Homemade Holiday Banner

I feel like I've been on a bit of a creative streak lately, getting a few lingering craft/house projects finally checked off the never-ending list, and with leftover motivation to write about them, to boot! What is going on?! Anywho, I spent this past weekend putting out our Christmas decorations, and in doing so, had a rare stroke of creative genius (as I'm clearly so prone to) for a super cheap (possibly free depending on materials you may have), super easy holiday (and beyond) decoration....

 Using some Christmas wrapping paper leftover from years past, a collection of pictures/storybook pages/postcards, some twine and clothespins I added some cute and festive decor to a usually blank space in our house. (Excuse the bad picture, the nighttime lighting situation in our house is apparently very camera unfriendly, and I'm too impatient/lazy to wait for better lighting).

Making this sucker was super simple.  I simply strung some of my twine up using push pins on either end, cut some triangles out of some festive wrapping paper, collected my other decorative items and hung them all up with the clothespins! It took me about 10 minutes total, and cost me nothing as we already had everything on hand. 

 

 In addition to the wrapping paper triangles, I hung a picture of the Kansas City Plaza all decked out in Christmas lights that I took a few years ago...

 ... a couple of pages taken out of a vintage 1950's "The Night Before Christmas" book bought at a thrift store recently for $3...

 ... and a vintage postcard from the 1920's or so, also found at a local thrift store, for around $1-2.

So there's one great example of quick and easy decorating using-what-ya-got. Phil even had the idea of leaving the twine up year round, and swapping out seasonal decorations and pictures throughout the year, and I am on board with that as well.  It's nice to have a little bit of somethin-somethin on what is usually just a big blank hunk of half-wall.  Cheers to Crafty Christmas Creations (and alliteration!!)

Infinity Scarf + Nursing Cover Crochet Win!

So I'm back with yet another crochet project, and this time my first ever that I created all in my own head with no pattern or anything. Go me.  My friend Megan popped out her third kid recently, and I knew all along I wanted to crochet her something - with three kids, I knew that they already had most baby things they might ever need, and as this was their last kid, I knew that any new baby items wouldn't be getting more use down the line, either.  So I wanted to make something that could be useful now and post-baby-phase, and maybe something for Ms. Megan herself, rather than for just baby.  So the idea of an infinity scarf/nursing cover came to mind.  Something useful and handy, multifunctional and usable post-baby/nursing = perfection! She can always wear it as a scarf after she's done nursing, and in the meantime, is a handy way to always make sure she's covered (both literally and figuratively) while needing to nurse out in broad daylight.

 As you can see, it can be worn as a chunky, oversized, hopefully-super-warm-and-comfy infinity scarf that can be doubled up/twisted/arranged in whatever fashion you'd like.

And when it comes time to feed baby, unwrap it, sling it over your shoulder, and voila - instant privacy for nursing time. When nursing is done, simply double it back up into a scarf! No need to carry an extra nursing cover or deal with slyly hiding baby inside a sweatshirt or other article of clothing that may or may not provide enough coverage.

(Quick side-note to give major props to gorgeous Ms. Megan for modeling my creation [and doesn't she look fabulous for having given birth a mere three days ago?!])

As for how I made it, I hunted around for a pattern to follow, and didn't find any specifically meant for the infinity scarf/nursing cover combo (there are lots of patterns for infinity scarves that I could have used/adapted, but nothing for this specific purpose).  So I decided to just wing it.  This is my first project where I didn't use a pattern at all. I've adapted them before, but always started with a pattern as a template/guide.  This time - nada. I'm pretty dang proud that it turned out, even though seriously, it doesn't get any easier than this as far as crocheting or creating patterns. But still, with my tendency to screw up even the easiest creative tasks, I'm calling it a win! I've written down the "pattern" for any other crochet geeks out there who want to tackle this super easy project, although it's more of a "guide," than a pattern. 

Infinity Scarf + Nursing Cover

Materials:
Yarn of your choosing (I used I Love This Yarn Chunky in Pearl Grey and Plumberry and I used about 3+ skeins total)
Size J hook
Yarn needle

"Pattern"
Make a chain however long you want the scarf to be.  I honestly don't know how long my chain was to start - I just chained until it seemed long enough, joined it, and tested it out around my neck until it seemed to be the right length.
Once your chain is the length you want, join to first chain with a slip stitch to make one big loop.
*{Ch 2, double crochet into each stitch around. Join with Sl St.} Repeat from * as many times as you want until the scarf is as wide as you want it.  You can vary the width as needed, based on your preferences and needs (just keep in mind if you are using it as a nursing cover, it does need to be wide enough to provide ample coverage for mom & a growing baby!) Once the scarf is wide enough, finish off the edge with slip stitches all the way around, and weave in ends. Change up colors as needed to create desired patterns.  My pattern for the color stripes, in case you want to replicate it exactly, was this:

2 rows Gray
1 row Purple
1 row Gray
1 row Purple
X rows Gray (this is the middle of the scarf, and depending on how wide you want your scarf, this number will vary, just make as many rows as you want to create desired width)
1 row Purple
1 row Gray
1 row Purple
2 rows Gray

Seriously, I told you this was an easy project! So that's that, my first ever straight-from-my-brain-into-my-hooks crochet creation sans pattern. Hooray!

Super Baby!

Wow it's been a while... there has been a bit of a lull in interesting house projects lately, for whatever reason.  But I realized I never wrote about one of my prouder crochet moments from this past summer.  My friends Linhhai and Lisa had their first baby in June, and all crochet geeks know that babies are an ample opportunity to crochet some shit.  So I knew I wanted to make them something.  A blanket came to mind as something that is easy to make and functional for years to come (I always shy away from baby clothes and hats, etc., because it just seems sad that you would put so much time and energy into something that could only be worn briefly, until baby outgrows it).  While brainstorming how to make the blanket as cool and special as possible, Phil came up with the great idea to make it a blanket that can moonlight as a super hero cape, and I was immediately sold on the idea.  Linhhai is a big super hero/comic book nerd fan, so it just seemed perfect, and like a great way to make the blanket multifunctional and super special. 

I knew from creating a drawstring on Kelly's yoga mat bag that it would be super easy to just create a hidden drawstring on one edge of the blanket, so that that end can be gathered and tied and the blanket can be worn as a cape! So I used a basic blanket pattern, added a ribbed texture to the edges by doing a couple rows of alternating front post/back post double crochet stitches all the way around, and wove a drawstring (which was just 2 strands of yarn chained together with knots tied on either end to keep it from slipping through) through the ribbing on one edge of the blanket.  When the drawstring is not tied, it is almost completely hidden within the edge of the blanket, so it's not in the way or creating some sort hazard by having ties/loops hanging off of it at all times. But when it's super hero time, you just gotta grab the ends and pull. Voila.  It was super easy, and I'm proud for being able to execute that element on my own without a pattern (I looked - no patterns for blanketcapes out there).  As for the striping/color pattern, I just wanted something colorful, kid friendly, and gender-neutral (we didn't know gender of baby until he popped out), so I got some bright, fun colors and did a completely random striping pattern that I just made up as I went along.  I love how it turned out, and hopefully little Binh gets use out of it for years to come. 

You can see one end of the drawstring on the bottom right corner

 

Demonstrating it's utility as a blanket, in case you weren't convinced.

 

Ta da! Super hero cape!

 

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's super Julia!

My apologies that there isn't something cuter modeling my creation.  But you get the idea.

 

I have a couple other crochet projects that have been completed lately, or that are in the works, that I'll be sharing soon (one in particular being the first project I've ever made without ANY pattern or guide whatsoever.  Jury's still out on whether or not it's a success, but hopefully I'll be back in a few days to share that YES it was). As for the house front, while it's not an interesting DIY project by any means, we are making one big update in the form of doggie doors! Hoorayy!! No, really, we are super excited.  Once that's done, I'll surely share about it, even though it's not a project we did anything for except write a check.  Oh and our bedroom, that I've talked about us working on since last December? Yeah - still not done. Yikes. Hopefully I can share that transformation before NEXT December........ eye roll.

Pipe Dreams

We recently had the opportunity to learn some valuable lessons regarding DIY plumbing problem solving, enough so that I thought it worth sharing, so perhaps others don't have to spend 3 days with a clogged kitchen sink like we did. We ended up trying 4 separate options to unclog the sink, only one of which actually worked. Lets break it down:

Unclogging Strategy #1: Drain-O (Or any other brand chemical-y drain clog blaster in a bottle)

We've had varying success with using this stuff in the past, and we had some leftover from some other clog scenario, so I went ahead and used it. Didn't budge the clog one bit. Complete failure.

Unclogging Strategy #2: Baking Soda & Vinegar

I have had complete success with this strategy in the past, so much so I was certain it would work this time around. For those who aren't familiar with this, you pour a sizable amount of baking soda down the drain, followed by 1/2 cup or more of vinegar, and quickly block the drain opening with something (this forces the science fair volcano action to head down towards the clog instead of back up and out into the sink). Wait half an hour and flush with boiling water. Repeat a few more times if necessary. I did just that, about 3-4 times, and nada. My tried and true natural home remedy finally failed me.

Unclogging Strategy #3: The Snake

After pouring various substances down the drain failed me, I decided it was time to try the snake, which is basically just a small metal coil/spring on the end of a long metal wire that you shove down the drain, into the pipes, in hopes of breaking up the clog manually. I bought a small, sink-specific one at The Depot for about $6, and was actually feeling very Rosie the Riveter in my attempts to deal with the clog myself while Phil was at work. I get home and hit snags right away. First off, we have a double sink, and the drain opening on the side closest to the clog has a strainer built in, that looks like this:

So problem #1 was that the snake wouldn't fit through any of those little holes, and removing the strainer involves fancy tools and pretty much dismantling the whole drain. So, logically, my plan B became (those of you who know anything about plumbing, get ready to face palm) to send the snake down through the pipes via the other side of the sink, the side featuring the garbage disposal. This actually ended up being absolutely fine at first - snake went through the disposal and into the pipes like buttah. I sent it down as far as I could, wriggled it around for a while, and then, snag #2. Snake done got stuck in the pipes. Oops. At this point I hung up my Rosie the Riveter headscarf (its hard to be both a feminist and inept at things like plumbing at the same time) gave in to the fact that I screwed up yet another project, and sent Phil this photographic confession of my oopsie:

You can see the snake hanging its head in shame on the right. (And for the record, part of the clog was caused by coffee grounds, hence why the sinks look so nasty). 

So I waited for my trusty male counterpart to come home and remedy the situation. After gently patting my head and sharing that "Sweetie, you can't put a snake down a garbage disposal," Phil got to work dismantling the pipes in order to free the poor snakeypoo. We found where it was stuck (the opening inside one of the pipe joints was very small and while the coiled end of the snake went into it just fine, it got stuck on an internal lip on the way out), and freed it from that spot. But then came snag #3, wherein the snake also would not fit back out through the garbage disposal (again, in my defense, it went in so easy there was really no indication that coming back out the other way would be such an impossible task.) We tried cutting the coiled part of the snake off with wire cutters (and gardening shears), but the metal wire was too strong. So Phil dismantled the other end of the snake, so as to free the non-coiled end and thread that side through the garbage disposal and out through the now open pipe. And so the saga of The Silly Little Woman and Her Snake came to a close. Which brings us to...

Unclogging Strategy #4: Take Apart the Pipes

After freeing the snake, we went for the last option we knew of, which was to stick a bucket under the pipes, remove the U-joint and see what happens. This took approximately 30 seconds, and we were able to fully clear the clog by simply dumping the contents of the U-joint into the bucket. We spent days avoiding this option, as it seemed like people went to great lengths and spent lots of money avoiding this step. However, our biggest lesson learned is that this was the fastest, easiest, cheapest and most effective solution to our problem. Next time, I might try the baking soda vinegar trick once or twice, but if that doesn't work, I'm going straight to option #4. Oh, and the contents of the clog was just coffee grounds & eggshells- so another lesson learned, when using a dozen eggs all at once to make a couple epically delicious frittatas, don't put all 12 eggshells down the disposal. And don't follow that up with coffee grounds either. 

So many lessons learned on that one, but we were proud to have finally dominated that clog on our own (after shelling out over $300 to have a plumber come fix our leaky bathtub faucet, we vowed to avoid hiring out these little repairs at all costs). Hopefully someone out there can learn from our mistakes and not have to endure half a week of clogged sinks and mountains of dirty dishes like we did. And I'll continue looking for opportunities to earn the right to don my Rosie headscarf on days other than Halloween (and for the record, I don't actually wear a red and white polka dot bandana while working around the house. It's figurative, people).

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Yard

We finally are 99% towards the conclusion of a project we've had waiting on our to-do list pretty much since day 1 of living in this house.  Our backyard, while a decent size, came with this lovely swing set which took up about half of the yard.  

If we had kids, it would be a swell bonus.  And we did consider keeping it so that when that day comes (years and years from now) we'd have it handy (swing sets like this can run hundreds to thousands of dollars).  But, the thought of living with half of our yard being essentially unusable for years while we waited to have kids old enough to even make use of it was quite unpalatable and just didn't make sense.  Plus there's a super awesome park/playground a short walk from our neighborhood, so having a playground in our backyard didn't feel all that necessary, even when we do have munchkins.  So we knew we wanted to get rid of it and fill that space in with grass, but given the expense, did not do anything about it right away. Last summer, we did successfully sell the swing set on Craig's List, so not only did we get some extra $$ in our pocket, but we at least had more open, usable yard space (even if it was still a gravel pit).  This summer we made it a goal to finally turn that gravel pit into grass. We started by shoveling and hauling the gravel out ourselves, to save on the cost of labor. 

Piper acted as the trusty supervisor of the project, as you can see.  (Oh, and all that gravel is still sitting in a big pile in our side yard, so if anyone reading this wants some free gravel, PLEASE. Let us know, and come take it off our hands!) 

So we were left with a bare dirt patch after hours and hours of hard physical labor.  I underestimated how hard it would be to get rid of all that gravel, but I think I calculated that between Phil and I, we put in a solid 10+ hours of shoveling to get it all out of there. Phew. Also, it was crazy how much bigger that part of our yard seemed after the swing set and gravel were gone. It really felt like such a huge chunk of our yard, and made us so glad we were going to finally get that space back. 

Anyway, after the aforementioned physical labor, it was finally ready for grass! We hired out the rest of the work, because laying sod is quite an involved process and the margin of error felt very high and it would have been a risky gamble to try to DIY it.  We found a local landscaping company that gave us an extremely fair price, and in addition to laying our new sod, also reworked the sprinkler system to make sure the new grass got watered, and audited and repaired the entire sprinkler system in the front and back yard. 

Here's a mid-process shot of them at work. From what I could tell from creepily watching them out the windows every so often while they were working, they tilled the already existing soil, added quite a bit of new soil, and then plopped down the sod! Obviously it's more complicated and involved than I make it seem, they were working for a solid 8+ hours the day they installed the sod. 

After they were done, we had this! It was wonderful to see all that grass in place of the gravel/dirt that once was, but we weren't all the way excited yet because our new grass was inaccessible for two weeks while we waited for it to take root.  We fenced off the new sod so that Piper couldn't get to it, with some basic garden stakes and chicken wire. 

We wished we could have explained to Piper why we had to do that - we would see her gaze at the new grass through the chicken wire fence and she must have been thinking "Why, oh why, can I not frolic in the new grass? Cruel, cruel world." But the two weeks finally passed, and after mowing what had become a ridiculously overgrown lawn from two weeks+ of no mowing, I give you, our new yard!!

(Piper approves, as you can see). Here's the before shot again, for direct comparison:

It's crazy how much bigger it feels. Even though we had the same amount of space before, the gravel pit always felt unusable. Having that filled in with grass makes our yard literally twice as big as it was, and it's glorious! It feels so spacious. We still have to do some landscaping along the fence, where there is just a bare strip of dirt between the grass and the fence, but we hope to get that done soon, and then this will be 100% finished. And when that day comes, we plan to have a big 'ol BBQ to celebrate are awesome new yard, so get ready to come enjoy our new grass someday soon! Yay! 

Proud Crafter Moment: DIY Memo Board

So I finally finished a project I had been sitting on for a while (I could start pretty much every blog post with this sentence), and the end result is something I'm pretty dang proud of, ifIdosaysomyself.  I've been inspired by a project I've seen all over various blogs and Pinterest, kind of like this, this and this. I have always thought it was a swell project, so I decided to try my hand at making one. 

I started with the above materials - an empty wood frame, spray paint, fabric, and jute twine. I already had all of these materials on hand, collected at thrift stores or craft stores over time. Just so happened they all could be happily married into this one awesome project. 

I started by simply spray painting the frame white.  Then I cut a bunch of short pieces of the twine and used hot glue to attach them to the back of the frame.  I opted for a random, crissed-crossed pattern, as opposed to having them all go straight across at even intervals. 

I was then left with this. Which would have been just fine as it is, and I did originally think this would be my end point. That was until I found the super cheap scrap of yummy yellow and white chevron fabric. So I simply stapled the fabric to the back of the frame and voila. 

Here is what I ended up with!

Added some mini clothespins, clipped on some pictures, hung it on the wall, and boom! Done!

Here it is taking residence on our ever-developing frame wall that I finally got started on recently.  More on that later when it's a little more filled in.  

So I mentioned that I was able to use random thrifted and crafty materials I had collected, but I'll break down how much this puppy technically cost me:

Frame: $2 (thrift store find)

Jute twine: $2.50 (thrift store find - and will last many, many projects beyond this one)

Fabric: $2 (scrap on clearance at Hobby Lobby. Quick tip: ALWAYS check the clearance fabric section at your local craft store. It's where they stash fabric that has been mis-cut or cut and returned, and it's a great way to snag severely discounted fabric scraps that are super useful for random projects such as this one!)

Mini-clothespins: $3 (available at most craft stores)

TOTAL: $9.50 (And I will be able to use the remainders of everything above except the frame itself for future projects)

(Oh, and most people already own things like paint or hot glue, but if you didn't, that might add an additional $10-$15.)

So there it is. I rarely toot my own horn when it comes to home improvement or crafty endeavors, as the title of this here blog indicates very clearly, but this is one project I am pretty dang proud of. I had a little inspiration, yes, but from there it was all my own creative juices that went into this. And I'm even prouder to say I got 'er done with a whopping ZERO, count 'em, ZERO oopsies. Booyeah! Crafting win! 

Nuestro Sala: Antes y Despúes

I'm riding high on the wave of having finally gotten around to sharing before and after shots of our kitchen, so I'm back with the same shebang for our living room. I only have this one before shot (that I didn't think to take until after we'd taped off the room and started sampling color options):

And here are some afters from various angles:

 (You can see that I took these before I added the new art pieces I talked about here - when it comes to taking house pictures, I've learned to strike while the iron is hot clean, and get some shots that do not feature the typical cluttered mess that is our house. So I don't always have the most super up to date photos, seeing as how our house is typically spic-and-span only every so often. Usually this occurs when we have people over - people who we don't know quite well enough to be honest about the mess we usually live in with. That was an unnecessarily long explanation of why these pictures are a little old. Thanks for hanging in there). 

So there you have it. Really all we've done in here is paint, paint, paint and add furniture and art. Someday we'd love to change the configuration of the furniture in here (I'm thinking a larger, L-shaped couch option that leaves the left side of the room as seen in the picture above more open (sometimes walking around that chair gets a little irritating).  But anywhos, that's where we're at for now! 

Nuestro Cocina: Antes y Despúes

Can you tell I've been practicing my Spanish lately? Anyway, I finally wanted to share before and after pictures of our kitchen, because as I've mentioned previously, I have yet to go back and document some of the very first projects we tackled, pre-blog, our kitchen being one of them.  Without further ado: 

I don't have a "before" from the following angles, but here's a couple other "afters" for you, nonetheless.

Close up of our sweet hardware.

 So there you have it! Basically all we did was give most everything a major face lift - it's all the exact same materials, just with some paint slapped on it. We painted the walls, backsplash and trim, and used the Cabinet Transformation Kit from Rust-Oleum to change the color of the cabinets.  We added hardware and some art, as well as the green cabinet (that you can read more about here).

We have lots of other things we'd like to do in the kitchen someday, such as replacing the countertops (they are old, stained laminate), the sink (stained, scratched porcelain), and the appliances (old, white, and old). Oh, and our "if we won the lottery" ideas for this kitchen involve the possibility of knocking down walls and opening up the floor plan a bit, to create more of an open, "great room" feel throughout the first floor of the house, and maybe shifting things around, adding more cabinetry and counter space. But for now, this mini-facelift at least made us love the aesthetics of our kitchen while we wait to save up for major upgrades. (Oh and if you are interested in reading more about the various pops of red you see in the "after" shots and how that random color accent came to be, you can do there here and here).

So there you have it, finally.  Y'all have at this point seen many "afters" via posts about other little projects, but this is the first I've shared of the "befores," so hopefully you can appreciate how far our kitchen has come!

Adventure Awaits!

Our living room recently received an upgrade, in the form of some new art. I found a couple of prints on Etsy that I loved, from Andrea Lauren's store Paper-Sparrow (I highly recommend checking out her shop - she has tons of super cute prints! I'm still eyeing the "Bear's Bouree" print, so I might need to make that one mine at some point as well. Who doesn't love a banjo-playing, suspender-wearing bear?! I mean really). So anyways, two prints in particular caught my eye big time, so I made them ours and decided they belonged in our living room.  We had been living with just a simple wrought iron piece on the wall in there, so it was nice to add a little somethin' somethin'.

There's a before shot for y'all (which reminds me, yet again, I have yet to show the full on before-after pics of the living room! I'll get around to that someday...)

And, with our new additions!

Some close up shots for ya, to really see the beauty of the prints (sorry about the glare in the second one!) I love that they fill in that wall a little bit more, and the colors in both prints just so happen to coordinate PERFECTLY with the colors in the living room/kitchen (I don't have a shot that shows this, but the blue mountains are almost the exact color of the kitchen/living room accent wall - and the pops of red in the print on the right add to the ever developing red theme we have started, and that I have mentioned here, here, and here).  Not to mention, we love the sentiment and they fit in with our outdoor-loving-selves very nicely.

As far as how I framed them, that was a minor adventure. These prints are a very unique size, at 11x17, and I quickly learned that this is not a standard size for frames to come in. I really didn't want to have to shell out big bucks for custom frames, but luckily my typically uncreative brain had an outside-the-box moment and I found a solution! The frames you see were actually marketed as being meant for three 3x5 pictures.  Well I luckily was able to break the boundaries of frame marketing and realized that these were just the right size for my new prints! The only thing making them "meant" for 3x5 photos were three small stock photos shoved in there. Take those out, it's just one big frame. And perfect that there was no backing or anything, so I didn't have to worry about a mat or anything.  Oh, and while the size of the frames was perfect, they actually started out black, so I showered them in some Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint and kaplow! They now coordinate perfectly.

So there you have it. Our living room is slowly becoming more swell every day.

OOPS COUNT: One big oops, and may we take this opportunity to have a moment of silence for one of the original frames I bought that committed suicide by swan-diving off the wall when no one was home, resulting in fatal injuries. Which leads us to..

Lesson Learned: Sticking and re-sticking adhesive strips in order to ensure that a frame is in the right location will definitely compromise the stickiness of said adhesive strips, and will lead to your frame falling into a clinical depression and eventually taking it's own life. Measure twice, stick once.

Soap, Soap, Baby

So every once in a while I try to look at my blog from an objective outsider's perspective... Based on my last post, wow. Homeownership sure does seem pretty lame sometimes. I mean, I wrote an entire post about organizing cleaning supplies, hello. Oh well, I guess if you're gonna own in you've gotta just own it! (Get it?!) At least I haven't lost my razor-sharp wit along the way.

Anywhos, I recently checked off another small project off the 'ol to-do list. I had seen many different versions of "mason-jar soap dispensers" all over Pinterest, and I decided to try my hand at one. 

 Voila!

Kapowie!

 

It was a ridiculously easy project, actually. I used a salsa jar (sans label) we had used to, you know, eat salsa out of, and started by poking lots of holes in the center of the lid with a tiny screwdriver. Once there were enough tiny holes, I merged them to make one big hole, just big enough for the pump to fit through. I spray painted the lid a navy blue, and left the pump au naturale (I heard that painting the pump is not the best idea because the paint inevitably scratches off as you pump). I also left the jar naked for now, as you can see, but might paint that down the line as well. 

So there you have it! I recommend this project to anyone who tends to D-I-Fail, as it was super easy and kind of idiot proof. AND, if you have a jar, a hand soap pump, and paint (which is actually completely optional), this project can be 100% free! Who doesn't like free?! I plan to make another for our main floor bath room whenever we get around to re-doing that sucker. In the meantime, I've become a jar hoarder. Oh well, there are worse things I could hoard. Until next time, y'all!