What I Did This Weekend…

….Construction Paper Edition!
So I planned on finishing up a sewing tutorial and sharing with you on Friday. My kids had other ideas and then this weekend we spent it making Halloween Decorations, a very special countdown chain, cutting Little Man’s hair and finally deciding what we were going to be for Halloween!
Here are the pictures and a few links to ideas and/or printables!

Little Man helped me cut & glue this free printable banner (it can be personalized!)together and choose where we hung it!

Milk Jug Ghosts (idea found here) I still have to cut a hole in the back and put our white Christmas lights in them but I think they are so cute! I have one more milk jug to add to it later today after lunch ha-ha!













Our countdown chain that stretches alllllll the way across our playroom (the center isn’t pictured) See our little footprint flag in the background? We still love it!



And lastly Little Man has a tricycle that he rides in the house and he kept saying he was ‘waiting for the green light’ while sitting on it so I made him a little traffic light and hung it in a doorway for him to pretend with…he loves it! Simple toys are the BEST!!

Ok that’s it for me today- hopefully tomorrow I’ll be back with a sewing tutorial OR our homemade Halloween costumes!
What are you & your kids going as?? Do you do a 'family theme' or just everyone picks something different?

Have A Happy Day,


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How to turn a tank top into a nursing tank

This is one of those projects that takes for-ever. Not to be confused with just forever- but for-EVER! I have been working on it here & there for almost 2 months. Its a project that would only take a couple hours total (minus the dying part) but I suppose it's the fact that I had a newborn & a toddler this summer that set me back on 'production' time. (like how I made it sound like I produce things? Big & important sounding........or not.)

Anyway.

How to turn a shelf bra tank into a nursing tank.

OR I could call the first part of this tutorial 'how to replace the straps on your favorite tank top'

Ok here we go.

If you know me in real life you know I have a slight addiction to shelf bra tanks. I have pretty much worn one everyday for nearly 10 years now. Love. Them. Well when I was pregnant with Little Man I bought a couple of Old Navy's maternity ones (the length is perfect for non-pregnant ladies to by the way). Well apparently after wearing them for 3 years the straps had had enough and started coming apart.

Not wanting to get rid of them just because the straps were falling apart I figured I could replace the straps. But before replacing the straps I decided to dye the top pink. Why? Because I had dye & I could. Hehehe

Then I cut the straps off the tank top

(sorry for the blurry photos I had to take these with my phone)

Here is where you can skip ahead to the strap replacement part if you aren't making a nursing tank.
So then I cut apart the neckline on the front only of the tank top.

Ok if you skipped ahead here's where you want to jump back in.

To make a cute little strap to replace the ones we removed you will need a strip of fabric that is 4 times as wide as you want your strap. So if you wanted a 1/2 inch wide strap you need your fabric to be 2 inches wide. The length is from the front of the tank top over your shoulder and to the back of the tank top plus a little extra for seam allowance. You will need two pieces that are these sizes.

This is the strap material right side down.

Fold it in half lengthwise and iron.

Open it up. Then take each long edge and fold/iron it to meet in the center.

Next fold it in half again and iron.

This is the finished width of your strap. Sew along the edge using a small seam allowance.

If you are not making a nursing tank then attach the straps to the outside of the tank top where you cut off the original straps folding both sort ends under and sewing a square with an X in the center. Add a button as decoration if you'd like. You are done!

If you are making a nursing tank top then you need to attach the straps to the back of the tank tucking the short end under and using the square with an X in center method. Then also attach it to the front but only on the fabric that is closer to your body (in other words not the fabric that is the outside of the tank top.)

Next take some of these:

And hand sew (I know-yuck!) the eye part to your new strap on the front and the hook part to the outside fabric.

You can see in that picture that I sewed some of the extra strap fabric to the front of the tank top- I did this to add some structure before sewing on the hook since the fabric was pretty flimsy. When you see the final product you will see how it looks like a continuation of the strap.

After that all you need to do is try on your tank top, unhook both sides so the front flap falls down and mark where you will need to cut your nursing openings. Then cut a slit in a shape like two facing parenthesis: () on each side.

If your tank top is a jersey material like mine you won't need to hem the raw edges because it won't fray. If it isn't jersey then go ahead and hem all raw edges.


Then you are all done! Wear it alone in the summer, under a cute shrug in the fall/spring and even under a sweater in the winter (just pull up the sweater to nurse.) You can remove the hooks and sew the front flap back to the back flap and have a regular tank top again when you are done nursing too!

mouse over image to see before and after:

There you have it! Let me know if you have any questions & if you make one I'd love to see it!
Have A Happy Day,


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Simple Homemade Pasta Sauce

So today I want to show you how to make the EASIEST homemade pasta sauce-hands down! It is so simple & so yummy!! Plus it is cheap to make....sounds too good to be true huh?

Well it's not. Here we go:

You need:

A blender or immersion blender
A stock pot with lid
4-6 (28oz.) Cans of whole tomatoes (or the equivalent in fresh from your garden/farm stand)
6-10 cloves of garlic
Olive oil

That's it.





Promise.

To make:

Open all your tomato cans and either use the immersion blender or put them in the blender and purée.

Pssst. There are those pesky DIY Painted countertops again!


Finely chop garlic. In stock pot heat about a 1/4-1/2 cup of olive oil over medium heat. After about a minute or so you will want to add your garlic. Stir and don't burn the garlic!! Only a minute at the most!

Then add just a 1/2 cup or so of your tomato purée. Stir it around for a couple minutes.

Next you'll just dump all your purée in the stock pot (as much as will fit- mine holds 5 cans) and simmer on medium-low or low heat for at least 4 hours. Stir it whenever you think of it.

Then we get to the part I love the best: take a big thick slice of homemade bread (if I'm really on my game I make them the same day so I have fresh-from-the-oven-homemade-bread)and dunk it in the sauce without anyone seeing.

Place it on a plate and smother in warm homemade-y goodness. Devour before your family catches you.

You're welcome for that secret.

Now back to the recipe. Take the pot off the burner after 4-6 hours of simmering (and who knows how many dunks of bread) and let cool completely. I usually make this starting at noon and remove it from the burner around 5pm let it stand on the stove until after supper then I place it in the fridge- pot & all- overnight. In the morning (or when it's completely cool) divide it up into large freezer ziploc bags and lay flat until frozen. Then you can stand them up like little files in your freezer. Cute, eh? If ziplocs filled with sauce were cute I mean. But anyway if you do it like that you will fit more in less space and they will thaw faster than if you put them in containers.

What I do is divide them into the exact quantities my recipes call for. So if I do my menu plan every two weeks and there are 4 dinners that need sauce- I make it, divide into those amounts, label it the recipe name & freeze. It's SO easy for Military Man to pull the one he needs and there is no measuring or leftover sauce that needs to be used up.

Yum yum yum!!
Also feel free to add your spices or a bay leaf or what have you. I don't only because we add those to the dish we are making with the sauce and we also use this as a pizza sauce for our homemade pizza night!

Thank you so much for stopping by, please leave me a comment so I know you were here! I comment back, I swear!!

Have A Happy Day,



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Frugal DIY Play Kitchen!

For little Man’s 3rd birthday party I decided that a play kitchen would be a good addition to our playroom! I didn’t have a lot of money to spend (none really) but I still wanted it to be cute! I found a possibility on etsy.com for a cardboard one and bought the PDF. I loved it but it required a lot more materials than I had available at the time. So I looked around and found some materials that I thought would work.
I first saw this end table that I was using as a cable box stand and nothing else. I grabbed that and replaced it with my file cabinet as the cable box holder lol
I knew I needed room for a sink too so I found an old drafting desk that the top ‘lift up’ portion of the desk was damaged on one edge but was long enough on the ‘good’ part to cover the top of the end table and then have overhand for the ‘sink’ portion.
So I had my handsome hubby cut down the desk top to the right size, cut the hole for the pie plate sink and screw it on to the top of the nightstand- lining up the edges. I caulked/used wood filler on the seam where the top of the end table and bottom of the wood came together. Then I taped off the half that overhang with painter’s tape and newspaper and spray painted the entire nightstand/remaining portion of desk top white. It took a couple coats and I didn’t do the back, the inside or the side under the over hang since those wouldn’t be seen. The reason I did this is that I wanted it to have some separation between the  stove/oven side and the kitchen side. It ended up looking like the sink is in a butcher block countertop- love it!

Next I took off the tape/newspaper and placed the pie plate in the hole. It has a lip and we measured the bottom of the plate (which is a bit smaller than the rim) so it fits in tight and the lip keeps it from falling all the way through.
I traced a saucer four times onto the ‘stove’ side of the kitchen and filled in the circles with black acrylic paint. Handsome Hubby drilled some small holes and fitted them with these little metal pegs I found laying around and that’s what we used to hold the ‘oven’ knobs on with. The knobs do come off but I didn’t want to glue them because I wanted them to be able to spin. I wrote the ‘temperature’ & ‘on’ ‘off’ with a thin line Sharpie.

Then hubby measured and cut plywood to fill the front of the end table for an oven door and he cut a ‘window’ in the middle for the oven window. I spray painted that white and we attached it to the kitchen with hinges at the bottom, magnetic tape to hold it closed and upright and a handle to pull it open with.  The ‘window’ of the oven is covered from the inside with a sheet of transparency film and it is just taped on using packing tape (so it’s clear and blends in). I might hot glue it on later but for now it works!
 

After that we just screwed the handles through the overhand/old desk top part of the kitchen for faucet handles and used Gorilla Glue to attach the wooden J (I painted it sliver first) upside down to look like a faucet. I would have loved to do a screw up through the bottom of the over hang into the bottom of the J but when we tried it started to split the J- so glue only was what worked for us!

I used sticky backed Velcro on the edge of the over hang and sewed the matching Velcro (using sew on Velcro obviously lol) to the bandanas to make a sink ‘skirt/curtain’
And that was that! I had everything but the hinges, handles, J and knobs on hand. The oven ‘knobs’ were free and the rest was all $1-$5 each.

 


So here are the materials you would need to make your own. I have linked to similar or the same products where ever it was possible!

Materials: End Table(I used one similar to this- only mine had two shelves)    
Pie Plate with rim (but no handles) (mine came in a pack of 2 and was similar to this)
wooden or paper mache letter “J” (mine is wooden- this link is for paper mache because I couldn’t find the right ‘font’ of J that looked like a faucet)
Kitchen or Bath Replacement Faucet Handles (mine are similar but couldn’t find them online)
Acrylic Black Paint
Metallic Spray Paint -Silver
Satin White Spray Paint
Replacement Oven Knobs (mine are actually from an old Helicopter)
Plywood (got mine at my local Lowe’s)
Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Markers
Wood to form ‘countertop’ (the same width as your end table from front to back and then about twice as long-mine came from the top of an old desk that part of the wood was warped. We cut off the bad part and used the good part)
Solid Color Bandanas - (Whatever Color you want)(mine are leftover bandanas from the Pirate Birthday party!)
Small Hinges (you’ll need at least two to attach the oven door with)
Magnetic tape (you can get this at Wal-mart or a craft store also)
Kitchen Cabinet Handle (this is similar to the one I used but I would have loved to use this kitchen cabinet long handle because it is longer-more like an oven handle)
Velcro (both sticky backed & sew-on)
Transparency Films
Packing Tape
Gorilla Glue
Screws

I hope you all find some interesting materials to make your own play kitchen! Just know that you CAN do it without spending a fortune on those wooden play kitchens they sell!
In fact, I’m not the only one who has made their own play kitchen.

Have a Happy Day,

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