The Big News!

As I have been a little distant from my craft blog as of late, I decided some changes were in order. I have decided to include a new author to my blog! I would like to introduce you to my wonderfully talented, incredibly witty, thrifty, stay at home mom, wife, and more importantly my sister-in-law, Alyssa! She is the Dollar Store Queen and makes all kinds of fun projects on a very tight budget, just like me. So I shall now pass the bar over to Alyssa with her very first post ever!

Bonjour, je m'apelle Alyssa! And thats it for the high school French that I remember, and I cant even guarantee that its spelled correctly. If its not, please don't tell me :) So as Kelsee has said, I am in fact a stay at home mom and wife, and because of this my craft budget is tiny to almost non-existent. I "shop" my home all the time, seeing what can be moved and better used in a different room. Heck, sometimes I even shop Kelsee's house or my mom's. Thankfully we all have a somewhat similar taste in some things. Ahhh family..what a wonderful thing to have. Anywho, on to the crafts!!!

My husband, son and I recently moved into a new, very large apartment. Its technically a 4 bedroom place, with an additional loft space which is my craft room; or as Neil, my husband, likes to call it, "That Place where she throws all the junk she picks up at Goodwill, and the Dollar Store til she decides what to do with it". I tell him thats too much to say, lets just call it a craft room and move on. But I digress yet again. The super bonus to this large apartment is that we now have a bona fide guest room. So exciting! And I already know for sure of my first guest who will be using it for a couple of weeks in June. So with this in mind I have been a busy little bee trying to make it a relaxing and somewhat decoratively neutral space. If I let myself go nuts then it would be an explosion of pink and oranges and paper lanterns dangling from the ceiling and since its a rather small room it may make my first guest, my grandpa, a bit nauseous. So I thought to myself one day that it should be classic, tasteful, still have my own personal stamp on it, but open enough that anyone would feel comfortable relaxing in there. I cant change the wall color (plain old white) since its a rental, so I am incorporating it into the color palette, which I decided should be black, white, silvers and grays, with touches of silvery blue. If you've been in the Post Falls Thomas Hammer, just think of their wall color, and there you go. If not, well then I am sorry.

My first thought on this guest room was wall art. I have a few challenges in here: stark white walls, very small room, and weird short walls. I did not want to overwhelm the space at all. So I was meandering through the Dollar Tree one day and spotted these sweet little square frames. They had a 3x3 inch opening, made of real wood, and had real glass. Score! Five of them in my hot little hands, and out the door we went. Now I love words, and fonts, and languages in general. So I thought of a bedroom appropriate word, "SLEEP", and typed it up on a new Word document. I goofed around with spacing, fonts, and the size until I thought I had the right size to fit one letter per frame. Disclaimer: I did not know this was going to be a project I would someday tell the world about so I dont have all the specifics of font names or sizes. Im sorry. You will just have to eyeball it. Trust me, it will be okay!

Next, once the letters were printed, I scrunched up my face and thought "Hmmm...these need to look older, not be on bright shiny white printer paper!" Enter the mighty powers of tea! 3 tea bags, 2 cups of hot water, and 10 minutes later, and I had a spray bottle full of strong tea. I simply turned my oven to Warm, laid the pages on my oven racks, and sprayed the pages with tea until they looked old enough to me. It wasnt a uniform look, but I love them. Let the pages dry, then simply traced the glass from the frame centered over the letters, and popped them into their frames. However, I wanted the frames to have an older look to them, so out came the glass and paper. I grabbed a bottle of metallic silver craft paint that I had on hand and applied 3-4 coats of silver paint to each frame, letting them dry several hours between coats. Since the paint was so thin, more like a glaze, and the wood so porous, this was unfortunately necessary. Normally I want projects to be DONE the second I think of them, if we are being honest here.

So there you have it, my SLEEP wall art. I plan to hang them an inch or two apart above the headboard. And that headboard is going to be a whole other adventure, so stay tuned!

So there you have it! Alyssa's very first post! I hope you will all welcome her and I hope you enjoy some of the new posts that we both will be having on here soon. I figure between the two of us we should have a pretty active blog and you will have a plethora of ideas to inspire you!

Rice Pudding and an Announcement

I rarely put recipes on here, because as I have stated before, not the best cook in the world. However, when I do find something that even I can make and it doesn't taste like a science project, I like to share said recipe with all of you! My husband decided to make this one day and I ate the entire pot all by my lonesome... I'm not lying. Gone. All of it. I even used a spatula and scraped the bottom of the pot just to get every last bit of it!

Creamy Rice Pudding

Ingredients

3/4 Cup Uncooked White Rice

2 Cups Milk, divided

1/2 Cup White Sugar

1/4 Teaspoon Salt

1 Egg, beaten

1 Tablespoon Butter

1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add rice and stir. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

2. In another saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups rice, 1 1/2 cups milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy, 15-20 minutes. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup milk and beaten egg. Cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, stir in butter and vanilla.

Now, you can serve warm, but I like it cold! You can also add 2/3 cup Golden Raisins to it too, but that is not my cup of tea, so I left it out. But if you like that you just add it in with the egg and extra milk. Its so good to sprinkle just a bit of cinnamon on top or do a nice swirl of Redi-Whip (and of course do a squirt in your mouth before putting it away, its mandatory!) And I wonder why I have a weight problem... hmmm. Hope you enjoy!

Now onto some fun things! There will be some big changes happening to this wee little blog of mine in the coming days. So stay tuned! And also, I will resume my more fun posts hopefully by the end of next week as I am stressed to the max with my daughter's 3rd birthday party crafts. I'll post all my fun things I've been making hopefully before then, if not after Easter. I just need to take deep breaths, have yet another bowl of Rice Pudding and make it through this week without a trip to my favorite closet and hiding.

Excitement!!

Who has two thumbs, is saving all her pennies and dimes, swoons a little every time she thinks about the FABULOUS things she's going to be bringing home on June 5-6? ME!!!!!

EUREKA!!!!

A few weeks ago I posted about my frustrations of being tall, large, shapes and not being able to find jeans for a woman of my body type. Alyssa over at the Persnickety Peacock posted a comment about getting her jeans at Coldwater Creek, as she has the same problem as I do, her being 6' and all. Well, after I got over my sticker shock a bit, I looked in the "Outlet" section and I think I heard the faint sound of angels in the background as that page opened... or maybe I just don't get out much and have to add theme songs to everything I do. I'm going to stick with the first one, its much more dramatic. I digress. I found two pairs of jeans that were long, 36" inseam, for under $20!!! Both pairs were originally over $70! WHOA!!! And the best part is that not only does my Boo-tay look fabulous in them, mostly because my crack is not inching its way out, but I can also wear heals with them! Its a rare occurrence for me to be able to wear pants and heals at the same time! So thank you Alyssa! You totally rocked my world and opened a whole new place for me to spend my money (well, the money that my husband earns so I can stay home. But its all the same, right?)

Old Navy Inspired Headband

My sister-in-law went to Old Navy a few weeks ago and bought this adorable headband. It was $5 and she said the only reason she bought it was because she knew we could mass produce them and make millions! Then we both came back to reality and decided that we could make them for ourselves and that I would just spread my knowledge on how to make them! So here goes!

Supplies:

* Glue Gun (with an extra stick, just in case)

* Fat Quarter or a scrap of fabric about that size

* Scissors

* Plastic Headband (I got a 6pk for $2.50 at Walmart)

Instructions:

*Start with your Fat Quarter. Cut 2 slits into your fabric about an inch apart, down the longest part of your fabric. Rip your strips, this is going to be the fabric that you wrap around your headband.

* Fold the torn ends in, glue them together so they don't move. Then glue your strip onto the inside of one end of your headband. Then begin to wrap your fabric around your headband, making sure to continue to fold the torn edges in as you wrap and glue all around the plastic. Make sure that you are not wrapping your fabric too close together, you only need the edges to overlap. ** Note: As soon as the first strip is done glue the next one right onto the fabric and continue in the same direction as the previous strip.
* This is how it should look once you are done.
* Next you will rip 3 strips from your Fat Quarter. You can decide how wide or thin you want, the wider the strip, the bigger the flower and so on. I did two strips at about 1" and then the third I did about 2".
* Tie a knot at the end of one strip, leaving a small tail at the end. You don't want too big of a tail, so try and get it about a half inch long.
* Start to twist your strip of fabric, while you twist it begin to wrap around the knot, using small amounts of glue to hold it on there. Please be careful that you don't burn your fingers!!!! Just hold it on there long enough for it to stick together.
* Continue to twist and wrap around your knot. I like to leave one edge a little loose and then take the long end and pull it under the flower and through the little slit that you left open. It creates more interest and then doesn't look like you just have a swirl on your head. Continue with all three strips. Make each one different! The beauty of this method is that each one can look different and yet still the same. It takes a lot to mess this up.
* Here are my three finished flowers!
* Next, cut three circles from your fabric that are just a little smaller than the bottoms of your flowers.
* Smear lots of glue all over the bottom of the flower and stick it onto the headband a little off center, then place your circle over the glue, with the headband in between the flower and the circle.
* Do the same to all three flowers.

Here's the finished product! What do you think?

I did a few more, just because I love them!

(Sorry this one is so blurry!)

This one is just tule that I twisted and folded and glued. Then I made the center flower and glued/stitched it onto an alligator clip.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you make one, please share it with me! I would love to see everyone's variations on them. I think they would be adorable with beads, buttons, vintage broaches! Love it!

You can also use ribbon to wrap around your headband, here's an example of how that will look over at my friend Chelsea's blog. She made hers for her daughters and they turned out so cute! The possibilities are endless!