Too Crafty for my Own Good :)

Now that the holidays are over, I can share with you one of the things that I did for a Christmas gift to my sister and her husband AND a new pen caddy that I made for my craft room work table.

For ten years I sold Longaberger Baskets & Pottery, so needless to say, I have quite a stockpile of products from my time as a consultant.  Most I use either functionally or in our home décor, but once in a while I'll part with one as a gift to someone.

The basket was another version of the magazine basket.  The difference is this basket sits on legs and has a wooden lid with a toggle clasp.   For many years, I used it to store magazines and or articles from magazines in it, but I had cleaned it out a couple years ago and it had just been sitting in our spare bedroom unused.  I had also somehow got acrylic paint on the lid that marred it a bit.

I decided to give the basket filled with goodies to my sister and brother-in-law for Christmas.  I came up with the brilliant idea to paint the wooden lid with chalkboard paint.  Chalkboard paint is very on trend right now and after I took the plunge, I was so glad I did!

 

I taped off the leather hinges before painting and it did take two coats of chalkboard paint to get a nice coverage and I did both sides of the lid.

 

The finishing touch was writing "Stuff" in chalk on the lid and then it was filled with the other goodies we had bought for them.

The other DIY project I worked on was a pen caddy.  I needed to figure out a way to corral all of the pens, pencils, markers, etc. that I have on my craft room work table.  Not only because I have so many of them, but so I could "see" them too.  I had been collecting bath tissue rolls for another project when I came up with the idea of using them for a pen caddy.

As you can see, I have a LOT of pens and that doesn't even include the Copics and more Stablio pens in their own storage containers.

 

The basket in the below picture on the left is is the basket I decided to re-purpose as a pen caddy for my craft room.  Funny story about this basket; I don't even remember where I got it, but it's been around for a long time and has literally been used in almost every room in our house for some function or another.  Now it's got a permanent home in my craft room. 

 

The first thing I did as you can see in the photo below was to cut a piece of chipboard the dimensions of the bottom of the basket.

Next thing I did was round up the number of bath tissue rolls I was going to need to fill the basket.  In my case, I needed 12 tissue rolls.

 

Since I would see the front three tissue rolls, I went to my scrapbook paper stash and found a patterned paper to cover the three tissue rolls in the front.

Once the front three rolls were covered, I hot glued them to the piece of chipboard I cut for the bottom of the basket.

 

Once all of the tissue rolls were hot glued to the bottom chip board base, I placed the whole thing into the basket.



All that was left to do was fill up the various tissue rolls with my pens and markers.  Pens are really suppose to be stored horizontally, but I have so many that I could never use all of them in a lifetime so I don't worry about it too much and my pens and markers seem to be fine.

 

I was also able to tuck a few other tools in the side of the caddy for easy access and another benefit is that it is very light and portable.

I've also been busy around the house since the new year and have some fun things to share and some really good recipes that I've discovered.

Thanks for stopping by.......later!

 



A Year of Stuff

It's a bit baffling to imagine that it has been 15 years since Y2K!  Time just seems to fly by when you think about it too hard and I can remember working hard at my job making sure that our computer programs all integrated seamlessly....amazing the amount of things that have happened since then...some very sad, some very happy and all are just.....life.

I imagine that 2015 will be an interesting year for us.  The husband will continue to do well in his career and have lots of opportunity, the kid will be continuing on his college education and earning a few bucks working part time, and me? 

Just not sure yet....I'm not bored, so I can't seem to focus on one thing.  I start another business class in a couple of weeks at our local community college, this one is a small business management class that I'm hoping will be valuable if I decide to start or buy a small business....but in addition to that, my immediate goals are to work on some of my home based business ideas, so that I can fund a trip for my family to Spain & Italy, so as soon as I get something   I'll be sure to post it here too!

Thought I would share on this posts what I found to be some of my favorite things of 2014 -

Movie

This movie was so much FUN!  The characters, the story and OMG....the soundtrack....total 70's.....a whogachugga, whogachugga....and who doesn't love Chris Pratt?

Book
This year it was a tie and not surprisingly, the authors are father and son.

Both books were so good and I was especially impressed with Doctor Sleep.  Forty years have passed since "The Shining" was written and at the time it was written Stephen King was a drunk and for him to write a sequel forty years later sober as seamlessly as he did was amazing.

Music
I'm an old school rock and roll chick that usually doesn't venture too far off her favorite genre of music but I'm open to exposure to other types too.  I've probably listened to more Black Stone Cherry because they had a new CD drop this year and they had other CDs I hadn't had a chance to listen to once I discovered them and their amazing CD "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" a couple of years ago.  I also liked new music from AC/DC, Seether, Foo Fighters, Counting Crows and even Taylor Swift.  :)

Food
Last year was the year of the "grilled asparagus/grilled zucchini/squash" (which I still love), but this year was the year of the "stuffed mini peppers/bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos"

We loved grilling both of these peppers and I even liked the mini peppers raw.  I was also happy to be able to get a vegetable on our dinner table without noses turned up.

Home and Décor
In anticipation of my retirement, there were a few things that we needed to get purchased in 2014 before my income was reduced.  First off last February was new appliances, well, a new stove, microwave and dishwasher.  It's been ten years since we moved into our home and the contractor put in the cheapest appliances he could (of course!).  Our refrigerator isn't as old, as we replaced it a a few years ago with a French door freezer on the bottom model.  We had a gas line run to the stove and switched out our flat top electric to a five burner gas stove.   The dishwasher is whisper quiet and the microwave is also convection, as is the stove.

In April we decided to FINALLY get a new mattress and a KING SIZE one to boot!  in addition to the new mattress, we bought new pillows....good pillows and between the mattress and the new pillows, we both have experienced much better sleep, especially the husband.  Prior to buying the mattress, he rarely slept all night in our bed because of his back problems, since then....I think he has went to his recliner maybe twice in nine months.

We also bought a new dining set and this time we bought a good one.  Over the almost 28 years of marriage we have bought cheap sets, although the last one lasted a good long time but it was most definitely showing wear.  In fact, last year I tried to extend it's life by painting it, my blog post about it is here, but the fact remained that it was time to replace.

TV
We're a big movie family so we don't watch a lot of televisions show and no sitcom type shows.  I think the only network shows that we DVR is "Sleepy Hollow" on Monday nights and "Parenthood" on Thursday nights.  We're going to be bummed when this final season of "Parenthood" ends as we have enjoyed watching it from the beginning.   Shows that we typically DVR to watch usually consist of reality competition shows such as "The Voice", "Survivor", "Top Chef", "Project Runway" with a dose of my guilty pleasure of the "Real Housewives" franchise, but I only watch OC, Beverly Hills and NY  {{hangs head in shame}}

Libations
Before anyone gets the wrong idea.....we don't sit around and drink 24/7 at our house, but I'm not going to lie and say we don't enjoy our beverages of choice, which for me is usually beer or wine with the occasional hard liquor thrown in.

This year I really enjoyed the hell out of this -

and after all of our wine trail travels......my favorite Iowa wine so far is Jasper Winery's Lucy Lane.  I cracked a couple bottles of that over the last year.

The husband on the other hand, loves to imbibe a bit in rum and tequila, specifically these -

 

I've got some resolutions and goals to share with you soon, but until then, I hope you and your families have a Happy 2015 with great things coming your way!

It's hard for me to believe......

I can't believe that I'm a mother to a 19 year old!  This past weekend, our son turned 19 years old....and let me tell you, that 19 years went by in the blink of an eye.  The kid wasn't due until January 8th....Elvis's birthday for anyone that cares, but the little stinker came two weeks early on the 27th of December.  I do give him credit for arriving at a decent hour where I could still have take-out Tasty Tacos for dinner and sneak a Corona with lime.

We've always tried to keep his birthday separate from Christmas and for the most part, the rest of the family does also.  It doesn't seem to bother Connor too much that his birthday is that close to Christmas.

Birthday cakes are a big deal in our house and that is one thing that Connor has always had for his day.....a birthday cake of his choice.   When he was little, we did everything from Winnie the Pooh to Thomas the Tank Engine and as he got older he wanted giant cookies with frosting, because you know that the cake or cookie is just the vehicle for the frosting.

This year our son requested that I make a "rainbow cake" for him.  A rainbow cake is a layered cake that every layer is a different color.   Betty Crocker as a recipe out there that looks pretty easy but my problem is time.

As soon as he told me (the weekend before Christmas, by the way), I immediately thought to myself..."No way in hell am I going to have time to create that!"  We were hosting Christmas Dinner on Thursday, which left me Friday to try and make a multi-layered cake.....uh.....no.

So, as the old saying goes I let my fingers "do the walking" and I picked up the phone and called Brick Street Market in Bondurant, about a 10 minute drive from where we live and a wonderful small town grocery store with a great cafe, deli & bakery.   I was so happy to hear the bakery manager tell me that "Yes, we can make the rainbow layer cakes" and I promptly put in a order for a four layer cake with the layer colors of purple, blue, green and orange per the son's request.

I'm happy to report that they did a great job with the cake!  both in appearance and in taste and Connor loved it!

Here's the kid with his cake and a much needed hair-combing.

and I'm just going to have to get used to being the mom of a 19 year old.