The Evolving Homemaker

Last week I got it stuck in my little head that I just had to make a felt board for the kids.  I went online perusing and found a couple sites that had ideas, so I sort of jumbled them together and created my own.

At The Feltboard Is Your Friend, she has lots of good ideas on how to use the felt board.  At Three Sneaky Bugs, she had a fabulous idea of using a frame and hanging it on the wall.  It looked so much nicer than so many I had seen.

Here is what I did.  First we snaked our way through the Humane Society Thrift Store to find a cheap picture with a large frame that we could use.  I think I paid too much for it at $3.50 darn it.  When we got it home we realized the glass covering our circa 1983 purple flowers was not actually glass, but plastic.  Nevertheless, we carried on headed to Hancock Fabrics as they were having a felt sale! Yeah!  All of the bolts of felt were 40% of and all of the different color squares were 5/$1.  We had a heck of a fun time picking out all our goodies.

All said and done, the total project cost about $15. Pretty cheap for long term entertainment.

When we got home, I took the frame apart, dusting off the cobwebs and pulling back the staples.  I placed the cardboard from inside the frame over our blue felt and began to attempt to staple it into place.  Unfortunately the staples went all the way through to my finger a few times.  Ouch.  I couldn’t find my glue gun anywhere, big surprise, so eventually decided we probably didn’t need anything to hold the fabric in place.  Once the cardboard was back in the frame, the staples that held the cardboard in, would hold the whole thing together.

And it worked.  Much to my surprise, considering my usual failings when I just try to ‘wing’ it with a project!

Here it looks hanging on the wall in the kids play/school room!  So darn cute!  I was happy we followed the framing advice!

Here it is with my first set of cut outs.  Grass, flowers, stems, and leaves abound and the kids can put them on anyway they choose!

I know how I feel when I see these sorts of projects on other blogs, like how the hell does this Mom have time for such things?  And followed closely behind is my guilt that I can’t finish any such projects myself.  Please know, that so far, only flowers have been cut out.  I did cut out a barn and two fences too, but that is all I have finished on a barn  yard scene.  I don’t claim to be super Mom here…there is no such thing!

Spill it: What are some of your favorite ways to use a felt board?  If you have one, how have you utilized it with your kiddos?

*FYI I have a blog post up on Reality Writes today and it isn’t this one!  Read it here.

I am singing the glorious praises of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ today!  My son wont let me forget it either, as it is the most commonly spoken sentence on Bob the Builder.  But now that he has caught on to what I am doing, he won’t let me throw anything at all out, not even into the recycle bin…which is going to soon pose a problem.

I have no idea what happened, it was one of those crazy light bulb moments Mom’s tend to have at the strangest and most inopportune time.  Last week, while I was making yet another perfect cup of hot cocoa, I used up the rest of our Fair Exchange cocoa powder.  For some reason, I stood at the sink, staring at it, and holding it in my hand as if enlightenment was about to burst forth from the brown and blue container.

Instead of enlightenment, I got an idea.

Gift wrap.

Why not?  I am just going to put this thing in the recycle bin, and since we found out on Monday that doesn’t always mean it is getting recycled in your town or even in your own country, it seemed that it still had some life in it I could put to good use.  So I did.

Here are the ways I began to think outside the box, no pun intended, well maybe it was intended, but how many things in my recycle bin could be passed on to a friend or family member instead?  Holding of course some little gem I think they would love, without purchasing boxes or wrapping paper or tape.  At Christmas too, I am always scrounging for a box to send things to the east coast, scrounge no longer, I have my answer!

Feast your eyes on these:

And to add a cherry on top, I cut the ‘To’ and ‘From’ cards from our paper mail recycle bin in the office!  I just found an area that was pretty, some aspen trees in a magazine handed to me by a door to door teen, or plain, the back of a ‘We’ve Moved’ postcard from the kids dentist office, and cut out a square from each!

I challenge you to this, next time you need something to put a present in, how creative can you get with what is already in your house?  A bag from a take-out restaurant dolled up with bows? A bag from your favorite clothing store revamped in a surprising way?  A box of snacks you used up in this weeks lunchbox?

So get crackin’ and get wrappin’!  I can’t wait to see and hear what you have come up with!

Spill it: Got some green wrapping ideas you’d like to share?  Let’s do it here and get people thinking outside the gift box!

I fell in love yesterday.  Utterly and completely, all at once, during an impromptu visit to the bookstore.  I stumbled upon a magazine I have never been privy to before, and it was awesome.

I perused it as my daughter was munching away on a dragonfly cookie.  Without the cookie, I wouldn’t have had a chance at reading it.  It had a hefty price tag at $14.99, so I wasn’t going to be able to actually buy it. But one day, I will most definitely be fitting it into the budget.

It is called Green Craft Magazine, and it is chock full of surprising and fun things to do while re-using items in the house or thrift store; even your junk mail.  It was really, really a fun magazine.

Hands down, my favorite things in the magazine were these purses made by felted sweaters and clothes from the thrift store!  I thought they were adorable, and I cannot wait to try one of my own.  Check out the purses at Grandma Peden’s Porch and if you can, support a fellow crafter by buying one!  If you can’t buy one get creative, head to your local thrift store, or hey head to your own closet and use your old clothes you aren’t wearing anymore!  Check out Marilyn’s blog too, she just had a workshop, so I can’t wait to see and read all about it!

I am probably the last person in the universe to have not felted a sweater before.  No surprise there.  So I went all over the net for instructions and ended up with a bunch of different advice.  One site says the sweater has to be at least 50% wool, others said 80%, and still another said 100%.  That is a big difference, and because I have never done it, I can’t really give you advice on that.  Do what I do, and experiment!  The journey is part of the overall enjoyment.  Right?  So throw your wool sweater into the laundry on hot, with a tiny bit of detergent and when it is done, toss it in the dryer.  Then cut, design, and sew your new purse or bag!

The world of possibilities this project opens, is just phenomenal.  Think about it, baby bags made from baby clothes, purses and messenger bags made from thrift store gems, fun bags and backpacks for your kids, gifts for your favorite gal friends…oh my goodness how I wish there were more than a mere twenty four hours in a day!

Get your sewing machines out and get stitching!  What are you waiting for?

Spill it: Please share photos/links in the comments or email jen@theevolvinghomemaker.com of your projects!  I think this is the funnest thing since sliced cheese and can’t wait to see and hear what you came up with and share them with the rest of the readers here!

I’ll be totally candid here…yes, I was turning on the T.V. for my daughter to watch Curious George on DVR, and on the PBS station at that exact moment was a woman explaining how she makes her own yarn for knitting from old clothes!

YES!

I had seen this once before in my all time favorite magazine Mary Jane’s Farm in her April-May 2009 issue.  The first issue of Mary Jane I ever got off the stand at our local natural grocers.  I ordered a subscription right away I was so in love immediately!  Mary Jane to me is the Martha Stewart of simple, organic, beautiful, and peaceful living.   The magazine is printed on recycled paper, full of amazing ideas and beautiful photos.  After your first read, you just might want to be her.  At least I do!

The magazine had a photo and instructions on how to knit old t-shirts into rugs.  The moment I feasted my eyes on it I knew I would try it…someday.  In all honesty, I am not the best knitter.  Chuckle.  As if you expected me to be!  In fact, the next time I do try to knit something, it will have been so long since the last time, I will have to jump on an online tutorial my mother-in-law sent me for heaps of reminders.  I have been feeling the urge as of late to find my knitting bag amongst the disaster I call a closet, maybe this program on T.V. was just the thing to wet my appetite for knitting again.

Basically you cut your old t-shirts, or ones you’ve gotten from the thrift store, into at least 1/4″ strips.  (1 inch for the rug) Then cut the circular strips at some point to create the long flat strips.  Then you can either tie the ends in a knot, yes the knot will show a bit, but it will add some character to your scarf or rug.  Or if you don’t want the connections to show as much, you can cut a one inch slit into both ends of each of the strips, lengthwise.  Thread one strip through the hole of one strip then back through the other hole at the other end of the one you are threading through.  Pull it tied.  (Mary Jane’s explains it as how you would tie rubber bands together.) Or, you can cut your t-shirt in a spiral all the way up the shirt to have less connections!  Roll all of your connected strips into a yarn ball!  SO easy!

The woman on Knitting Daily on PBS, and I so wish I had caught her name, had made a scarf out of an old skirt she got in Paris.  She also had an enormous ball made of old jean strips!  She was thinking of trying to make a rug out of them.  She did emphasize that often with working with homemade strips, she had to start over and change her needle gauges, or make the rows smaller, etc.  It will be trial and error for the first few tries!

So get thrifting and get knitting!  I can’t wait to find some of my husbands old shirts that have holes in them to cut to pieces!  Of course he still wears them, holes and all, so I might have to use physical force to wrestle them away from him…

Who knew I would be cringing about all the clothes I have passed on the Goodwill!  Oh what I could turn them into now!!

Spill it: Show us the photos of your recycled knitting project in the comments!  I want to see the attempts!  I will post mine in a blog post follow up!

I have a really bad habit of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.  For awhile I was doing pretty good at ignoring what I saw, not watching the news, not engaging in yelling at the top of my lungs at Meet the Press or Air America.  I have ignored politics, any environmental tidbits floating around on Yahoo News, stories of disasters, and hardships.  Sometimes one really does have to take care of themselves first, otherwise our spirit is killed in the battle, even if our body seems strong enough to plod on.

Unfortunately, you can take the girl away from worldly problems, but you can’t take her worldview away.  Dang it.

Lately as spring is well, springing, and construction is happening, and Avatar is playing, and the war over resources in the Congo rages on.  Of course I am also reminded as I read A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon, with every page turn, at the individual devastation the plunder for resources creates.  I can’t help again feeling the enormous weight of my own purchasing power.

We have purchasing power you know.  Ever dollar you spend makes a bigger impact than checking a box on the first Tuesday in November.  And as women, we spend 83% of the money in the U.S.  (source: Time Magazine).  We’ve got the power in our purse to create whatever change we envision.

I bring this up today, because I made an exciting discovery!  A few days ago I posted to Facebook asking people if they knew where to get fair trade fabric.  It seems that buying fabric only contributes to child and slave labor, much like shopping at most clothing stores does.  I wanted to try to avoid creating more demand in the world, but I also wanted to make some pillows for our living room, among other crafty desires I have.  Not one of my Facebook pals had a creative answer to this dilemma, and my quick Google search made it quite evident that I would be spending a lot on amazing fair trade fabric from Africa; in which my husband would probably divorce me over.

So what is a responsible girl to do?  I went to the thrift store.  And they had a ton of fabric.  SO CHEAP.

I bought yards of blue…for $4.99.  I repeat…yards of fabric, not a yard.  Yards.

This is a season for breaking out of the box.  We are all flowering, bursting forth with our own potential, much as mother earth does this time of year.  The question is, do we do it with awareness?  Are we present with our purchases and the impact each of them make?

I am no angel.  I also had to go to Target, uck, today to get a bathing suit for a pool party tomorrow.  Sometimes we have to do what we have to do. But living simply, in my book, really does mean I slow down my life enough to spend the extra time searching for a solution; reaching for a more resourceful way to expand into my creativity…because it really does matter.

Spill it: What ways have you been creative and resourceful re-using?  Is it hard to think about being responsible with your buying power when it comes to your hobbies?

My husband is embarrassed of me.  More often than not probably, if I was to really analyze it.  But he has expressed his concern in this particular area with actual words, out loud, not just in eye rolling or mutterings under his breath.

Apparently he is publicly humiliated by the fact that our drinking glasses have little paper wrappers still clinging for life, to their otherwise see through bodies.

You see, last summer I did a lot of berry picking with the kids at a local organic pick it yourself farm.  Strawberries, raspberries, geez, I am drooling as I think of those precious little nuggets we would eat along the way to filling our baskets, the heat of the sun still warming their centers.  Uhh…I just remembered my daughters face on our first outing of the season last year, as we rode in the wagon attached to the big John Deere, covered with the red flesh of the strawberry patch we just left behind.  So perfect.

Anyway, the best way to store such fresh delicacies is in a glass jar with a lid in the fridge.  This I learned from hunting all over the internet, and I would link it if I could even remember where to begin to find it.  This little tidbit was actually in a long thread about how to store fresh strawberries.  The gal who posted said her Grandmother used that method, so I figured of course, that if anyone knows best…it is Granny.

So I started washing and saving all my MaraNatha Peanut Butter jars, my Spectrum Mayo jars, even my St. Dalfour’s jelly jars.  In the following weeks I created quite a collection of vessels with screw lids.  For our next adventure to the farm, I was prepared.  When we got home, and after my usual stint standing over the sink washing the fruity gems and stuffing my face and my spirit, I put the remainders in my new jars.

Of course, it worked.  Granny so knows what she is talking about.  All of my fresh picked berries lasted at least a week in the fridge, in their little glass homes.  I was so happy.  I live for the summer and mornings spent with the kids on the farm.  I never come home with less then a flat overflowing with the bounties of summer.  Now I could enjoy them for a longer period, for cereal, for snack, for sneaking after the kids are in bed…

I think I am brilliant.  I think I am so brilliant, that I begin to save more of these jars for use as our drinking glasses too.  We have small children.  Glasses are a commodity here that don’t have a very long life expectancy.  I have already paid for the peanut butter, why not drink out of it for a few years too?

My husband finds this classy look to be somewhat of a disgrace, especially if we have company.  Evidently, if I would take the time to rid the glasses of the hanging paper chads they still exhibit, it would be OK.  At this juncture, I just put them in the dishwasher knowing that one day they will come out perfectly clean.  For now, we use them, peeling MaraNatha labels and all, until that day comes when I can see from one side through the other.

This my friends, is how I mortify my significant other.  I myself like to think of it as glassware composting.

Spill It: Has your significant other been humiliated by something you thought was just so charming?  Have they been slightly less than thrilled by any of your attempts to save the planet?