Sofi Sue's Pokemon Birthday Party (Jiggly Puff Pinata)

I haven't been doing much work on the house lately because Sofia is having a birthday party this weekend.  My house is always a complete mess so I had to stop fixing it up in order to clean it up.  My mom is in town and has been helping me to clean and get ready for the party.  Sofi Sue is into Pokemon, so that is the theme this year.  This is what I made today:

Fancy Pants Jigglypuff Pinata

For all you Pokemon noobs out there this is Jigglypuff.  Or, at least it is supposed to be.  Henry commented that it was sad that poor Jigglypuff was going to be beaten in order to get at the goodies inside.  I doubt that will prevent him from taking the first wack or diving for Jigglypuff's innards as they spill onto the ground. 

Muumuu Redo

I have seen these muumuu makeovers on the internet before and wished that I had an old muumuu to redo myself.  Then, the other day (which in my method of time keeping can be yesterday or two years ago) my workout buddy Nancy asked if I would like to go through her father's house to pick out what I liked.  He had moved out and no one was interested in putting on a garage sale.  I was, of course, overjoyed at the prospect. I love old stuff, I love free stuff, and I love looking at other people's houses. This was a win win win!  I found a large box full of goodies, including this red, white and blue muumuu in one of the closets!

I forgot to take a picture before removing the right sleeve.  You get the idea.

I searched for a good tutorial online and found newdressaday.com.  It seems like the usual redo for a muumuu involves ripping out the sleeves so that the cool yoke detail is more obvious and then either shaping it to fit your body or letting it stay flowy.  I decided to leave it flowy but add a belt to give it a little bit of shape.  My pictures are, as usual, deplorable but I feel that I have sunk to a new low with my standing on the toilet shots.  Here they are!

First I removed both sleeves using a seam ripper.

Don't mind the dried concrete on my fingers.

Then I pinned the seams around the arm holes and sewed them flat.

When sewing something that I want to look good I never back-stitch.  Instead I leave my thread long and use a needle to put all of the threads to the wrong side of the garment and tie the ends together.  I think my sister-in-law Judi might have given me that trick.  She is a much better sewer than I am, you should check out her etsy shop HERE.

 

It still looks very much like a muumuu.

It doesn't help that I am wearing a fleece with a similar color so that you can't see the neck detail.

Then I decided the length I wanted and cut off the extra fabric.

I turned the cut edge under twice and sewed the hem.

I added a belt (not a good looking one, but one I grabbed at a bag sale hoping it would look better than it did) and did one last top of the toilet picture.

I am trying to decide if I should take in the top just a little bit so that the underarms aren't so large and so that there isn't quite so much fabric gathered on top.

Overall, if I can find I cute belt I think that I will definitely wear this dress this summer!  I love doing things for my house, but it's nice to do something for myself as well once in a while!

Sorry about the potty shots, I do have a full length mirror in my house, but it is in this closet, so standing on the toilet is the only way to see my outfits for the time being.

If you look closely enough you can see the partially opened closet door behind all of my very necessary stuff.

Yay Cork Flooring!

 We finally bit the bullet and purchased the cork flooring that I've wanted ever since I found out that our first floor does not have hard wood hiding under the carpeting.  I spent a long time researching cork before deciding that the pros outweighed the cons.  I got a lot of really good information from thissortaoldlife.com.  If you are considering buying cork you definitely need to read this post.  I like that cork is softer, warmer, and more comfortable to stand on than my other flooring choices.  But mostly, I just love the way it looks.  I decided on the type of cork flooring that I wanted, Wicanders Originals Accent.  I found it in a store semi-near me and checked it out in person.  I then waited a year, just for fun.  Then I shopped around on the internet and found two sites that were competitive in price and contacted them both over the phone.  I felt more comfortable with the first site I had visited, but their price was several hundred dollars more.  When discussing my order with both sites I mentioned that I was shopping around and the site I liked better immediately lowered their price by several hundred dollars.  To save on shipping I chose to unload the flooring from the truck myself.  This morning when the truck pulled up I was prepared to jump in the back and start handing boxes down to Tim.  Luckily the truck driver said he'd use his lift to lower the pallet to the street.  This option was the $50 shipping upgrade I had said no to, and here we got it for free because the driver didn't want to wait around for us to unload the entire pallet one box at a time.  Yay free money!

Sofia was extra helpful during this process.  I believe each box weighs about as much as she does.

The flooring weighed about thirteen hundred pounds and took about ten minutes to carry inside.

Now it is going to live in our dining room until we have a chance to move it to a slightly more hidden location.  We aren't ready to install quite yet.

This was today's favorite thing!

Isn't it pretty?

Too Many Yellows!

Too many yellow paint colors, and none of them quite right!  I know Tim wants me to stop wasting money on paint samples, but I can't find just the right yellow for our built in book shelves.  And I still haven't decided on the white for the living room walls.  I'm so fearful of making the wrong choice that I'm having trouble making any choices at all!

Building a Raised Garden Bed for $15

Last year I tried to start a garden in the backyard.  I began by starting seeds indoors and then transferred them to a small area in the yard where I removed the grass.  I must have done something wrong because the only plants that survived and thrived were three tomato plants.  The rest of the plants died almost immediately or were choked out by weeds.  This year I have decided to keep the tomatoes where they were last year but I also want to add some raised beds.  Although I prefer the look of traditional gardens I like the idea of a method that requires less work.  However, I am extremely cheap and don't want to shell out the money it would cost to buy a prefab raised bed, or even to buy the materials for a do-it-yourself raised bed.  So I went to Craigslist and stalked the free section for months collecting as many old bricks as I could get my hands on.  I did end up purchasing weed blocking landscape fabric to put under the raised beds and a landscaping adhesive to stick the bricks together.  I bought THIS TYPE of adhesive that looks a lot like a tube of caulk.  I got the tube home and went to put it in my caulk gun.  That's when I realized that I was going to need a bigger gun!  I went back to Home Depot and bought this bad boy!

I feel a little bad for my puny old caulking gun!

I laid out the landscaping fabric and started placing my bricks.

I wanted each bed to be around six feet long and three feet wide.  I'm hoping to fit three beds along the chicken's fence.  I feel that my way of building the raised beds must be the most slap dash method in existence!  I eyeballed the whole thing and was halfway through with the first bed before I even knew it.

Looks good enough for me!

It is at this point that I realized I should have planned better.  I like the way my raised bed looks, kind of old and worn, but when you don't plan in advance you inevitably run into trouble.  I completely neglected to prepare the bricks.  These are old bricks.  Most had been stored outside for years.  I was having so much fun building the wall and was in such a hurry to get my beds completed that I didn't think about the fact that these bricks were dirty.  When gluing them together with the landscaping adhesive some of the bricks had so much dirt on them that the adhesive was sticking to the dirt instead of the bricks!  I decided to wait until the curing time for my adhesive was over and see if my walls would remain standing.  Luckily, most of the bricks were stuck tight, but a few came right off in my hands.  I took a few days to spray down the bricks to clean off the majority of the dirt before continuing.

Wouldn't these make an awesome patio?

I also stopped by my friend's house to collect a few more bricks.  After cleaning them all I got back to work.

Note the wood board behind the second raised bed.  My chickens are dumb as rocks and were actually eating the landscaping adhesive.  None of them suffered any ill effects, but now as I work I have to put this out to block the chickens from sticking their heads through the fence and eating glue.

By the third bed my garden walls were looking pretty wonky.  The bricks for this one were not all the same size and the ground is a bit uneven here.  Oh well, as long as it holds dirt I'm fine with some wobbly walls.

I love the detail on these bottom bricks (thanks Nicole!) and the bright yellow one makes me smile.

The raised beds aren't quite as tall as I wanted.  They are supposed to be at least twelve inches high and these are only eleven.  I ran out of bricks and am feeling antsy to fill them up and get planting.  If I find that they are too short to work well I can always add more rows of bricks next summer.  Now let's see if I can grow anything other than just tomatoes this year!

Sofi's T-Shirt Rag Rug

In order to keep costs down as much as possible I'm making everything in Sofia's new bedroom myself.  That last statement is only partly true.  I actually enjoy making stuff and I get all warm and fuzzy feeling when people compliment the things I make.  So, although I am cheap I am also a compliment hog.  There, full disclosure!  The first thing I am making for Sofi Sue is her rug.  I can't get in the room yet to make her loft so I have to start small with things I can make and store until the guest bedroom/Tim's office furniture gets moved out.  I first saw Laura from xoelle.com's tutorial a couple of years ago.

The diy for this rug at xoelle.com made me start collecting old t-shirts immediately!

I didn't know where I would put the rug I planned on making, I just knew that I had to have it!  I started collecting white t-shirts at rummage sales and also got a few from my friend Sari.  If you shop on the second day of a rummage sale they almost always have a bag sale to get rid of their extra inventory.  For $5 you can fill up a bag with whatever you want, and I wanted t-shirts!  After over a year of collecting t-shirts I finally had enough to make a good sized rug, as well as finally having an idea of which room to put the rug.  In.  Where on earth does the word in go in that sentence?  Anyway, I also now knew that the rug would be pink to go with Sofi Sue's color scheme.  But the latch hook method didn't end up working out for me.  Instead I used This tutorial from thehappyhousewife.com .  I already had the old towels so over the course of a several of months I cut my t-shirts, dyed them, and sewed them onto the towels.

Almost finished with my t-shirt scraps

You have to scrunch the t-shirt strips up to make the rug fluffier.  This rug is all about being fluffy!

At this point sewing the rug was getting a little unwieldy.

Halfway there.

I only worked between a half an hour to an hour a day, otherwise this project wouldn't have taken me quite so long. I ran out of pink t-shirt strips partway through, but luckily found that I had stashed more white t-shirts under my craft table.  After another run to Joann Fabrics I had enough pink dye to finish off the rug.  And so at least a year and a half (I am underestimating here) after hatching a plan to make this rug it is finally done!

This rug is a little under 4' by 4'.  I was hoping for larger but didn't want to cut and dye any more t-shirts!

 Sofi had better use this rug until she moves out of the house!

BM Simply White vs BM Decorators White vs BM Super White

 I can't believe I have turned into one of those people who spend long periods of time debating the merits of different shades of white.  White is white, right?  I am finding out that this is not true.  First I researched white paint colors online.  Then I got a few sample pots and slapped them up on the walls in the living and dining rooms.  I joked with the lady behind the paint counter at Home Depot that I would get home and not be able to tell the difference between the three whites I was wasting money on.  But after putting them on the wall I was completely surprised to find that none of the colors even seemed terribly white to me!  Simply White was a gorgeous white in the dining room but definitely a cream in the living room.  Super White was a beautiful light grey that I would have considered back when I wanted a grey living room.  And Decorators White comes across as having a definite color but I'm not sure what, maybe a violet grey or blue?  Either way, I've ruled out Super White and would go with Decorator's white as being the most crisp and clean, which is what I want, except for how lovely Simply White looks in the dining room.  If it looked that way in the living room as well the decision would already be made.  I think I need a bigger swatch!

BM Decorator's White

BM Simply White

BM Super White