Whatever Wednesday: 5 Easy Snowflake Crafts

Today on the blog, I've found some cute snowflake crafts to share. They are easy, inexpensive and/or use recyclable material!

Swirls of Winter Snowflake 

I LOVE Michelle's cute idea using clear banister clips!

Hot Glue Glittered Snowflake 

Bethany at Pitter and Glink gives us step-by-step instructions on how to make snowflakes with a glue gun! Cute idea!  

 

Popsicle Snowflake 

 And Snowflakes from Popsicle sticks are a such a breeze!  Kimbo, from Girl and a Glue Gun, guest posts on SugarBeeCrafts with a fun tutorial.

Giant 6-pack Plastic Ring Snowflake

 The tutorial is a video and really easy to follow. By MyRealityBites.

 

Before Christmas, I was at a thrift store and found these amazing looking snowflakes made of 6-pack plastic rings.  Aren't they great?!  
I loved this idea of using the plastic rings for this because years ago, I took my children to the Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery in Branson, MO, where they have a live turtle, very much like this one:

After seeing what the harmless looking piece of plastic can do to a Red-eared Slider, I was a little more cautious about just throwing the rings out.  Instead I began cutting each circle before throwing it away so that nothing could get caught in the plastic.  BUT...making them into snowflakes is such a fantastic idea!!  It's on my to-do list for January!

 Borax Crystals Snowflake

(see tutorial below)

Using borax to make crystals is such an easy project!  For the recipe check out the tutorial here.  My children, their friends, and I, made these a couple of years ago, and I'm still using them!

Gather the pipe cleaner color(s) of your choice and lay them out.

Cut each pipe cleaner into three pretty equal parts.

Make an X

And then lay the third piece over it.

Then twist all three pieces at the center and tie some string around one tip.

Tie the string onto a stick, Popsicle stick, or other like-object and set aside.
Boiling water

1/3 C Borax to 1 Quart jar of boiling water (but I've found that if you just keep adding the borax until you can't dissolve it anymore (I think I put close to 2/3 cup in) then you get lots and lots of crystals).

For other hints, check out when I made Borax Valentine's hearts here.

Side-by-side, before and after the crystals had formed.

Last year, I made them into a garland  to hang in our front window. 

See how after a year they are oxidized and not sparkly? But I felt like they were still snowflake-y 

And kept them to hang again.

Make a Mix Monday: 6 Reasons to Make Mixes and Places to Find Them

 I make mixes to save myself time and to know what is going into my family's food.  But I found a list of these 6 reasons at the Utah State University extension website.

I've listed them here too, but their website has so many great ideas and recipes!  Did you know how to keep your pickles crisp when canning them?  I found out there - but I digress...

Here are 6 great reasons to make your own mixes:

1. Time Saver - Taking time to make master mixes allows you to prepare several recipes at the same time which, according to USU, can save you about 3/4s of the preparation time! 
2. Better Nutrition - It seems that there are so many reports popping up about the genetically modified foods that we are eating and the things that we can't pronounce going into our daily food.  So, when you make your own, you can create mixes without preservatives and additives! You can also put in less sugar or salt or other ingredients than the recipe calls for according to your dietary needs!
3. Economical - Commercial mixes do save time too, but many times they are expensive and making your own mix can save you lots of bucks!  In fact, USU suggests that by making your own mix you are saving half of the cost of commercial mixes!  AND if you buy your basic commodities on sale, or in bulk, (or, when they aren't on sale, at Aldi), you'll save even more. 
4. Versatile - Often you can use one mix in a variety of ways.  They can be an opportunity to use your creativity and imagination to make delectable meals for your family. 
5. A chance to utilize your food storage - Before I started making mixes I had gobs and gobs of food storage sitting in my basement waiting for "an emergency".  I finally figured out that because we are living on just one income, that my food storage could be used often and rotated through, if I add them to mixes.  Especially powdered milk!  It's just not a favorite to drink (There's even a song about how awful it is: Powdered Milk Man)
6. and they make great gifts! - From the above five we know that mixes save us time, money and are more healthy; so, of course, they make fantastic gifts to give to your friends and family!

For the so many wonderful places to find mixes, here are a few:On-line:

• This woman's blog and her review on mixes and preparedness
• Utah State Universities Extension 
• Budget101 has a listing of mix recipes here.
• And of course, there is always Pinterest for a plethora of mix recipes. 

 And in Books, such as Make-a-Mix Cookery by Karine Eliason.

There are so many great mix cookbooks to choose from which you can find on Amazon or at your bookstore or library. 

The book above is amazing and got me started over 10 years ago using mixes and I have LOVED having it! It is chock full of mixes and then gives countless recipes to use from those mixes! 
The one below is the new edition:

Furniture Friday: Building bookshelves into the wall

My husband and I LOVE to utilize wasted space between walls!  I mean, it's very name is asking for use and purpose - we don't want wasted space!  This post shows our two between-the-studs transformations in our master bath; this post we built small shelves between the studs in a half-wall to hold all my kitchen baking goods; while this post only gave a sneak peak into the bookshelves we made in our tiny office.   (All seen below)

   

      

Those bookshelves are what we're going to focus on today.  In the post about the computer desk, I mentioned that we had a beautiful window in our stairwell that wasn't being utilized because of the west facing wall in this small "office".  However, we couldn't just knock out the wall completely because we didn't want children falling into the basement...because that would be bad.  ;-)  So, using the same concept as our half-wall baking good shelves, we set to building.

 The entrance to our basement used to be in the garage but before we moved in, this entrance was added.  Since the wall to the small office is directly next to the opening the basement, we felt that we could utilize the space between the studs and add another 6 inches out over the entrance. 

 Because I would be painting this, it didn't matter how the wood looked before so most of our wood pieces were purchased from the Habitat Re-Store.   

 We pre-built each of the four units in our garage and then moved them into place and nailed them to the floor joists and existing wall studs.  Then covered each set with 1x4s to hide the fact that they were separate units. 

Then I caulked like crazy!

Primed and painted. 

And enjoyed our new bookshelves! Ah, the natural light; it's so wonderful!!

Whatever Wednesday: Doornob Washcloth Hanger

We're in a rental right now and our landlady is so wonderful at decorating county-living style!

Isn't this such a cute idea to hang in the bathroom for hand towels and wash cloths?  Just a portion of antique baseboard, a vintage doorknob, and two old-fashioned nails.  

Make a Mix Monday: Taking a Favorite Family Recipe and Turning it into a Mix

There are so many wonderful places to find mixes BUT, have you ever had a family recipe that you loved, that you wished was just faster to make? 

My mother makes some pretty yummy, yet healthy(ish) blueberry muffins.  Some mornings (like 90% of them) I just can't wake up in time to get all the ingredients out, then bake them for the required 20 minutes and have their bake-time finished before my son leaves at 7:20!
The finished muffins do fine in the freezer, but some days it's just nice to have something fresh out of the oven, right?

So, I turned her recipe into a mix and I'll show you how I did it so that you can make your family recipes into a mix too.


To the original recipe:

Because milk is so expensive, I don't like using my good drinking milk in my baking - which is one good reason to like mixes! 

In this recipe, I changed my milk to 1/3 cup of powdered milk (1/3 cup + roughly 1 cup of water, as seen in the recipe).

I then wanted enough to make these muffins once a week (if I chose to).  So, some simple measurement math:  3 tsp = 1 Tbsp, 1/3 cup powdered milk makes 1 cup of milk.

Okay, here we go.

Make your recipe one time with your regular measurements, substituting your powdered milk where you would normally have milk.  So my mix recipe ended up looking like this:

But I want to make it to use four times so I multiplied everything and ended up with this recipe:

  So, what are you waiting for?  Do you have a family recipe that would make a good mix?  Give it try. 

Furniture Friday: Of New Goals and Never Giving Up

We all know that most of us make new goals for the new year.  And I have made some personal, family, and blogging goals.  But I wanted to show a project that has taken me forever to finish!

I received this chair from a friend in October of 2013.  Yes, over a year ago!  It had duct tape around one of the legs (which was ominous at the time, but fortunately it was just there for show as there was no damage to the leg at all, whew!).  But the most distressing thing about the chair was that it's seat deck (where you sit) was covered in mildew and black mold and it was warped beyond repair.

Because the paint was good and a nice color, in my mind I thought that just repairing the seat deck would be an easy fix - like 20 minutes to get it back in working order.

 

 I went to a fabric store and purchased some webbing.  Sadly, this store only carried your typical burlap-y with red stripes webbing.  It did not look good on the chair. 

Then this project got set aside while we fixed our house to sell and during our move. 
In September, after we had moved and life settled down a bit, I wanted to get this easy project out and finish it. But do you know, that everything that could possibly go wrong with such an easy project did go wrong?!

I found some great green webbing the same color as the chair.  But couldn't find my air-compressed staple gun. Waited and searched for it, only to find that all my staples for the gun were too long and went straight through the rungs of the chair.

So, pull out the staples - only I couldn't find my upholstery puller, or my pliers!

Wait and search, find the puller.  Find my hand- staple gun.  No staples.  Go to the store for more staples.  Get them home, ready for the project!  Wrong size staples!  Go back to the store, get it all settled away with the right size, come back home and can't find my webbing stretcher!

I finally broke down and purchased a new webbing stretcher.  And my good husband helped me to finish this project in time for Christmas guests to use.

The moral of the story, to me anyway, is one, to have everything on hand BEFORE you start a project, but more importantly, to not give up.  There were many times when I was so ready to just throw that puppy out the door!  I got it for free so I didn't think it would matter if I kept it to finish or not. 

Sometimes the easiest goals are the most difficult to keep to the end!  I should have been able to finish this in such a short amount of time, and indeed, it only took a little over 30 minutes to do the work.  But without the proper materials and some outside help, this little green chair would have been thrown out with the garbage.

I'm going to try to remember that for my new year's resolutions this year.  Happy New Year to you and good luck in your keeping and making your own goals! 

Catching Up

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a long while!  My family and I sold our house in KC and moved out to the country.  We're currently renting a beautiful home while building a new one.  I know, an amazing dream in the works and a great blessing!

Now that I'm a little more settled, I would love to share some things I've been working on!

When I "grew up" and became a wife and mother, I figured out fast that I had a hard time staying on task and keeping up with the job, the family and the home.  So, I came up with themes for myself to get stuff done, like Mopping Monday and Fish Friday and Water the plants Wednesday.  This way I often could remember what to do, when, and things were less likely to be neglected.  Does anyone else do that?  Well, anyway, I know it's a little weird, but it sure has helped me A LOT!

In order to keep myself on task here, I decided that I had better do something similar for this blog.  So, introducing:    

To save money, and to know what's going into our daily meals, I've been working a lot with mixes from Pinterest and from The Make-A-Mix Cookbook.  On Mondays, I'll just give some info on how I thought the mix worked, or if I think another worked better; if it sped up my cooking time, etc.
  

Wednesdays will be filled with different things.  Whatever I have worked on recently that doesn't fall into the other two categories.  For instance, when my kids were much younger, to help in learning the alphabet and how to read, each week we focused on one letter. And in that week, for one meal, we'd focus on that same letter.  My daughter, being the youngest, doesn't remember it and only remembers seeing the signs I made (which sadly didn't make it in the move).  Anyway, though she is an avid reader, she wanted to do that again.  Only this time wanted to pair it with, what she called, "Baking Through the Alphabet".  Among other things, look for that on Wednesdays.

And of course, my stress-reliever and enjoyment, finding furniture in dumpsters or on the side of the road or at the Habitat ReStore and making them to fit my home (or another person's home). 

Because the holiday break is fast approaching, I'll be starting this at the beginning of the new year. See you then!

* I may not always be able to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I will do my best to get it done.*