Sprocket Pillows!

Today's project comes from my Sewing! board:
http://www.cluckclucksew.com/2011/03/tutorial-sprocket-pillows.html
These remind me of pillows that used to be at the family camp.  They were full of scraps of random material.  Some shinny, some velvety, and some just plain funky.  I do not have such a diverse scrap fabric collection yet (key word), so I made do with pulling on a color group and working from there.

Anyone who has been in our house or knows anything about us will not be surprised at my pick of the color blue for this pillow.  To be fair, I needed 12 pie slices for the top and I didn't think I could pull together the eclectic look the author in the tutorial was able to do (need to learn that skill).  I also have more random blue fabric than any other color.

First step first, print the template from her tutorial page.  Mine printed right on the first try.

 I cut out the pie slices which wasn't too hard.  I made 2 each of 6 different fabrics.  Just folding the fabric over itself meant only 1 cut to get two pieces.  This I like. My assortment looked pretty good to me.

I will say I am glad she put the instructions to sew them in pairs and then sew the pairs together and then sew the halves together.  This helps keep all your pieces even and allows you to have a fairly good circle at the end.  Way to go!

So my pretty pinwheel of color looks like this:

When cutting out the bottom circle, it's important to make it match the top as close as possible.  I went a little bigger on mine and had trouble lining it up with the center ring in the last steps.  I ended up just fudging it at the end, but had I thought about it earlier, I would have taken the time to pin it down and make a closer copy.

I was able to reuse some of the crib skirt material I used in my son's room for the side of this project.  Getting the length of that just right was a little tricky, but not too bad. When you go to sew the top to the side band, pinning is really your friend.  I dislike pinning, so you know if I am telling you you need to, then you really probably need to.  I am guessing I used close to 30 pins to make sure it would sew correctly.  You are basically sewing a straight piece to a curve and that's not exactly an easy thing to just have happen.  You'll need to be as obsessive about pinning for the bottom as well.  If you did it right you get something like this:

And because I happen to have a random bag of Poly-Fill laying around (who doesn't right?), I went ahead and started to fill the pillow.  The bad news?  I only had enough to fill the pillow about half way.  The good news?  I finally found a use for that silly bag of Poly-Fill I have had forever.

I'll post finished products when I get to the store to buy more Poly-Fill.  I was thinking I was doing pretty darn good on not spending any money on these projects just yet.  There are a lot I can just do with the mini craft store I seem to have in my house, but there are also a number of them that need just 1 or 2 random things that I don't seem to have.  My shopping list is becoming a hodge podge of random supplies.  All in the name of a Pinterest Challenge. :)

Glittery Things

What makes every day items better?  Glitter of course!  My oldest is bringing home some smashing art work these days and the magnets we have on the fridge are only kind of so-so with holding them on there.  So these looked easy enough to do.  The hardest part was locating my glitter stash.  I swear it moves on me.

Another one from my Crafts board:
http://fromainsleywithlove.blogspot.com/2011/07/shake-glitter-off-your-clothes-now.html
This one is actually just an image and someone "hacked" instructions below it.  It's the clothes pins with glitter on top and magnets on the bottom.

I had some left over magnet reel from when I did my spiders on my door (still my favorite Halloween decoration).  I have glue and I did manage to locate my glitter.  Surprisingly, I only found 1 clothes pin though.  Eh, better to start with one than none.  Here's what the final product looked like:

Total time: 10 minutes plus drying.  Pretty snazzy upgrade for not a lot of effort.  And hey, glitter!

*Changes I would make - not to use the curled up magnets, they don't lay flat enough to stick well.  I have some flat circle magnets that work better.  :)

Heating Pads

I may be a hoarder of fabric. It's possible that I have bought fabric from the remnants bin at Jo-Ann's with no real clear goal in mind other than - "this will be handy to have some day".  I get really excited with those some days come around.  About 3 years ago I bought some flannel material I thought would be good for burp cloths. Let's just say that never happened.  And because of that, I have fabric laying around to do my next Pinterest Project.

From my Sewing Corner board I present this gem:
http://www.thegreenwife.com/2010/04/02/heating-pad-tutorial/
I love heating pads.  They do wonders for aches and pains and are great for winter nights with the bed is cold.  I have one that I made a long time ago that is now getting to the point where it's seen better days.  I might have burned the rice once and it's an old towel that's getting kind of beat up.

I liked this tutorial because it showed a sectioned heating pad thus making sure the rice was evenly distributed.  Mine is basically just in a long tube and it can be a pain to get the right amount of stuff where I want it.  Also, this one added some essential oil to make them smell nice.  Something I wasn't aware of when I made mine years ago.  SO!  I set aside a chunk of rice yesterday with some lavender oil to marinate for this project.

I liked the timeline on this project for being about an hour.  I don't have a fancy serger (although Santa could bring me one and I would be happy to have it), so I made so with my regular sewing machine.  Most of the places she used hers for are all inside seams anyway.  Flannel doesn't unravel like most cotton, so not a big deal.  I also didn't buy "high quality flannel".  Did you read the part where I got this out of the remnants bin?  Pound puppy material more like it.

I love how thorough these tutorials are with each step shown so you know exactly what you should be doing.  As I read through what she had detailed I made mental notes to skip stages.  Pinning has never been my strong suit and for something as simple as this, I didn't bother.  The exception was holding back the rice to get a stitch down.  That was sort of necessary.  I figure I saved myself some time by not having to serge all the edges and then serge them together.  I did pin at the 3" intervals because I do not own a proper fabric marking pencil.

So how did all of this turn out?  I would say fairly good.  Some of the sections aren't as straight as they should be, but whatever.  It still works the same.  Perhaps I should invest in a pencil.  It took me about 50 minutes to do.  This does not include the overnight marinade with lavender oil on the rice.  Now I just need to put it to good use which I am sure won't take long!

Pinterest Challenge

Ok so it's been a while.  A long while.  Ok, just over a year long while kind of.  I could fill in all the blanks on what happened in the last year, but honestly, I have better things to do with the limited free time I have.  Speaking of free time, I am on maternity leave, so it seems I have some more time available to me than I used to have.  Funny, first kid is a loss of personal time, and the second you get some back and don't know what to do with yourself.

Anywho, since it's the middle of summer and it's not always nice or easy to just get out and go for a walk or otherwise occupy my time anywhere other than home, I have come up with a game plan.  I have decided that I am going to set a challenge for myself.  I don't have anything better to do right?  So the challenge is this: Do something related to my Pinterest Pins 5 times a week.  This could be anything that has to do with the just over 1,000 pins I have on my board.  Preferably, it's some sort of "project" and not me just laughing at a hilarious eCard I pinned.  Although, on some days that might count.  This challenge is for the month of July (what's left of it).  I am hoping this yields at least roughly 20 project-ish things.

So to kick things off, here's what I did yesterday:
http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/06/01/chocolate-chip-scones/
That's right, make something from my Food Love board.  This is where I pin things I consider "treats" instead of Real Food (another board).  I have to say, baking things really isn't a huge time investment other than waiting for the oven to make your mush turn to magic deliciousness.  Also, I prefer recipes that don't care for completely off the wall ingredients.  So, this one fit the bill.

There may be one missing because I couldn't wait to taste it before taking a picture.  I regret nothing.  It was delicious and I would encourage you to try the recipe if you like to have "cookies" for breakfast because let's face it, scone is a nice way of saying breakfast cookie.

The second project is one that I adapted from this post from my Craft board:
http://www.ohreallybeckyforever.com/2011/08/15/im-not-crazy-youre-crazy/
Making envelopes from scrapbook paper!  We have decided after this past Mother's day that we are kind of done spending $45 on cards for people for one holiday.  Since when should it cost $5 to say Happy Mother's Day with a cute picture on the front?  My kids can do that!  Anywho, in her tutorial she was making the envelopes a different size.  I wanted to make mine so they would fit an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper/card stock folded in half.  For those that want to know, this is known as an A2 envelope size (4 3/8" x 5 3/4").  She also had a template to work from that fit the scrap book paper.  I did not. You would think I would have measured using the dimensions for the A2 size envelope, but that would have made sense right?  I just sort of eyeballed it with a piece of folded over paper.  I did however pick a scrapbook paper that was essentially a grid so I would have some guidelines.

Overall, it came out pretty good.  I also did not have double sided tape, so I raided the Elmer's glue stash and used that instead.  I would in the future make the tabs that fold in a bit wider so there's more surface area to glue to.  One of the questions that she was asked was how did you seal the envelope?  There are a few ways to do this; 1 - use double sided tape, 2 - use Elmer's glue, 3 - use a decorative sticker (you can splurge there since these are cheap to make - see breakout below).  I think I would go with double sided tape or a sticker.

Otherwise I think it turned out ok.  I just need to put something on the card stock and mail it to someone.  :)  Also, if you are tempted to do this at home yourself, the comments section recommended that you use a white sticker address label so the poor people at the post office don't have to decipher the mailing address a midst whatever pattern paper you decided to use.  And if you want a price comparison for store bought vs. homemade, here you go:
Store bought - cheapest I could find $1.99, but I'll admit, even those were sort of lame.  Typically $3.99 is more average for a card.
Homemade - 50 pack of card stock (regular price $9.99, I buy it only with 40% off coupons at a minimum - $6).  Price per sheet (assuming $6 for pack) - $0.12.  Price per sheet of scrapbook paper - Individually $0.49, rock bottom sales - 6 sheets for $1 ($0.16 each) for individual sheets.  Packs can come in 180 sheets for $20, can get them on sale for $10 - $0.06 a sheet. So card stock - $0.12 + $0.16 = $0.28

So that's $3.99 - $0.28 = $3.71 savings per card.  I know some people will say, "I don't have time to make a card."  I get that.  I don't have time to agonize over the 50+ card selection in the store (which can take me up to 30 minutes, plus driving to and from - I hate picking out cards) only to find cards I like which are $6 a piece which I won't spend.  SO!  To each their own, but for family at least, you are going to get homemade wonders.  Don't worry, we have markers, crayons, glue, glitter, and stamps to make them all one of a kind Picasso's.  :)

No More Plans!

My smart phone was one of the first generation smart phones or very close to it. I have had my little Droid Eris for just about three and a half years which is well past the lifetime of any modern day smart phone it seems. I am content with functional and don't usually need all the fancy things. Well my phone is so old it is basically a brick. I couldn't add apps, couldn't download most anything, and I was paying for it still. I said this is stupid.

My friend Adam had talked to me about NET10 back in December when he was visiting and it sounded like a cool idea, I just had to get warmed up to it. Basically it's this: no contacts, month to month, unlimited everything (for my purposes anyway), and cheaper than current phone plan by a lot. So what's the catch? You do have to pay for your phone. Yes the real price and not some discounted "deal" which you end up paying for in your service plan 8 times over.

We did some math and it was actually cheaper to pay the cancellation fee with our old service provider than to wait out the contract terms which ought to tell you the price difference we are talking here. Under our currently family plan we got only 700 minutes and the smallest data package for 2 people. The bill (with discount) was just under $150 each month. Our new plan, unlimited talk, text, and data (for what we use it will be unlimited) is just $85 a month. Um, yeah let me think about this... Done. New phones are expensive, but when you stop and think about how much you still pay for a phone with "discount" for anything remotely newish, it's not that much different. So if I am going to pay $100-200 anyway, I can justify spending the remaining amount to get a phone to have a cheaper monthly bill. Especially if this one lasts as long.

That sounds risky right? Well my thought was this, I now own the phone. If this prepaid provider doesn't work for us, we can just buy a new $10 SIM card and try again. No contact means no obligation to stay. I can also go back to another big box place if I wanted but no contact needed. You get contracts to offset the cost of the phone, if you have one then that solves that issue. Overall, I couldn't find a reason to not try it. We will see how it goes!

And because I love my new phone, I have written this blog entry from it with an app I previously couldn't ever have on my old phone. Neat!

Victory!

So I wanted to follow up on my race status since the last post on my Movement from the Couch.  I have in fact completed both races, the 5K and the 4 Miler.  I am proud to say that I was able to run both the whole way!  I am not only impressed with completing those races, but my time for both wasn't half bad either.

Wounded Warrior 5K (aka - LM 5K)

So in my first for real race ever, I was mostly on time for the start.  I managed to get there, get out of the car, and find my posse I was going to start with with a handful of minutes to spare.  No one was under any illusion that we would run the whole race together.  Especially considering some flat out told me they would run the first short bit, be it a block or a mile and then walk the rest of the race.  :)  No hard feelings for sure.  By the end of the first hill we were all split up.  I fell somewhere in the middle of our group and just kept on trucking.  I have to say, the layout of this race did nothing for me.  It was an out and back (as people in the running business call it) which I have decided aren't my favorite, but for this one I couldn't remember where I had been running on the way out, so I didn't know where I was going on the way back.  That's just as annoying because you think you should know, you were only just there.  The course was anything but flat, so that also had some annoyance factor.  I think about half of the second mile was straight uphill.  The second half was at least downhill, but still not enough of a boost for all that uphill.  Haha.

Anywho, the overall weather was nice.  It felt too cool to run without a long sleeve shirt, but really, I didn't need it after about the first mile, but my bib was on there, so I couldn't just take it off.  Lesson learned.  :)

My overall time for that race was a 35:57, which put me at an 11:25 mile.  Way faster than I was hoping for, so that made me feel pretty giddy.  As for my first race, it was small, uncomplicated, and just a way to get out there and get timed.  :)

Mother's Day 4 Miler

How nuts must have I have been to sign up for a 4 mile race a week after finishing my first 5K?  My friend Megan had talked me into doing this race with her with all kinds of encouragement, "You'll be fine.  If you can run 5K, you can totally do 4 miles."  In the back of my head I was thinking, are you high?  Haha.  I am thinking of this from the perspective of a person who couldn't run a mile in February, so 4 miles seemed a bit of a tall order.  I went into this race thinking, ok, if I have to it's ok to walk.  My personal goal was to go at least 3 miles since I had demonstrated that I could handle that without many issues last weekend.  When I got to the third mile, I was thinking, "Ok, cool, well you can walk anytime now and no shame."  The back of my brain was like, seriously?  You can do this, get your butt up that hill and get on with it!   The back of my brain won out in the end.  I managed to pull it together for the last hill and finish the race without walking.  Totally shocked about that, but still kind of an ego boost.  "I CAN DO IT!"

So the overall results for my 4 mile status: finished in 46:49, which breaks down to an 11:42 mile.  I thought that was pretty fantastic for adding an additional 0.9 miles to my longest run which was only last week.  This also earned me 46 active minutes on my pedometer which topped off my max points for the day and earned me a badge of "Busy Bee" for having 45 active minutes in one day.  Winning!

So now I am an official running fool.  Onward ho!

Will It Grow?

It's been a long long time since I have lived in any one place to be really "settled" in.  In fact, now that I think about it, the last time I was in one place this long I was in high school.  Wow.  I guess that enhances the reason of why I am so excited about my garden project.  It's been forever since it was even a possibility!

My father is a farmer.  He grew up on a dairy farm and has basically had a farm, tractors, land to play on most of his adult life.  I know how delicious food from a garden can be and have wanted to have a mini garden of my own for a long time.  Even growing herbs seems to be a challenge around here with cats.  This year I decided to get serious about it and figure out what I wanted to plant and how.  I called my dad and said, "I have room on my deck that gets good sun, what can I grow?"  The answer was apparently a lot.

This is my year of experiments.  I plan to take notes on what grows well, what doesn't have a hope and a prayer for making it on the deck, and how much of any one thing I really need.  I went to the garden supply store in March and purchased starter soil, containers, and seeds.  A lot of them.  I think the whole thing came to about $50?  I figured there's something to that 'strength in numbers' philosophy, so I planted a bunch of them.  Probably more than was necessary, but that whole survival rate can be tricky.  There were a few things that had a terrible success rate; oregano - zero, catnip - one plant made a come back, dianthus and carnations are running at about 2 plants each. 

Most people think I am nuts that I am growing everything from seeds.  Apparently, getting starter tomato plants is the preferred method.  What do I know?  Seeds were $1.69/pack with the potential for 24 plants.  I had time and space, so give it a whirl.  If it does work out, I am out $5 for the containers, dirt and seeds.  I am ok with that investment risk.  So far about half have made it and of those, I am not sure which are going to thrive in the transplanting process.  I tell myself the solution will be to just buy the starter plants everyone else buys and call it a day.  :)

So what did I decide to grow?  I am so glad you asked!  Here's what's growing so far:
Heritage Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes
Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Romaine Lettuce
Butter crunch lettuce
Spinach
Radishes
Green Beans
Peas
Green Onions
Parsley
Basil (also sad growth rate, but I have 3 tiny plants)

The radishes and peppers are doing very well, the tomatoes had a lot of struggling seedlings, but they are in the zone where they may make it.  I am planning on also planting a hill of cucumbers for giggles.  I am probably most excited about the lettuces because we do eat so much of them.  It would be wonderful to have a good crop to save some money there.  I am planting waves of those to have them available all summer/fall long.   

So, the ultimate question - Will it Grow? should be answered over the summer.  I'll keep you posted!