Where two must share a room

We have two bedrooms.  Small bedrooms.  As much as I would like to spend my hours decorating another baby room and adding all those little adorable touches, I just don't have that option.  My husband wasn't cool with us sleeping in the living room.  So, the only other option is for A. James and New Baby to share a room.

Honestly, I doubt the baby will be spending much time in their room.  First off, there isn't another room for an additional bed.  Second, I am planning on nursing and don't feel like running across the house 100 times a night for several months.  We will probably just get a co-sleeper for our bedroom.  Who am I kidding?  The baby will just sleep with us until I'm no longer nursing throughout the night---and probably even longer then.  I like cuddling with babies.  Third, I love and trust my A. James, but I wouldn't put it past her to try and climb in bed with the baby or bring him/her into her own bed.  It is just too much temptation.

Pretty much the "sharing" part will just be the storage space for all their things: clothes, toys, swings and all the other "necessary" baby equipment.  However, I still want to make some changes to the current room to help with the transition from A. James having her own space to having this new needy stranger move in (and so I can properly nest).

I'm thinking a vintage woodland theme.  I've always liked this and I have several owls and nature-esque themed aspects in the room already.  There are just quite a few changes I need to make.  Like adding these:

Fun woodland garland/buntings:


Burlap and Embroidered Garland by Rita



Red Poppy Garland by Ioana

Some new curtains which will either be vintage or I really do need an excuse to buy some of these fabrics and make some of my own.   I have a hard time resisting anything with owls or birds....or little hedgehogs, or snails....or mushrooms.  Okay, I might have a hard time resisting fabric in general.

So this, plus some shelves on the walls with little jars of pinecones, rocks a few potted plants---all which we already have.  Maybe some embroidery hoops featuring some of my favorite fabrics and a few cute owl or snail another one of Lolly Chops cute embroidery patterns.

Also, I'll need to make a few of these Toadstool seats, because c'mon.  Do I really need to explain it?

If you have any other suggestions, let me know!

Temporary Decorating Ideas, anyone?

Since it looks like we will be renting for another year, I've decided that I should just go ahead and make where we are feel like home.

No sense hoarding that cute fabric I've been saving for "my dream house" any longer, or waiting to make curtains, or waiting to decorate the rooms.  I'll just drown my "boo-hoo" feelings about the situation by making the best of it and creating my own space.

So first step: the walls.  The walls are blank.  No pictures, no decorations---blank and boring.  Since we are renting we can't do anything permanent like paint the walls crazy colors, but I may have found an adorable solution to that problem.

Fabric Wall Decals tutorial by Sewing for Scarlett

Especially in A. James' room.  My head is swirling with ideas; birds, mermaids, pirates, trees---oh my.  So many cute ideas to work with.

I'm not sure if this would work in the other rooms (maybe our bedroom)---but I have other ideas for them.  Embroidery hoop designs.  I have always loved these, I made a few for A. James' room and I've wanted to create a few for the other rooms in the house, but I haven't gotten around to it. 

from Budget Wise Home

I like the ones without embroidery that just features beautiful fabric.

By ThreeRedAples

I like ones with lots of embroidery and applique.

By Wild Olive

I like silly, ironic designs.

I think these will be great summer outdoor projects.  Unlike quilting (unless you are braver than I and hand piecing) you can take this anywhere.  Small, compact---I can see myself at the pool or park relaxing while my little one plays herself tired.

What are some decorating ideas of yours? 



Where things slow down long enough for me to finish a quilt top

From the second to the last weekend in February until last weekend I had something planned.

Seriously.  I feel that I've been going non-stop for months (which I have) and finally I have some time to breath.  No plans this weekend.  Or next.

I feel like a free woman.

Not that the things I had planned weren't exciting:  Beekeeping school, Trip to Chattanooga for A. James' birthday (I'll have pictures up soon enough), cousin's bachelorette party, wedding rehearsal and wedding, and MY birthday.

All loads of fun.

However, it is nice just to sit around and do nothing.

Also, my BOTM class is officially over.  Even if my quilt is not.  The class was exciting.  Our instructor was great.  I just learned the hard way I cannot join a class in the middle of the holiday season and be expected to get anything done.  Yesterday I put everything away in a box and don't plan on thinking about it for at least another month or two.  Then maybe I'll head over to my moms and beg for her help in getting it finished.

So.  I looks like (fingers crossed) that I might have some time to work on some projects for me.

Here are some I came across while mindlessly browsing other blogs.

T-Shirt Poppies

Yet another Baby Quilt, Story time Squares

Yeah, I know.  I am still thinking about making things for babies.

Good grief, can it possibly get any cuter?  Have you looked at this fabric?  I'll wait while you jump over to Heather Ross' website and drool a bit.  Even though, I finally finished the top to A. James's pink coin stack quilt---I immediately decided I must use the Rapunzel fabric and make her another quilt.  Ever since she has been a tiny girl she has said she wanted "long, long hair down my body."  It only makes sense that Rapunzel  is one of her favorite stories and we read  it almost every day. 

She would flip if she had a quilt with Rapunzel in her tower.  The only problem with this pattern is that I doubt it will be long enough to cover her long legs much longer.  So, I must a) alter the pattern to make it bigger which means doing math (ugh).  Or b) I can find another quilt pattern.  I've leaning toward this one from Moda Bake Shop.

Topsy Turvy Quilt

Either way.  Chances are I'm going to be spending quite a bit of money on etsy in the next few weeks snatching up all of this delicious fabric.

The birds and the bees---well, mostly just the bees

I want to be a beekeeper.

 

I want to spend hours watching tiny little insects fly in and out of a hive gathering pollen.

I want to put on a crazy looking white suit and open up the hive and pet my little bees and hum to them and tell them what a good job they are doing.

I want to see little eggs hatch out and become drones or workers or virgin queens.

I don't even care if I get stung in the process.

I've wanted to keep my own bees ever since I was a little girl and my great uncle would bring jars of honey comb from Mississippi where he kept bees.

After one bite of REAL honey---you'll kick that little cute store bear to the curb.  Your taste buds won't be satisfied with anything except for the real thing.

We've been hooked on real honey for a while now.  We've even gone as far as to become picky as to say, "Oh, I like the honey from the jar made from blackberry plants better than this stuff."  I know---we are honey snobbs. 

This is why I have to raise my own bees.

On Saturday I got just a little bit closer to reaching that goal.

I went to the Kentucky State Beekeeping Association Bee-School and for six hours listened to experts talk about bees and the future of beekeeping.

It wasn't enough time.  I could have stayed all day.  I could have stayed a week.

Now, I have some big decisions to make: 

• Should I order bees or catch my own swarm (sounds like more fun). 
• Should I use a beeswax foundation or go foundation-less.  This guy says foundation-less.
• To treat or not to treat.  Thinking not treat because Kent Williams doesn't treat and he's a Master Beekeeper and he invented his own hive tool.  AND he kind of reminds me of Silent Bob.
• Do I supplement their food?  If so what with?  It just seems to UN natural
• Top Bar Hive?  Medium?  What size?  Buy or Build? 

Okay, so maybe I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do.  I want to bee keep as naturally as possible.  I want to catch a wild feral swarm of bees who have been keeping themselves alive for generations without special sprays or foods and I want to care for them in an environment as UN artificially as I can possibly get without using a hollowed out tree trunk. 

Since I won't be able to do this until next year---I'm going to spend this year studying up.  Hanging out with some people who have their own hives and aggravating the dickens out of anyone who has ever owned a beehive and reading books probably a lot like this one and this one.

So I've not been sewing much

Guilty.

I've been doing other things.  Spring is in the air and my brain has been in vegetable garden mode ever since the snow went away.

But----spring also means I can pull out my skirts and stop wearing pants!  Hurray!

I'm going to add a few to my wardrobe this spring/summer.

Here is the line-up.

Adorable Petticoat (two ways to wear) by alisaburke

Murphy's Layered Skirt from Ruffles and Stuff

Because I am a sucker for pockets---Summer Pocket Skirt by Made

Cup Day Skirt (but in big girl size) by Thornberry

High Waist Skirt by Crap I've Made (also in Big People Size)

Well, I'll keep you updated on the progress

What to do, what to do?

I stumbled across an entire tote of my old clothes from High School (which ended up being very fun and very depressing all at the same time). It was mostly tops; long sleeved, short sleeved, tanks, sweaters. They are all in surprisingly good shape with there is one problem. They are all about 3-4 inches too short. I can't just toss them and while donating them to charity is awesome---I'd really like to try and alter them in some way so that they are wearable.

I've been thinking I could just cut off the tops a little under my breasts and add on a skirt. I've seen several different modifications. I like this one with the ruffles. Or maybe a plain top with a bright colored print like here. Or belted with a patchwork bottom. So many different ideas!

So, I'm in need of some help. I have about 20 (no kidding) tops. I'm thinking of posting the pictures of a few of them on here and see if you all can help me decide. What do you think? Any tutorials/pics would be much appreciated.

“There's nothing half so pleasant as coming home again.”

I've been thinking about the decor in my house---or lack thereof. For the past year we have been living in a rental house and I have done very little to make it look like a "home." Since we plan on building in the next year or two, I keep thinking it would be silly to do too much. However, lately I keep wanting it to feel more like home instead of just a place we rent.

In the next few weeks I'm going to be doing a product review for a great site. I was browsing through all of the products they offer (which took a while because they have over 200 stores!) and I came across these lovely headboards . Check out the ones covered in fabric. So nice! What a beautiful idea. It got me rethinking about my decorating dilemma. For a place to feel like home I need two rooms to be decorated: the bedroom and the kitchen. I'm not real sure why, but these are the first two rooms I tackle.

What about you. What makes your house feel like home? Curtains, vases, plants, your bedroom set, lovely headboards, your kitchen plates? Do you collect something and showcase it? Or is home really just "where the heart is?"

Spring Cleaning on a budget

I never really understood the idea of "Spring Cleaning." To me it sounded pretty gross to wait until a specific season. I get these sporadic bursts of energy where I must clean this or that. They usually end up with my house looking way more chaotic than before. You know what I mean. You decide to reorganize your closet and the entire house looks like it exploded. This happens pretty often to me because the rental house we are staying in is pretty small compared to the house we lived in before. I am always trying to move things around to "make more room."

Anyway, yesterday I got the urge to clean all of the baseboards in my house. It was raining outside and I was feeling pretty cooped up. I don't like to be indoors if I don't absolutely have to. So I decided to distract myself by doing some random task. I was excited because it gave me another excuse to use the homemade wood cleaner I had whipped up about a week ago. I found it in a library book called "The naturally clean home; 101 safe and easy herbal formulas for nontoxic cleansers" by Karyn Siegel-Maier. It was fantastic. I'm thinking about buying it for myself from Amazon.

I really enjoy making my own household cleaning solutions for the same reason that I enjoy making my own food from scratch. I know what is going into it. I don't have to wonder what isopropyl alcohol or tetrasodium pyrophosphate is, and more importantly, is it really safe? When you are only using a few ingredients the most I have to worry about is not mixing baking soda and vinegar together. Also, it is much cheaper!

A few weeks (or months---I can't keep up with time anymore) I went shopping with a friend who was buying cleaning supplies for her home. She had ran out of everything and needed to restock. I didn't really need anything, and was just tagging along for the company. She was right. She was out of everything. Laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, wood cleaner, window cleaner, disinfectant, toilet bowl cleaner---the works. This is all that she purchased on this trip and the total was around about $60.00! I was floored.

Before I started to make my own cleaners, I had never really made one trip to the store to buy everything. I guess I never ran out of everything at the same time so I never knew how much I was spending for the whole kit and caboodle. I'm not really sure how much cleaners cost per use. That would involve elaborate math and that is something that isn't in my job description. However, I do know that you can make your own cleaning products for a fraction of the cost of buying them in the store. The best part is that most of them require the same ingredients so you really do not have to purchase that much to start out. As I have mentioned before, all you really need is baking soda, vinegar, borax, and super washing soda, castile soap, lemon juice and some essential oils (if you'd like). Some of these are more expensive than others (like the liquid castile soap which is around $14.00), but most of the ingredients can be bought even in bulk for under $5.00.

I made my own laundry detergent after finding the recipe on the Women's Voices for the Earth website. They also have instructions for Green Cleaning parties which I have been seriously contemplating hosting for a while now. However, whenever I mentioned this people just tended to snub their noses at the idea. I don't know if it just seemed like a lot of work, or if they were just happy with their own cleaners, but I didn't think that anyone would be interested. Lately, I've been reconsidering the idea. After talking to a few of the ladies from the sewing group I am thinking that I might have a few takers. Ladies, if you are reading this let me know if you'd like to come to one. I think it would be a good time.

As I mentioned before, I found a ton of great recipes in the book by Karyn Siegel-Maier. However, if you're not able to get the book, there are more than enough resources on the web. Just Google what you are looking for: "How to make your own Windex" or "How to make your own Febreze" and you should find more results than you'd even know what to do with. Also, there are several blogs dedicated to such topics like Healthy Child, Healthy World or Simple Organic just to name a few. Also, here is a few that I am already using. Enjoy!

Herbal Mist Spray (Air freshener)
Wash a container and fill it with water. Add 5-7 drops of essential oil per 8 oz of water.

Rug and Carpet Deodorizer
I have not yet used this one, but it is on my list!

1 cup Borax
1 cup baking soda (Tracy talks about how wonderful this ingredient is here)
½ cup cornmeal
15 drops of your favorite essential oil (or try mixing two of your favorites together)

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Break up any clumps. Sprinkle mixture over carpet/rug. Wait several hours (overnight) and vacuum up!

Dusting Aid
½ cup of oil soap (Murphy's Oil)
¾ cup of warm water
5 drops of essential oil (I used orange)

Put into spray bottle and go!

Fabric Softener
1 gallon vinegar
10-20 drops of your favorite essential oil.

Add 1 cup per load to rinse cycle.

Basic Laundry Soap Liquid
I have been meaning to try this one

1 ounce liquid castile soap
2 Tablespoons glycerin
1 cup washing soda
1 cup baking soda
2 cups warm water
10 drops essential oil

Put all ingredients into a heavy plastic container. Shake well. Use 1/4 to 1/2 cup per load.

Kitchen Floor Cleaner
1 gallon hot water
2 Tablespoons liquid castile soap
15 drops orange essential oil (use whatever you'd like)
¼ cup lemon juice

Combine all ingredients. Dip mop into bucket or place in spray bottle and spray your floors before you mop.

 

Remember when I said I wanted to do a Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt?

image from here.

I feel better about life already. I think I’m still going to cut out some hexagons and make a block of the Grandmother’s Flower Garden. However, I’m just going to make a purse with them. Start small. Baby steps.

The Results are In!

I know you have just been giddy with excitement wondering if the yogurt turned out. Well, if you haven't don't worry. I've been giddy enough for the both of us. So, results?

We have yogurty looking yogurt in the fridge right now as I type this! Perfect looking (and tasting) yogurt made from organic whole milk and organic whole milk yogurt that I made. I am super excited about this. All you need is: some pots, a heating pad, milk, plain yogurt with active live cultures. (I used Stonyfield Cream Top Plain Yogurt)and a thermometer (I used a candy thermometer). Come on, do it! You have all that stuff right now.

I followed the directions from here, doing the same thing as I did last time with a few exceptions. I used a smaller amount of milk this time (1 quart instead of 1/2 gallon). I also used a smaller pot (3 quart instead of 8 quart). So, a word to the wise if you decide to do this. Which you should because it is super easy and worth it. Before you start, check the temperature of your heating pad. Do this:

Turn your heating pad on (on medium heat, which is recommended) and put the pot you are going to use on top of it. Fill the pot with the same amount of water you plan to use for yogurt (1 quart, 1 gallon, 1/2 gallon). Let this sit for a while (an hour or so) and then measure the temperature of the water. Is it 110 degrees? No, try high heat?

Why do this you ask? The milk has to stay at around 110 degrees for seven hours to become yogurt. The yogurt site recommends you put your pot on a heating pad and put it on medium heat. This is what I did last time. However, when I tested the water this time it was only keeping it at around 100 degrees! This may be the reason for my yogurt failure last time. I had to kick it up to high to get the right temperature.

Now, the yogurt is just plain jane yogurt (which I think tastes a lot like sour cream). You'll have to add honey, sugar, fruit, etc. to get it to taste the way you like it. Personally, I just like to add in some bananas and wheat germ. Or you can add in vanilla extract. Yum. The sky is the limit.

Making Yogurt: Take two

So, I am trying to make yogurt again. Last time it just evolved into this semi chunky milk-like substance that I used instead of milk when I made bread and such. It wasn't entirely useless, but it wasn't yogurt and despite the assurances from the website that I could "drink it," it just didn't agree with my palate. So I am trying again, using the same great website. It is full of pictures and advice. After my yogurt disaster I emailed the website and was walked through by their yogurt experts. We decided that it must be a problem with my heating pad to make a long story short.

So, I am giving it another try. We eat a lot of yogurt in our house. A. James eats a cup of yo-baby at least everyday for breakfast or a snack and they are around $3.50-$4.00 for a six pack. I don't mind getting them for her because they are made with whole milk and organic ingredients (and lots of less sugar than other brands) not to mention that it tastes so much better (yes, I sometimes take a bite here and there). However, I love to make things from scratch; i.e., washing powder, dishwasher detergent, shampoo, soaps. Not to mention food stuffs like salad dressing, bread and such. I just found out you can make baking powder and confectioners sugar from scratch from this website. I think I may have shed some ecstatic tears when I came across this site. Everything from scratch! Are you kidding me?! I can make food coloring and gelatin mix on my own! I didn't even know I had the desire to do so until I found this website. Amazing.

I have everything I need. I even did a trial run to make sure my heating pad isn't going to ruin everything this time and it went well. Hopefully, I'll have some yogurt in about 12 or so hours. If not, I am going to try the crock-pot method I read about here. Wish me luck!

Spending lots and lots of time, making lot and lots of bags

I took a break from making the million (just 15 actually) reusable library totes (from the Morsbags pattern) for A. James's birthday party and decided to make something different. I didn't stray too far. I made another bag, but this time I made a bag for me! Yay! No, I did not make a diaper bag. I am still procrastinating on that one No, No. I made a Tiny Happy Bag.



I am very excited about it. I used some material I found on clearance for $1.50 a yard (Fantastic, I know) and some material I already had on hand. I hand embroidered a little birdy design on the front and sewed that baby up! It was such an easy pattern to follow and Melissa was especially helpful with some beginner questions I had. I adore the pattern so much, I think I am going to make more.So, don't be surprised if you get one of these from me soon.

Waste Not, Want Not

So I am tired of paying way to much for household cleaners. You may be too. My grandmother got along just fine using basic items that everyone usually keeps in their kitchen; baking soda, vinegar, borax, and super washing soda (not so much the last two, but they are very handy). For the past few months I have been making my own washing detergent. It works great and costs much, much less than Tide or whatever else you use. Here is the recipe:

Laundry Washing Detergent

1/2 cup Borax (found in the same general area as other washing powders)
1/2 cup Super Wahing Soda (I found this at Kroger, right beside the Borax)
1 cup grated soap (I use Kirk's Castile Soap, but you can use whatever you like. You just take a bar and grate it using a cheese grater).

Personally, I like to use unscented soaps. However, you can use essential oils to give your laundry a nice smell. Use 2-4 drops.

Put everything into a glass/plastic container and shake, shake, shake. Use 1 tablespoon per load.