Category Archives: Design

Flower Shirt

September 11, 2010

I took an online class to learn about decoratively sewing flowers on a shirt from Elizabeth Kartchner. It was a lot of fun. I look forward to learning more from her.

IMG 7622 1 Flower Shirt

Everyone who is taking the class is posting comments to try to win a package of free scrapbooking goodies. Here are her ways to leave a comment and my actual comments:

  • Leave a comment if you share a picture of your project (whatever stage it’s at… pinned, finished, no pins yet) on our class message board. Under the thread called: Where I’m at: giveaway.
    I posted my “not started” picture under the Where I’m at: giveaway. Hopefully this Wednesday, I will finally get to work on it!
  • Leave a comment if you completed all the answers to the Handout from Lesson 2.
    I completed my handout! I am still not happy with all of my answers, but more than 1/2 are the best ones I could think of and the remaining ones I can work on improving. I am trying to figure out what to do with my answers now. I don’t want to get rid of them, but I don’t know if I want to publish them on my private blog either.
  • Leave a comment if you blog or Facebook or Twitter something you’ve enjoyed in this class. (Leave 3 comments if you do all 3… or 2 or 1.)
    I blogged about how much I was going to enjoy this class a while back before I even got my flowers. I really did enjoy everything about this class. :-)
    Facebook comment and picture of final product posted!
  • Leave a comment if you blog about your finished project.
    I blogged about my finished shirt and included all of my comments on this post in my blog post to remind me of my answers.
  • Leave a comment if you are already thinking of another fun thing to make with what you’ve learned.
    Even before the class started, I was trying to think of other applications for hand sewing flowers. I definitely want to try adding some flowers to gifts for friends and family for the holidays and/or their birthdays. I know my cousin would love a flower decorated outfit for her little girl’s 2nd birthday which is really soon.
  • Leave a comment with something you’ve enjoyed about this class.
    There are so many aspects of this class that are wonderful: self paced, easy to follow, thought provoking, something new for me to learn… in addition, I have to say my FAVORITE thing about this class is my friend Carla came over today and we worked on our shirts together. This may not seem like a big thing to some but this is the first time she has been to my house for more than a few minutes in over 4 1/2 years (she has 2 children and another one on the way)!
  • Leave a comment if you hand cut your flowers… that deserves a prize in itself!!
    I didn’t hand cut my own flowers, but I helped my friend Carla modify a few of her very large Martha Stewart flowers. I trimmed a few down, but the best one was the tiny daisy I hand cut for her. I really loved helping her. :-)
  • Leave a comment if this was a stretch for you and you loved trying something new.
    This has been a stretch for me, but not in the way you’d expect. I have used my sewing machine a bunch and used to cross-stitch all of the time, so I am not new to sewing. However, sewing flowers on something that I am going to wear is what is the biggest stretch for me. I am not a gurlie girl, but when I have my moments and do go gurlie, it is all out – this shirt will be perfect for those times. So, thanks for expanding my horizons!
  • Leave a comment if you just would love to have some new scrapbooking goodies.
    When I realized how much I spent on scrapbook items last year and how much I had accumulated, I stopped my increasing spending habit. So far this year, other than some rhinestones, a silver pen, and page protectors, I haven’t purchased any fun scrapbooking supplies. I would LOVE to have something new and try out beautiful Lizzy items!
  • Leave a comment if you lost your needle at least once. I wonder if I’m the only one that does this.
    Nope, no losing of any needles. (I didn’t post this comment.)
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Padding A Chair

April 23, 2010

A bunch of years ago, I purchased 2 folding bar stools from IKEA. I have used them off and on, but they aren’t very comfortable for any length of time since they are wood with no padding. After recovering a friend’s chairs, I knew I needed to add padding to these chairs and I knew how to do it.

I purchased the foam and already had a microsuede that would work great. I cut the foam and fabric and stapled it on like last time. The seat went well. The only difference was this chair had a back to cover. It wasn’t the prettiest job, but when I cover the second chair I will know how to do it right that time. I cut the fabric a little small, so the wood and edge of the fabric shows. The back of the chair was curved too which wasn’t fun. It was really difficult to get the fabric stapled but I think I will use something to wedge the curve next time and it won’t be so bad.

Pictures of before and after.

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Pictures of the process.

IMG 5573 1 Padding A ChairIMG 5574 1 Padding A ChairIMG 5582 1 Padding A ChairIMG 5583 1 Padding A ChairIMG 5585 1 Padding A Chair

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Reduce

April 21, 2010

Adding to my tags… Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… in the spirit of the week of Earth Day.

Sometimes cleaning out the house is an easy as finding friends who could use the items you don’t want/need anymore. It isn’t always easy to match up a friend with an item, but knowing that a friends will be receiving the item(s) makes it easier to let go usually.

I’ve used plastic hangers for as long as I can remember. I had them in my closet at home growing up. I took some of my mom’s unneeded ones with my to college and my first apartment. Then, I started accumulating some of my own. Different bright colors for different sections of clothes like long sleeve and short sleeve (easy way to find things quickly in a dark closet).

Recently though, I have been slowly converting to the fabric covered slim hangers. They sort of give more room in the closet, but I was looking for the non-slip quality in particular. Over the last few months, I was slowly converting my hangers and yesterday, I officially converted all of the items in the closet to the non-slip hangers.

This meant that I needed to find a home for the hangers. My friend Carla accepted the hangers and now I just have to get them to her. We will be seeing each other this weekend for Earth Day at the Zoo, so what a perfect time to reduce the items in my house and reduce her need for buying new items.

IMG 5554 1 Reduce

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Closet Redesign

April 19, 2010

Back at the end of September 2009, I removed the existing shelving in our guest room closet and replace it with shelving to more suit our needs but make it easy to change as our needs may change.

IMG 22601 225x300 Closet RedesignIMG 2259 225x300 Closet Redesign

It is amazing how many items come out of a closet. Vertical storage really is an illusion.

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Old closet hardware vs New closet hardware.

IMG 2267 225x300 Closet RedesignIMG 2270 225x300 Closet Redesign

In September 2009, I had all of the items back in the closet, but found that for more support for the few clothes in the closet, I needed another upright and bracket in the far right corner. In April 2010, I finally finished my project and here are the pictures of the finished closet redesign.

IMG 5534 e1272005000971 Closet RedesignIMG 5540 Closet RedesignIMG 5541 e1272005209768 Closet RedesignIMG 5543 Closet RedesignIMG 5544 Closet Redesign

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2007 Updates

April 12, 2010

I wrote about some of the changes around my house from 2007 and backdated them so they fit in chronological order. Here are the links to the new posts:

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The G5 George Foreman Grill

February 7, 2010

For Christmas, from my parents, we received a G5 George Foreman Grill.

IMG 3554 1 The G5 George Foreman Grill

It came with 5 interchangeable plates; and after the holidays, we purchased two more – the omelet plates. We now have 7 plates and about 4 different combinations:

#1: Grill plates. Anything you want to drain fat off of is best cooked on these. I find that it doesn’t drain as well as I would like with it set to the highest tilt setting, so I add an upside down drippings tray behind the back support and then it drains perfectly. We grill chicken pieces and 2 lb slabs of ground turkey on these grill plates the most. We tried something a little different and cooked some tater tots the other day. I call them tater squats since the heaviness of the top plate squished them – but they were still really good and crispy too.

IMG 4087 The G5 George Foreman GrillIMG 4088 The G5 George Foreman Grill

#2: Waffle plates. This is an obvious one. It makes waffles. We make organic whole grain waffles that come out beautifully. Heat the grill on high until the green light goes off. Fill with batter according to directions – I think it says 1/3 cup and I use that on each side. Close. The green light will come back on shortly and then when it goes back off the waffles are done. I think it takes about 3-4 minutes for them too cook. Much better than my Waffle Maker which is going bye, bye. Any takers?

IMG 3632 1 The G5 George Foreman Grill

#3: Flat plate. We have cooked tater tots on it so far. But the booklet says it can make pizza, eggs, cookies, biscuits… well, just about anything you can cook in a pan where you don’t need the fat to be drained. We plan to make corn bread on it next and see how that goes. I would love to try pizza. With this plate orientation, the flat grill goes on the bottom and then the top grill/steak plate goes on top. In the picture below, the top omelet plate was used since I wanted to see if it would work too and it did.

IMG 4280 The G5 George Foreman Grill

#4: The omelet plates. These have to be the coolest plates. So far, we have made egg white omelets and brownies. Making omelets on this grill has to cut breakfast prep time in half. I saw in the booklet that brownies could be made, so I HAD to check it out. I mixed up the batter like usual and filled the 3 reservoirs to the top (should have put a little less but it still worked out) and closed the lid. I think it took maybe 9 minutes and they were done. They are about twice the size of a normal brownie, so serving size would be 1/2 of one of these. Also, if the reservoir was filled only 1/2 way, the brownie would have a really nice curve like the 3rd picture below that was the last of the batter – just about a serving size. As I was taking them off the grill and putting them in a container, my husband told me how appropriate they were for the day we were making them. We aren’t football fans and we made them on Super Bowl Sunday – and they look like footballs!!! Almost like I did it on purpose but I definitely did not. These really would be perfect for football fans with some white icing for laces.

IMG 4128 The G5 George Foreman GrillIMG 4277 The G5 George Foreman GrillIMG 4279 The G5 George Foreman GrillIMG 4278 The G5 George Foreman Grill

So, I highly recommend this grill. The energy savings alone is worth it and it varies in the time it saves depending on which plates are used. It would have taken 10 minutes to heat up the oven and then another 15-20 minutes to cook the brownies. This way it took 5 minutes to heat up the grill and around 18 minutes total to cook the two batches of brownies. I can’t make a $ savings equivalent since I don’t have one of those energy calculators for electrical outlets YET, but I know there is definitely a substantial savings between heating a small grill and heating a standard sized oven.

If you are looking for an easy way to cook stuff, this is it. Within 5 minutes, it is warm on high and cooks fast too. The practicality far outweighs its only negligible shortcoming I have found so far. If you aren’t used to the interchangeable plate type grills, the plates take a little getting used to but once clicked in, they are secure. I have used this type for a while and I think it is easy once you get used to how they fit.

I think if we lived in an apartment, a small space where we couldn’t have a kitchen, or were remodeling a kitchen, this would be one of my top 3 items along with a microwave and fridge. One of the best gifts we received for Christmas!

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Many Updates

February 4, 2010

A few months back, I did a bunch of updates around the house, but the updates never made it to this blog. I am finally writing the posts, and I want to let everyone know which posts are new.

I thought there were only 8 posts to catch up on, but with further inspection of my pictures, I found that there were 8 in September 2009 alone and not even counting what I missed in other months. Once I finished up all of the posts, updating from January 2008 – December 2009, there ended up being 15 posts from the last 2 years. I thought there were going to be a lot more updates than I expected, but I had actually kept up with my posts somewhat and/or didn’t do much certain months in the way of interior design or organizing.

Here is a list of the new posts that didn’t make it to Google Reader:

And a list of the ones that did make it to Google Reader:

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Child-Friendly Ornaments

December 21, 2009

This year for Christmas I was planning on making my friend’s children pillow case covers with their favorite things right now, but ended up running out of time. So, I was looking around Michael’s Craft Store for some inspiration and something I could do rather quick but would still be well received. I remembered that my friend was using paper ornaments this year for her Christmas tree due not wanting her ornaments broken (the children are 1 & 3). I found some wooden figures that I thought I could turn into ornaments with some wire and hotglue. With the selection I had, I chose what I thought they would like. A butterfly and dog for the girl and a turtle and train for the boy. I thought that even if they do get broken, they are wood and can easily be glued back together.

IMG 3216 1 Child Friendly Ornaments

Update: Shortly after the holidays, we went to see my friend and her husband and gave her children the ornaments. They were sweet at first and looked like they liked them. They were put on the tree and all was good. Until their son swatted at the one playing with it and then their daughter proceeded to swing at them all and throw them to the floor one by one – they did not get broken! I would have normally taken some offense and thought they really didn’t like the ornaments, but hopefully this behavior of  “removing” the ornaments is why my friend did not put her good ornaments on the tree. Once they went up to bed, I casually walked over to the little beaten down ornaments, made sure they were okay, and placed them back on the tree. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day for the ornaments?

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Organizing the Attic

September 16, 2009

The attic has always been a problem area. There is so much I would like to store up there but the area is so narrow that I have to make sure everything stays close to the sides. If more than just the middle had plywood, I’d have SO much room. I still get a lot up there though and it has gone through lots of phases of organization. Each phase is better than the previous and it keeps getting better.

This time I made a lot of good improvements. I moved our seasonal clothes into clear bins so we can see them and know what we have. The blue bins the clothes used to be in became storage bins for household items. Instead of having these items in either crates or loose in piles, they are now organized by containers, office, kitchen, and bath. The Space Bags have done wonders for making more room where there used to be small bags stacked up always falling over. Our boxes are still stacked up at one end, but they always come in handy when we are selling things we don’t need anymore.

Attic before recent organization:

DSC01974 225x300 Organizing the AtticDSC01975 225x300 Organizing the AtticDSC01992 225x300 Organizing the AtticDSC01993 1 225x300 Organizing the AtticDSC01964 300x225 Organizing the Attic

After rearranging bins and items, the attic looked better.

IMG 2121 225x300 Organizing the AtticIMG 2120 225x300 Organizing the AtticIMG 2119 225x300 Organizing the AtticIMG 2118 300x225 Organizing the Attic

There is still more work to do, but that will be for the next time. Continuous improvement.

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Kitchen Drawer Mod

September 1, 2009

We have these 2 drawers in our kitchen that are in the corner of our cabinets. You can’t open them up at the same time due to them being at a right angle to each other. This never used to be a problem until I decided one day that I wanted knobs on my cabinet drawers. The doors had them and I was tired of either grabbing under the face of the drawer or, like I usually did, grabbing the top of the drawer face and snapping a nail or making my finger tips sore. Once the drawer knobs were on, the two doors perpendicular to each other would each only open almost 1/2 way. Well, that is loosing more than 1 total drawer and that was completely unacceptable, but I wanted my knobs, so I went to the drawing board.

It took me two tries to get it right and the first attempt was a more complicated mistake so was not ashamed of it (not that you should be ashamed of creative mistakes, but I was proud of how far I got until the mistake happened and sometimes mistakes happen early that you just want to kick yourself about). The first attempt was flawed by the hinge placement. I forgot that if I wanted to hinge the drawer face that I needed to place it at the bottom of the drawer not the bottom of the drawer face since there is an overhang between those two which results in a gap that forms and a hinge that won’t open more than 45 degrees. It is all angles and I forgot about that one.

It was easy to fix though and when everything came together, it was awesome. So, what I did was use magnetic catches on the inside of the drawer and hinges on the bottom so that the drawer face could hinge down and be flush with the bottom of the drawer. This allows the drawer with the hinges to be pulled out and not conflict with the door knob that sticks out of the drawer that is perpendicular to it. Also, it allows the perpendicular drawer to be pulled out completely without running into the other drawer knob.

Some pictures to explain my possibly confusing explanation…

IMG 1961 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1966 e1265053476854 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1965 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1973 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1970 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1969 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1968 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1974 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1975 300x225 Kitchen Drawer Mod

Even my kitty Veda helped out – well, not really, but she was there for moral support as I tried to figure it out

IMG 1963 300x225 Kitchen Drawer ModIMG 1962 300x225 Kitchen Drawer Mod

Updates: My dad came to visit in November and loved my solution to the drawer problem. My mom and dad came to visit for my birthday in January. I showed my mom the cabinet drawer and she was so proud of me!

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