Its Harvest Time Again

So, its harvest time again at the Thrift farm. This late summer season I planted black eyed peas and they are amazing! My pumpkins on the other hand fell flat... I really don't know what happened to them. They started beautifully but now, there have been tons of blooms, but no actual pumpkins. Sad. In other news, Cheyenne's tree house is coming along swimmingly! Seeya Sunday, maybe I will have some better stuff going on!

Yes yes I know, I'm a slacker.

I know I was suppose to post today... But my camera battery is deaddddd... So I am hoping I can squeeze a full post in tomorrow morning before Sarah.

Make Do

"Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without."

Words of wisdom, no doubt, but ones that are hard to adhere to strictly in a consumer-driven society. I am certainly not the best example of this adage, but I do try to do my best whenever I can.

Tonight was a pretty good example of how I both embody and flout this notion, simultaneously. It all starts with a confession: I have a shoe problem. A pretty bad one. And sure, I'm a girl, and that's to be expected. But I still feel terrible about my 60+ pair shoe collection (granted, a lot of them are second hand.) I've been trying to keep myself from buying more, and trying to wear them all or get rid of them.

While feeding my caffeine addiction in the coffee shop at work, I noticed that the rope on one of my favorite pair of wedges was completely falling off.

And aren't they adorable?

"Wear it out."

Unfortunately, let me reiterate that they're one of my favorite pairs. And I usually don't do anything but flats.

So... "Make do."

That's right. I stapled my shoe together.

Certainly, this is not a permanent fix. But it will certainly keep me from walking around with half my shoe flopping off.

I refuse to "do without."

So why is this such a big deal to me?

I guess it's that I hate seeing people take a perfectly good item and literally throw it away (not donate, not give to a friend, not find a new use for) simply because it has a cosmetic flaw or something so simple as a missing button. Did your dryer put a pinhole in your favorite sweater? Darn it! Put a patch on it! Embroider over it! For God's sake, don't just throw it out.



In related, but not really, news, I had leftover pumpkin pie filling last night, and so I made little pumpkin handpies.

Hand. Pies.

I just used store bought crust, so they aren't as delectable as they could be, but it was pretty good for 2 am ;-)

Last up: What's in my book bag today?

I work in a library, so usually there are a LOT of things in my book bag, but this is what I'm currently digesting.



I worked in Montessori schools for two years and really loved it, both as a job and as a teaching method. I've been missing it lately, so I'm brushing up with this oh-so-up-to-date volume ;-)

So what's your favorite ways to Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without?

Hope everyone's having a good week!

~Sarah

Tree House!!!

I swear I have a husband who keeps himself neck deep in projects. The latest one is a tree house for Diva! She is super excited about it! It is going to be pretty much completely made of salvaged and recycled materials. Though its not much to look at right now its going to be amazing.

Also, Saturday we went to the flea market and got my troops shirts air brushed. I got the girls tee shirts to wear when we go on trips and outings. They are super cute, the airbrush artist is really good down there. So what is the total cost for personalized shirts? 9.00 including the shirt. It ended up being 56.00 for the entire troop. So I leave you with the cuteness! See you Wed!

Ants in my pants!

Hey everyone! Yay for Thursday posting, which I can actually remember!

Today, I have a pretty girly post! You know what I hate, as a girl? Jeans that NEVER fit right. If they fit through the hips and thighs, they're huge in the waist, and vice-versa. I also have a ridiculously large difference between my hips and waist, which makes it even harder! I don't know why they seem to build jeans only for straight up and down people, but they do!

Anyway, the other day on Pinterest*, I saw a post about tailoring the back of your jeans with... get this... elastic. No joke, elasticizing your jeans. Like a 4 year old. I have a particularly notorious pair of jeans, in which I always feel like I'm flashing people my buttocks, or like I could store snacks in the extra space... so I decided to try it.

Yes. I put elastic in my jeans.

And you know what? I LOVE IT. No joke, best thing ever. Here are some butt pictures to prove it. Really. I put pictures of my butt on the internet. Anything in the name of crafts.



Lays flat!



Look, mom, no gap!

So how did I do it? HOW DID I CREATE SUCH MAGICAL TROUSERS, YOU ASK?

Easy.



All it is is a piece of elastic in the waistband. You cut two slits (I lined mine up with the outside edge of the pockets, but I might go all the way to the sides next time), insert the elastic, and sew the elastic down on each side!



TADA! I used crazy thread, just in case it sucked and I had to rip it out.

I did have to take the Levi's label off mine, since it was sewn through the waistband, but I'm fine with that. I don't want your stinkin labels on me anyway!



They look a little bit like kid's pants when they're laying flat, but they look just fine when they're on, and I never wear anything short enough to show the top of my pants anyway! BRILLIANT.

*Pinterest.com is an awesome website. It's basically a way to bookmark websites and pictures and share them with other people. There are always great recipes, decorating tips, craft ideas, you name it! You can find both Patricia and I wasting a lot of time on there ;-)

In less-exciting news, my vanilla is coming along nicely!



Hurray!

I also set up a little craft corner in my new room today, so I can keep on craftin while I keep on movin!



That's all, kiddos! See you on Monday!

~Sarah

Little Girls are Amazing!!!

Hey blog world. Monday we had our very first girl scout meeting with the girls!!! Little people are amazing! As of today we have officially filled out our troop to 6 girls. Ahhhhh!

In other news, well there isn't any other news really... I really should get on the crafty cooky ball... Well, until Sunday... Toodles!

I Dream of Ikea

Hey everybody! Because of my internet situation (and the fact that I haven't even unpacked my computer yet), I will henceforth be posting on Mondays and Thursdays. Woo!

So, moving houses always makes me aware of the need for more storage space. You can never have enough. For the past two years I've had this *huge* army surplus dresser, that actually had very little usable space: two tiny drawers than can hardly fit socks rolled up, one WAY too big drawer, and two cupboard-like spaces on the bottom. Yuck. I've moved it a couple of times, but this time I put my foot down. "I am buying a good dresser. I'm a big girl."

You know what that means...


IKEA TRIP!

*L and I, along with her BFF (who has a truck!) headed off to Cincinnati this weekend.

Gotta try out ALL of the couches!



Halfway through, gotta have a cake stop!



Whatchu call me?



Holy moly, that's a lot of purchases.

The people in front of us spent $1300. *L guessed it almost exactly.

When we got home, at like 11pm (5 HOURS in Ikea! WHEW!), the living room looked like a box farm.

Whoooooaaaa.

Ikea's flat packs are awesome, but they were waaaaaaaay to heavy to lug upstairs, so I brought them up piece by piece.

Lots of pieces...

The instructions say it takes two men to build this.

Or one girl with power tools.

People always complain about Ikea's instructions and how difficult they are to understand, but they are literally pictographs. Super. Easy. The only thing to watch out for is the little boxes that show you "use this hardware, not this." That really is important.

Lucky for me, I had a helper. A super-speedy helper.

All in all, it took a little over an hour to put the whole thing together. I finished the drawers the next day since they took a lot of hammering and I started at like 3am...

AND THE REVEAL!

TADA!

A usable dresser! I'm super excited. All my tshirts fit in ONE drawer! AMAZING.

I also bought this neat chest with the intention of cutting a hole in the side and making it a hidden catbox.

Notice, that amazing basil plant from Trader Joe's!

Once I got it together though, I fell in love. I want to put things in it. Blankets, jackets, costumes, fabric. I don't care. The cats can't have it. I'd rather still look at the catbox. Besides, look who trained himself!



No joke. The bunny really did potty train himself to the catbox. I'm thrilled. I'm also paranoid that if I hide the catbox, he'll stop using it. So the blanket chest remains mine, and Boo Boo keeps his catbox. Win-win!

Sebastian has also finally found the couch and is chilling just fine.



Whew! It was a busy weekend. Can't wait to see what Patricia's girl scouts come up with on Wednesday!

~Sarah

Pine Cone Bird Feeders!

This week has been super productive for me! Yay! Some things I have done, I made a test pine cone bird feeder, I cut down a man's shirt into usable pieces, and I scooped the seeds out of my acorn squash and put them out to dry so they are ready for planting in the spring! I made a test feeder because tomorrow my scout troop will be making them and I wanted to see how they would turn out and how much time it would take me, so I can double the time for them. The shirt is actually one that belonged to my Daddy, he passed away in 08 and I am finally getting around to going through stuff we just put up into storage after he passed. There are a ton of dress shirts, so that means a ton of fabric for me to use, once I break them all down of course. Last but not least, I have acorn squash seeds! I bought an acorn squash a while back to eat and finally got around to eating it last night, so instead of wasting perfectly good seeds I went ahead and laid them all out to dry for the spring! Keep checking our blog for fun pictures of my girls making their own pine cone feeders! That's all for me folks! I will leave you with a picture tutorial of the feeders, and a couple of shots of my other completed projects!

Cheerleader in training.

If you ask Cheyenne, my little diva what she wants to be when she grows up she will answer you very quickly. She wants to be a Jacksonville Jaguar cheerleader, and a sports medical trainer (her description of the job is a football doctor). I, on the other hand have never been a cheerleader type... I am the polar opposite of a cheerleader type in fact. But, I support her always. Anyway, last weekend Cheyenne had the opportunity to go to a cheer clinic at our local high school. It furthered her really wanting to make her goal. This Friday she gets to perform at the pregame show with the big girls. Her one request of me is that she wants to look like the big girls as well. This means cheer shorts, and a huge hair bow to go with the tee she got from the clinic. So today I am making her hair bow using a great tutorial I found. http://snsribbon.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/hair-bow-tutorial/ Also, I went this morning to our local State park and picked up the GA Jr. Ranger guide books for my scout troop. It looks like a really fun program for the girls to participate in and earn patches through.

Well That Was a Success!

This evening I held my girl scout troop parent's meeting, everyone came, yay. All of my girls but one were there as well. It is her birthday today, happy 6th. I am so glad I was able to get everything out there I needed to in a decent amount of time! None of the Mom's had any questions about anything, but the questions I got from the girls were awesome. J asked me if we were going to have fun, and if I already knew what we were doing next week. C asked if we were all going to be friends. While we were doing the meeting the girls were coloring a picture of a Daisy D! They're sooo cute! My camera battery has died on me yet again, so I will edit this post tomorrow and put up the pictures of their pictures!

Hello Everyone! I'm not trying to step on Patricia's toes, but I'm late from Friday! I have a pretty good excuse though, I'm MOVING! Agh! One of my co-workers and I are going to live together as a trial run. She has a big 2 bedroom town house, so I'm moving in to her spare room. If I get my house, she might move in with me, or if we decide we like living together but need more space, we'll look for a bigger place. Exciting stuff. I moved my bed and animals this afternoon, minus one cat, who is hiding SOMEWHERE. No idea where.

My room looks so clean though. It will not look like this for very long...



Last night, instead of actually packing, I worked on my trash find bunny hutch. I pulled this dresser off of the side of the road (actually right in front of my new apartment) and I've been planning on making it into a 2 story bunny condo for Boo Boo. I gutted it, but hadn't done anything to it... I went crazy though, and now it's almost done!



Sorry for the night phone pictures, but, well, it was night. And I was on my phone.

So, the top floor is going to be for food and water, then there's the ramp down. On the bottom floor, I'm going to hide his litter box behind the ramp. I think I've decided to make the bottom totally enclosed with an access door to clean litter and let him out. The top has a flip up screen door for filling up food and water. The back is all chicken wire so he gets plenty of circulation. Everything is cut for the bottom enclosure, but I charged my drill all night without actually having it plugged in :-/ Oops.

In crafty news, I made a CUTE baby set for my friend's adorable baby. I used this
tutorial, which was super-easy.



Next time I think I'll try to make the lining separate so that there are no interior seams, but we'll see. With the leftovers (all of this was from 2 fat quarters), I made ruffles for the neckline of a onesie too.



Oh baby stuff. Love it.

I also made a ruffled shirt for myself, out of two $3 shirts from Meijer. It was just a practice, but next time I'll measure the layers better. I still like it though!

In fun news, I got a hilarious picture of my porcelain crab riding a conch. He's a trooper. Yeee Haw!!



Hope you guys had a good weekend!

Ugh.

I promise I have a post. I had one to put up. Phone is at home, along with all of my pictures. There will be many cute baby pictures to come!

Organizing Life.

I admit, I am an over organizer and over planner. I make lists and schedules for lots of things. Thankfully it is finally paying off. As many of you readers know I am a first year girl scout leader. I have talked to a few other new leaders and they have told me that they feel overwhelmed.  Over the last month and a half everything has started moving very quickly, between training, meetings, getting girls that are interested, and planning our year. So what do I do with all of this new information that has been thrown at me, I organize it all in binders, and notebooks, and folders. Last night we had our Leaders meeting and fall sales training. It drove me crazy that so much information was thrown out there with no real rhyme or reason, so today I had to look over everything again and pick up all the main points so the parents of my scouts could understand. So that's what has been keeping me busy, no fun crafties, no new planting (Well that's a lie, Momma brought me new houseplant babies for a planter I have had forever)... Sad isn't it? Here are some pictures of my world of scouts, and my new houseplant babies.

In other news, my garden has blown UP! I have pumpkins blooming and vining everywhere and my black eyed peas have pods on them, they are super cool looking!

No rest on Labor Day!

Hey y'all!

Sorry for the late post! Promise we're going to get back on schedule.

So yesterday was Labor Day, and for like the FIRST TIME ever, I was actually off work. How weird. What did I do???

I LABORED! All weekend. Well, part of the weekend. Some of the weekend. A little bit of the weekend...

Yesterday I mostly ran around outside in the rain, excited that it was under 80 degrees outside! I've been painting furniture, Day of the Dead skeletons, you name it!

Some things I've made:



Buttermilk pumpkin donuts. Oh my God they were good.

While making these I got this:



My first double-yolk egg!! I'm pretty sure that means that my girls are getting fat, but it's so neat I don't care. You go girls!

One of my little Americauna/Maran girls laid her first egg.



It's in the middle. It's a pretty goose-turd green in real life.

Two words:



Homemade vanilla.

Oh yeah baby. I used a Kentucky distilled vodka, called Pure Blue, I think, the first distiller to come back to the distillery district in Lexington. It actually doesn't taste like rubbing alcohol. Not bad!

In non-culinary goings-on, I made a curtain for two of my friends' office.



Love the hounds tooth!

I also finally made rag balls out of this huge roll of fabric I got at a thrift store for $2. I think I'm going to make a braided rug.




I didn't make these last things, but I'm such a proud momma about this! I have a 30 gallon saltwater tank, and even though I ignore it most of the time like a terrible person, I do get super-excited about it. A couple of months ago, I bought a type of coral called a rhodactis mushroom (fancy name) that was a lovely aqua color. Love it. Paid $10 for one piece I loved it so much. Yesterday, I noticed this:



My little baby coral split in to THREE!! Hurray! I love corals. So neat.

Here's a pretty dirty shot of the whole thing from a few weeks ago.



I've got some cleaning to do!

Hope you all had a good holiday!

-Sarah

Happy Homecoming

Sorry I was not able to post sooner today, but, I had a really good reason! I wanted to capture an awesome moment. Tonight my bro in law came home from deployment. This deployment is a first for my sister. They found out they were pregnant about 2 weeks after he left, needless to say its been a rough one. So here are the pictures, they are worth a thousand of my words. Yeah, some are blurry, but I am not a pro... and they weren't exactly being still.

Its Girl Scout Mania!

Sorry I have been slacking in my posting duty, but I have been living and breathing Girl Scouts for the past week. Seriously! This week alone I have had 2 separate training days. Plus I have been doing tons of prep work for my own Daisy troop which will have its first meeting on the 12th! I am very excited to be a troop leader, being able to mold girls into great leaders is a wonderful duty.  We are going to do some really awesome stuff this year! Our first day trip will be to Coast Fest in October, so much fun. It is put on by the GA Dept. of Resources and is a wealth of knowledge learned through fun activities, all about our coastal area!

So with all this training, prep work, and general running amuck, I have been fixing lots of soups and stews and crock pot meals for the family that can be frozen for later when things get really nuts. I added it all up and I have about 5-6 soups, stews, and chowders on the meal plan just for this pay period, crazy right? I think I might have a soup problem. The last soup I made was good old fashioned Chicken Noodle.

Chicken Noodle Soup Ingredients List, because I don't really measure anything.

A whole chicken (bone in)

Seasonings of your choice (its really hard to go wrong here)

Water

Celery (I usually use a full head cut up)

fresh cut Carrots

Fresh or frozen Peas

Egg Noodles

Directions:

Place chicken in pot with water and seasonings let simmer until fully cooked, remove chicken from water, set aside to cool. Add carrots, cut up celery, and peas. While this simmers de bone the chicken. Add Chicken back into the pot. Add egg noodles, let simmer until egg noodles are cooked, and tada yummy!