up and have a complex.

So what do you think about toddler leashes? Yay or Nay? Do you think it would be a good idea to get a bunch of ladies together and pump a bunch of these out? You know how there's knitting and quilting groups to make little hats and blankets to send to people in need? Well I could start a group of lady-leash-makers, and we could pass them to out to mommies in need. You know the type, right? They let their kids run wild, terrorizing grocery store shoppers.

Um, maybe we better not.

Back in the Saddle, err the Sewing Machine

I actually got a chance to sew today! No, the grouting isn't finished (though it is close, and we'll finish it tonight). Instead of grouting this afternoon, I decided to make a poodle skirt for my friend's upcoming 1950s-themed bridal shower.



It was really easy! And the best part is, I didn't buy a thing for this project. That's right folks, you should be very proud of me. I used things already in my stash! The purple felt was free several years ago from a friend. The elastic was from an old pair of shorts that had long since been scrapped (but of course the packrat in me cut off the elastic and kept it). The white felt was from an after-Christmas clearance sale from Michaels. I've had the glitter for years and years; it was attached with Elmer's spray adhesive from the closet. The buttons were in one of my several mason jars of vintage buttons, and the ribbon was already in my ribbon bag. And last but not least... the fuzzy "fur" was thrifted several years ago. Can you guess what it really is?

It's okay. Go ahead and guess. I'll wait.

*Twiddles thumbs and whistles the Jeopardy theme*

Give up?

It's actually faux spider webbing for Halloween! I bought several bags of it for a quarter each to use as stuffing for pillows, softies, etc.

Here's a close-up of my furry friend. She's glued on with hot glue. Have I mentioned before that I *heart* my glue gun?



The only thing that isn't on the skirt that I would like to add is the leash. I would like to use some sequinny ribbon, but I don' t have any. If I were to buy some, then I can't say that the skirt was made entirely from things I already have, so I probably will just leave it as is. Oh well. I'm pretty pleased with it anyway!

The Most Awesome Cake Ever

Isn't this the most awesome cake you've ever seen?



Yes, it's really a cake! You can visit parenting.com to see how to make it. Basically, you take a cake and cut it to fit the burger basket. After you ice it, you top it with the yummy french fries! Well they're not really fries; they're toasted slices of pound cake with a side of red icing. This cake is going to be sweet for my friend's wedding shower in a couple weeks. I'm throwing her a fifties themed shower, and I already had purchased 14 of those burger baskets. We'll be having good old fashioned hamburgers, fries, and malt shakes. Mmm! A heart attack on a platter.

Ok, enough blogging. Grout is calling my name. Ugh.

Must. Finish. Grouting. Soon.

Still Spring Cleaning

Yep, I'm still at it. I don't think the bathroom will ever get done. I'm now working on regrouting the tiles on the walls around the bathtub. It's looking pretty good but I get bored easily and keep taking breaks, so it's not going very fast. My goal is to have it done by Friday. We'll be out of town from Saturday until Monday night, so it can dry while we're away. Tuesday then we should be able to shower at home again for the first time in over two weeks!

I'm also scrubbing the grout between the tiles on the floor to make it white again. It's amazing how dark they had become and I hadn't even noticed. Up against the new white though, the dingy grey really sticks out bad!!

In the kitchen, I've got a crock pot full of venison stew cooking. My coworker's boyfriend had hunted and killed a deer, and since my hubby loves it, she gave me two steaks. I've never cooked deer meat before, so hopefully it turns out good. I figure you can't really go wrong with the crock pot. It makes the toughest cuts of meat nice and tender!

I've also started saving all my hubby's coffee grounds, and all my egg shells for the garden. I absolutely hate gardening, however to save money I just might give it a try this year. Even if I don't actually plant anything, I figure I can save these coffee grounds from going to the landfill by putting them in our soil.

The only other thing going on today was finishing up our taxes. We're getting back a few thousand, so I'm pretty happy about that. We need all the padding in the bank account we can get since my job is still up in the air for next year.

The only sewing I've done lately was to trim down the sides of Joel's Easter sleeper. I had thrifted one for him before he was even born, but it's a size 3-6 months. From what my mom had said about me as a baby, I figured he'd fit into that size at 2 months. I was wrong. It wasn't a big deal to make it a little thinner, although the arms are a little long on him. Here he is wearing it:

Spring Cleaning Bonanza

Thank you to those of you who have checked in on me, to make sure I’m still out there! Sorry this blog has been abandoned this past week and a half. Things have been very busy in my household. The spring cleaning frenzy has set in. Spring cleaning does not really equal interesting blogging, so consider yourself warned!

It all started when I decided to clean out the hall closet. We had way too many towels and sheets jammed into such a small space… some things had to go. Next I reorganized the gift wrapping station in the laundry room. I like to buy gifts year-round when I see something (cheap) that reminds me of someone. It was overrun with presents, gift bags saved from previous presents, and tissue paper (yes, I save that too!). I’m glad to say that the chaos has been reined in. Speaking of gifts, I have done a little thrifting lately in my spare time (though there hasn’t been much of it!) The other day I found an OSU soft baseball and bat, still new in the packaging for five bucks. It was a little more than I normally like to spend at a thrift store, however I’m sure it still would have cost way more new. I’ve also found a little toy drill and jigsaw for fifty cents each. That got the brain ticking… I am going to sew my son a little tool belt whenever I finish finding some more play tools. That way I can tailor the tool belt pockets to the exact size of the tools. I think it will make a good toddler gift. I have a few years to get it done :)

Next up: the bathtub. I had Bathfitters come out last year to give us an estimate to put a shell over our existing bathtub… they wanted over $6000.

I just about fell out of my chair.

For that much money, I would expect to have a whirlpool tub! Needless to say, we passed. But we still have to do something because the grout has gotten really nasty. In our free time we’ve been removing the old grout and caulk so that we can put in new. As we only have one shower in the house, this means that we have to drive to Jason’s parents’ house to shower every evening after he gets home for work. Since we’re gone each night from about 6 until 10, that alone has seriously cut into my blogging time.

Last but not least, as if refinishing the grout and caulk wasn’t enough crap to deal with this week, three days ago we had an ant infestation in the kitchen. Great. Just what we needed. I couldn’t kill them at first. I tried to scoop them up on napkins to take them outside. That lasted for about the first three ants. Then I started killing them while apologizing to them. But by about the sixth or seventh ant, you could have called me the ANTi-Christ. I think I killed about fifty that first day. Then it hit me…. A long time ago corn syrup spilled in the kitchen cupboards and hardened. It was impossible to get off; it was as hard as glass. That’s the cupboard the ants were attracted to, so obviously I had to find a way to get the corn syrup up. I emptied the cabinet and tried prying it up with a screwdriver and hammer. That didn’t work. Eventually I figured out that pounding it with a hammer and turning it into dust did the trick. It was slow going, but at least I got it to come off. Jason also did some bug spraying; we didn’t see a single ant yesterday!

Then to top it off, I got my official RIF (reduction in force) letter in the mail the other day. The board of education approved over one hundred layoffs, and I am one of them. Music K-6 is being eliminated if the levy fails. So besides the fact that I have been busy cleaning and reorganizing, I really just have not been in a very bloggy mood. Please bear with me; I should be back to my old sewing/crafty self soon!

A No-Cost Wedding

Ok, so it won't really be no cost since my sister-in-law bought the bride a white sundress at Old Navy, however it will be pretty darn close to it. My husband's cousin is getting married with pretty much no money to spend on it, so we're pitching in to make it practically free.

I'm putting my sewing talents to work by sewing a short birdcage veil (hopefully) and a bouquet with things I already had in my stash. I'm not sure if she will like the bouquet so I may have just wasted several hours on it. I'm not sure if I like it myself. It's not quite done, so maybe I'll like it once it's finished. I still have to put in some filler flowers and/or some greenery. Still trying to decide just how to do that. I think I might take some tulle fabric and place little tufts of it in the bouquet. If it isn't a big hit with the bride, I can always give the bouquet to a little girl in our family. She can play dress up with it.




Yep, pink and purple. That's what the bride requested.

I used this tutorial over at Lettie's blog, Polka Dot Pineapple. She is very crafty, so check her out! I changed a few things: I didn't want the center of the flower as big as Lettie's because I am not planning on using these flowers as pincushions. I made the petals 2 3/4 inches, and the center of the flower only 2 inches. Also, since these flowers were going into a bouquet, they needed stems. I used pipecleaners, curled the end, inserted it into the center of the flower, and held it in place with hot glue. Unfortunately, I only had red pipecleaners... not so good for a stem color. I wrapped each stem with green florist's tape. I will then wrap a pretty ribbon around all the stems to complete the bouquet. Maybe I'll get that done this week. Maybe not. I'm so bad at finishing projects.

I promise to throw a Green Bridal Shower

Howdy folks. I've been reading this blog, and I must admit that I am feeling pretty bad about myself right now. I am such a consumer hog. I could do such a better job at reducing the amount of trash I create if I just tried a little harder.

The wonderful people at cleanbin.wordpress.com make their own laundry soap, pasta sauce and pasta (tried it before but it's so time consuming... I even own the pasta maker attachment for my kitchenaid mixer but it makes such a mess and takes forever), and practically anything else that you could think of so that they don't have to buy it with all the packaging that comes with it.

I've done some things in this department, but I must admit that I could do so much more. I've sewn bag after bag to take with me to Aldi's when I go grocery shopping, however I need to do a better job of bringing them with me to other stores too. If I just have a couple things, I always tell the clerk I don't want a bag, but if I brought my own bags with me wherever I went, I would feel better. Yes, I recycle the bags that don't end up as wastebin liners but still, I feel bad.

The cleanbin people don't buy store-bought cakes because of the plastic packaging and were saddened when someone brought them one. I'm sure they don't even buy cake mixes because that comes with packaging too. Get this: they even take reusable containers with them when they go out to eat (which they don't do often anyway) so they don't get their Whopper or Big Mac wrapped in plastic which would be promptly thrown out anyway.

I'm feeling the major guilt: we stopped at McDonalds last night when we were on the road, still over an hour from home and dead tired. If I was going to stay awake I needed some caffeine, so I got a McCafe latte and a McChicken sandwich. Trash, trash, trash. At least what the hubby got was recycled (an energy drink in a can from a gas station). I wish I had thought ahead and we could have brought our thermoses (is that the plural form of thermos?) and made some coffee at my grandma's before we left. That would have been a heck of a lot cheaper too.

I did, however, buy reusable plastic spoons and forks for our wedding shower instead of my maid-of-honor buying the throw away kind. I wrote a cute little poem that went along with them so people would know not to throw them away.


But then I think about all the stuff that we did throw away, and I am sickened. The cake came in a throw-away container, as did the big Subway subs. Many of the decorations were one-time-use only, such as the balloons, tablecloths, and the kissy-lips tablerunners (which was actually a thrifted wallpaper border).

I am throwing my friend, T-2, a shower next month, so right here, right now, I am announcing to the world that I will make her shower green. I will dig out those reusable forks and spoons. We'll use real glasses instead of styrofoam. (We'll be using my collection of Coke glasses since this is going to be a fifties themed party). I already bought reusable fifties-styled burger baskets for our burgers and fries, so hasta la vista paper products! I will most likely have to use paper napkins though, to line the burger baskets. *sigh*

The decorations will be reusable. I am going to get some thrifted records and make record bowls with them. My friend, T-3, already made two which she gave me. One can hold the cards. Another can hold the games. If I make a few more, they can hold things such as chips, candy, etc. as long as I clean them very, very well. I'm also planning on having us watch the old fifties version of "The Father of the Bride," and I can use those red and white reusable popcorn containers that my nephew gave us for Christmas.

I could make another bunting (T-3 really thinks I should) using material I already have. I think it would be cool to make one that looks like records, but I don't think I already have any suitable black fabric that would do the job.

I probably won't buy a cake, as she is having two other showers where I'm sure there will be cakes. We can do ice cream malts instead for our dessert, in true fifties fashion. Of course, those will be in glasses that I already own, so no plastic there.

Now for the gifts: I can't really tell people not to wrap her gifts in wrapping paper because it's bad for the environment. Oh well. At least I know I'll be using a reusable gift bag.

If you have any other ideas on how to make her shower greener, please let me know!