Make your own fake snow A TUTORIAL

Good afternoon everyone!!!  How was your Thanksgiving?  Ours was awesome!

 

I know that it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything cool, or anything at all for that matter!  BUT, we put our tree up last night and I started putting up the rest of my decorations and realized that I needed some fake snow.  You know that flakey fake plastic stuff that you can buy by the bag fulls??  Well we live in a tiny town that doesn’t ever have the things you need, so I made my own!!  Would you like to make your own??

               

I thought you might say that so here we go!!  The top 2 photos are examples of the before the snow, which is pretty, but missing something and the after with the snow.  What do you think??

 

First of all you need to gather about 5 white plastic bags.  I only used a little bit of what I made in the jars and I have a bunch left over so adjust according to how much you need.

Second you need to cut the colored part off of the bag.  Look at photo below

                                     

Third you’re going to layer all of your bags together and roll them, scrunch them or just bunch them all up and start cutting!!!  See photo below

 

                   

 

And finally you have a container full of fake flaky snow!!!  So easy and so much cheaper than spending money on the store bought stuff!!!!!  And look how fluffy it looks

                      

                                   

Now just put it wherever you want. Now if you have small children please don’t put it where they can put it in their mouths, they can and will choke!!!!

Have you started decorating yet?  I’d love to see!!  So until next time………..

Happy Decorating!!!!!!!!!!!

Better Late than never

Good morning Everyone!!!

I hope yall had a wonderful Halloween.  I know we did and my boys got enough candy to last them a year!!!  This is a quick post I just wanted to show you what we’ve been up to.  I hope yall have a great November 1st!!!

 

            

                                                                         

 

   

 

                                         

And yes those are homemade costumes.  I made the Robin Hood costume for my youngest and my Mom made the dragon costume for my oldest.  Below is a better photo of the back of my oldest’s costume.

                                                       

They were the cutest kids yesterday!!!  So until next time……………..

Happy Crafting!!

Our pretend Tree house!!

Good Afternoon everyone!!

Well today my oldest stayed home from school due to throwing up and coughing until almost 3 this morning.  So to help entertain my sick one and my 3 year old I decided they needed something really cool in their room.  We live in an apartment (up stairs at that)  so going outside to play is not an options sometimes.  So to solve a bit of that problem and help their imaginations, I made them a tree in the corner of their room.

It's not perfect and it needs a few more leaves, I figure I will add them as I go.  What do yall think?

Thrifty Thursday

It has been so long since I have done one of these post!!

Check out all the awesome fabric I scored today.

 

I’m not exactly sure what you would call this type of fabric, but it feels just like the minky fabric you can buy from the fabric store.  It is so soft!!  The burnt orange is about 2 yards long and the turquoise one is about 1 yard.  I think that these will end up as backs for some throws or baby blankets.

 

This one is about 4 yards long and I had been eye balling it for a while and I finally decided that today was the day it was coming home with me.

I had been eye balling this one too and it was finally on sale today.  It is a little over 3 yards long and this one is 60” wide!!

 

This one is the same measurements as the one above!  I loved the red pin stripes all over it!!

This one is about 4 yards long.  I know that it looks like it is wool, but it’s not it is cotton.  When I saw it sin the bin with the rest of the fabric I had to feel it to make sure it wasn’t wool.  I love it!  And all of this fabric together was only $10!!  Can you believe it?  That is almost 17 yards of fabric!  I couldn’t be happier with my finds today.  Have you found anything good lately?

Tick Tock……

I can feel Christmas getting closer and closer and I seem to be getting farther and farther behind.  Does anyone else make a list of the things you MUST get done by a certain time and then find yourself constantly adding to that list?  If I could get my foot up far enough I would kick myself for adding to that list, but since I can’t I guess I better just keep sewing.
Remember me showing you this quilt top?  Well I finally got it basted and quilted and checked off the to do list.  What do yall think?
  

How fun is this?  I did not know I could tilt my photos!!  I think I found my new favorite thing!!

What do yall think about the green polka dotted back?  That’s a thrifted sheet!!!  Yep, yep it is and it worked perfectly I think for the color scheme of the quilt. I know my lines aren’t perfectly straight, but I think it turned out pretty good anyway.  I hope the next one will be better. 
I really need to perfect my basting method.  Any suggestions?  The fact that I have carpet all throughout my apartment and limited space does not help. 
Ok now onto the next thing I wanted to share.  Now that I’ve posted an up close and personal of the finished quilt, I have a question.  Do you see the sandy colored fabric in the above photos that creates the diamond shapes in the quilt?  Well I personally dyed all of that fabric with coffee and/or tea.  Do any of yall do that?
                                       
I save all of the coffee that is left in the coffee pot in the mornings and I use it to dye thrifted white sheets.   Yes you read that right, I do not buy white fabric from the fabric store and I also do not buy any type of tan fabric unless I have tried to achieve a certain color and have failed epically!  But I must say that doesn’t happen very often because I have learned that if I dye the fabric first with tea and it isn’t dark enough, I let it dry then stick it in a bowl like the above photo of very hot coffee and let it soak for about an hour that usually does the trick.  Oh and I must mention this method makes me feel like I’m doing something good for the environment because I’m only using coffee or tea to dye the fabric and I used something from a second hand store!

Speaking of thrifted sheets I wanted to show yall some of my stash.
                                
As you can see in the first photo, the second shelf isn’t as full as the top shelf.  The top shelf is 2 stacks deep and each stack is at least 7 sheets high.  The very front 2 stacks that are shorter than the others are pillow cases.  The second shelf is mostly solid colored sheets there are a few that you can’t see in this photo that are different shades of blue and purple (all thrifted).  Now the bottom shelf are our bath towels.  Is it a bad think when I have more vintage sheets that I do bath towels?  
I know I’ve probably babbled enough with this post, but I wanted to show you a sketch of the next quilt I am working on.  Keep an open mind because this is a very rough sketch and it gets worse because I had to take a picture of it because my scanner wasn’t cooperating.
                                     
And the last thing I wanted to share today is that my kindergartener had homework for the first time the other evening!!  He was so excited, but I don’t think that will last!
                                        

Show and tell and I need your help!

Hello Everyone!!

I hope everything in your neck of blogland is going well! I have been so BUSY, like busier that I thought I would be! 

I have been sewing my booty off over here!!  I haven’t been able to share very much of what I’ve been making for several reasons.  Some of what I’ve been working on has been Christmas presents and the others are Thank you gifts and well I don’t want to spoil the surprise.  I do need your help finding just the right fabric cleaner for older fabric though to get those yellow stains out of it.  I’ve heard there is such a cleaner, but I have no idea what it is or where to find it at.  So if you have any ideas please let me know.

 

Now onto what I can show you, I mentioned awhile back that that I had a new nephew!  So exciting I know, but anyway back to what I was saying.  I was suppose to have a quilt for him made before he was born and well Aunt Alley kind of fell off and didn’t get it done.  So this morning I got the quilt top all pieced together and the border put on and now it is ready to be basted, quilted and the binding put on.  This particular quilt pattern is called a wonky strings, it was so much fun to make!! 

      

So opinions please, and any opinions on how I should quilt it?  I actually really like it’s craziness and I definitely think it will keep Mr. Man comfy and warm!  So until next time……..

 

Happy Crafting!!!

It’s been so long

Good afternoon everyone!  I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted, but we have been so busy here with school starting and Christmas sewing that I haven’t had much of a chance to type anything up.

When we went on our vacation, I came home with some Dresden plates that my Grandmother made out of flour sacks about 40 years ago!  They are absolutely beautiful!!!  My Mom and I laid them out to see if I had enough to make a queen size quilt for my bed, and I DO!  Isn’t that exciting?  You know what is even more exciting?  There are enough of them to make matching pillow shams and I will still have a few left over, so 1 of these beauties is going to be made into something special for a special person I owe a very big Thank you to!!  I can’t tell you who, because I know she will probably read this and I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I can show you how beautiful these are.  I hope you have a drool bucket because you are going to be in awe!  Oh and these are all hand stitched together by my grandmother!!

         

See I told you they were beautiful.  Ok wipe your mouth now.  Aren’t those prints lovely?  Well until next time…………………..

Happy Crafting!!!

Sewing a new wardrobe

Good afternoon Everyone!!

It has been quite a while since I did a Thrifty Thursday post, and even though it is Sunday instead of Thursday I wanted to share it anyway!  I have been going thrifting on Thursday's , it's just been so hard to remember to take photos of my finds so that I could share them with yall. 

I have been wanting to update my wardrobe here lately, seeing as how all I usually wear is tank tops and shorts and the occasional T-shirt and jeans.  I just can't justify spending very much money on clothes when school is about to start and my boys need things more than I do.  So I have been scouring the thrift stores for a while now looking for things that catch my eye and these are 2 of them that I turned into skirts.

Once again forgot to take photos, but the before was a horrible 80's style jumper with huge shoulder pads and it actually came down to my ankles!  I removed the skirt from the top part cut it down to make it the right length and kept the pockets.  (I love pockets!)  I kept the top part for another outfit.  Everything in this photo including the belt and Tank top came from the thrift store.  All together the whole out fit was $3.00!  You cannot beat that, I don't know of anywhere I could buy a complete outfit for that amount!!

This was a shirt that was way WAY too tight across my chest and under my arms, but I loved the fabric and the fact that it was a button up top with lace around the edges.  SO what was I to do?  Turn it into a skirt of course!!  So what do yall think about the new additions to my new and growing wardrobe?  Well until next time..................

Happy Crafting!!!

Back from Vacation

We had a wonderful time, so I thought I would sum it up for you with a few photos.

Such a beautiful view!

Perfect place for brother's to bond!

Sailboats in the bay

Grandma standing by keeping an eye out!

We had such a great mini vacation and none of us were ready to come home, but back to real life with school starting on Monday and many things to clean, sew and prepare for up and coming holidays!!

So until next time................  Happy Crafting!!!