What’s Been Going On?

Well, here’s a picture (or 11) of what’s keeping me away from the computer these past few days.  And it’s also what’s going to keep me away for the next few days.  Maybe weeks.  Who knows how long this will take….

This is my living room furniture.  All in one big ‘pile’.

We’re Rick’s pulling up all our carpet to put down new hard wood laminate flooring. 

We’re putting the same flooring all throughout our first floor, which means the kitchen will be next.  While the floors are up in the kitchen, I’ll be painting the walls. 

Yellow.  One of these yellows.  (the colors are crappy in the picture)

Oh, and maybe one day painting those cabinets a nice creamy white color. Maybe.

While we’re in a state of mid-construction, Jack is forced to wear his new boots.  He LOVES his boots, so that isn’t a hardship. 

While the sub floor is showing, I decided to write out some scriptures.  We’re supposed to stand on the word of the Lord, right?

Now, everyone who ever walks on our floors, and anyone who ever owns this house will be standing on a firm foundation. 

Jack wants to help with EVERY step.  He’s a pretty good helper too.  Rick is *mostly* patient with him., too.

He was the first one to walk on the new floor.

He even got to help pound in the boards.  What a good helper!

Someday, hopefully before Christmas, I’ll show you our AFTER pictures.  I can’t wait! 

Yes, we’ll have mismatched woods in our home.  I can live with that!

Squirt Gun Art

I saw this on a blog that I read, and I thought it looked like a lot of fun. Since Rick likes to go shoot his guns, I thought Jack would be excited to shoot his own guns at a target.

I did this once with just Jack in our backyard and it didn’t turn out so well.  Mostly because I didn’t follow the directions. That’ll happen.  I used water with a little bit of food coloring in it instead of just food coloring.  The result was a very pale color left on the paper.  You could barely see it. 

This time, when Cage and Jack got together for their most recent Art Date, I changed things up and got a much better result.   Instead of using water and food coloring, I used water and tempera paint.  It made for a much bolder color on the paper.  Since I only had three squirt guns, we used yellow, blue, and red paint.  Obviously, if you try this at home, you can use any colors you want to use. 

It was a fun activity for the boys to do.  It was definitely a workout for their fine motor skills and eye hand coordination.  Luckily, they didn’t get too much paint off of the paper.  At least, I hope they didn’t!

Thanks, Bekah, for letting us come over and have another Art Date with you!  We can’t wait until next time.  My Pinterest board is filling up quickly with ideas for our little guys.

Since I’m Not Pregnant…

*WARNING*

If you are male, or squeamish about menstrual cycles, and would rather not know these types of things about me, please DON’T READ THIS POST.  Really. 

If you are male, or squeamish about menstrual cycles, and would rather not know these things about me and you choose to read this post anyway, please don’t ever mention it to me.  Thank you.

*warning over*

Remember when I said that I craft out of necessity? Well, this is another example of that. It’s also an example of how I’m going old school.  I am a woman.  I am not pregnant.  I am not breastfeeding (man do I miss that!!).  Put that all together and it means that I still get a regular monthly visit from, you know, Aunt Flow.  (yes, I’m a teenage girl who still gets embarrassed talking about it)

I’ve been wanting to buy some Mama Cloths for a while now, but every month, I think “this will be the month we get pregnant, so I better not spend money on something I can’t use right now.”  Then we aren’t pregnant after all, and it turns out it would have been nice to have already ordered some cloth. 

My other stumbling block is that I can’t decide who to buy from.  If you search on Etsy for Mama Cloth, there are a ton of WAHMs who make what look like great products.  How is a girl to choose??

So, I decided to make my own.  A friend sent me a link to this site that had links to lots of other sites with patterns.  This site was the one I used to kind of copy the pattern from. I just eye-balled what I thought looked like a pad, then made it a bit bigger.  She has since put a pattern out on her site if you’re an actual pattern follower.  I have yet to follow a pattern. This is the site that I used to guide me through the steps of putting my pieces together.  It was very thorough and helpful.   Here is my step-by—step ‘tutorial’ for how I made my very first Mama Cloth.

First, the fabric! I have a few questions as to what fabric is best for this purpose, so I went to my cloth diaper sewing board on BabyCenter, and read about how fleece is used for the outer layer of diapers and flannel is used for the absorbent layer.  I decided to buy three fleeces and three flannels and test out how they work at home.  I washed and dried them then did a water test. I put a few drops of water on the fabric, and for the water that beaded up, I pushed my thumb on it and saw how quickly it went into the fabric.  I also checked a paper towel I had put under the fabric to see if the water went all the way through or just into the fabric.  Flannel soaked through every time, very quickly, and Fleece soaked in but didn’t go all the way through each time.  So, flannel was used for my ‘inserts’ and fleece was used for my backing – or layer that’s against the panty.

Here is my pretty fleece I used for the backing.  I eyeballed the pattern,   (even with the seam allowance it was too wide in the long run, but still useable) then cut it out and used it to trace onto my flannel.

I then took some flannel and folded it a few times to get four or five layers of absorbency in the pad. I sewed it a pink flannel top so it would stay in place even after washing. 

I decided to try out different ways to attach the inner layer.  I thought maybe adding channels may help direct the flow, or maybe just a big open rectangle.  I don’t know what will work best, but I’m guessing that there won’t be much difference.

After sewing the pieces together, good sides facing each other, I turned them inside out and gave them a top stich.  Officially, I was done then, but I wanted to put Velcro on my wings so they’d stay together.  I don’t have snaps or a snap applicator, so this was my alternative.  You could also sew a button on one and a button hole on the other. I’ve even seen how you can omit the wings all together and add a button on the bottom of the pad and put a button hole in your underwear.  Not sure I’m down with that. One of my friends uses a safety pin to keep it in place. 

Here are my finished Mama Cloths!  Aren’t they cute?  I love how girly they are. 

After realizing that I am again not pregnant, I decided I better have more than just three ready to use, so I whipped three more up with other flannel and fleece the very next day.  From start to finish, it takes me about an hour and a half to make three.  I’m guessing if I made a bunch (why would I?) that I could get it down to 30 -45 min. from start to finish easily.  I’m just a slow seamstress. 

These turned out pretty patriotic I think. It was completely unintentional, but cute all the same.  *and see the sewing machine cover behind the pads?  I added some denim to the bottom of my cute cover – you can see the original post here.

I have to admit though, that I use the Diva Cup for my cycle, and I don’t need a lot of pads anymore.  Just one a day in case of any leaks and one at night for a few nights.  6 may be all I need to complete my week, but we’ll see. 

Oh, and in case you’re interested, I spent $27 on 6 fabrics and thread and I’ll never need to buy fabric again (for this purpose).  I still have another fleece and some flannel left to make a ton more.  I bought a half a yard of 5 fabrics and a yard and a third of another fabric.  It would have been cheaper had I not picked out fancy fabric.  That blue was $9 something a yard!  And that was after a sale.

If you’re brave enough to cross over into the world of cloth, let me know if you try making your own.  Or if you have already made some, add your link in the comments section.  I’d love to see how other people are making their own – and steal your ideas!

*********UPDATE****************

After trying them out this month, I can say that I have NO IDEA if they work or not.  Every month I need a pad a day as a backup. but this month I didn’t leak once.  Ugh.  I’m happy about that really, but I can’t tell you if they worked or not. I liked them, and I would not recommend using Velcro honestly, but I managed to make it work.  If you have any questions, leave me a comment or send me an email and I’ll get back to you.

Recipe Boxes Prettified…sorta

Do you remember these? (click on the picture to see how I organized my recipes)

I LOVE having my recipes organized. I knew that I would cover them someday, but I wanted to wait until I found just the right paper.  I found this at JoAnne’s the other day, and it was 50% off – LOVE! 

Now, before you look too closely, I want to remind you that I’m not a paper crafter.  I’ve never done this before. I’m pretty sure that if you want to cover a box with paper and Mod Podge, you should use something other than scrapbook paper.  It’s pretty thick, and these boxes are pretty irregularly shaped.  (irregular meaning they’re not flat and prefect rectangles).  I have no clue how to do this correctly, but I covered each box with 2 different pages that I thought were kitchen appropriate.  To finish it up, I put a layer of Mod Podge on the entire box as a sealant.

While they’ll never win any awards for being perfect or even beautiful, they’re much nicer to have in my kitchen than the plain gray boxes.  I hope they last for years to come, and that they don’t start peeling any time soon.

I Craft Out of Necessity

My husband rides his bicycle into work each morning.  Wait, let me go back and reword that.  My husband USED to ride his bicycle into work each morning.  He USED to park in a free parking lot about a mile from his downtown office building.  He USED to ride a paved trail that lead him right to his workplace.  He USED to save our family $80 a month by doing this.  Enter: Winter Weather and Spring (and Summer) rains.  Now, he’s not so much riding his bicycle as he is taking it in the back of his truck every morning and parking in the garage by his office building. 

Now that summer is here, he’s trying to get himself back into the habit of riding in again.  Though I love that riding in to work saves us money, I don’t so much love the grease-stained pant legs that have become a part of every pair of pants the man owns.  I should have come up with this craft last year.

I decided it was time to make him some pant cuffs to wrap around his pant legs that will keep them from flapping into the bike chain.  I looked through my stash of fabric, found the ‘manliest’ color I could find, and bought some Velcro.  Except for the one Velcro tab I had to remove after stitching on the wrong side of the cuff, it was a very easy and quick project.  If I can do it, anyone can!

Here’s the stuff I used.  Light blue isn’t all that manly perhaps, but it does match all his blue shirts he wears to the office. 

Cut two strips of fabric oh, about 4 inches wide. I didn’t really measure much of anything, but I did have him wrap my fabric around his leg initially so knew at least how long it had to be.  I think it was around 12.5 inches or so that he needed around his leg, so I cut them about 16 inches long.  You can never go back if it’s too short!

Iron and sew them into two strips that look like this.  No biggie.  I did two rows of straight stitches to make them more secure.

Then, sew Velcro along the ends.  But not like this picture shows.  Put the Velcro tabs on opposite sides! Can you believe this is the second one I did?  I did the first one perfectly, then I got careless.  I had to rip out the stitches from the second cuff I did.  Ripping stitches is not fun.  Don’t be like me.

WHALAA!  A bike-pant-leg-cuff thingy! 

Now, if you REALLY want to be like me, have the wearer try it on and realize you made it WAY too long.  Then go back and cut out the middle and sew the two pieces back together for a shorter cuff.   

I made two, but Rick tells me he only needs one.  That’s fine.  Now I have an extra in case he forgets or looses the first.  I hope this helps with the stains.  Though, I’m not sure I’ll see the benefits until we buy new pants.

Mr. Sandman

Though I wish he’d come and bring us a dream, I’m not talking about that sandman.  I’m talking about Jack!

Daddy built us a sandbox this weekend. He used lumber he already had, the cheapest white exterior paint I could find, and a LOT of sand.  This project probably cost more than getting one of those little plastic turtle sandboxes because they don’t hold as much sand, but we wanted a nice big sandbox for Jack and Daddy wanted to build something.  He loves to build things.

A long time ago, he invented his own paint can stirrer.  He made it out of a coat hanger. 

He plugs his drill in, attaches the stir-bit as I call it, and then stirs the can of paint.  It’s like using a hand held electric mixer.  It works great. I told him to market that idea and make millions, but he figures it’s already been done.  And if it has, we can see that anyone can make their own, so it’s not all that impressive anyway, right?

Jack helped.  Kind of. 

He loved using the hammer and screwdriver when Daddy wasn’t using them.  I guess this chair looked like it needed some tightening.

Here is our beautiful new sandbox!  Rick put it directly in the sun, which is hard to find in our backyard.  He said it was so the sand would have a chance to dry out whenever it got damp.  We originally thought to put it under the trees in the shade, but for a few reasons, like acorns and hickory nuts dropping down our heads, we thought that wasn’t going to work out so well.  As you can see, if it’s a sunny day, I’m never going to get a good picture of Jack in the sandbox. 

We hadn’t figured out what to do as a cover yet, but since it was scheduled to rain for the next couple of days, we had to think of something quickly.  This junior size tent fits perfectly over the box.  We’ll see if we were geniuses or not after the rain clears.  It looks like it should work, even if it looks a little silly.

I think he’s going to love this sandbox.