Taking Requests

Yesterday and today were both good days.  I had a good day at work yesterday, but pretty much collapsed into bed once I got home.  We had some pretty crazy summer storms last evening/night so it wore me out driving home.  Today Ryder and I got some cleaning done in the house and I finally put away all the clean laundry I had just sitting in baskets. We had a pretty good lunch of yogurt and carrots with ranch dip (Ryder picked out lunch obviously) and then family nap time in Mommy's bed.  After Evan got home from work Ry and I started fixing some dinner and baking our first batch of WHO bread (from SouleMama ).   Ryder had already eaten dinner before ours was finished, and headed up to bed.  While doing our night nights I think Ryder named her favorite puppy dog hand puppet Bobby.  We'll see if that sticks tomorrow, but it was pretty cute listening to her call him Bobby and then giggle.  Evan and I then enjoyed our dinner while watching a movie about Gator a skater from the late eighties and early nineties.  All in all a great day full of successes, but not ever feeling hurried or manic (as days with a toddler in the house and a mommy trying to get things done tend to feel).  And the bread is AWESOME!  Evan gave me some pointers on how to make it better next time, but I feel pretty good about how well it has turned out!

And now by request, I will share my home cleaning recipes with you all.  I would love to hear if any of you have any different recipes that you love as well!  Some of these I will just type out the recipe and some of them it will be easier to just give you the link to see it yourself.  I hope you guys can try some of these and you like them!  Many of these recipes will call for Borax and Washing Soda.  Borax can be found in a box near all the laundry detergents at your local grocery store.  Washing Soda can be hard to find, but I found it a year ago at my local Harris teeter again near the laundry detergents.  I also use a lot of Dr. Bronner's castile soaps.  It's a vegetable based soap that you can use for shampoo, toothpaste, body-wash, dishes, surface cleaning, degreaser, laundry, basically anything in your house.  You can buy a bottle of it and water it down (a lot!) to make it go a long way.   I use the almond liquid Dr. Bronner's in all my hand soap pumps in our bathrooms watered down and it smells soooo good!  We also use the peppermint and almond liquids in our bath for shampoo and for body wash.  Keep in mind that these soaps are going to get rid of residues left from your old shampoos/body-washes, so you will sometimes need a little transition time where your body makes the right amount of oils for you hair and such.  It sounds gross, but after your body adjusts you will find your skin and hair looking the healthiest it's ever been and you will notice that you don't need to condition or wash as much anymore.  Also, I know there is a lot these days where people feel the need to have everything be super antibacterial and all that jazz.  If you want your cleaners to be antibacterial you can add Tea Tree Oil to your soaps and cleaners.  It's an essential oil that is a naturally occurring antibacterial agent, but it can be put into all your cleaners, soaps, and shampoos and still be safe to use.   Anyways, here are the recipes: 

Dish washing detergent for hand washing: 

In an olive oil cruet I have a cup of Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap (the citrus scent) and 1-2 cups of water. It does a great job and I love the scent.  Make sure you rinse well in hot water as it can sometimes leave a residue if you don't rinse well.  

Dish washing detergent for the dish washer:

I found this recipe somewhere online, but I can't find it now to give a reference.   I think it's a standard recipe.   

In a bowl mix together: 

1 cup Borax

1 cup Washing Soda (soda ash)

1/2 cup Salt

1/2 cup citric acid  

use 1 tbsp of this mixture and fill your rinse aid with white vinegar.  We have really hard water so I will sometimes have a little residue, but overall I am in love with this recipe!  For the citric acid, you can use packets of Kool-Aid lemonade with no sugar added.  

Peppermint Laundry Soap: 

I'm just going to give the link to this one in the hopes that once you go to this woman's blog you will spend hours going through her archives and then become addicted to her blog like me.  

SouleMama's Laundry soap

Peppermint Shampoo: 

1 cup Dr. Bronner's peppermint liquid castile soap

1 cup distilled water 

1 tbsp. Jojoba oil

mix together in a bottle and use on hair like normal.  Castile soaps don't suds up like you are probably used to, so concentrate mostly on your roots and then rinse.  Use a conditioner if you need to.  

Baking Soda/ACV No-Poo method: 

keep a container of baking soda, a bottle of apple cider vinegar, and a 16 oz cup in your bathtub.  In the shower mix 1-2 tbsp of baking soda to 1-2 cups water from your shower.  Mix thoroughly in the cup and then pour over your head concentrating on the roots.  Rub it into your scalp and let it sit for a minute before rinsing.  After your shower spray hair down with 2 tbsp of vinegar mixed with 1 cup of water as a detangler.  One of my Charlotte Mommies friends told me she keeps it in a spray bottle with a stick of cinnamon in it.  I used this method for about a week before switching back to Dr. Bronner's because I think the baking soda wasn't reacting with my hard water very well.  I think I'm going to give it another try, but maybe research a little more.  

All Surface/Everything cleaner:

I keep two spray bottles of cleaner.  In the kitchen I mostly use vinegar and water to clean the counters/table/placemats/anything that needs cleaning.  It has a salad or easter egg smell  to it when you are cleaning with it, but it goes away as soon as it dries I promise.  All over the house I use Almond Dr. Bronner's liquid soap mixed with water in a spray bottle for dusting/cleaning/getting Ryder's finger prints off the coffee table.  It smells sooooooo good.  It'll really make you happy you're cleaning.  Well maybe not, but at least it'll smell good and clean well and it's non toxic so I don't have to worry about Ryder touching things or putting her mouth on them after I have cleaned them.  

Floors: 

I just use a mixture of vinegar and water for the floors, but here is what I think I'm going to try next.  I have a swiffer wet jet thing already and I have some old hand towels I use as the little pads on the bottom, so I think I'm going to try to hack my old wet jet bottle and put vinegar and water in it.  Here's a link to the website describing how to do it, but again, I haven't tried this one yet. how to hack your swiffer If you read down into the comments people go on to list easier ways of doing this by just cutting the cap or drilling a hole in the bottom and closing it with a cork.  It's a great idea as a money saver.
If you just want to use a regular mop and bucket, mix 1/2 cup of white distilled vinegar with a gallon of water.  

So I think that's it, but if I've forgotten something please let me know!  

After a lengthy week

Forgive me friends, as I have written blog posts almost daily in my head every day of this week, yet never quite made it to the computer before bed to post them.  It's kind of ridiculous really, but needless to say, here I am with much to say after a busy week and countless unpublished blog posts with an extraordinarily long conglomeration of them all.  Sit back folks... If it makes you feel better, I made a special playlist in iTunes labeled "blogging mix" and am currently enjoying it just to stay focused.

So this past week was a busy one and I enjoyed it for the most part.  I worked a lot as well as had a staff meeting on my day off, so much of my week was spent thinking of or being at work.  I decided to take a small break from sewing for the moment to revisit a crochet project I began last year before Christmas (I know, I know) and never got very far with because I'm not too great with patterns.  It's one of those free patterns you can pick up in a craft aisle near the yarn and originally I picked it up hoping to learn how to felt.  It's for a cute purse that you crochet and then felt and it is supposedly intermediate level.  Guys, I have to tell you, I have been crocheting for around  15 years now.  My sister taught me as our grandmother had taught her years ago and since then we have been quite a pair of blanket/scarf/cozy making machines since then.  Neither of us were ever taught how to read patterns or really what the names of the stitches we were making were, but we could make some pretty stuff.  Also, once Beth had given me a 20 minute tutorial on how to start a chain and then do a couple of stitches, I was off and we never did another lesson really.  Well imagine my surprise when I learned a couple nights ago after my third unsuccessful attempt at this stupid pattern that for the past 15 years I have been crocheting a specialty "crab" stitch as my normal crochet method and really hadn't ever done a proper crochet stitch.  That's why my things always looked so weird.  Anyways, lesson learned and after about 10 minutes worth of youtube videos and Evan making fun of me I angrily relearned how to crochet.  (And yes, I checked the blanket Beth made me years ago, my sister crochets perfectly, I am the stupid head who taught myself differently apparently)  So anyways, that being said, I have spent the past several nights sitting and watching movies with Evan while crocheting and trying to figure out this pattern.  Frustrating as it is, it's still fun.

I also spent a huge portion of this last week looking up recipes for homemade cleaners/soaps/shampoos and cleansing our house of the really bad toxic cleaners and such.  I began this a week or so ago with the baking soda shampoo/apple cider vinegar rinse, but now we are completely using homemade dish-washing detergent (for the machine and the sink), laundry detergent, hand soap, face wash, shampoo, conditioner, all purpose cleaner, and floor cleaner.  I think the best part of it all is that it all smells so good!  Tonight I took a peppermint bath with my newly mixed peppermint shampoo and almond soap and it was heavenly.  Evan and Ryder have been really helpful and encouraging with it all (actually Evan has been super supportive and has amazed me with how awesomely helpful he's been through all of this)  and we made the laundry soap together as a family (Ryder just watched) but it was fun.  A lot more fun than grocery shopping and artlessly buying something off the shelves while Ryder gets cranky because she is bored and stuff into a cart seat.  All of these benefits aside, I think the biggest thing that made me feel good about this and my entire project this summer is that I have influenced my sister to make some huge changes too.
Some background: My sister is my best friend in the world.  Seriously.  We are eight years apart, but we couldn't be closer.  When I look back at my life, so much has been shaped by my sister and so many things that could've been really hard growing up were made so much easier by  having her in my life guiding me and being there for me.  So when she called me Friday and said that we were going to be big old hippies together (never fear, I'm not really going to do dreads and we will always bathe and smell nice) I was amazed that I could give her something as meaningful as what she has given me in the past.  Long story short, very sad circumstances along with kind of scary new fears have arisen in Beth's home having to do with illnesses that could have been environmentally caused.  Beth decided to take matters in her own hands and have a green non toxic home to try and remove some likely factors.  She has joined my ranks as a make your own green cleaner soldier and is pretty happy with the results.  I hope she doesn't mind me sharing about her on here, but I was really excited for her and it made my heart burst when she said, "I couldn't have done it without you doing it too!"  Ah, I love my sister and that's that.

So anyways, after a maudlin middle section I will finish up this extremely long post with a little story about this afternoon.  After a long morning of playing in the sprinkler with her cousins at Memaw's house, Ryder was tired, but still not tired enough to take a nap.  I kept finding her just sitting at the top of the stairs quietly talking to her favorite puppy dog hand puppets (Meh-Meh's as she calls them), so finally I gave up hoping for a nap time today and decided we would play outside some more with the new sidewalk chalk and bubbles we got at Target today (on clearance in the dollar section -- so worth it and not breaking the bank).  We spent two hours just sitting on the front steps of the house blowing bubbles and practicing drawing stars and hearts.  It was magical.  It was so hot and muggy it felt like a sauna, and we were so dirty from playing in the field earlier that we were just as earthy as we could be.  The only sounds were of the birds chirping around us and flying away from the squirrels in the trees right next to the house.  Every once in a while I could hear our neighbor sawing wood in his wood shop and it was a soft buzz followed by comforting plops as the wood would fall to the ground.  After a bit Ryder stood up and asked for me to get her bike out so she could ride it.  I complied thinking that she would just push off the ground with her feet or simply hide the chalk in the seat for later as she usually does (she hasn't ever been successful at riding her trike by herself), but she just sat on it, put her feet on the pedals and rode her trike for the very first time by herself as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  It was awesome!  The she figured out how to ride it backwards and spent 20 minutes just riding it up and down the drive way.  After a particularly fast ride down the driveway she got off and ran to me yelling, "Mommy that was fun!"

I'll leave you with that for tonight.  May you have sweet dreams full of memories of hot summer days full of sprinklers, bubbles, and bikes.

A Chip Off the Old Block

So Ryder and I had a pretty OK day.  She has discovered the never-ending question of "why" this week and it has worn me out today.   After breakfast this morning we decided to clean out her playroom so that we could give toys to boys and girls who need them.  Ryder really got into it and was throwing toys she hasn't really played with in a while into a big bag.   After packing them away we cleaned and organized her room.  I was busy making a little dress up station for her and I heard, "look Mommy, this is cool!"  I turned around to see that Ryder had covered her little chairs and table with bandannas from her dress up stash and laid an old pillowcase across the top as a tablecloth.  It was so cute!  I'll have to go up and take pictures after she goes to sleep.  I guess she's been really into all my redecorating lately and wanted to do a little on her own.  The funniest part was when she kept walking around it and touching it saying over and over again, "wow, that's pretty Mommy, that's so cooooool!"  Haha, I love that little girl!

I didn't do anything crazy this week craftwise yet; I am actually trying to figure out my next project.  I don't know whether I want to start a sewing project or maybe a crochet project.  I'm beginning to think about Christmas presents (I know, I know, but it takes so long to make presents that I have to start them now!) and I need to sit down and make a little plan of what I am going to do and for whom.

Anyways, that's it for today.  Hopefully I'll be super successful doing things tonight so that I can have an awesome post tomorrow haha!

My kitchen now has curtains!

So today I decided to do a few things around the house.  I have been wanting a new couch for a while.  Evan and I have picked out what couch we want, but as always things keep coming up that we need to pay for so the couch keeps getting put off.  A couple years ago I bought a slipcover for our couch, but Evan is so staunchly against slipcovers that it got taken off and disappeared to somewhere in the garage.  On a whim, I pulled it out of hiding, washed it, and then stuck it on the couch trying to get it as tight as I could.  It looks OK, but not great, and I'm sure Evan will come home and immediately pull it out of the couch, but it's kinda fun for now.  I then took an old sheet from my fabric stash and recovered a rocking wingback type chair that used to be my grandmother's.  Like the couch, it looks OK and it'll do us until we can buy some new furniture.

The thing I am most proud of from today is that I made some curtains for my two kitchen windows from an old tablecloth.  We never have put up any curtains in the kitchen partially because they are really big oddly sized windows and partially because we've just been lazy and haven't wanted to spend the money on hardware to hang them.   I had a cute flowered table cloth I had bought at Target last year I think that was pretty big and fit our old kitchen table.  Obviously when we switched tables the tablecloth was hidden away in a closet.  I figured out today that it I cut the fabric in thirds I would have three panels perfect for two long ones on the big window by the table and a little runner curtain (I guess it's called a valance) for the window above the sink.  It only took me about 30 minutes from start to finish for me to cut it into thirds, hem the cut sides, and make little pockets at the top to encase the curtain rod.  It was super easy and they look great!  The only problem is that I didn't have any curtain rods to hang them on!  I scoured the house and garage trying to quickly work something out so that I could just see what they looked like on the wall.  Finally I found some hardware for cabinet child lock things and some twine, so I screwed the hardware into the wall and strung the curtains on the string tied to the hardware.  It's not a permanent fix, but it works for now.  OK so here's a peek (excuse the messiness of the kitchen -- Ry and I had just finished dinner and I hadn't cleaned up yet)

Oh and as an added bonus you can kind of see the skate ramp through the window haha!

homemade shampoo?

So it's been a great weekend.  Friday night I hung out at the house cleaning and doing laundry.  It was a nice peaceful night.  Saturday was kind of a rough day (I slept weirdly on my neck and was in odd pains all day -- weird) but Saturday night was awesome.  We went to a surprise birthday party at a friend's house.   It was a small gathering of really good friends and we had some good face time talking about anything and everything with some really awesome people.  Our hostess is a really good friend that went to highschool with Evan.  She is actually who turned me onto Soulemama (Amanda Blake Soule) who in turn is my idol inspiring me to transform this summer.  She was really excited to know that she had influenced me in that way (and I was really glad to be able to share that with her).  I got an email today from her asking if I wanted to be in a sewing club with her.   I immediately wrote back a "yayer!" reply.  It's so exciting to think that my homebody tendencies are also helping me grow in a social way too.
Today we had a big family day spending the first part of the day with my family and the last half with E's.  It was a really fun time of just hanging out and eating some excellent food.  I wore my dress I made last week again and it did great in the washer.  Everybody examined and made me feel good about it so I was really excited.  Once we got home I decided to look up homemade shampoos to see what I could do.  Earlier this week I mixed up some Dr. Bronner's almond castille soap with water to use in the bath as bodywash/facewash/shampoo.  It works amazingly well for body and face wash, but my hair felt greasy like it left a lot of residue in it.  I found many websites with recipes of using baking soda and water for shampoo and then a rinse of apple cider vinegar and water as a detangler/shine agent.  I was a little wary of it mostly because I have such damaged hair from dying it so much, but I really wanted to try it to find a better, more natural, and cheaper way to wash my hair.  I took a bath tonight and tried it out.  I had baking soda but I was out of apple cider vinegar as well as white distilled vinegar.  The only kinds I had were balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar.  I decided that it wouldn't hurt for me to use red wine vinegar instead to at least try it.  I took my supplies into the bath with me and mixed up 2 tablespoons of baking soda with about 2 cups of shower water, stirring until it was all dissolved.  I then poured the mixture over my hair lightly rubbing it into my roots like shampoo.   After rinsing it out I poured a 1:1 mixture of red wine vinegar and shower water over my hair and finger combed it through.  I then rinsed it out lightly (to get the easter egg scent out of my hair) and voila!  I haven't blow dried it (I usually air dry my hair anyways), but I have towel dried and combed it and so far it feels great!  I still feel a little bit of residue on the end couple of inches of my hair, but I think that is just from overprocessing and overconditioning for too long and it'll take a little while for that to go away.  I think I'm going to stick with this and see how it goes!

So anyways, that is my weekend... how was yours?

Login Woes!

So I have tried to update the past couple days, but for some reason the website wouldn't let me in.  This is the second time it has happened and I have no clue why!

Anyways, it's been an OK week.  I haven't had a soda since Sunday night and I've been doing well on that.  I had enjoyed my purse I made on Monday and am still carrying it.  Evan and I have been eating pretty well.  I have taken my lunch to work and even if everyone else is eating out, I still eat my bag lunch (in my super cool darth vader lunch box).  I have been drinking a ton of water and I think it's done a lot of good. On Wednesday night, the house was so hot (our a/c was newly fixed, but the house hadn't cooled off yet) that I didn't feel like cooking anything hot for dinner, so I made some homemade hummus, laid out some fresh carrots and broccoli, grapes, bread, apples, strawberries, and some french vanilla yogurt and we all went to town on it.  I think it's the healthiest meal we have ever eaten as a family haha.  I think I have perfected my hummus recipe.  This batch was pretty much perfect for us.  I ran out of dishwasher detergent Wednesday night, so  I made my first batch of homemade detergent.  I used an easy recipe I found online and put it in one of my special glass bottles I've saved lately.  It's the cutest detergent I've ever seen haha!  The best part is when we checked the dishes in the morning to make sure they were clean, it was the cleanest load of dishes we've ever had!  We have hard water here and it didn't even leave the hard water mineral deposits we were used to!  I'd call that a success.  While cleaning and running out of commercial cleaners I've been rinsing out the spray bottles and filling them with Dr. Bronner's almond liquid castille soap and some vinegar to make a cleaning solution.  It's been working really well as a cleaner, but also smells so heavenly!  I've found that it doesn't leave the waxy residue other cleaners leave so I'm sold!

Last night I reorganized the coat closet downstairs in order to turn it into my craft closet (with some coats in the corner ha!).   It was a success and I managed to use an organizer to store all of my yarn so that I can see it.  I now feel a little better because everything is organized and stored in a sensible way.   So now Ryder and I are watching a little Dora together and having spelt bread and cheddar cheese for breakfast (it was Ryder's choice, don't ask) and we'll probably have a lazy day.  So that is my book about this week!  

I'm on a roll

I think I have finally hit my stride.  Today was my first day without sodas and I did pretty darn great.  I had some caffeine via a smoothie I made this morning.  Wanna know my secret?  I make a batch of coffee, let it cool, pour it into ice trays and then freeze it.  Then I freeze peeled bananas in a little baggie.  When I want coffee, I get the blender out, put in a banana, about 4-5 frozen coffee cubes, a little bit of skim milk, and some chocolate syrup, then put it on the smoothie setting blending it all up and voila!  It's a pretty tasty, chocolate banana coffee smoothie!  From my kitchen to yours haha!

Anyways, I did great eating/drinking wise today which made me feel really good.  I also went grocery shopping tonight at Trader Joe's and got some good organic produce on the cheap and some staples we were out of.  I love Trader Joe's. I had a pretty good day I must say.  It was too hot in the house (A/C is still out) for me to do anything really strenuous, so Ryder and I just hung out in the tent, we had a picnic of sandwiches and water in the tent while watching an elmo movie for lunch, and then we went to my parents' house to pick up some chairs from their attic for our dinner table since we stole two chairs from the kitchen to go outside during the great recovery of the chairs 2010 (pun intended--my mom would be proud).  While Ryder was napping this afternoon I got bored and decided to make a new purse out of this really sweet fabric I had.  It's pink with hearts on it and super girly, but also a little rock and roll too.  I tried to do some cool stitching on it and make a neat shape, but I didn't do so well, so if you look really closely at it, it's not too pretty, but overall I think it's super cute.   Like Bette Midler said, "from a distance..."

I think I've really begun to see the changes I have made as just how I do things instead of having to really make myself do anything.  Like today I just drank tons of water and didn't really think about sodas.  At the grocery store I had no problem only buying produce and staples.  While Ryder was napping it was like second nature to sit and plan out a purse and just do it.  I really like what I am accomplishing and I'm beginning to be really proud of myself.

I'll take some pics of the purse later and slap them on here.  Otherwise it's over and out!

lata!
Allie

I MADE A DRESS!!!

OK, so, pardon the excitement, but I am just so thrilled to have finally made something from a pattern and it was successful and pretty cute and I wore it today!  Last night I made Evan sit up till 2 with me while I sewed my dress together.  After he went to bed I stayed up till 3 because I just couldn't stop while I was on a roll.  I made the super cute trapeze dress from Heather Ross's "Weekend Sewing." I cut out the pattern pieces a while back and didn't get the time to actually sew them until last night.  I told Evan that I think I just get lonely sewing by myself, so I need someone to come and hang out with me while I sew.  Sounds like tons of fun right?  Actually Evan was a huge help last night.  He helped me figure out the pattern directions, played guitar and kept me company while I sewed, turned the straps right side out after I sewed their seams, and, yes, here is the big one folks-----he taught me how to make a pleat!  That's right, my husband is the person who taught me how to make a pleat.  Isn't that awesome?  He then proceeded to sew Ryder a bracelet from the extra straps once I was done with the dress.  It was really cute.

So here it is:

pretty sweet huh?  Yeah, I'm pretty proud.  I kept showing my pockets to everybody!  

Well, so I had this great dress to wear and the a/c wasn't working at the house, so what did I decide to do?  I went to IKEA with Beth!  We had a blast.  I love IKEA.  It's probably unhealthy how much I love IKEA.  I could spend hours walking around, dreaming of selling everything in my house and just redoing it.  Beth got a cool wire hanging system that is supposed to be for curtains, but I think she is going to hang other cool things on it.  We'll have to check with her later for the success story.  I brought home a small table top ironing board for sewing, a tall step stool for our bathroom for Ryder, and a funny orange fuzzy cat pillow (sssshhh... it was from the dog section, but Ryder just had to have it!).  Beth decided that Ryder really needed a tent so she got her a little present of a ladybug tent.  We all had a blast, and Ryder really won out today.   Here's some evidence of how happy IKEA made her today: 

And with that bit of cuteness I bid you goodnight!

If I were wearing perfume it would be called Eau du Depression.

It's been a rough couple of days folks, I'm not going to lie.  Stupid me forgot to get her Zoloft filled earlier this week and went three days without meds, and then saw pictures of myself where I finally realized how fat I have gotten.  Yes, I have gotten back on my meds and am feeling better, and let's just leave our conversation about the last couple days at that. ha.

In the midst of living in a pity party blue gloom submarine the past few days, I did actually do some good things.  I haven't spent any money that didn't need to be spent.  Let's face it, that 5 dollars I spent at Starbucks on Friday was well worth it.  I reeeeeeeeeeeeeally needed that (and I think Ryder enjoyed getting out of the house).  Evan and I mastered home made pizza dough this week and tonight with our pasta Evan made some really good pasta marinara out of all the fresh tomatoes his mom and g-ma have given us this week.  It was quite tasty.  I added garbanzo beans to it, because I think they should be added to everything and Ryder couldn't get enough of it.  She ate it on a spoon getting one bean or piece of pasta at a time.  It was pretty cute.

We also got a wild hair up our butts and decided to recover the chairs we used to use at our dining table so that we can use them outside.  A few months ago, I decided that the dining table and chairs we were using in our kitchen were too large for the area.  Here's a quick peek at the old table:

This was back when we still had the piano in the kitchen and I had just recovered the chairs with some nifty orange fabric that looked great against the green.  Since then we moved the piano over next to the drums and moved our big mama jamma book cases into the kitchen so we can easily get to our books and store our cookbooks and things.  Aaaaannyways, I found a pretty cool outdoor wrought iron table that folds away for our back deck at Target for super cheap on sale about a month ago.  Chairs for it were still too expensive for me to justify buying any, so I figured I'd just wait and see what happened.  Fast forward to last weekend when Beth, my radically awesome sister, brought me a random old vinyl table cloth that she had laying around and told me to use it for whatever.  Evan, my genius husband, said, "Hey, that would make great seat covers!"  So long story short, E and I covered these chair seats with a waterproof vinyl table cloth today and they look great!  Here is a little before and after: 

Evan wanted a more dramatic before and after so he took the picture of the old one we had left outside as a tester and subsequently the seat was super faded from the sun.   The after looks fantastic though and we felt pretty good about it.  Ryder had to try them all out and then insisted on watering the plants over and over again.  Maybe that's why all my plants die.  Anyways, I'm pretty excited about the way they turned out and now we can all eat outside!  Now if we could just get that mosquito problem under control... Anybody have any ideas?  

And just because you guys have been so good listening to me ramble for a bit, I'll tack on some action shots of Ryder using said table and chairs.  Please excuse the nakedness, she rocked panties all afternoon and night because our a/c was out and it was really hot inside and outside.  

and this is how she decided to get comfy and beat the heat relaxin on her daddy while watching Sleeping Beauty.   

The Wheat Cracker Saga Continues!

So today was quite productive!  Ryder and I had some good playtime outside watering the flowers.  She was so cute walking around in a little dress I wore as a toddler way back when and some cute bloomers my cousin got her for Christmas a couple years ago.   Here's a couple pics of the cuteness:

So after super fun outside play time, I decided to make a go at the whole wheat crackers again.  If you remember, last time they came out pretty awful because I didn't roll them out thin enough and only Ryder liked them.  This time I decided to tweak the recipe a little bit too and added some brown sugar and some honey (so that they would taste more like wheat thins).  I had a tough time rolling them out.  The dough was better this time I thought, and I rolled it out to make three cookie sheets worth of crackers, but I just had a hard time getting it consistent on thickness.  The result was definitely edible (I'm eating some right now!), but the edges were burnt by the time the middle finished baking, and there were parts that were thicker that never really baked enough.  Here's a finished pic of some of them: 

Taste test!

Yeah, I had been sitting out in the sun and then baking with a two year old, plus I didn't put on make up this morning.... forgive me!  So now Evan and I are indulging in some homemade crackers!  I also decided to get wacky tonight and made pizza dough from scratch.  It turned out great!  It was definitely a hit at dinner time.  I kept it simple just following the directions for the dough off of the yeast package (one of those Fleishman's pizza yeast thingies) and then used some Classico pasta sauce and mozzarella cheese.  It was pretty yummy if I do say so myself.    So now, Evan and I are enjoying a really kind of funny movie called Charlie Bartlett and pretty soon I'll head to bed.  

G'night all!

The Pattern Remains

So today I kind of forced myself to get started on sewing.  I knew I was dragging my feet and I just needed to grow some, pick a pattern, pick some fabric, and get to it.  I decided to first try some reconstruction.  I pulled out an old turtle neck from our re-purpose pile and planned out how to make a halter top out of it.  It was plain navy blue jersey and huge so I had a lot to work with and the fabric was pretty forgiving.  I also had no emotional ties to the fabric, so I could care less if I failed.  I did pretty well I think.  there are two triangles for the bodice that tie around the back of my neck and the rest of the shirt hangs straight down to my hips.  I measured my girth wrong and it's still too big, so I need to go back at some point and fix that.  I think it was more of a creation exercise for me than the want for a finished product, so it may be some time before I go back to it and finish it.

Next I began making the trapeze dress from my new book, "Weekend Sewing" by Heather Ross.  I chose my pretty blue owl fabric and set to work trying to read the pattern.  Keep in mind folks that this is my first time using a pattern EVER.  I don't think I've ever actually opened one up and looked at it before.  I don't have one of those handy dandy tracer thingies and this pattern is one I can't cut apart (it has 10 or so other patterns on it for other projects), so I had to do some figurin' to cut out my pieces.  I ended up taping several sheets of notebook paper together and tracing the pattern shapes onto them, then cutting them out and using them on the actual fabric.  This worked pretty well, but I am not very good at cutting fabric or patterns.  I think I'm just awkward in general because of being a newbie.

So at the end of the night, I have all the pieces cut out and marked for my trapeze dress and hopefully Wednesday I'll find the time to begin sewing it.  It's exciting and scary all at the same time.  What made it especially good is that I think Evan is as excited as I am about all of this.  I think he's just happy that I'm excited about something and doing something creative.  He has been a huge help in figuring out where to make my space for crafting, as well as always being excited to hear about what I have done/plan to do.  It's awesome having such a great hubby.

Well I probably won't post tomorrow since I have a long day at work, but I'll be seeing you Wednesday night!

Happy July 4th!

Happy Birthday America!  We had a grand celebration today.   We have a skate ramp in our backyard, so it was quite appropriate for us to host a skate party for July 4th.  We had burgers and hot dogs, grilled corn, my famous bean dip, yummy watermelon, brownies that were to die for, tons of chips, and veggies with ranch dip.  The kids made messes, ran around aimlessly yelling, played dress up, and had an absolute blast.  The adults had a great time hanging out, talking, eating too many brownies, and just enjoying the company.  Only a select few made it to the party, but they really made it awesome.

As a result of last minute party planning at our house, I didn't do anything craft wise the past day or so.  I've been mainly running errands, taking care of my parents' cats, trying not to kill plants with my lack of knowledge, and playing with Ryder pants Mcgee.  Beth came over bearing presents today and I think that is actually where I am going to start tomorrow project wise.  I'm going to look through the magazines she brought over, but more importantly, I may try and sew some outdoor cushions with the vinyl tablecloth she donated to my stash today.  We shall see.

Anyways, I'm pooped and heading up to bed, so I'll have to post more on that front tomorrow.  Hope everyone enjoyed the fireworks!  I know we did!

Fabric Galore!

Today was a fun day. Yesterday I had another grueling, yet fun, day at work and pretty much fell asleep as soon as I got home.  This morning Ryder and I went to the park with some friends and played for a couple of hours and had a little picnic.  It was a blast.  Ryder kept running up to me and saying, "This is fun mommy!"   It was really cute.  After the park we came home for nap time and I too took a nap since I've been having TMJ problems again and I wasn't feeling so hot.   Evan made dinner tonight.  He took left over Tabbouleh and mixed it into ground turkey meat to make Tabbouleh burgers haha!  They were pretty good!  I contributed baked beans to the meal.  Afterwards I started looking up reconstruction projects to try and use fabric we just had in the house.  I also really want to preserve some of our favorite old t shirts that we never wear anymore and make them into something new.  This prompted me to clean out our linen closet making a huge pile of old sheets and worn fabric that I'll be able to use for new projects.  I also went through my old t shirt drawer and *insert angelic voices heralding a magnificent moment here* Evan cleaned out his closet giving me all the old shirts and things he doesn't wear anymore!!!  I never thought he would actually do it!  So now I am super excited to hang out with Beth tomorrow and make something cool from all my repurposed fabric! I'll post more tomorrow about what I decided to make!