Here’s a photo of a recent dinner at our house. I found the recipe for bacon wrapped green beans here. I will be making these beans again. They were delicious. I served them with baked salmon. To prepare the salmon, I drizzled a little olive oil over the salmon, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and dill, then baked for about 20 minutes. The whole meal was super tasty.
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This is a necklace I made while remembering one of my favorite runs: The Rock to Pier 10K. It starts in Morro Bay, California and ends at the Cayucos Pier. The whole run is in the sand on the beach and the view is beautiful. I haven’t run it in several years since I moved, but I have fond memories of this fun family event. You can see the Morro Rock near the bottom of the pendant. The pier isn’t quite so easy to spot, but it’s near the top of the pendant. This necklace is available in my Etsy shop.
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Today’s project is a Batman sleep mask. I’ve shown you a few other versions of the sleep mask: the owl, the eyelashes, and the glasses. There are directions in the prior examples, if you need them. You can probably just look at this to see that I cut out two pieces of black felt in the shape of the Batman mask, sewed eyes onto one piece, then sewed the pieces together with the elastic attached at the sides.
With the Wonder Woman mask I made earlier this year, wouldn’t this be fun to give to your favorite superhero couple?
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Today’s project is an upcycled coffee cozy. It’s upcycled because I used the embroidered part of a thrifted sweatshirt to make the cozy. I’ve been using the $1 reusable coffee cup from Starbucks lately. After I drink my coffee in the morning, I switch to tea, so I’ve been carrying this cup around with me everywhere. It’s nice to have a reusable cozy to go with the reusable cup.
Here’s the sweatshirt I started with:
I bought it because I thought the embroidery was so pretty. There were stains on the sweatshirt, and it wasn’t really my style as far as a garment, but as a coffee cozy? You bet! I’ve made cozies before and I just opened up the paper cozy from my Starbuck’s cup to get the pattern. For this one, I used an old cozy to get the basic pattern. Since I didn’t want to cut off any of the flowers, I made this one bigger than the one I used for the pattern.
I cut out the shape for the outside of the cozy, then cut an identical one from some pink felt I had. It’s just cheap polyester felt, about 25 cents per sheet at Hobby Lobby. I also cut a row of pompoms.
For the sewing, I placed the right sides together, sewing around the edges and leaving an opening at one end so I could turn it right side out. I also held the row of pompoms in place so the pompoms were on the inside of the cozy at this point.
Next I flipped it right side out, then sewed along the edge of the cozy to give it a more finished look. I tucked in the end that was left open earlier for flipping, and sewed it shut. Then I added a loop of elastic to one end. I should have included this in the first place when I had the right sides together, but I forgot. So, being lazy, I just sewed it on after the fact. Then I picked out a fun button from my button collection and sewed it on by hand, making sure to measure the cozy on my reusable cup before sewing the button.
Here is another cozy I’ve been using lately. I made this one a while ago with the same pattern and felt.
I love adding a bit of personality to my drink cup every day.
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Hello there. The past few weeks I’ve been in a vintage phase. You’re probably thinking that I’m always in a vintage phase, and you’d be right, but lately it’s been more intense than usual. For one thing, I’ve been watching The Wonder Years series on Netflix. I loved that show when it was out and I love it now. When our youngest son was little, he couldn’t watch a whole movie without going outside to become one of the characters. If it was a hockey movie, he’d be outside with yard tools playing lawn hockey. I’m starting to think maybe he got that from me. Since starting the Wonder Years series, I’ve worn my hair just like Winnie Cooper more than ten times. True, I wear a lot of headbands, but normally I pull my bangs back. Lately, the bangs are out just like Winnie’s. So, not only am I liking vintage things, I’m becoming a vintage character. I might be taking this too far.
Then I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. My hair has been in a bun a few times since then.
In addition to modeling my hair after whatever I’ve been watching on television, I’ve also been going through a box of old photos and miscellaneous documents from my grandmother. I found this little brochure that mentions Junior League, which I think is cool because I’m a Junior League volunteer in my town. The art on the cover is just plain cute, too.
In the same box I found this photo of my great-grandfather’s pipe. He was an English professor. Aren’t all professors supposed to smoke pipes?
This dress is one that I spotted on ModCloth. I need this. Red, sleeveless and polka dots are all some of my favorite things. Don’t you think this dress would look great with a nice vintage hairstyle?
I found these bathing suits while browsing a 1966 Good Housekeeping magazine. It’s funny how she’s wearing a towel on her head at the beach, instead of a hat.
I tried to make this vintage computer work. This is all I’ve got so far. Any ideas?
The other thing I’ve been doing is listening to old records. We used a ton of grease a few months ago and got our old jukebox working again. We’ve been organizing records and looking for new (old) records, too. I might write a post on organizing the records once it’s all figured out.
Hopefully looking at all this old stuff will inspire me to make some new stuff so I can get back to blogging.
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This is a project done by my daughter, Maddie. It’s a pretty simple project, and quite economical for a unique pair of high waisted shorts. She bought some jeans at a thrift store, then found some patches at another thrift store. She had a few patches already, some of which were from my childhood. First, Maddie cut off the legs of the thrifted jeans. Next she played around with the patches until the shorts looked the way she wanted. Then she sewed the patches on by hand. That’s it. She didn’t use all of her patches, so hopefully there will be another project made from them soon. Because it snowed the day she made these shorts, she paired them with a sweater and tights.
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We had a spring snow late yesterday, so I thought I’d share a few photos. It was pretty weird, because we had our spring break over a week ago! Still, no matter when the snow falls, this California girl is impressed. Snow continues to be a novelty even though I’ve lived here for almost nine years. This was the most snow we had all winter. As soon as there was enough snow to make a tiny snowman, I did. I placed him on top of a tiki torch on our patio. I love the contradiction, that the snowman is somehow taunting summer.
Last night I was outside after ten o’clock because it was so bright out there. I didn’t use a flash to take this photo. I know I need to work on this, because the photo is blurry and far from perfect, but it does show you how bright it was with all that snow. It felt like late afternoon, not night time.
This morning it was still white outside, but I knew it was going to heat up and melt everything, so I took advantage of it while I could. This photo shows two of our trees; one is trying to get leaves on it and the evergreen is holding onto some snow. I love seeing the battle between winter and spring, knowing that spring will eventually win.
Here’s another contradictory photo: snow sitting on the sun.
And, if you saw my post from yesterday, you know how happy I am that high school tennis season is upon us. I guess there won’t be any outdoor tennis today.
The roads weren’t bad enough to cancel school today, so after drop-off I came home and built myself a snowgirl. That’s not wrong, right? Regular grown-ups do that, don’t they? Her eyes are made from the pokey balls that fall in our yard non-stop. Last weekend we were out there clearing them off the lawn {while wearing shorts}. This weekend, they are creating some stunning eyes on my sweet snowgirl.
While I was taking photos the little snowman from last night melted enough to fall off his tiki torch.
The least I could do was pick him up and move him next to my gal.
That was all this morning, and the snow is really melting a lot now. One of her eyeballs has fallen out, she looks like she’s about to fall over, and one of her jazz hands has dropped. Oh dear. It was a short lived spring snow, but it was fun while it lasted.
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It’s spring. Do you know what that means around here? It means high school tennis season! I am beyond excited to be a tennis mom again. My older kids both played when they were in high school and it was one of the highlights of parenthood for me. I’m pretty sure it was a highlight of their childhood, too. Now that our youngest has decided to play as well, it means I have a shot at four more seasons! Woohoo! {I had to throw in that shot pun.} I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly what I love about being a tennis mom. It could be that it gives me the chance to focus on one child, with no multi-tasking. Maybe it’s the fact that as an introvert, I have always preferred individual sports. High school tennis is the best of both worlds: it’s an individual sport structured within a team. The athletes get to play a singles match and a doubles match, plus have their scores tallied with the rest of the team to determine which school wins. Maybe what I love about being a tennis mom is that there are so many great tennis families here. I get to be around them and soak up their goodness. Whatever it is that makes me love it, I am happy to welcome this element back into my life this season.
Now I know that technically it’s spring, but we are supposed to be getting a few inches of snow today. Good thing I still have my tennis ball snowman wreath hanging on the front door. Procrastination pays off and we will look like we knew all along that we weren’t done with the cold weather. To celebrate the return of tennis season inside the house, I created a tennis ball garland. As you know if you are a tennis player, balls don’t last forever. After a while they get flat, or dead. I’m always looking for ways to upcycle them and give them another life before they hit the landfill. Here’s how I made the garland:
I started with a bunch of dead tennis balls, put them in a vice grip, and drilled holes all the way through them.
Then I found a piece of yellow bias tape and an elastic threader. I think you could use any ribbon or string, I just used bias tape because that’s what I had around. This next part takes a few minutes and a little patience, so wine and chocolate could possibly be helpful to your mental state while you create this.
I just threaded the bias tape through the loop at the end of the elastic threader and stuck it through each tennis ball. Finding the first hole was easy. Finding the second hole is where the patience comes in. After the ribbon was through first couple of balls I got the feel for how to find the second hole. You can see in the photo below that my threader wasn’t much longer than the tennis ball, so I had to smash the ball down so I could get a good grip on the threader to pull it through.
This next photo shows how it looked with three balls attached. I was playing with my camera and trying to focus on the middle ground and it actually worked, so I’m including this shot.
I used a total of 15 balls for this garland. The balls are a bit heavy, so I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t break the string. I used screw-in hooks under my mantle to provide enough support for the weight of this garland. I added a couple of vintage racquets in front of the fireplace and that’s it. {I thought we were done using the fireplace for the winter.}
I love having a little bright color on my mantle and the sweet reminder to appreciate this tennis season while I can. I think the tennis ball garland would be a fun decoration for any tennis themed birthday, or for high school tennis banquets across the country, too.
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Have you seen all the map art projects out there? I admit that I’ve been enamored with maps lately, but not enamored with doing big projects. This map wall art was the perfect project for me to use a map and create something that took very little time. I used the frame that I’ve used for my other changeable wall art here, here and here. It’s a vintage black metal frame. I wrapped a piece of red polka dot fabric over the base of the frame so I can just change out the art whenever the mood strikes me. For this one, I found a map of the continental United States online and printed it, then cut it out. I used a thin red Sharpie to draw stars on the places where we have lived since we were married, and a dotted line to show the direction of travel. I used some tacky spray on the fabric to make the paper stick. I’ve used this for each of the other projects I’ve done with this frame, too, so the red fabric is getting rather sticky, but that’s a good thing in this case. When I’m ready for a change, I’ll just peel off the paper and stick something else there.
When I look at this map, I wonder where we will go next. Do you think there’s a dichotomy of people who are willing to move away and people who aren’t going farther than the next town over? I understand both types of people. There is something very sweet about living in the same town where you grew up (or very close), knowing all the same people you’ve known all your life, and being intimately familiar with the history of people and events of your town. There is also something wonderful about trying out someplace new, and adding new traditions and kindred spirits to your life to compliment the ones you already had.
Here’s to a happy home, whether it’s the one you grew up in, or one you’ve created from scratch.
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Every time I think we’ve gotten our household finances as lean as we can get them, I discover something else we can do to make them even leaner. Here are five things I’ve done over the past couple of years that have saved us a lot of money.
1. Make laundry soap. For about $10 in supplies, I was able to make enough laundry soap to last us for about a year. And with five adult sized people who wear regular clothes plus sports clothes plus pajamas every day, we do a lot of laundry around here. I’ve just now had to replace the last ingredient and it’s been about 18 months since I started. This is the recipe I use. So that’s basically a huge savings. I still haven’t found a recipe for fabric softener that I like, so if you know of one that leaves clothes soft and smelling good, let me know in the comments. I prefer liquid.
2. Get rid of cable. With all the options for watching tv out there, you really don’t need cable. We already had streaming Netflix and Apple TV, so we kept that. We added Hulu Plus for about $9/month and bought a digital tv antenna for $30 so we could watch Downton Abbey. (We can get local channels with this, but Downton is the only current tv we watch.) Our cable bill used to be about $110 per month, so that first month we got rid of it we saved $71, and every month since then we have been saving $101. That’s a huge savings, too.
3. Get rid of the land line. We didn’t get rid of our land line for a long time because we used it for receiving calls from stores, marketers, political campaigns, etc. We turned off the ringer and only checked the messages every week or so, or whenever we remembered. We didn’t want any of those people having our cell phone numbers. Then we discovered that we could get a free Google Voice phone number. We monitor that number, but we don’t have to be bothered on our cell phones all day with calls from folks we don’t want to talk to, and we don’t have to pay for a service that we don’t use. The new number is one we give out when we don’t want to give out our cell numbers. We feel very clever, like we beat the system. Not having a land line saves us $35 per month.
4. Plastic wrap the front window. We have a huge window that isn’t double paned. I added a layer of plastic wrap to the inside (I’ve done it twice now) and both times our utility bill went down, even though it was a colder month and the bill should have gone up. I wrote about how I did it here.
5. Give handmade gifts. For two years now we have given handmade gifts to the adults in our lives for birthdays and Christmas. It is a trade-off because it takes time to make things, but if you’re in a phase of life where you have more time than money, it’s great.
Those are some of the things I’ve done lately to save money…and saving money makes me happy. Do you have any money saving tips?
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