DIY Desire

I did not get a chance to blog yesterday because I was in the car for 12 hours driving back from Illinois.  And boy was I worn out!

Today, I have an itch to craft!  I have been scouring my pinterest boards for the past month looking for a fun craft to do.  I have not had much luck.  How can it be so hard to find a craft?  Well let me tell you.

1-I have next to no wall space left in our apartment.  Just about every space is filled with a photo or a canvas or something.
2-I cannot make any more blankets, hats, or scarves, Adam and I both have more than we can use.
3-I do not have a sewing machine, but I do now have a hot glue gun after Christmas
4-It needs to be relatively inexpensive.  I’m not made of money.

After doing some more looking I found a couple ideas that interest me, but some seem expensive, and some just seem like I would be adding clutter to my house.  So I would love to hear your ideas.  Have you found a great craft that you’d like to share?  Because I want to see it!

What do you think of these ideas?

 

All of these photos came from Pinterest.  Here are some links to the original sources if Pinterest still had record of them:
Makeup Board
Magnetic Scrabble Board
Nail and Thread Art
Letter Wreath
Kitchen Printables
Trivet

23 for 23 Update

March is done, and I did pretty well on my goals.  Check it out!

Daily Goals
1. Be content with where I am in life, don’t wish my life away, flourish where I am
I feel like I am doing pretty good with this one.  Sometimes it is hard, but when I remind myself of how good I have it, then it becomes a lot easier.

2. Be a good, supportive, encouraging, loving wife to Adam
I feel like I am doing well at this one.  I am trying to be really mindful about how I treat Adam.  But I guess you’ll have to ask him to see how I’m doing at this one.

3.  Do one thing to clean the house
My shoulder has been feeling a little better, so I am doing better at this one again.

4.  Keep a food and fitness diary to help me remember to be more healthy.
The fitness thing isn’t going too well.  I’m hoping to start walking everyday because that shouldn’t hurt my shoulder.  And I am doing better at making better, healthier, well-rounded meals.

Weekly Goals

5.  Call my mother
Still rocking this one, and it has been really good for my relationship with me and my mom.

Monthly Goals

6.  Write a thank you note to someone who I am grateful for Check.
I wrote a note to Adam.

7.  Have intentional date nights with Adam.
We went to LongHorn steakhouse (with a gift card) and saw Les Miserables at the Real to Reel.

8.  Find a craft or something creative to do
Super check!  Crocheted hats, art for the bedroom, and crocheted a scarf.

9.  Have someone over for dinner.
Amanda and Jarod came over for pizza, and then another night we had the Nicols and the Albrechts over for dinner.  It was super fun!  Oh! and I forgot, the Tomlinsons were here visiting for Easter and I made dinner for the family as well.  So I think that counts.

10.  Do something with my sister
We watched The Paperboy and The Lion King.

One time goals

11.  Finish Financial Peace University with Adam and save some money.
Check this one off my list.  We finished Financial Peace in March.  During the class we saved $800 and paid off $400 of debt.

12.  Take a vacation No progress made

13.  Finish my Best picture list I made quite a bit of progress on this one.  I watched 6 best picture movies in February, one was added to the list, and I only have 8 left to watch!

14.  Finish reading Anna Karenina
Check! Done and sooo happy about it!

15.  Plant flowers in the flower beds outside my apartment
The weather is getting warmer, so hopefully I’ll get to do this soon.  I’m pretty excited about it.

16.  Read through the whole Bible again
Working my way through.

17.  Play Eclipse with Adam
Done.  Pretty happy about it too.  It was actually pretty fun.

18.  Finish watching Prison Break
I have sadly not watched any Prison Break.  Maybe someday soon.  Maybe during my free time at the convention this week I can work on it.

19. Learn how to knit
I know how to slip knot, get started, knit, and pearl.  And my first knitted scarf is progressing nicely.

20.  Go to a sporting event or concert
Progress made!  Bought tickets to a Relient K concert in May!! So excited!!

21.  Take a cooking class
No progress made, mostly because I can’t find one near us.

22. Go one weekend unplugged
Not warm enough yet

23.  Read a biography of someone I don’t like to learn more about them
I have too much other stuff that I am currently reading.

I feel like I rocked March!  Checked four one time goals off, that’s pretty good!

one of my weekend crochet projects

Here is one of my weekend crochet projects.  The other one is now a week project because it isn’t quite finished yet.

Adam finally has a hat with a beard!
This didn’t take me very long at all.  It was fun to see it all come together and to see how much Adam likes it.

My Current Craft–that may never be finished

The only current craft I have going right now I have been working on for almost a year now, and I’m sad to say that this one might be the first one that I don’t finish.

I had lofty goals set for my t-shirt rag rug.  Here is an example of what I’m trying to do:

The whole time I have been working this has been my goal.  Look how nice and fluffy and soft it looks.  And then I read the tutorial and I thought “oh that’s easy.”  WRONG!  It’s so hard!

First, you have to have enough t-shirt strips to cover the entire rug.  Each strip is about 1-inch wide and 4-inches long.  Let me tell you right now, that’s a lot of cutting.  I have so far cut up about 15 Hanes white T’s and I’m not even close to having enough!

That’s probably because when I go for something, I go wayyyy too far.  When I first started and bought my latch hook canvas I bought way too much.  When I opened the package I had double the amount that I actually needed.  So once I cut that in half I had a canvas of about 20 squares by 20 squares.

So you see that blue line making a square with a bunch of little squares in it?  So twenty of the blue squares by 20 of the blue squares.  So that’s a total of 400 big squares and each big square has 100 little squares.  The tutorial said to put a strip on every other little square.  On my canvas, being how huge it is, that’s 20,000 strips of t-shirt!!  But did I try and figure this out before I started?  No.  I figured this out after finishing about 10 blue squares.  And that is when I cut it in half, so now I’m only dealing with 200 blue squares and 10,000 strips of t-shirt.  Honestly, by the end of this, I’ll be lucky if I have the energy to make a bath mat sized rug.

Now, the process itself is not that easy, it’s not just the size of the project, it’s the actual process and the time that it takes to do it.  1-do you know how long it has taken me to cut the 4,500 strips of t-shirt that I have?  Probably about 20 tv shows.  After cutting that many t-shirts and only being halfway toward my goal I decided to start making the rug with the strips I had.  Easier said than done.

They fool you by telling you that you only need the latch hook and the latch hook canvas and the process is easy to understand, but not as easy to do.  This is what you’re going for:

You’re basically just making a knot.

1.  You put your hook under whatever line of the canvas you are working on
2. Fold your strip of t-shirt in half and put the bend on your hook
3. Pull your hook under the canvas, but not all the way through
4. Bring the tails into the loop and pull tight

See, it’s not that hard of a concept, but what they don’t tell you is this:

1. Your 4-inch strips of t-shirt are too short to make this easy.  You need some muscle to pull through
2. You will drag your knuckles on the canvas and tear them up
3. Your latch hook will break
4. This takes forever

So, needless to say, I have like 8-10 blue squares done out of 200.

I need some motivation or this is never getting done.  As we speak, the whole project is in a bag hidden in my office because I’m too annoyed to even look at it.

Did you ever have a project that you thought would never get done?
Anyone want to have a latch hook party to help me finish?

 

*Coming Soon–I will be trying out a new recipe from The Pioneer Woman (she’s my favorite), so be looking for a blog about it soon after!

Indoor Snowman

This is one of the crafts that I had seen on Pinterest (surprise, surprise) that I finally got to do.

Now, when I was looking at it on Pinterest, it didn’t have a tutorial with it, so I kinda had to make it up as I went.  On Pinterest it said, “just buy a $3 spindle at Lowe’s” and that ended up being the hardest parts.  Adam and I wandered around Lowe’s for a long time looking for a spindle.  I found many table legs and chair legs, but no spindle.  Finally, when I was about to give up hope, I found a spindle.  It ended up being $1 and some change.  It didn’t look exactly like the one online did, but I figured it would work.

So, I sat there staring at this wooden spindle in my living room for 2-3 weeks trying to figure out how to turn it into a snowman.  It wasn’t as fat and round as I had originally envisioned so I had to mull over its transformation for a while.  Finally, one night I figured it out and set to work.

I painted the spindle white, and then added black eyes, mouth, and buttons and an orange carrot nose.  I had some extra fabric around for the scarf and hat.  I nailed the fabric to the head and tied it at the top.  I am very happy with how my indoor snowman turned out.