Ready Freddy?

I'm feeling a little like this lately.....

...thinking about all the things we have to do yet, finish, blog about, and all the craziness that will be in store for this month!  Cause tomorrow is the kick off of MAKE DO MARCH!  A whole series of getting those projects done…with what you have! AHHHHHHHH!!!!

BUT.....

 ....I'm actually feeling pretty excited!

And hope you are too!!!

We really would love to have you join us…please leave a comment about what you’re doing with a link to your blog and/or use a button! We will be hosting a link up party on Mondays, which we hope you’ll join!

We also want to say that we have some giveaways in store…but we’re going to holdout until we have 25 followers…

Get READY!!!

Sarah

Here we go again....

Howdy hoo—

Yup that’s what I said howdy hoo to you! Hope things are going well for ya'll in your neck of the woods…it’s been getting lighter and warmer here, which is something we can’t complain about!

So we’ve all heard about March Madness…the whole college basketball thing…well that has never been our cup of tea (although if you met me in person one of the first questions you may ask is if I played basketball… cause I'm tall....which I would say no, you don’t want to see how uncoordinated I am!), but I digress....so Nathania and I decided that we wanted to do another monthly series…so instead of March Madness we have for you:

Huzzah!!! Yup, we decided that in theme with our blogs mission of frugality we would have a whole month of using stuff we had. We have a few rules we are going to follow:

1. We use only what we have in the house---no shopping trips to Joann's, Home Depot, Michael's or the Thrift Store, etc…

2. We finish projects that have been started and abandoned first…get er done!

3. If we need an additional item, we can call a friend/sister to see if they have it, but if not…no dice…we make do!

4. We put up a post every day! AHHH!!

5. Host a linky party…yup stepping it up…every Monday!

Them's the rules. We're gonna stick to it...hopefully...and you'll be proud of us...we already have some projects ready to show, a sure sign that we're fully committed and not procrastinating. 

So who wants to join us? I know that there are plenty of people out there who have plenty of unfinished projects; large enough stashes to stock a store, and who just need a reason to stop procrastinating…all categories of which Nathania and I fall into…so join us for Make DO March and reduce the stash, get the projects done and get your rear in gear!

Series will start March 1st, so stay tuned! You know there will be a giveaway or two...

Ready? Hope so!

Sarah

check one off the list

YAY! I finished! I finally finished re-doing...well actually just re-painting one of our bathrooms...we have 3 full baths, which is slightly overkill in my opinion...but such is life. Our bathroom in the basement was this loverly brown when we moved in...and in my humble opinion it looked like poop, especially with the tile that is EVERYwhere. So I needed a change.

Halfway through last summer I got really crazy and tried painting one wall this really pale green...well it was too minty and I didn't tape/prepare/do a good job. This project was abandoned until about proximately 4ish weeks ago (I'm really good at starting things...but not a good finisher...ask my mom:p). I found some mistinted paint at Lowes that I thought would go with the tile...so I rallied the troops, aka Andy, and we taped and painted three walls.

Lovely before pictures....

The white is actually green....but not the right green...anyhoo we painted the 3 walls that are still brown in the before pictures with the champange-like color that I found at Lowes and really liked it, but we thought it really need some more color.

My friend Krista had painted her kitchen a color that I loved and I thought would go with the tile...and she had a whole bunch of samples, which she let me use! I found the right shade, called Window Shopping (Valspar). I had tried all the samples she gave me...and the one I thought looked awful, just so happened to be the one she used, and well vice versa she thought the Window Shopping looked like dog vomit...just goes to show you that paint looks so much different with different lighting! We both like what each of us used:) We painted the wall that I had attacked earlier in the summer that color. We think it gave the room just the bit of oomph it needed.

Can you see the difference in the wall color?

 

 We also had to remove all the caulking around the tile...it was old, painted over and done really badly. I got it all off and Andy re-caulked it. I wanted clear, but he accidentily used white...it looks fine, so I don't really care:)

I ended up using a brown shower curtain that I already had and we hung up a picture that we had sitting around for ages up to add some color.  I also used the same fixtures that were there...they all matched and were in good condition. Although gold is not my favorite, I'm too cheap to go out and get new stuff! I actually think it goes well with the tile.

Overall I'm super happy with the way it turned out. The only other change I may make is to get a wooden toilet seat cover. I think it would go better overall, but we weren't thinking about that when we replaced it...we just wanted the foamy cracked, nasty seat that was there gone!

This is some awsome wallpaper we found under the shower curtain attachment...I thought it was just under that part...but found out later that they never took the wall paper down, they just painted over it. Fantastic right?....NOT! But I just painted over it too. Oh well.

What do you think?

Happy Painting!

Sarah

who you is....

We'd love to know a little bit more about some the people who check out our blog! So to do so I thought I'd put out a simple questionnaire...

1. Where you're at...

2. Found us how?

3. Crafty or Not? Favorite type?

4. Procrastination Project....aka whatcha working on?

5. Favorite post/type of post/what you want to see more of

Leave us a comment in the comment section! We'd love to hear from you...

Sarah

mittens for kittens...

Well, actually not...kittens, but for Kay! My friend Kay has been a significant contributor to our sweater stash...I wanna say like 75% of the sweaters we had came from her. She basically rocks...for more reason than one. Well, Kay asked for some more mittens to be made...3 for herself and then one fore her coworker. And my response was a resounding "Yes! When do you want them?"

We met up and talked about what she wanted and then she gave me another sweater that she wanted a pair out of...along with another bag full of sweaters...like I said she rocks!

The below mittens are some shoddy pictures of three of the pairs of mittens. I took pictures of all five pairs, but with my phone and these were the ones that turned out the best:)

 This pair was made out of the sweater she gave me...probably some of my favorites I've ever made! I have enough for one more pair...which I may make fore myself :p!

 Who doesn't like argyle? 

These were just soft...I loved them:)

What do you think?

So this is what I've been up to...along with a disastrous plumbing adventure that I will relate to you soon, painting, and preparing for our new series!

What have you been up to?

Sarah


Linked to Frugally Sustainable

ground turkey pasta

recipe time!!!Woot woot!

I found another fantastical recipe---and even better...its super duper EASY!!!

Here's what you'll need:

3/4 pound of dried pasta--is used small shells

2 cups of broccoli florets (fancy way of saying cut up broccoli!)

1 lb of ground turkey

olive oil

2 chopped cloves of garlic

1 tsp of fennel

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Parmesan cheese

1/ cook pasta according to the package

2/ add broccoli during the last minute of pasta cooking

3/ brown the ground turkey in olive oil with the garlic, fennel seed, and crushed red pepper flakes in a large skillet. Season with salt

4/ toss turkey with drained pasta and broccoli

5/ add 2 Tbsp of olive oil and sprinkle with Parmesan

Easy! And oh so tasty!

Happy cooking!

Sarah

ready, set, random!!!

Whose up for a ridiculously random post? Well guess what? That's what this is going to be...RANDOM!!!

Why random? Because I have little projects going all the time...so this may turn into a weekly post.

1. We're making dog toys!!! What?!! Dog toys? Yup...my s-i-l sent us a fleece toy for Lucy for Christmas...and she absolutely loves it. So it got me thinking...why not make dog toys out of the extra fleece we have? We always have strips of fleece that aren't big enough for mitten parts, so in our frugal way, we made something useful out of them. Isn't my model cute?

2. We were able to hang up the hoops that I had made for Arias room yesterday...but the best place to put them were on the yellow wall in her room....and I had made a yellow hoop...that if it was hung up you wouldn't be able to see...it was the exact shade of the walls. So I'm going to change it up and put in some blue.

3. I made my way into the realm of dying this past week. We've been doing some painting in our downstairs bathroom, and I had this teal shower curtain that just wasn't matching....I wanted it to turn into more of a pea green...so I first put it in a bath of yellow...

...and this is what I got...Fluorescent green.

I did try dying it again with a tan...which got it much closer to the color I wanted, but somehow the dye didn't all dissolve and I have some bright red splotches on it now...boo! I'm going to try to make it a darker brown so you can't see the spots. I will update with a better picture later. But in the meantime, does anyone know how to prevent the splotches? I'm almost positive everything was dissolved in boiling water first!

So hows that for random? Dog Toys, Camouflage Hoops, and botched dying....

Now the real question is...what have you been working on?

Happy Day!

sarah

P.S. Nathania and I are working on a series for March....it's gonna be a good one. SO stay tuned!

order up!

A while back, friends of Nathanias gave us some sweaters that their mom had when they were growing up. Their parents recently sold the farm they grew up on and they wanted some mittens made out of the sweaters as a momento....

Now...one of the sweaters they had was a very bright peach color...and the other two blue...we weren't sure how they were all going to turn out with the color combo, but they turned out great! Kinda retro....and it works. There are three sisters so we made them all just a little different.

 They turned out cute right? All similar, but definitely unique...just what they ordered! Now comes the fun part....we added some special touches and a few more products....

SPECIAL TAGS!!!!!! all of the sweaters were cardigans that had a ribbon behind the button portion...so we used that to make tags. They have their moms initials on one side and

Their first initial on the other! Can't mix them up this way!!!!

We also made cute headbands (isn't the model cute?) for their daughters...surprise!!!

We also made some cute new warm headbands for the sisters....these are still in the development stage and may become a product...what do you think?

They are fleece lined...so nice and warm!!! We think they may need to be a little thinner...

They are all different and go with a specific pair o mittens....so if these are your moms sweaters...surprise!!!!

We hope you like it all!

Happy sewing!
Sarah

Come ski with me!

This winter my husband and I decided to buy ourselves some skate skis and today I decided to make some ski straps after seeing my friends.  I have this awful mustard soft shell jacket that my husband hates which I decided to use, one because he hates it and I'm not so keen on it and two because it's stretchy and I felt it would be perfect.  I cut 4 rectangles and sewed down the sides and voila, I was done.

\

To keep the skis separated I put some cardboard into the middle pocket (you can just see it in the picture) to make it thicker.  I thought about sewing that middle pocket shut but felt if the cardboard got wet and I had to replace it I really didn't want to have to pick it open and resew it. I might look around for some plastic that I can replace the cardboard with and when I find that I will sew it shut but for now the cardboard works for me!

Nathania

whooo's there....

It's a cute Alaskan wild owl...a tasty one by the looks of it as well!!!  I realize you've seen him before but there is something different about this guy!. Can you spot it...?? 

If you said bushy eyebrows and cute little orange claws you would be correct!!!  (And kudos on your good eyesight as my pics are not the best ) I realize it's nothing major but I really like the eyebrows, I think it gives him a bit more character and the claws are more 3D than what I used last time. One of these days I will branch out and try my hand at a different cool cake but teachers at my sister's school requested this guy for their Winter Festival after I sent the first attempt of this cake to them last September. He will be raffled off and the proceeds go towards the school PTA.  If you love him and want one of you own you can go here.

Anywhooo that is all for now (and my attempts at bird humor)!

Nathania