Twine-Wrapped Vases

Happy Black Friday!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families and friends-
We had a delicious, fun Thanksgiving with my family and afterwards played Just Dance 2 on the Wii. Oh, my goodness, that was SO much fun!

I've been trying to make the most lately of the storage capacity of our bedroom, which takes some creativity.
The room is long and skinny (it used to be the back porch)  and it fits a dresser, bed, desk and that's about it. It's really cozy and there's a window looking out to the cow field which I love!

My sewing table is right in front of the window so I can take peeks at the cows grazing lazily around in the field while I sew away.
We have kind of made the windowsill into a bookshelf/storage for art supplies/whatever else ends up there and we had paintbrushes and some other things stuck into mason jars and it looked kind of mumble-jumble.

I wanted to prettify the space, so I took some twine we got at the thrift store and wrapped it around the jars. I may have a fetish for twine. I love it!! My mom gave me the huge roll of twine, and the smaller one is from the thrift store.

Viola!!

Cute, rustic decorative jars to hold all of our odds and ends. And lavender.

It looks SO much better.

I didn't even hot glue the twine, I just tied it around the top, then wrapped the twine around tightly, working down to the bottom of the jar, then used elmer's glue to hold the other end down.
So if you have some mismatched containers holding stuff that you'd like to make look prettier, get some twine and get wrappin!

Pinterest Inspired Twine Experiement

Hi!
Sorry the blog has been quiet this week- I've been trying to cut back on my time online and spend it with the kids which has translated into less blogging.
Hopefully I'll get organized here in the next week or so and write out a bunch of posts on Sunday night, then schedule them throughout the week. (that works so much better!)

Anyway.
I mentioned that I got some great deals at the thrift store on 4th of July.
Everything was 1/2 off in the entire store, and I was able to get a nice, lightweight white blanket for a dollar, three or four shirts for myself for a few dollars each and a cool knit orange and white and brown throw blanket straight out of the 70's that made me excited for cool fall nights to curl up under it. :)

Finally, to the point of today...

You know those really cool twine globe lights/hanging decorations that are all over Pinterest?
 These ones.

Source

Or these...

Source

I got it into my head that a couple of them would look GORGEOUS above our bed.
With our pallet headboard and hanging globes of natural twine; the natural-ness of both would just play off of each other and it would look so pretty.

Don't ya think that it would look nice with pretty globes over this?? I do. :)

So I got out my glue and mixed it with water, got my twine,

blew up a balloon,

and got to work.

It was really a messy job!


I let it dry overnight....

This morning I popped the balloon...

and this is what happened.

Oops! Obviously I didn't use enough glue? I think?  Maybe I didn't wrap enough twine around the balloon?I'm just glad I only made one instead of a bunch! I'd have been so disappointed!

So.
Advice?
Have you done this before and had it work?
What did you do differently?
I still want gorgeous twine creations above my bed.
I may try this again with more glue.
Or, maybe I"ll try the doily one, like this:

Source

Help!
:)

Easy DIY Pallet Headboard

So, remember way back last year when we were playing around with pallets and made a pallet table?
It served it's purpose (because we didn't have a dining room table at the time) but when it was time to see it go, I was glad. It was too scratchy, and bigger than we'd planned for the space.

There are all kinds of cool pallet projects on Pinterest, and I've been wanting to make some sort of headboard for our bed- the wall just looked a little bit lonely all by itself.

So, do you want to know a SUPER easy way to make a pallet headboard?

First: drive around and find some pallets. They are everywhere, just laying out by the side of the road; near dumpsters of businesses, all over the place. We found ours in an industrial business park behind the building.
There were a whole bunch of them just waiting to be taken away by a garbage man, but we got there first.
Saturday is a good day to go pallet hunting, since most businesses are closed.

(side note: If there is anyone around, it's a good idea to ask if it's okay to take the pallets so you don't get in trouble for stealing. There was a man there that hubby asked and he said "go ahead!", so we did!)

We picked the pallets in the nicest condition and brought 6 of them home.


Next: make sure your pallets don't have any spiders on them and wipe them down to get the dirt off.
You don't want any "surprise visitors" when you're sleeping! (eek!)

Thirdly: Take your bed apart or scoot it away from the wall.

We took the metal frame out from under our bed.

Fourthly: Stand two pallets up next to each other and scoot your bed up against them. You may need to raise the pallets up off the ground, or lower your bed to get the right height for your headboard.
We decided to take the ugly metal bed frame off the bed and place the box spring and mattress on a few pallets to lower the bed enough to get the look we wanted. So now we have a platform bed with a cool headboard.

Then make your bed all pretty, stand back and admire it!

I LOVE how this turned out, and it seriously took like 15 minutes.
You don't even have to have skills to do this, other than some strong arms to muscle the pallets around.
Hubby did all of that, I just made suggestions and got some homemade granola cooking in the oven. ;)

I also have one more easy pallet project to share with you, but it's not quite done yet, so stay tuned!



This post is shared at Natural Mother's Network, Seasonal Celebration.

Diaper Pouch

So, if you're like me, you spend WAY more time on Pinterest than you should.
And you find all sorts of cool stuff to make, that you may or may not actually get around to.

However.

I pinned this a while ago as an idea to make for baby showers or friends who are expecting.

And I actually made one!

Here is the tutorial, if you want to make your own.

I modified it a bit, as I used coordinating fabric as a strap instead of cotton webbing (because I didn't have any and didn't want to buy any) And I also just made my own bias tape to wrap around the top edge because I (ahem) kept sewing the bag together inside out, or backwards so I said "screw it"! and just made the bias tape and it was much MUCH easier. :)

Here is my diaper pouch!

Imagine how many newborn diapers you could fit in there!
Probably a lot, along with some wipes and maybe even an extra onesie.

I REALLY like how it turned out, and am quite tempted to keep it for myself, instead of giving it to a friend for her baby. Instead, I'll just make another one for me to use for Ellie's diapers. Although I'm hoping she'll decide to potty train before I get around to making a diaper pouch, then I won't need one. :)


This post is shared at Seasonal Celebration Sunday on the Natural Mother's Network, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways at Frugally Sustainable and Pin'inspired at Adventures in Dinner.