Water, Water Everywhere but not a drop that I'm drinking

I need to drink more water. I know I feel so much better when I do but I got out of the habit (again). Recently, I noticed that I was taking some ibprofen before bed and in the morning for a dull headache. I've been kind of lethargic and unmotivated. I've been losing my train of thought, forgetting things and being unable to judge length of time passed (I'm not all that great at this to begin with). I've been hungry and no matter when I eat, it's not satisfying. And I've been going thru the $20/tub of lotion at break-neck pace.

One day last week, I did drink a lot of water and had an epiphany - I wasn't drinking during the day! I found that I wasn't even finishing my first 16 oz cup (that's about 1/2 a L - I bought these huge cups 3 or so years ago specifically to drink more water). A little background - I don't buy juice or soda for the house and I don't drink alcohol regularly so my drink choices around the house are water or 1% milk. I'd have my mug of coffee in the morning over breakfast with my husband and then pour a glass of water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge. It would proceed to "sweat" next to me while I drank sips here and there but the majority would still be there 6 hours later when the kids got home from school. Sometimes, I'd have a mug of hot decaf tea in the evenings too.

So I posted on my facebook timeline also joking that I should set alarms (since I am constantly using that feature on my phone). Among the suggestions to find my favorite bottled water to put water bottles in the fridge to ecofriendly reusable bottle alternatives (honestly, guys - having water available isn't the issue, it's actually drinking the cup sitting next to me), one friend said "There's an App for that..." So here I am reviewing water drinking  iPhone apps. There are 2 kinds of drinking water apps - the track your water consumption apps and the find free drinking water apps. I'm looking only at the track consumption apps today.

The one that kept coming up in searches first is Waterlogged Drink More Water, Track Daily Water Intake, Get Hydration Reminders by Daily Water, Inc. It has a nice user interface. The home page tells you your daily goal (which you can easily change by tapping it) and how far you have to go to meet that goal both visually (a water bottle or glass that fills). The scientist in my loves that you can easily switch to metric (which I have). You record when you drink something either by the 16.9oz/500mL bottle or 8oz/250mL glass (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full) or by entering a volume. You can see what time you logged the drinks by clicking "Edit Drinks" and see a graph of daily water consumption to compare days. It's integratable with FitBit (which I don't have). But the one thing that is missing from the free version of the app is reminders. With the free version, you can set a single "time reminder" (such as everyday at 10:30) to remind you to drink but to set more, you need to upgrade (I can't figure out the price - lifetime subscription is $2.99, unlock reminders is $3.99 so I do have to purchase both?).

The second app that shows up in searches is Daily Water Free by Maxwell Software. There are some things that I like better - the ability to set you serving size, free notification settings - but I don't generally like the home page. It's a grid of 9 glasses (unchanged if you change your goal) which toggle checked (for drank) or unchecked and I'm sure I'll accidentally check or uncheck something. And there are ads that hide your goal too. The other thing that's difficult is that you can only set a single serving size and it's all or nothing unlike Waterlogged where you can enter a volume or choose a portion of a serving. You also can't see what time you logged your serving.

Day 1's results: 2500 mL consumed and I remembered what we needed at the store last night (bread for sandwiches and milk) and made banana bread this morning after drinking my first 500 mL of water this morning.

I'm going to try these out for a couple more days before I move on to App#3...AppCrawlr - you are my best friend!

ShopTalk - these cutie booties are available in an assortment of colors and appliques.

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UPDATE: Week 1's progress via Waterlogged (I think I'm going to figure out what each price point means). It's before 10am on June 11, so I'm doing good so far today.

Marshmallows!

So I was up late one night and saw Kristen Bell promoting both Disney's Frozen and the Veronica Mars movie! It's on Amazon Prime Instant Video and I'm hooked and it turns out, I missed way more than I thought of the series - 22 episodes per season and 3 seasons... oops! Well, I'm thru season 1 and 1/2 thru season 2 (Duncan just left).  When the kids are at school, I can watch on the big screen while I work but when they're home, I'm on earphones on the laptop. I can work while I watch on the screen but the headphone cord gets in my way!

Last week was Spring Break for my kids. We went swimming at the neighborhood indoor pool, bowling (with my daughter's boyfriend - when did she even grow up that much?) and on a Family Scavenger Hunt at Maymont Park in Richmond. I also made a new product - my first for sale garment - a Christening gown!

Bunny ears crochet pattern

I had the opportunity to make a fuzzy bunny hat for a photographer recently. I found some really great bulky fuzzy yarn (Yarn Bee Cameo) - it's soft, it has fluff and fuzz - it's great except...it's super bulky (6)...I love sport weight yarn and often use it (with a size larger hook) when worsted weight is called for. It's light and lacy. But bulky and then some? Yes, it works up faster but it's just so big! No problem though, I'll have to find a pattern that calls for bulky yarn. um... yeah... so...

Well, a beanie hat isn't hard to make. I loosely followed Red Heart's Bunny Hat pattern for the beanie - I love the dc row amid the primarily sc rows. Granted, the pattern was written for a worsted weight (4) so I had to make modifications - I switched to my largest hook (M) and cut down on number of rows. but even then the ears didn't really work - they were too stiff with the bulky yarn.

I went looking for another pattern. I couldn't really find one that would work with bulky yarn or gave me the look I was going for so I made up my own!

Inner ear (crochet 2)
with sport or worsted weight yarn (I did white with the pink hat and cream with the tan hat) and a I hook, leave a longer tail and ch 21.
R1: sc in the second ch from hook, sc 18; in the last ch, 5sc. working on the other side of the ch, sc 19 to the end, do not join, ch1 turn (43)
R2: sc in the same sc as the ch1, sc 18, 2sc in each of the 5 turning stitches, sc 19, ch1 turn (48)
R3: sc in the same sc as the ch1, sc 7, hdc 3, dc 10, hdc, 2sc, sc-ch-sc, 2sc, hdc, dc 10, hdc 3, sc 9, ch1 turn (52 including sc-ch-sc)
R4: slst in the first stitch, slst 5, sc 19, in the ch1 space, sc-ch-sc, ,sc 19, slst 6, bind off leaving long tail (53 inclusing sc-ch-sc).
using the longer starting tail, sew up any gap made by crocheting on both sides of the ch.

Fuzzy Outer Ear (crochet 2)
using the super bulky yarn and the M hook, ch 13.
R1: sc in the second ch from the hook, sc 10, sc 5 in the last ch, working on the other side of the ch, sc 11, ch1 turn (27)
R2: sc in the same stitch as the ch 1, sc 10, 2sc in each of the 5 turning stitches, sc 11, ch1 turn (32)
R3: sc in the same stitch as the ch 1, sc 10, hdc, dc, 2dc, dc, 2dc, dc-ch1-dc, 2dc, dc, 2dc, dc, hdc, sc 10, ch turn (38 including dc-ch-dc) do not bind off
weave in the starting tail

*here come the tricky part - joining the inner and outer ears together. You'll notice that they aren't the same size and don't have the same number of finishing stitches and that the M hook will not fit in the I hook space. I switch to a J hook. I use 3 removable stitch markers (safety pins) to hold them together temporarily. The first one is placed in the ch space at the turn for both inner and outer ear. The other 2 attach to the top of the ear for both parts of the ears. As the next row is worked, there's a bit of "easing in" that goes on - the stitches with stitch markers are the only ones that have to match up.
R4: holding both part of the ear together, insert the hook with the fuzzy working yarn still looped under the first slst of the inner ear and thru the same stitch as the ch1 of the outer ear, draw a loop through both pieces and make a sc. Do the same for the rest of the slst and the sc on the inner ear (24 st) to the next stitch marker - some of the outer ear stitches will have 2 stitches in each stitch but not all of them (this is the easing in part). In the ch spaces, sc-ch-sc. sc in each of the inner ear sc attaching it to the outer ear - remember, some of the outer ear stitches will hold 2 of the sc - use your best judgement. bind off leaving a long tail.

tuck the starting tail of the inner ear between the layers and use the long tail of the inner ear to sew the top closed with a whip stitch, I knot it and weave in ends. Using long tail of the fuzzy yarn, sew the ears on the hat where and how you like them. Weave in the ends of the fuzzy yarn, put hat on a baby - adorable!

Hopping Down The Bunny Trail fuzzy bunny hat at hamburke.com

Sewing with Kids

Last week, Joann's Fabrics had a McCall's Pattern sales - 5 for $7 and with pattern prices creeping up to $20 a pop, I JUMPED on this! I picked out some patterns that I could possibly do with my girls (I'd do them with my son too if he had any interest whatsoever but it's not Legos so he doesn't care). My 12 year old learned to sew in Home Ec this year and has asked for a cape pattern for fleece (I had one, where did I put it again? oh well, $1.40 and I have a new one). I've been promising my almost 10 year old a ballet bag with an Andover Fabric At the Barre fabric panel (purple) and coordinating striped fabric I bought for her years ago now (2008? 2009?).

My oldest was less than thrilled at the pattern I picked up for her (McCall's M6196) b/c it's a poncho, not a cape...so I started with my dancer. She wanted one with a spot for her water bottle - I get that so I picked out this one McCall's M6297 and she picked out View D (the big on in the back) with the pocket on the inside:

I have no idea how I learned to sew with a pattern - my mom's not really a sewer and I made a lot of stuff before my friend's mom taught us the basics. I know things came out less than perfect for a LONG TIME but I found out that my little girl can't cut a straight line even slowly with my super sharp scissors. This was also NOT a simple pattern! I really thought it was going to be a "sew the bag, sew the liner, sew together, add the pocket" pattern but it was more complicated than that (LOTS of stitch the ditch type instructions) and I ended up taking over completely - she  ironed the fusible interfacing on... oh well! she has a fun bag now! I'll find something else to teach her machine sewing - maybe a pillow or blanket...

oops - forgot to add the photos!

Shop talk:  I'm really excited to be adding this bunny hat to my collection! It's made with Yarn Bee Cameo Bulky yarn to give it that fuzz!

GIVE AWAY - Check out my facebook page to enter but here's the details:
GIVEAWAY TIME! Today is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday - whatever you call it, it's the day before Lent, the countdown to Easter, starts. I'm giving away a blue and white mini crocheted Easter Basket filled with a yummy Sweetastic soft-serve fudge! I'll ship it anywhere in the US or to APO/PPO. All you have to do is like or comment on this post and I'll be choosing a winner using Rafflecopter's Facebook Flash Giveaway app on Monday, March 10, at 9pm.

You're welcome to share this status update on your page or group but it won't increase your chances of winning (sorry - it's Facebook rules).

#giveaway #handmade #fudge #Easter #win

*legal stuff: this promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

Children's Books Re-written for Moms

A few weeks ago, my friend sent me a real-life rewrite of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie (with a tip of the hat to the DirecTV commercials) based on a weekend day home with her hubby and baby boy.

If You Give Me A Bathroom to be Cleaned...

...I'm going to bleach the entire shower and let it soak all day.
...and then I'll go to church with my family........
and then we'll come home and gag on the bleach fumes that have permeated through the house...
...and then i'll decide to bake something to cover up the smell....
...and then I'll start making chocolate chip cookies...
...and then I'll realize it's lunch time, but I don't have enough rice to eat with my more than a week old leftovers...
...so then I'll start cooking some rice before realizing I haven't finished my cookies...
...and I'll mix the flour into the dough and wonder why it's crumbly instead of gooey...
...and then I'll consider mixing in oil or applesauce to make it right...
...but that's a CRAZY idea, so I'll press it into a 9x13 pan to make it a "bar" cookie...
...and then we'll have lunch until it smells like the cookies are done but not quite burnt yet...
...and then I'll stare at the pan wondering what I did wrong before realizing...
..."1 cup stick butter" is not the same as "one stick" butter!!! Doh!...
...but Hubby eats one, so I eat one...
...and realize that my mixer really didn't crunch up that hardened pebble of brown sugar...
...but my teeth did...
...and maybe it will taste less sweet with plain yogurt...
...but it doesn't...
...so now we need vanilla ice cream to offset and save the cost of the ingredients...
....but I'm only going to be able to go to BJs today, and I don't need a tub of vanilla to feed the entire city...
...so I guess I'll either buy the tub or go without or maybe mail them to all of you.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't clean your bathrooms. 

I, of course, laughed and set it aside...until this past Monday...when I had a morning like that...

If You Give A Mom a Chocolate Stain... by Karin Wallace

If you give a mom a chocolate stain on an off-white table cloth that's set in overnight,

...she takes everything off the table.
And if she takes everything off the table, 
...she'll notice that you've hidden rainbow loom rings under the centerpiece.
And when she goes to pick them up, 
...one will fall on the floor where she'll discover your pile of Legos
And when reaching for your Legos, 
...she'll find where you left your watercolor art pencils that you cried about someone taking last week.
And when she goes to put them away, 
...she'll knock over the hiding spot for your Girl Scout projects
And while she's picking up that, 
...she'll notice that every single shelf in her sideboard is filled with crumpled papers and half finished art projects and board games.
After she gathers up everything that you've left in the dining room, 
...she'll remember the chocolate stain and go get the spray.
On her way to get the stain spray, she'll trip over your sandals from the unusually warm weekend and catch herself on the chair with your dance clothes and soccer ball on it.
After spraying the tablecloth and starting the laundry, 
...she'll remember to take the leaf out of the table. Your shoes and daddy's tool bag will be in her way when she's putting the leaf away.
When picking that stuff up, mom will notice the pile is too big to carry upstairs and take a picture to send to her friends!

MORAL OF THE STORY: do your taxes instead of cleaning up a chocolate stain!


But I did spend the rest of Monday making this for my daughter's teacher who's having her baby tomorrow! 

Beanie Hat available here 

Snow/Ice Dyeing - An adventure in the winter wonderland!

My friend Cathy Nault from Orange Octopus Studio does beautiful things with ice dyeing!

photo by Cathy Nault

photo by Cathy Nault

  

She mostly does cotton and silk scarves for sale. She's one of my #EtsyRVAWearableArts friends so we see each other almost every month at our #meetup. Her craft fair tables look AMAZING too! She's the one who told me to buy the canvas drop cloth as a cheap tablecloth for the 6x3 table I use for fairs. Which leads me to this crazy project!

I love my canvas dropcloth tablecloth for fairs - it piles at the bottom and does a good job at hiding the boxes I bring my stuff in - but I wish it was colorful! I decided to try ice dyeing because it gives interesting patterns and texture plus it looks like it's really fun. I googled "how to ice dye". Dylon has instruction on their website and AC Moore carries the powder. I picked Dylon Bahama Blue and I thought about how I was going to do it - crush up ice in my Snoopy Snowcone Maker? buy the circle ice? use ice maker ice?

Then it snowed and Cathy posted this: SNOW DYEING

photo by Cathy Nault

I was intrigued! I thought - this will be the best time to ever try this. I spread out my dropcloth/tablecloth in the back yard. I swept the snow off the deck and spread it in a thin layer over the cloth. I opened the dye pack and sprinkled...uh...word to the wise here: the powdered dye is very very lightweight (the packaging might actually weigh more than the crystals) and blue dye crystals look EXACTLY LIKE SNOW until they get wet...so the wind took a lot of my dye and made my backyard blue (it keeps getting bluer as the snow melts and refreezes) and then I didn't have enough for the other half of my project. No matter - I'll fold it in half and it will be fine!

That was Tuesday afternoon... It didn't get warmer, the snow was not melting and I decided that I had to do something because we have lots of wildlife and I had a feeling I would have a Mitten situation if I left it out. So I dumped a plastic bin, put in one of my cookie racks, folded up the snow filled drop cloth and dropped it into the bin. This is where things started to go wrong -
1) we never raked the leaves up this fall (the vacuum truck was coming on a busy weekend for us and the leaves really hadn't fallen until that week so we only raked the front yard) and there were now a bunch stuck to the now frozen drop cloth. No matter, it will just leave more interesting patterns, I said!

2) cookie racks are not designed to hold 9'x12' 10oz drop cloths filled with now and it collapsed. It's just to let the liquid drip out and how much water can be in this anyway - it's just a dusting of snow, I said!

Okay - some of you may know this, but I'm a chemist by education. I've taken and taught A LOT of science classes and calorimetry is an absolute favorite experiment of mine. I know what the R is r-value for insulation means (thermal resistance) and how to test for it in different materials. AND I watch SurvivorMan and know that igloos offer excellent insulation... why in the world did I think that snow wrapped in canvas would melt overnight? When I went to bed, 5 hours after bringing the bin inside and setting it by the floor vent, there wasn't even condensation in the bin! When I woke up, there wasn't a drip in the bottom! It wasn't until a full 24 hours after bringing the bin in that I noticed a bit of blue water in the bottom. Better suck that up so that the table cloth on the collapsed cookie rack doesn't sit in it and not give me cool patterns!

By bedtime on Thursday, I had sucked out a total of 45 cups of water! Waiting for me on Friday morning were another 6... it's been 60 hours inside, I don't see it dripping anymore - I think it's done! I go to rinse it out - the center is still filled with snow!! Regardless of whether the process is done, I'm done, so I take the cloth outside and shake the remaining snow out hoping to also shake off the leaves. It's 18 degrees outside and my damp dropcloth freezes in less than 2 minutes. Leaves are still stuck to it, snow balls - both Bermuda Blue and icy white - are still stuck to it.

I get off what I can and toss the whole thing into the washer with cold water and vinegar. I pulled it out to clean out the leaves and it looks pretty good. We'll see when it comes out of the dryer!

I think I'm going to leave this craft to Cathy but here's what I've learned (and should have applied from learning them in all of my other crafting fiascos):
1 - you're supposed to use multiple colors of dyes when ice dyeing
2 - start small
3 - do this craft in warm weather
4 - canvas is a good insulator
5 - read a variety of instructions before you begin a project (soaking in soda ash or salt solution might have been more vibrant)

Bulletin Board Ideas - Movie Night

You may know that I like the PTA and that I organize PTA events. I did the Mistletoe Market vendor fair last month with great success and this month, I'm organizing Movie Night. Movie nights are great community events - they're pretty cheap to do (I ask for a $600 budget but it's mostly pass-thru for pizza and snacks) and the point is not to make a profit. Here's a how-to to organizing movie night for an elementary school:

1 - get to okay from the principal and PTA board.
2 - choose a movie. Most schools like G movies but let's be real - good G movies are rarely made these days. I usually check DVD release dates for movies that come out close to my movie night date and then check what Common Sense Media has to say about the movie (I like to pick movies that green light age 6 and get 4 or 5 stars from parents).
3 - apply for a one-time event/one-time viewing license. It's usually best to not charge admission - it changes the type of license you need. We make up the cost of the license on concessions just like the movie theaters do. Between Criterion Pictures that represents both 20^th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures which includes Dreamworks Animation and Blue Sky Studios and Swank Motion Pictures which represents basically everything else including Disney, New Line and WB, you only need 2 email addresses and you can show any movie you want!
4 - get your ducks in a row - got equipment? projector, screen, dvd player, speakers (and no, computer speakers are not cool)? ask the local theater is they can donate anything - movie passes, popcorn, etc, call pizza places to find out how much it costs for the pizza (PTAs often get a discount b/c they are a non-profit) and decide how much you're going to charge for it, buy drinks and candy at Costco.
5 - advertise! flyers, reservation/order forms, posters and bulletin boards. The good news is that with your site license, they allow you to use the name and official artwork to advertise your event internally (you can't do that outside of the school community though - no radio spots, no billboards, not even the sign outside of the school). My reservation and pizza pre-order form has student name, teacher name, number attending and pizza order info but the most important words on this form are this phrase, "For the safety and security of all who attend, children must be accompanied by an adult."

Now, for what you're all here for - the bulletin board!  This huge bulletin board is in the foyer of my kids' school. It's for the PTA's use. This month, we are advertising 2 events - the Barnes & Noble book fair fundraiser and Movie Night.

I did not photograph this as I was doing it, so you're getting the mock up.
Materials:
1 Movie poster
1 yd of cheap black cotton fabric
1 yd of champagne colored tulle
1 sheet of Steam a Seam
1 sheet of black foam board
1 sheet of bright yellow poster board
1 sheet of white poster board (doing it again, I'd go with 2 yellows)
1 Rainbow Loom band (don't tell my kids - I found this one on the floor)
1 black bingo stamper
clear contact paper
popcorn bags
yellow crepe paper
3 different sized round things to trace (I used a demitasse saucer, a regular saucer and a small plate)
scissors, xacto knife, stapler & staples, pins, iron

1 - Make curtains for the poster "movie screen"

I remember when movies screens had curtains and they'd open at the beginning of the movie and close at the end - this was before the oh-so-fun movie trivia was shown when you get in there, of course.  After a trip to the Byrd Theater last week to see a preview of Downton Abbey's Season 4 Premier, I decided to make my bulletin board look like an old fashioned move theater (not gilded and grand but, similar). I bought a landscape poster to be the screen. I cut a strip about 4 inches wide of the black fabric so that I now had a 32 inch piece (curtain) and a 4 inch piece (valence). I then cut 1/2 inch strips of the steam-a-seam sheets.

 Using the steam-a-seam strips, I "hemmed" the valence piece under.

Make sure to measure the poster when doing this step - the valence should be about 3-4 inches smaller than the poster. I cut the curtain piece in half along the fold and sewed both sides to the valence piece with the selvage edge being on the inside of the curtain - this is the only sewing I did and looking back, I could have gotten away with just using steam-a-seam but I was worried about it falling apart on the bulletin board. Press the seam so that the curtain edge is flat. 

Next, make a knife pleat in the curtain section. For the big version, I made 3 outward-facing skip-1 knife pleats. Here on the mock up, I only had room for 1.

I was going as no-sew as I could and used two 1 1/2 inch strips of the 1/2 inch steam-a-seam strips to tack the pleats in place. I removed one side of the paper, ironed it where it needed to go, removed the other side of the paper, refolded the fabric over it and ironed it again

 Finally, I folded down, pinned and pressed the top "seam". I did not sew or use steam-a-seam on this one - it's where I hid the staples when I attached it to the bulletin board! I brought it to the school with the pins in it!

The final (mock up) project!

 

(Landscape works better for this theme but if I could only find a portrait poster, I would have cut the valence from the width rather than length but I think it would require about the same amt of fabric).

2 - The Projector

I went looking for free clip art to help me design my projector. I found at lot in my google search and was reminded that even though it comes up in a google search, doesn't mean that it's actually free or that the person listing it has the copyrights to it... oh well! I came up with a good design based on a lot of the artwork.

On the black foam board, I placed the largest of my round objects (the regular plate) at the top center - maybe a little off to the left of center - and traced. I put the medium sized round object on edge of the board on the right so the center of the plate was at about at the 3/4 mark and traced. I found the center of the smaller circle and made that the "corner" of the main part of the projector. This should cut thru the bottom of my larger circle. I finished up the front of the projector and cut it out using the Xacto knife (getting clean lines on foam board is HARD). So my extraneous pencil marks wouldn't show, I flipped the now-cut-out foam projector.  I used some of the white poster board to trace the medium (saucer) and small (demitasse saucer) round stencils and cut into sixths. I rounded the edges and then pasted 5 of the 6 white pieces in the center of the reels (I spaced them better than the diagram below - I think I need to install my really old version of Illustrator so I can make my diagrams look cool again). I (ahem, my husband) cut the large and medium circles out of clear contact paper and put them over the the reels to hold them better and give it a bit of glossy definition (really - it shows up).

drawing/cutting diagram for the projector

I found a for-real-free clapboard image and used Paint.net to add the name of the movie, showing date, time and fact that we're selling concessions - print that, trim the edges, paste and cover with contact paper that too!

3 - pulling it together

I was sharing the board this month with another chairperson - B&N bookfair - so we did a bit of over the phone coordination so that we wouldn't step on toes when we got there. It worked fine b/c we both had a very loose idea of what we wanted it to look like. Both of us also forgot how HUGE this bulletin board is! It's 2 "standard" sized outside of classroom bulletin boards butted up to each other in portrait orientation - GI-NORMOUS! Neither of us planned for the space we had... So after I put up the poster, curtain, tulle light and projector, I ran out to Dollar Tree to get popcorn bags, crepe paper and a bingo stamper and grab the poster board I had at home (my initial plan for the light from the projector now replaced by cheap tulle). I stamped the letters to give them the "Marquee" feel. I filled the popcorn bags with yellow crepe paper and stapled them on the board. It looked done. I felt that if I did any more, it would be over done. I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope you have a successful movie night at your school too! 

Keep warm and cozy as the temps dip into the single digits here overnight!