Laurie's Everyday Notions

 Supplies ~ straw wreath, pruning "snippers", pins and fresh greens.   Once the greens are done it's time for some "embellishments". I prefer simple. Merry Christmas!

Over the past couple of weeks I have been slowly cleaning out the laundry room. The laundry room is the dumping ground for tools, craft supplies, stock pans which don't fit in any of the kitchen cupboards....plus all the stuff that has no other home. Things get dumped, the door gets closed and the room is ignored. So anyway....this is the bag I grabbed out of the laundry room today. I also grabbed the stack of embroidery hoops. I had found the hoops at a garage sale years ago and had intend to make butterfly nets with the daycare kids. The bag of tulle is the leftover material for the tutus that I made at Christmas. I'm done making tutus. Time to find a new project.  Before I even started searching for ideas (I became sidetracked. No surprise there.) I stumbled across a tutorial on making reusable produce bags:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-onestringbag/   I did a simple version. I'm not very skilled with sewing so simple is good. No drawstring. I c...

Remember the hundred (give or take) jars of baby food that were gifted to me? I have a bucket full of empty jars now that need to be "crafted".  I also had a bucket of aquarium rock that needs to find a new use. This week we used up a few rocks and jars while making terrariums. Easy peasy and the kids loved this project.   First we painted the lids a sunny yellow.  I was wondering where I'd find moss or other greens to put into our terrariums. It is March in Minnesota after all (although you won't know it with temps nearing 80 degrees today). While at the farm checking my maple trees (I had hoped to harvest a bunch of sap to make my own syrup this year. Unfortunately the weather has been too mild to produce a good sap flow), I noticed a pile of concrete blocks, which were once the walls of the horse barn, covered in moss. Perfect! The Boy and his big, muscular arms loaded up a moss-covered block for me to bring home for our project. Yesterd...

A couple of weeks ago I bought a heart shaped silicone mold at Hobby Lobby. My intentions were to use it in making Valentine candies.........                   and then I saw this great idea on a crafting blog.  I started at the bottom of our crayon bucket, that's were all the broken, misfit crayons hide, dug out the misfits and if any labels was left, I peeled it off. The crayons were too hard for my little helper to snap into pieces so I snapped and she arranged. If you want to be more "controlling" of the color combinations, you may. I just went for the eclectic look, not being too concerned about complimentary colors or using all valentine colors. Besides, I had used most of my Valentine colored crayons in last weeks Melted Crayon art .  The silicone molds are a little flimsy so to avoid melted wax all over my oven and/or stove, my carpet or more likely me (because that's the kind of thing that happ...

 I was hoping that my painters tape would hold up to leave a cool heart in the midst of the melted crayon. Unfortunately I think the tape lost some of it's sticky factor and didn't hold up. Next time I will try contact paper.  I used a "pancake mold" to make the template.  Crayons were glued to the top of the canvas with a hot glue gun. We used an assortment of reds, pinks and purple.  After the wax began seeping behind the tape, we tried holding the pancake mold to the canvas in hopes that that would save our heart but in the end I decided to ditch the heart. Another obstacle we faced was a dysfunctional hair dryer which preferred running on the low setting. Occasionally high setting would kick in for approximately ten minutes before reverting again to low. The low setting did not give enough heat to melt the crayons. It took most of the afternoon of running the dryer on high for ten minutes, letting the dryer cool off for twenty minutes and beg...

Watch out, I've moved from crocheting dish clothes to trying my hand at knitting a scarf. I've decided that this scarf is my practice scarf. I do a few rows of knitting, a row or two of purling. I'm not keeping track so it will be a haphazard pattern and I'm ok with that. Like crocheting, the first hour of learning this new skill was difficult. The thought of my hands working together with the long, awkward needles seemed like an impossibility. Eventually it did come. The other night I knit while watching a so-so movie with a really great soundtrack ("The Tree of Life"... beautiful yet bizarre and lacking of something I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's the lack of dialogue.). The music along with the rhythmic motion of my fingers was so calming. I'm hooked. Cooper is peeking in here. I think he is confused, and a little put off, with all the attention I'm giving my yarn. 

There are bunches of tutu tutorials on the web, (I know, I looked at many of them) but I thought I'd share some tips and shortcuts that I learned along the way. If you haven't already guessed by my previous posts, I'm all about finding a faster and less complicated way to do EVERYTHING. I'm short on time and often short on patience. My first tutu was a flop even though I followed the directions. It took a lot of time, I was using more tulle than what was recommended (meaning my inexpensive Christmas gifts were becoming quite expensive), it was ugly and I had less than a month to make eleven tutus. Before giving up, I took my first tutu apart and tried again....and I found some tricks to help me accomplish my goal! THE SUPPLY LIST: The waist can be made from ribbon (something wide ~ I used ribbon with a 4 in width) OR elastic (this will need to be sewn ~ I did mine by hand) OR elastic headbands. I loved the ribbon because I left long tails to be tied around th...