Quick and dirty window screen and a towel rack face lift

So I have this older window in my bathroom, that I can’t afford to replace yet and it has no screen in it.  So  came up with this quick and cheep window screen using things from around the house or bought cheaply from the dollar store.  The first thing collect all your required tools and supplies, I used some tulle I had lying around for the “screen” part and some square plant stakes from the dollar store.

so now we measure and cut the pieces, I used my handy dandy wood glue and a random nail I had around the house to hold the corners together.

next I draped the tulle over my frame.

I then popped some staples around the edge (just like recovering a chair) and trimmed the tulle up nice and neat

when the hole thing was dry I popped it into the window.  I can now have my window open with out the bugs.

  

This is the before and after of the little hand-me-down shelf I use for my towels in the bathroom. It started out as a bras colour but over the years was starting to look really .. well unattractive.  did I mention I like tremclade all most as much as duck tape!  Well I wiped all the dust and dirt off and started spraying .. a can and a half latter it was white and looks much better in the bathroom that is purple and blue.

I Finally got to wear it!

I thought I would do a quick post for my regency bib front dress. The Family and I went to Fort York, in Toronto, back in June for the War of 1812 celebrations.  I took my recently finished dress with me so I could get some pics of me wearing it in a setting of the same time period. Although the pics aren't so great I had a good time at the fort with the kids.

 

Me looking not so impress outside the officers mess.  While I was actually wearing my dress I found a few things that need shall we say adjusted... I need to make a tuck in the bodice so the shoulder will stop sliding down.

some of the volunteers that were roaming around

the Encampment, they had 200 tents set up that weekend

The York Regency Dancers, they are based at Fort York. 

They were a  lovely group off people we had dance lesions while we were there.

And a picture from one of my budding photographers!

Homemade Lactose Free Butter

 

Well this week I stumbled upon a book at the library on country cooking, and thought I would give butter making a whirl (lol no pun intended). Turns out it supper easy and pretty quick too.

What you need/ I used:

Food processer

Heavy Cream (AKA Whipping Cream in Canada)

water

bowl

Cheese cloth 

 

 

 

So I was absolutely gitty in the store when I discovered that they now have lactose free Cream, hence the lactose free butter.  So you start by setting up you food processer with your chopping blade.  Pour your cream into the food processor and start, my food processor only has a high and a low setting, so I used High.

 

 

 

 

After a few minutes you’ll notice it’s turned in to whipped cream (haha duh right  :) ), You want to keep whipping it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You want the buttermilk to separate from the fat, this only takes 5 – 10 minutes.  The fat turns itself into a ball and the milk will sit on the bottom.

 

 

 

Next you want to turn it out into your cheese cloth, I think I had about 4 layers or so sitting in my canning funnel so that the buttermilk can drain into the bowl underneath.  Now pick it up and give it a twist, you want to do this over your bowl.  You want to get as much of the buttermilk out as possible.

 

 

When you have got as much of the butter milk out as you can out need to rinse it, for this I took my butter still wrapped in the cheeses cloth and swished it a round in a bowl of water, give it a wring, I did this a few times.

 

The next step is to put into a mold of some sort, I have a collection of little silicone molds from the dollar store in varying shapes and sizes.  I line my mold with plastic wrap, for easy clean up, and storage.  So now push the butter into our mold, and place in the fridge to harden before you try and take it out of the mold.

 

    And the finished product, after about an hour in the fridge it hard enough to take out of the molds, I then wrap it in the plastic wrap that I lined the mold with and pop it back in the fridge or into the freezer.

Regency Bib Front Dress part VI

  

It’s  done! after many days of staring at it Finally picked it up and finished it.

I finally machine stitched the sleeves in, stitched the bodice to the skirt, and hand stitched in the lining around the arm holes and

along the skirt.

 

 

I finished hand sewing the side openings, and the button holes for the front , added all my buttons

I finished stitching down the Bib and added the ties as well.

And the finished dress :)

And from the back …

What I’ve been up to …

 

Well I’ve been working on my garden this week and have got most of it planted, now I just need to get my pumpkins in, we have 5 different kinds of pumpkins for the garden this year.  We have or usual  Jack-o-lantern, and Sugar pumpkins (can we say pie), and this year we also got Atlantic giants, Casper (white), and Jaradale (blue/green).

 

 

 

So here is a picture of the garden at one week, the zucchini has sprouted and the beans and peas are just starting to pop up, and all my tomatoes are in.

We also got a herb garden in this year so we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve been working on my dress diary for my regency bib front dress, making very slow progress on that.  Apparently being sick is time consuming.  I have a few things in the works I plan on posting at a later date, And we are planning an adventure weekend for next week, so I’ll share some pictures of that when we get back.  Oh and our pimped out cart was just perfect at the wing ding the kids loved pulling it around and filling it with their yard sale finds  :)

 

Until next time! 

Rag Rugs

Ok so last week will I was joy ridding through Pintrest I came across a post for a rag rug, to witch I've been want to make for a while now.  But I'm not particularly motivated to do the traditional braided rug, just to much effort then I wanted to put forth. so I've been on the look out for alternatives, well I found one over at Sugar Bee Crafts.  Now I warn you, I am not the read the instructions kinda gal, so I didn't exactly read it, just sorta skimmed over the pictures. I have enough crochet skills to make basic stitches and on a good day a circle.

So as I said before we love sheets around here (very useful things), so now I had a mission and needed to recruit some "helpers" (I use this term very loosely), I got to work .... I cleaned out my linen closet.  We found some sheets in there I couldn't even identify as mine ... any ways we pulled out the ones that where see through, had no elastic left, or just weren't being used.

  

I found lots of helpers for the next part, for some reason you can always find people to "break" stuff.  we got to making our "yarn" we tore 1" - 1 1/2" strips from our sheets, and rolled them in to balls.

Then I had a bit of a problem finding the giant crochet hooks, I did find them a few days latter at our local fabric shop for a couple of bucks.

This method works up really quickly, It took me and my poor crochet skills about an hour to get the middle done (about a foot to foot and half worth of rug).  Sweet I love instant gratification :)

I can easily get one done in a day in my spare time (ha ha spare time :)

 

 So as it worked out that 3 double/Queen size sheets will get you about a 3 foot round rug, give or take.  I've gotten a few comments on them, my purple and blue one I had made for myself as already been stolen by my son for his room. and the yellow and blue one matches my new curtains, you can see them here and here.

DIY Explorers Play Tent

 
After seeing the play ten tutorials on on Pintrest I thought I would give one a try for my little man, and it give my hubby some thing to channel his energy into.  So we went out to the hardware store for some supplies.  What we came home with was 2 – 1x2’s that were 8 ft long and a 5/8 inch dowel.  When we got home we raided the linen closet, yet again and pulled out this twin sized sheet set.  It kinda reminds me of the turn of the century explorers (i.e.. Indiana Jones) or an African safari.

So now with our materials in hand we headed out for the back yard.  We started  by cutting our 1x2’s in half, so they are roughly 4 ft long, and drilled a hole in one end of each of them.  We used a 5/8 inch drill bit because we wanted to have a sung fit so the dowel didn't fall out of the holes well the kids are playing with it, and we didn’t want to use any glue/hardware because we still wanted to be able to fold it up or take it apart for storage purposes.

Here’s a picture of just the frame, really Simple and supper quick for this part.

And here is a picture of the the sheet over the frame.  This is where all tutorials I saw online stopped, but we decided to add “doors” (flaps that open and close) to the front and back. We also added a tube at the top to run the dowel through, so it wasn’t sliding all over the place. All you do to make the tube is fold the sheet in half and run a line of stitching down the center along the fold, keeping in mind that the tube your making needs to be big enough to run the dowel through.  On mine I sitched about an inch from the fold.

 

As you can see we used the flat sheet for the main tent portion and I used the fitted sheet for the ends.  We started by removing the elastic from the ends and cutting the seams out of the corners.  Then we folded the sheet in half and cut down the center to make two end panels, then we folded each end panel in half and cut to make the opening for the flaps.  Then we finished the ends that would become the opening of the door (fold over twice and stitch), and hemmed up what would become the bottom of the door panels.  For the the closures on the doors we used  Velcro on one side and on the other we used twill tape for ties.

We also add some ties to the side to help support the weight of the sheet on the frame and so we could tie the doors open.

The tent has been a big hit, my kids and all the neighbor kids have been play in it nonstop.  If you make one and add the doors like I did make sure your elastic loops are on the out side of the tent, I have to go back and move mine, but other then that it works great! and cost less then $15.