I heart organizing

My new favorite blog is:
iheartorganizing.blogspot.com

This lady is down to earth, frugal and has three sons like me! I've been reading her blog for inspiration for 24 hours now (joking!) and I felt inspired to deal with the linen closet. So here's the "mini tour". (I almost said tourette, but that has wierd connotations yes? tourling, tourita?)


I always forget to take a "before" shot. But just imagine twice as much stuff shoved in, and slowly falling forward like a glacier!





My cute labels (this seems to be the hidden rule of organizing successfully: labels. Cuteness is extra)


AND, the VACUUM has a Place!


So Long, Farewell! From my Linen Closet.


Okay, I give up, I can't write a blogpost without a little cuteness.




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Flossed World

My limes are growing! And the boys are growing!








Give it to ME!


My beautiful floss came! Thank you Feeling Stitchy and Floresita!


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My Jewelry Holder

Ladies have been showing this on the web, and after looking at different options (branches, drawers, nobs) this was the one I had the stuff to do! I added the mirror (it's just hung on another nail) so I can see better to put them on. It also works great when I put on mascara because I'm really nearsighted. My tips for this project:
1. Make sure you have the frame RIGHT-SIDE up when you begin tacking it down.
2. If you use upholstery staples (or normal staples) fold the lace over a few times where you intend to staple/hammer to give it added strength.
3. Hang it somewhere that the jewelry will be easy to pick up if it falls. So NOT over the dresser.
4. I used a tiny gold "cup hook" to hang a couple necklaces from. I screwed it in by hand- no pilot hole, no drill, no hammer! I only had one. Gotta get some more!
5. Lace that contrasts with the wall a little is good. You don't want to do all this work with pretty lace to have it be invisible.

I plan to add more lace if I run out of room, but I'll have to take all the jewelry off first. I found earrings I'd forgotten about and in one case matched a set whose mates and been stored in different boxes!


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Scrapbook Art

James wanted me to design a title page for his scrapbook. After we talked about it this is what he got! Thought y'all might like to see it. It's a lot different than the princesses, girls, and mermaids I drew growing up!

Road Trip Buddies

Ok everyone let's get lined up! Here we go! Ignore those teenagers laughing at us. Y'all look fabulous!


Robots, Christmas Elves, ??, Captain America, Bug Man, Blue Snowman, Wolverine, Camilla, Blue Ninja, Dad (partially visible)


Little Robot, Dad Robot, Girl Christmas elf (still undergoing cosmetic surgery), Boy Christmas elf.


Wolverine.


Phillip ate paint and yogurt happily.

The Peter Brady Shirt

In case you never saw the Brady Bunch, Peter was the boy in the middle. So I decided to name the little knit shirt pattern I created for my middle son after Peter Brady.
This is my meager entry for week 2 of the sewalong for Project Run And Play and if we ever get our Internet back online here at the house and if I can simultaneously get my act together I will post the pattern.
But here it is and I really like it.


It was raining while I was taking pictures.






Can you tell I didn't hem the sleeves yet?


MOM! Thunder!
He's a trooper.

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¡Folklorico Skirt!

I entered another contest. The challenge was to remix The Circle Skirt pattern from MADE. Well in my opinion the mother of all circle skirts is the Folklorico Dancer skirt. It's not one but TWO full circles sewn together! Here it is folded in HALF!


See! Las awesomenesas! Okay that's not really Spanish. Before you start you should know that construction is SUPER easy! It's adding yards and yards of ribbon that takes so long. This little girl skirt started with 2 circles 42" wide. The hemline: 8 yards. Yes, 24 FEET baby.
And now, here's what I did.
I read that pattern on MADE that I mentioned before. I cut out 2 circles. Figure the elastic like she says. Cut out the waist opening using HALF the measurement she says - really tiny holes for waists ok?
Lay them out right sides together.
THEN cut those chicas from the outside to the inner hole. Make sure you open those circles


Warning: you chain quilters and stack and slashers put there! Dont be clever and not open the circles up all the way. They get tricky so save yourself trouble and lay them out on the dirty carpet.
Now pin down each side of the cut. Sew them up!
Add ribbons and lace to make sort of concentric circles on the skirt.
How much ribbon do I need?
Ah, yes - Pi and all that eh?

1st: Find the radius of the skirt measurement (original center before you cut it - to the edge). We'll call that (r).

2nd: Length of bottom edge of the skirt is:
12.6 x (r)

3rd: Already have some ribbon?
Measure the length of it. We'll call that (L).

[(L) / 12.6] - 2" = how far from the original center your ribbon should go.

You might find that you have enough to go 6" down from the center and if that looks good, use up that ribbon! If not dig up something longer.

Add the elastic waist band like Dana tells you. Now go rock some Cinco De Mayo!

Battle of Yavin Mobil

My nephew had a Star Wars birthday this week. We live in TX and he in CA so I needed
something light. Also money is tight so I thought my boys and I could make it!
J came up with the mobil idea and since the Battle of Yavin has all the best spaceships that's what we did.


Except for the x-wing we made all the shapes twice and glued them together (Yavin & Vader's Tie fighter are already glued). My four year old painted the planet, the ten-year old painted the Death Star and assisted with the x-wing.





I did the rest. I made the mobil with clips so things could be played with or changed out.
I also painted the inside of the mailing box to be an interior of the Death Star to play with. I think they turned out really well!





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Paper Anemone

So anything with book pages and anything with butterflies has been all over Pinterest for awhile now. Seeing all those butterflies helped me finally decide what my big book page art was missing. I LOVE how it looks now.


The "canvas" is made from cardboard and foam core board. So it was really cheap but it's a little unstable. I think I'll make my husband hang it up. I feel like I really slacked off today, but I actually got done the things that needed to be done. The kids and I also made plaster of Paris "rocks" to decorate the garden and I made these:


Big tissue paper flowers! The one on the left is supposed to have a button in the center. Not sure that worked. I made that flower by placing a strip of blue randomly distributed through the layers of light brown. The other two have a shorter contrasting color center. I think they look like anemones.



The way to do that is thus:



Whatever you want your middle to be you cut with less width than the rest of the tissue paper. The above is the blue flower before i tied the center and pulled up the layers. Other than that these are standard cinco de mayo flowers.
That light brown is all old sewing patterns from Pennywise, a thrift store I love. I also used these papers on the butterfly art.

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Portal Maze

My four year old loves mazes! He is getting really fast and I have to keep thinking of ways to make them slow him down. I came up with a portal maze. Each color dot makes you jump to that color! You never know where you'll end up! Once I had a treasure chest in a box with 2 portals. Kids know they can't get into the boxes so it's exciting when they can! This is great for using those three colors they give you at a restaurant!





He also "had" to change color to match each new dot!
Have fun!
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