Author: spaleksic

Working Out

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I am working out, outdoors that is.  I am going to blog a before and after deck reno soon, but here is a sneak peak at some of the decor items for our outdoor living area.

You might wonder how I get anything done with 2 little kids sometimes I do too.  Making things is part of who I am, and by translation the kids are quite used to me having a project on the go.  Usually I have a little helping hand for a part of whatever I am making especially if the project is for one of them.  This is the foam that I used to stuff the deck bench cushion cover, and here they are jumping away.  They played with it, and on it for a couple of days while I was making the cover.  Once I had cut the foam to shape, they used the off cuts to make a tunnel and the moon.  Its amazing what their little creative minds come up with.  Sasha wants to help with everything, and there are so many little steps in the process that he can participate in, or he asks for the scraps to make his own creations.

Making of the bench cushion – my monkeys jumping and lying down on the job.

 

Here is the finished bench cushion, on the bench that my husband made. It’s great to be able to make projects with him as well. Now we are fighting over who gets to lounge on the bench in the late afternoon sun. Ah the luxuries of life.

For more details on the bench we got fantastic instructions from http://ana-white.com/2010/04/plans-simple-outdoor-dining-table.html. We adjusted the dimensions a bit to fit our space, but it was a great starting point.

I also made a pair of outdoor poofs I really don’t like that word it just sounds so poofy. I am open to suggestions on new names for these things. My inspiration for these poofs came from Target but the colours didn’t work for me, so I decided to see what I could come up with on my own. The great part about being able to sew fairly well is that you can make things exactly as you want them. The part that drives me crazy is that the fabric, foam, and stuffing cost more than what you can buy the finished products for and forget about costing my labour into the equation. Sometimes it feels like a conspiracy against those of us that like to make things. I did get the fabric on sale so at least it wasn’t that bad. For both the poofs, and bench cushion I used outdoor fabric and outdoor thread.  All have zippers so that I can remove the covers to wash them, a necisity with kids.  I have been sewing for at least 20 years so I can pretty much make up a pattern on the fly, if you can too please feel free to copy and enhance as you see fit.

Keep sewing, jumping and creating.

Watermelon Cupcakes

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Here is a super quick post, because these cupcakes are super easy.  Especially when you are a box baker.  Sometimes life warrants cupcakes but time doesn’t allow for “from scratch”.  So faced with the choice of cupcakes fast and easy or no cupcakes at all, I go the easy route.

Ingredients:

Cherry Chip cake mix

3 eggs

water or milk as per the package

oil as per the package

red food colouring

mini chocolate chips

vanilla frosting

green food colouring

 

Directions:

1. Prepare the cupcakes as per the box directions.

2. Once all of the ingredients are mixed add a couple of drops of red food colouring, the more drops the more intense the colour.

3. Then mix in about 1/3 of a bag of chocolate chips.

4. Bake the cupcakes per the box directions

5. Mix up the green frosting, using vanilla frosting and green food colouring.  Again the colour depends on how many drops of green you use.  Start with a couple of drops and add more drops until you are happy with the colour.

6.  Wait until the cupcakes cool.

7. Frost.  I used a piping bag, but you could use a knife.

8. Add chocolate chips to the top.

9.  Serve or eat.

Keep baking, crafting and creating.

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Crafty Momma’s

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In December I read a book called “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin where in each chapter (broken into 12 months) she choses something to focus on during the month to improve her happiness.  While we were at our December book club I suggested “The Happiness Project” for our January book club selection.  It was a great book, and December/January is a fantastic time of year to start on your own happiness journey.  When one of the book club ladies mentioned my blog we got into a chat about making crafts.  In “The Happiness Project” Gretchen Rubin choses to teach to improve her happiness one month and share her knowledge and passion.  The day after the book club I was reflecting on the book and the next thing I knew I was hosting a Crafty Momma afternoon.

During the first Crafty Momma’s we made button name crafts, for details on this craft click here.

button 2

The second one was the Toothasaurus, for details click here.

toothasaurus

The 3rd and most recent Crafty Momma’s also included our kiddies who were fabulous assistants making Watermelon tea towels, for details click here.

towels 4

Sharing my enthusiasm for making crafts with the Crafty Momma’s is a great way for me to show other people what I am passionate about and they get to learn something new.  Win, Win.  I even think that teaching and sharing might be increasing my happiness, but maybe that happiness feeling is just a side effect of the cupcakes.

 

The day was great we were outside and the sun was shining.  To top it off my assistant Sasha and I made Watermelon cupcakes.  Here are some pics of the assistants taking a little watermelon cupcake break.  Stand by for a Watermelon cupcake post tomorrow.

Keep crafting, sharing and creating.

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Making Tracks

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Both kids were playing with the train table TOGETHER last week without fighting, so I thought I would share it.   I can’t take full credit for this one though, because apparently Santa and his elves made it. On Christmas morning this train table materialized in the living room, and according to Sasha Santa and his elves built it for him the night before. Why should I to correct him?

Lucky for me I work for a furniture company, and there are often table tops up for grabs.  My husband has other thoughts about how lucky we are to get free furniture, because we have quite a collection.  For example this table top used to be our dining room table years ago, and I have been saving it just in case it might come in handy.  The size (30″x48″) was perfect for a train table.  Maple veneer might be a little fancy for a train table, but it has been in operation for 6 months, and still looks like new especially considering that a number of the pieces have been torn off, and glued again.  Being that we have to see the train table everyday (our playroom is open to the kitchen) I wanted something relatively inoffensive looking and we had the top and the legs so FREE is good too.

It took a little time to plan out the tracks to get all of the pieces onto the table.  Once we were happy with the layout, my husband and I hot glued all of the pieces in place.  Most of the buildings we had already, but we added a couple of new (used) pieces.  For anyone that is familiar with Thomas & friends wooden railway you know that the pieces are stupid expensive, but I will tell you that most of the pieces came from a Chapters Indigo 50% off sale a couple of years ago, some are from IKEA and the rest came from a local used Thomas store.

It took us a couple of hours to put this together, but we have saved tons of time that we used to spend building tracks and picking up trains.  Forget the store-bought train tables, grab an old table and a glue gun and get busy.

Keep crafting, creating and playing.

 

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READ

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Recently I hurt my back, and I was very limited in what I could do.  I couldn’t make any crafts but I could catch up on my reading.  I added my Goodreads info on the right side of this blog, so if you are a reader please join me on Goodreads and we can share book ratings and recommendations.

While we have a lot of books, but we also use the library weekly.  I love that I can get books, movies and E-books for FREE from the library.  I have even gone so far as requesting that the library order newly released books, which they do for FREE.  I love the library, and encourage you to use your local library if you don’t already. I also belong to two book clubs in Victoria so if you are interested in joining, please leave me a comment.

We read to our kids daily and both have large collections of books, so I though that these over-size scrabble tile letters might be a good addition to Logan’s bookshelf.

 

These can be made any size you wish.  I made these from 7 1/4″ x 7 1/4″ x 3/4″ pine.

Materials:

  • Pine board (as knot free as you can get) 7 1/4″ x 3/4″ by the length you need depending on number of letters
  • Jig Saw
  • Printer/Computer
  • Black paint
  • Paint brush
  • Painter’s Tape
  • Pencil
  • Stain, or Tung Oil
  • Sandpaper

 

Instructions:

1. Cut the wood into squares 7 1/4″ x 7 1/4″

2. Sand the squares on all sides (going with the grain) using 120-220 grit sandpaper

3. Print out the letters and number using a computer & printer.  I used Century Gothic font with a size of  500 for the letters, and 150 for the numbers.

4. Cut out the letters and numbers

5. Tape the letters on to the wood with painter’s tape

6. Trace the letters with a pencil

7. Using black acrylic craft paint, paint in the letters and numbers.

8.  Once dry the paint is dry (24 hours) finish with stain, tung oil, or leave natural

 

Keep reading, crafting & creating.

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BBQ Treats

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burgers 2I am really looking forward to the first long weekend of the summer season.  I know that summer doesn’t technically start until June 21 but we are kicking it off NOW.  If you are heading to a BBQ this weekend, or hosting a BBQ what are you serving for dessert?  How about burgers?

TIPS: I used a boxed cake mix for these beauties.  Using a silicone cupcake tray means that there are no paper wrappers to remove.

Ingredients:

  • Chocolate cake mix
  • Vanilla cake mix
  • Oil – as per box mix directions
  • Eggs- as per box mix directions
  • Milk/water – as per box mix directions
  • 1/2 cup coconut
  • Green food colouring
  • Yellow & Red tube frosting
  • Optional decorative sticks
  • cupcake wrappers

Step 1. Prepare batter & bake cupcakes, if the goal is 12 cupcakes burgers you need 3-6 chocolate and 12 vanilla.

Step 2.  While the vanilla are still hot roll the top of the cupcake in a plate of sesame seeds

Step 3.  Let cool

Step 4. Cut the vanilla into 2 pieces, and chocolate into 2-3 pieces depending on the size

Step 5.  Mix 1/2 a cup of coconut with green food dye to make relish

Step 6.  Using prepackaged tubes of frosting for the ketchup & mustard, or a piping bag and coloured frosting, stick the coconut relish to the top of the bottom bun with either ketchup or mustard.  You could also use white frosting if you like mayo on your burger.  Drizzle a little ketchup or mustard on the edges for fun.  Put the burger on the bottom bun.

Step 7.  Using the alternate condiment put the top of the burger on the bun, again drizzling a little on the edges.    Stick a decorative stick in the top if you wish.  ENJOY.

Have a great weekend!

burger 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wino Wednesday

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I LOVE wine, who is with me?  Yesterday I posted how to make a pillow from a dress shirt, today I am going to reuse the sleeves.  Have you ever been caught drinking wine from a paper bag?  Me neither but if I am going to go that route I think I will class it up a little bit with these shirt sleeve wine bags.  But in all seriousness, I wouldn’t mind getting a bottle of wine in a reusable bag such as these.  Who am I kidding if you are giving out wine I am taking it in any form.

Should you have an extra shirt that you don’t need the sleeves for try making one of these wine bottle covers.

Step 1.  With a wine bottle, full or empty your choice, measure the length of the desired wine bag.  Yes that’s right, use a wine bottle as a measuring device.  Forget the measure twice cut once rule just this one time.

measure

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2.  Cut off the sleeves so that the bottle will fit.

cut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3.  Turn the sleeve inside out

Step 4.  Pin the edge you just cut

pin 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 5.  Sew the edge closed.

Step 6.  Put the bottle in the bag, close up the buttons.  You could make it fancy by tying a ribbon.

party time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep crafting, creating and drinking?

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Seriously Don’t We Have Enough Pillows

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pillow 3I had my sewing machine out last night, and no good can come of that.  I have no idea why I think it’s such a big deal to get out a sewing machine, but once I have it out I must make those projects that I have been planning that require it.  A while ago I saw a picture of a pillow made of a man’s dress shirt.  My thoughts after seeing the picture were a little morbid,  I though what a great idea for someone who has just lost their husband, partner, or loved one.  It doesn’t have to be quite so morbid though, maybe it would be useful if you are in a long distance relationship, or have a partner that travels a lot, or maybe I have totally lost my mind.  Or for the environmentalist, what a great way to recycle clothing.  I will leave the judgement up to you.  My husband’s comment was “Seriously don’t we have enough pillows”.  He does have a point I couldn’t argue with, but seriously what’s one more?  In case you can’t figure out which one is the dress shirt pillow in the picture above, it’s the beige one.  It is a little boring, but everything can’t be flashy.

On the bright side, this was the fastest easiest pillow I have ever made.  And FREE, who doesn’t love free.

Step 1.  Start with a men’s button dress shirt, I asked my husband nicely and he gave me an old stained one.  That’s true love, isn’t it.

Step 2. Iron the shirt (if you are lazy, just iron from the arm pits down)

Step 3. You do need a pillow form, or an old pillow you want to recover.  Put the pillow into the shirt and check the size.  For the one that I made I used a FJADRAR 20″x20″ pillow from IKEA.  The instructions below are based on the 20″ pillow form and a men’s medium dress shirt.

cut shirtStep 3.  Lay the shirt on a flat surface and using a straight edge mark a line from arm pit to arm pit, you can use chalk to make a line, or pencil/pen lightly.  If you want to get super fancy, you can mark the cut lines to make sure the button’s are symmetrical.   Cut along the line you marked.

Step 4.  Trim the bottom of the shirt to be parallel with the line you just cut.  All you want to do is square up the bottom edge, usually the bottom edge of dress shirts is not straight.

Step 5.  With all of the button’s fastened, turn the piece of the shirt you cut off inside out.  Pin the 2 open edges.  Sew the edges closed.

Step 6.  Open the button’s.  Stuff with the pillow and fluff it up.

So now what do we do with the rest of the shirt?  Great question, I will show you how to make something with the sleeves tomorrow.  Crack out the wine, you are going to need it.

Keep sewing, crafting & creating.

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A Sweet Bite Of Summer

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Summer is on the way and so is the end of another school year for the kiddies.  I am always on the look out for teacher gift ideas that I can make.  I have been thinking of making this craft for a while, since I saw watermelon wrapping paper posted on Pinterest.  I typically don’t make cards or packaging, because it seems like a waste especially because wrapping paper ends up in the recycling bin so quickly.  But I loved the idea of the watermelon potato print, and figured that I could adopt if for a tea towel print, which I can give to Sasha’s teacher for a year-end present.  It is also a super easy craft that school age kids can help with.

Here are the instructions:

Step 1. Wash the tea towels (or not, I am lazy and didn’t but it is a good idea)

Step 2. Iron the tea towels (even if you didn’t wash them)

Step 3. Cover the surface that you are working on so that the paint doesn’t ruin your table.

Step 4. Cut a potato into 4 pieces, length wise is best.  The goal is a watermelon looking shape.

step 1     Step 5. Mix Acrylic Craft paint with Textile Medium.  Textile medium is a product that when mixed with acrylic craft paint help the paint from fading when washed.  Some fading will happen, but I have bleached T-shirts and other tea towels that have been printed with the paint textile medium mix without an issue.  Follow the instructions on the textile medium when mixing.

Step 6.  Using a paint brush paint the potato section in the colour of your choice.  I used a red and a pink on some of the towels for a little variety.

Step 7.  With a little pressure stamp the painted potato on the tea towel, and repeat Step 6 & 7 until the desired pattern is reached.

step 2

Step 8.  Using a green paint mixed with textile medium and a brush, paint a rind on every watermelon.

step 3

Step 9.  Using black paint, dab on the seeds using a brush.

towels 5

Step 10.  Let dry.

Step 11.  Iron once dry to set the paint.

Keep crafting, creating and giving.

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Photoshoot take 2

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Yesterday for Mother’s Day we had a photoshoot in Beacon Hill park, which sounds lovely.  We hired a professional photographer who picked out a great spot, but with kids being kids there was a lot more running, falling and crying than picture taking.  The experience left me thinking “what was I thinking”?  My kids are 5 and not quite 2, and perhaps a family photoshoot is too much to ask.  I haven’t seen the pictures yet and maybe there is some great shots, but I am not holding my breath.  So a little deflated after the experience I though maybe I can still get some decent shots of just the kids, they were clean and dressed what more could I ask for.  So with Sasha as my assistant, we walked across the street to where the neighbours haven’t cut there grass in years and started shooting.  We took turns and he was totally into it.  Sasha roped Logan into it too and I captured some fun expressions.


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