Monday, August 15, 2011

Homemade Monday #4

This week is another work in progress, The Boy's room. I am going for a colorful transportation theme, this past week I was able to get a little work done in there due to a major allergic reaction I had. I was confined to the house due to my spots, puffy face, spots and medicine. Here are just a few pictures.




Monday, August 8, 2011

Handmade Monday (Christmas Project) #3

This week has been a busy whirlwind of production. I chickened out on trying the finger crocheting and went with trying the huge Q-19 needle. I have fallen in love with it, it makes such fluffy, large blankets, quickly too.  I made this blanket to cross off my Christmas list.


I have also been working on a few side projects, a pink & brown giraffe that is still in too many pieces to recognize and a hound dog pillow for The Boy for Christmas. The hound is also still in progress, his legs are made & read to be sewn on but I needed a break from him & they haven’t been attached yet. I hope to do that this week.   
Yet to be finished
We continued to work on our new kitchen furniture and cleaned what was getting to be our very ‘lived in’ house. I thought it would be easier to get down on the floor and scrub all the floors by hand since The Boy insisted on using the shark (steam mop), so I figured getting us both a bucket of water and a sponge would let him help and let me be productive, but now my knees look like I’ve taken a good stumble. He had fun; I didn’t think to ask The Hubs to get any pictures of my little Mr. Cinderella.
I also thought it was time to go through all my coupons. I had about 5 weeks of coupons sitting in stacks, some still in their Sunday papers. I buy 4 papers every week so they start taking over pretty quickly. I have tried several ways of organizing them and storing them & nothing seemed to fit my needs and style. I have seen the file whole inserts by week, use an index box, use baseball cards and tried them all.
The file by week left me with stacks of papers lying around the house & not really knowing what I had, the indexing box would have worked better if I wanted to staple my sets of coupons or if I only bought one paper.
And then there’s the baseball card binder, I used this for a while, even got a special bag to carry it all, ‘all’ meaning what seemed like 10 pounds of it. It was taking me too long to cut all the coupons, fold them and stuff the card inserts, I started dreading Sundays, hence the papers piling up.
Then it hit me, a new way of doing things.
I pulled out all the pages from my inserts that had even one coupon I wanted on it, chucked the rest of the pages (before I would have kept them for a just in case there’s a blow out sale on something I don’t even use, but could make $0.05 on), took me a whole 5 minutes or so. Bought a binder & some regular document protectors, slipped all my pages in & bam! Organized- enough for me, clean, tidy & quick, what more could a girl ask for. I don’t make quick trips into stores in hopes of an unadvertised sale, so I don’t need it to be portable, and I don’t mind looking through it and pulling the coupons as I need them. Perfect! I also added a few baseball sheets to the front for coupons I get in the mail, at the store or clip and don’t use. I am using a few tag post-its to remind me of coupons I don’t want to forget to use as well.
I already planned a large shopping trip & it took me no longer than any other way would have. I think I may have found my fix.
Here is a shopping trip I did not too long ago to help inspire.
All this stuff today for….ready?......$6.76!!!!!!!!! Summary, (2) men dove deodorant, (2) sargento shredded cheese, a cool blue listerine mouthwash, (4) tostitos chips, (9) bags of frozed veggies, (2) oral-b power toothbrushes, a large bottle of contact solution, (2) Lysol toilet bowl cleaners, (2) fab laundry detergents, and a womans secret deodorant!

Monday, August 1, 2011

Handmade (Mantic) Monday #2

I saw this amazing doily rug over at Someday Crafts and had to find out how it was made. I did a little digging and came across a few instructions on how to finger crochet. It is just how it sounds, you use your finger (whichever one is comfortable) as your hook and start stitching away. It was hard to find pictured instructions on how to do this, but there were a few videos to help me out like this one and this one. It would give the same effect as using a very large crochet hook, a fluffy and loose look. I am going to give a few stitches a try tonight to give a go at something new.


Photo courteous of Knitting and Crocheting Guide  
Side note: It has been one of those technical difficulties, frustrating Mondays, therefore, will be no linky party today. I will pick it back up next Monday with my Homemade Christmas edition.