You made that out of what?

So my computer is on the fritz and I'm attempting to blog from my phone. Its slow going but gets the job done.

You know those uber popular things people are crocheting these days out of plastic bags? They are a lot of work. You have to cut them and you're them together and not to mention still crochet your item. Its a pain.

But as I was cleaning out the garage last week with my husband we came across some old vhs tapes. My brain did this little flip and I said "i think I can crochet this". My husband rolled his eyes.

I did it anyway.

I made the whole bag with one tape and there was still some left on the reel. It worked great. But its very shiny and only comes in one color. Lol.

The flower is made out of duct tape. Tutorial to come soon.

Seriously? No great Easter Pictures?

THIS my friends is the only picture I have of our kids on Easter.

I blame 9am church.

But we DID get a little crafty this year. We tie dyed our easter eggs. It was an interesting technique and not sure if we will repeat it again as everything turned a greenish brown. Not the pretty effect I was going for. But what can you do?

You mixed a bit of food coloring in 3 T of vinegar. Then take a wet cloth and wrap your egg. Drip dye in random drips around and remove cloth. That's it. Pretty simple.

Tutorial- Flower Fairies

I came up with the idea for these cute little fairies in September for my daughters birthday party. They were such a hit and so cute! A few readers have emailed me how I made them so I decided to do a tutorial. They are super easy and if you don't put a face on them there really isn't anything to mess up!

For each fairy you will need:

A wooden bead head. I found them in the doll making section at Joanne's. While your there grab:
Darice Doll Hair
2 pipe cleaners
2 large artificial flowers
1 very small artificial flower for the cap
1 flat backed crystal or jewel
Glue gun
Glue for the glue gun
Skin colored acrylic paint
Paint brush
Felt for the shirt and wings
Scissors

To start you need to paint your dolls head. Since I was making a bunch I stuck them all on one pipe cleaner so I didn't have to paint around my fingers. It worked like a charm. Let it dry. It takes all of two minutes.

Next fold one pipe cleaner in half and cut the other one in half. Like so:

Put a spot of glue on the folded half and stick on the head. Have I mentioned this was easy?

To put the arms on you simply wrap it around the body.

For the fairies shirt and wing you simply cut the wings out of felt. I took a piece roughly three inches square folded it in half and cut them out. Sorry. No pattern.

The shirt is a tiny half inch or so rectangle with slits  for arm holes. So technical, I know.

Yes, I realize that the pictures of the closeups of the fairy clothes are in a different color. It's been on of those months. Anyhow it's time to glue the shirt on. Start by glueing the bottom half on first. Like so...

Then cross over the top part in a V on the back. Don't worry how it looks. The wings will cover it up.

Take apart your artificial flowers:

And slide them upside down in whatever configuration you want (small, big, medium or big, medium, small). Play around with it if you want. You want it to look like a skirt.

Now for the fun part. The hair. I cut mine in two inch pieces. Although truthfully you could probably just glue a glob on and cut it to the shape you want. If a piece looks out of place just trim it off or glue on more hair. I love this stuff.

A tip: Work from the outside in. Trust me. Oh and don't glue the wings on yet. It just gets in the way of the hair. Ask me how I know.

Once you've got the hair on like you want you can glue on the wings.

Glue on the small flower so it's facing down towards the head. This makes it more cap like. Glue a jewel on the top. Pause and marvel at the cuteness.

And then take pictures! Because you are done!

I purposely leave the faces off. If you want this as an outside fairy for your fairy garden I would suggest maybe a quick spray of clear over the head before you start putting it together. So go on... what are you waiting for? Get thee to the craft store!

TWO finished knitted articles of clothing. Holy cow!

I love when I have a finished project. It makes my heart pitter patter and I get to feel the sense of true accomplishment. And brag. I really like to brag. Especially when it's something wearable like this...

My favorite part about this wrap is that you can wear it a gazillion ways. And it's so pretty. For my fibery friends you can see more on the rav page for it.

AND not only did I finish one wearable adult sized item this last month but two. FOR ME. I know, the shock almost killed me too.

Oh man, I need a hair makeover. Stat.

THREE WEEKS?

Ok, so I will admit that having a blog is a lot of work. And apparently it was more than I was willing to do in the last month. We are still in the waiting game for Spokane. I've been doing a lot of spinning and knitting. And I made some of these cute things...

Which btw are ridiculously easy and totally cute and addicting. You just buy the flower cabochon and the ring base and glue them together.

If you don't want to do that you can just buy one on my etsy store. :)

I have this friend...

So the last few weeks have been a bit nuts. My oldest son turned 8 and got baptized. My husbands work announced that they are opening a Trader Joes in Spokane. My best friend in Spokane (Misty) sending us links to houses and referrals to agents. Then there is the non stop perusal of Craigslist and Realtor.com.

You see, we are on the short list of possibly getting transferred there. And in the non-stop perusal of Craigslist we realized something. The rental market in Spokane is nuts. You see something nice and it's gone a week later. Or less. Then we realized something else. OWNING a house in Spokane is cheaper than renting. :|

So we may or may not have gotten pre-approved to buy a house. Ok. We totally did. ROFL. So this weekend we are loading up the car and driving to Spokane. Now, granted we are going because it's Misty's baby shower and I have loads of boy clothes to pass down to her. But that's like the icing on the cake. We are going to look at houses.

The smaller the better.

SAY WHAT?!?!

You see, I have this friend and she lives in a 256 square foot cabin with her husband and their daughter. Purposefully. I never really understood it until she posted on her facebook a link to this video.




And while living in less than 100 square feet is just not possible for a family of five (and maybe more) it did start us watching and reading online a lot more about small house living. Ok, so I still want one of Jay's tiny houses... it would make a great guest house. And a very portable cabin for when my husband goes hunting!

We have been married 9 1/2 years and have always rented. You should see our "dream house" list. It's insane. And would probably require 5k square feet just to fit it all in. There's a few problems with that thinking though. 1. My husband doesn't make enough money for a 5k square foot house. 2. I don't want to clean it. 3. Can you imagine the utility bills on that? 4. Do 5-6 people really need all that space? REALLY?

And while yes, having a screening room would be ten shades of awesome (heck that's what basements are for, right? So it stays on the list) we'd rather travel and give our kids experiences instead of stuff to fill that 5k sq. ft. house. Or at least buy them ultra awesome small stuff.

Some reasons why my brain shifted gears so quickly:

1. We want to be debt free. Including our house. It will take a whole lot less time to pay off a 150k mortgage than a 300k mortgage.
2. We have a lot of stuff we just don't use. If we have to live in a small house that stuff's got to go!
3. We want to travel.
4. The utilities alone would kill us. What if someday we want to go off-grid (or at least partially off grid) outfitting a 3k square foot house would be expensive. Outfitting a 1800 square foot house would be do-able.
5. Granite counters, awesome cabinetry, millwork, radiant heating... heck yeah I'm going to do it! I can have all these luxury finishes if my house is smaller. It will cost less!

Do you see where I'm going with this? We currently live in an 1800 square foot rental. We fit amazingly into it with plenty of room to spare. And as my dear friend Shawna pointed out to me yesterday 1800 square feet in most parts of the world is a fantastic luxury.

At least my bedroom is not our living room and I don't have to fold my bed up in the wall every morning. See, it's all about perspective.

Small will be awesome.

A now for something new...

I am a copycat. Truthfully. Very few of the things I do are actually my own idea. When I do come up with something I feel like it's a small miracle. So as I'm perusing the blogosphere and seeing all theses amazing crafts/projects/recipes/ideas something hit me. Let's do what I do best... and copy them! So, I've made a cute little button so that if "I Copy You" you can grab it and link from your project to my copy.

I'm pretty proud of my button. I've just started using my design software (thank you paint.net for the freebie). After finally figuring it all out I think I've got the basics. I might tweak it or change it up but for now it's not too shabby!

Now, I've been planning this for awhile but the whole month of February was one craziness after the other. And March is shaping up to be equally as nuts but you know, I really want to do this so I refuse to put it off any longer.

We were at my parents house at Christmas and my sister handed me her cashmere sweater and asked me if I could fix it.  As you can see there were these in a few places on the sweater. Bummer! And totally not fixable. So I asked if I could cut it up and make it into other stuff. Good thing I asked. But she was nice and said yes. Squee!

So the sweater landed in my project pile. And by chance a week or so later I came across Melissa Esplin's totally cute blog (which by the way when I get pregnant again I'm going to copy every single maternity outfit she wore) and her Cashmere Mitten Pattern for Grown Ups.

Melissa Esplin... come on down because I Copied You!!!

They are just a tad different. I was sleep deprived when I made them and cut them too short. On her blog you can see that she cut them nice and long and wore them scrunchy. And it's an Old Navy sweater and I'm pretty sure they did some sort of chemical treatment on it because no matter how hard I tried that thing would not felt. So these are unfelted. But still totally cute and warm.

 Here are some pics of the process...

I cut them out of the sleeves. I plan on using the main body for a cowl and ear warmers. Projects forthcoming. Promise.

See the problem? By the time I hem them they would have been WAY too short.

So I cut some more of the sleeve to make a ruffle band.

Folded it in half and pinned it right sides together and put some pleats in there.

I sewed it there and called it good. I used some scraps and made rolled flowers and glued them on. Yes, hot glue baby. That's the way I roll.

So totally cute. They look amazing on. I'm so bummed to part with them but maybe now I'll have to hit up the thrift stores for an old cashmere sweater for myself.


Also a huge shout out thank you to Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife for her amazing tutorials on how to make a blog button and how to make codes. And her blog rocks as well.