what’s up…

Posted on 2013/02/18 by daisyeyes

Things are a little nutty around here. That’s the way life goes I guess.
The stomach bug reared it’s ugly head for at least a week last week and boy I’m so happy to see it gone.

We sold almost every table and chair we own this weekend in less than 24 hours. Standing in our empty kitchen we both wondered if we had done something irrational (don’t answer that!) and we are now eating on my grandmothers rickety antique table that has served as a table on and off for us for more years than it should. That said, our reward is a new matching table and chairs for our upcoming anniversary. Sixteen years is a long time to wait for a matching set!

I decided to do a little local blog advertising right about the same time I was offered an interim teaching position. Great planning. But I’m clinging to the promise that the Lord never gives us more than we can handle and I’m planning on keeping the shop up and running…just the felt cape kits are on a requested basis only.

Talking about the little bit of advertising love: head on over to frugalissa finds and read about the history of my little shop, some of my favorite items and enter in a give away for either an embroidered pendant or 5 DIY felt cape sets.

And say a prayer that our family makes it through the next few weeks with me working full time, plus etsy, plus more I’m sure that I don’t even want to think about.

But you know what? Irregardless of how crazy the next few weeks are, I’m crazy thankful for this opportunity and the reality of how well God takes care of me.

If you are visiting here from frugalissa finds…consider yourself welcomed!

14 days of love {day 7}

Posted on 2013/02/07 by daisyeyes

Today I’m sharing our Valentine gift to our kiddos. Last year we did a year of family adventures. We did pretty well overall, but I did pretty poor planning when it came to the family budget and these adventures. Some months it took us a few extra months to get the activity done and we still have 2 hanging on our fridge. That said, this year we decided to do a mix of individual and family dates.

Our kids are 9 and 6 and at the ages where they are more apt to have a good conversation with us if we are one on one versus as a whole family. I divided up the year and went back and forth between dates with my husband and I and then we have 4 family adventures thrown in there. When one date with a child had money involved I tried hard to make up a frugal or free date for the other one and then swap up as the year progressed. We’ll see how I did as this year goes through!

I printed out labels with distinct clip art, one for the boy and one for the girl. Then I went through and made little cards with the date written on it and whether it was with mom, dad or a family date. My mom had a huge stack of random little envelopes so I just used those and glued down the month labels on the outside and stuck the date cards inside. So this year they will each have a little envelope to open up the first of every month.

Now I’m trying to figure out what to store them in. I know Target has those little fun mailboxes so I may just go grab a couple of those or I might make little bags to hang somewhere in the kitchen where we won’t forget them.

Here are a few examples of our dates:

for the chick:
trip to coffeehouse, pedicures at home, ice cream date, tea party with dad, craft/sewing activity with mom, buy a plant at a nursery and bring it home and plant it, bake holiday treats

for the boy:
trip to coffeehouse, batting cages with dad, fishing, woodworking project with dad, bake a fancy cake with mom, visit to a local museum

for the family:
chocolate fondue night, family water gun fight, day of giant blanket forts, children’s choice holiday activity

If you are interested in a pdf version of my templates, please email me and I’ll be happy to send you a copy.

thredUp beware

Posted on 2013/01/14 by daisyeyes

A few years ago I saw a review of a company called ThredUp. The concept was simple. Fill up a box of gently used clothing and then list those items and other parents were able to review all the different boxes and chose one. I did this at least 3-4 times and never had a complaint about the clothing that I had sent in. And while I had a few duds in some of my boxes, for the most part it was all represented accurately.

Recently their company decided to do away with the swapping boxes idea and become somewhat of an online consignment store. The idea is you send in a bag of clothes to them, they go through them and then chose the ones that meet their criteria and give you credit for them. You can go to their website, use their iPad app and shop for clothes online. Simple right?

I thought I would give it a try. I have a local consignment store that I love, but it’s 30 minutes from my house. The idea that I could just fill up a bag, leave it on my step for the postal worker was rather appealing. I ordered my little green dotted bag, filled it up with clothes that I would have normally taken to my local shop and waited.
And waited. And waited.

Finally I heard back from the company that I had received a whopping 80 cents for the one shirt out of 20+ items that they decided met their criteria. I was told the rest of the items were stained or ripped. Totally untrue.

After doing a little nosing around on the internet, I found blog after blog where people had written great reviews about the items they had received from ThredUp (for free to review), but comment after comment about situations like mine. They even have a multitude of complaints to the Better Business Bureau for the same thing.

So, while ThredUp may be a great place to buy clothing…DO NOT send in your clothes there. Support your local consignment store, do a clothing swap with friends, heck give that bag of clothes to someone in your community that needs them. But stay clear of that little green polka dotted bag.

tooth fairy box

Posted on 2012/10/19 by daisyeyes

I so hate to admit it, but the time has finally come for my baby to begin losing her first tooth. She has a pretty wiggling one and has been super concerned about having a tooth box like her brother.
Realizing that I’m not going to make it to the special toy store that has the special tooth boxes, I decided to just make her one. While on a Michael’s run this past week, I gathered up the supplies to make a little box just for her.

Here’s the rundown on cost:
3 sheets of scrap book paper (on sale at Michael’s for 99 cents each…yes even the glitter stuff)
bling on a roll (4.99 @ Michael’s minus a 40% off coupon)
little cardboard box (99 cents at Michael’s)
tracing of a tooth
martha stewart mod podge stuff (no idea…had it for a while)

I cut out the paper to fit and used the martha glue (which is ok, but’s not the “real” thing for sure) to stick it on.

After the glue was a little dry, I painted some glue to seal it all around the outside. While I waited for it to dry completely, I worked on a little satin pillow for the inside.

This was some scrap fabric I had laying around and I just cut a circle wider than the outside of the box, stitched it, stuffed it and then added a little stitch in the middle to make that special spot for her tooth to lay.

On the top, I cut out an outline of a tooth (which apparently looks more like a bunny according to the oh so wise 5 year old chick) and glued that down. I did not add any glue to the top to seal it because I thought it might mess up the glitter.

So there you have it! One little tooth box ready and waiting for a visit from the tooth fairy. All less than $5 to make!

a foodie post

Posted on 2012/04/17 by daisyeyes

If there seems to be anything that strikes stress into the heart of a mom lately, it’s the idea of menu planning and grocery shopping. I spend way more time than I would like to think going over recipes, organizing recipes, making a menu, making a grocery list and let’s not forget actually going shopping and cooking!

That said, I feel like I’ve sort of begun to turn a corner with my level of foodie stress, only to have a whole host of changes coming my way this summer. It’s an easy trap of perfectionism (or the thought of it) and comparing my kitchen to another’s to fall into and I would love to be a community where we encourage everyone to eat better without stressing over it.

Our family of four grocery budget hovers around $400. I don’t stick to it as closely as I should, but give or take $25-30, this is where we sit. Once upon a time I was shopping at least 4-5 different stores in a month and have gladly cut that down to just about two: Walmart (I know, gag, but it is the cheapest) and our local food co-op.

Some of the biggest changes I’ve made lately is with dairy. My kitchen overall is probably about 50% organic from produce to dry goods. I try to buy as little processed food as I can sanely manage and we do bake a lot in our house, but dairy was one of my last hangups. It’s just so freakin’ expensive.

I started out with yogurt. We eat a ton of yogurt in our house and I was probably spending $50 per grocery trip on those little yogurt tubs and little containers for my husband’s lunch. No more. I’ve started buying only the 32oz containers of vanilla and we are slowly experimenting with adding other flavors, fruits and granola to it. We have recently discovered Brown Cow yogurt and are completely smitten. It’s awesome.

I’m still working out the milk issue. We’ve put the kids back on whole milk, generally because they aren’t drinking as much as they used to. We ration milk pretty good around here. The hubs and I are on 1% when I can find it. I’ve been buying different brands over the course of the last month and I will say that I have seen a huge improvement in my ability to handle dairy, namely milk. Organic cheese and butter for baking are my last two dairy items to convert. We shall see.

One of the biggest changes that is happening this summer is where I buy my food. This is where the budget is going to hit the fan, as I’m really not sure how to budget for it. Azure Standard is heading my way in a month and I’m super excited. I’ve read nothing but raving reviews about this family owned company and their prices are pretty hard to beat, even with Earthfare and a local food co-op to choose from around here. This is where I just don’t know how to budget. I’m hoping to start buying pretty much all the stuff I was buying from the bulk bins from them, along with some of their frozen meat (their ground turkey supplier and their whole chicken supplier has nothing but awesome reviews online).

We are also getting a Trader Joes (insert gigantic scream of joy) and a Cosco this summer (not to mention a Publix). Talk about too many shopping choices. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all plays out by August.

But biggest change in our lives is going to be our no food dye or food coloring challenge. I’ve been talking it up with the kids for the past few weeks and we’ve been talking about the things we would have to cut out. Why are we doing this? I truly think that my daughter for sure has a sensitivity to it. We aren’t a heavy food dye family to begin with, but she does get her fair share of it at school in the form of Popsicles and other junk (insert gigantic groan). Before I made a radical change in her food diet at school, I wanted to try it out at home during a time with I could control it pretty much 100 percent.

The Kitchen Stewardship blog has a great series on avoiding food dyes called “my food is not a number”. Check it out.

I’m already starting to stockpile a list in my head of the things we have to stop buying and today was totally bummed when I saw that Edy’s 100% fruit pops have yellow and red food dye in them. Urg! More incentive to use all those Pins from Pinterest and make my own fruit pops!

What are you doing in your kitchen to reduce your menu planning/budgeting stress?

Martha of the Month {February}

Posted on 2012/02/29 by daisyeyes

This month’s project (thank goodness for Leap Year!) is from Martha’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric. It is a Girl’s Shirt dress from an upcycled men’s dress shirt.

The first thing I had to do was find a shirt. After moving less than 2 years ago and various runs to Goodwill, the husband had zero dumpy shirts I could use. I probably could have raided my dad’s closet, but opted to hit Habitat. After digging a little I found this purple-ish shirt that met the chick’s approval.

The next thing I had to do was print, cut out and tape the pattern. Whew. This one was a doozy. I think it was more daunting to cut out the pattern than put it all together.

This is a pretty simple project and leaves gobs of options for you. I decided to make my own bias trim, versus hitting up my stash (which was low) or heading to the store (it’s kind of stormy-gloomy here) so I scrounged around in my scrap bins and found this flowery trim. The directions were very easy to follow and probably my only complaint was that the directions for making the little tie on the neck were pretty vague. At least enough for me to say “the heck with it” and left that part off.

I think it turned out pretty well, but I’m thinking it looks (and feels) more like a great summer nightgown than a dress.

Either way, it was a simple and fun 2 hour project.

holidays are comin’

Posted on 2011/12/12 by daisyeyes

We are getting ready to do some celebrating around here (it’s the big five birthday week…more on that later this week) and now that I’m finally caught up on most of my orders I can start sewing my long list of stuff for the kids and family!

First off was finishing up the chick’s Christmas dress. This is the same peasant dress pattern that I’ve been sewing a lot lately. It’s super easy and makes such a cute dress! I’ve not a clue who the fabric is by, but I love it and I hand appliqued the little owl on there the same as this dress.

We are also having fun at school this week with holiday parties. I saw this idea on Pinterest a while back and I knew it would be a hit in the Rooster’s crazy second grade class. The original idea is to use tic-tacs, but tic-tacs are not cheap at all and when you have to buy 20 of them we decided to look around for other options. We thought about doing green mint gum and calling them “grinch sticks” instead. After wandering the aisles of Target with a calculator, the Rooster spied these and I think they were a great find!

I printed out the little .jpg image onto full sheet label paper, cut them out and voila! A funny little treat for their holiday treat bags! Below is the .jpg image that I used and here is the link to the original blog post.

31 days: a give-away winner & brown sugar

Posted on 2011/10/27 by daisyeyes

Day 27: a winner and some brown sugar

Congratulations to my friend Lee S. for being the winner via random.org of my little give-away!

Let’s get in touch to figure out how to get this little goodie to your house asap!

Today’s creative moment comes in the form of sugar…brown sugar that is.
Did you know you can make your own brown sugar?
In the words of my mother “why do you make things so difficult?
To be honest, it was simple and was an easy fix that saved me a trip to the grocery while I was up to my neck in chocolate yesterday.

All you need is 1 cup of sugar per 1 tablespoon of molasses and a good fork. I actually mixed mine up with a mixer for the first little bit, but in the end found it was quicker and easier to just use a fork. If you do this and get little balls that look like an oil spill happened, keep mixing. That’s why the fork worked out better for breaking up all the clumping balls of sugar.

This stuff worked out great and tasted awesome! It’s not something I’ll be doing all the time, but sure is nice to know about in a pinch.

Missed a post in my 31 days of creating series? Click here for a complete list.

31 days: using what you’ve got

Posted on 2011/10/22 by daisyeyes

Day 22: from table to bench

Sometimes I remember something I’ve seen online and it just sits in the recesses of my mind until one day I remember it and act on it. This frustrates the husband (aka the man with the saw) greatly because usually these fits of “creativity” happen when he is in the middle of a project (which is pretty much all the time lately due to the state of our current house). The family budget also tends to dampen these plans too and today I just had to make due.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I found this table at an estate sale a while back, finally painted it and it has served as a coffee table for the past few weeks. The husband dislikes it greatly due to the fact that you can’t comfortably put your feet on it.

Source: None via Jenny on Pinterest

I remember seeing this a while back online and knew it was something that I wanted to do in the future, only we didn’t really have a place to put a bench like that so I wasn’t in any big hurry. Until today I had an epiphany…it would fit perfectly at the back door! I carried it in there and it fit like a glove. Of course, the man was deep in the midst of repairing the siding (that’s a post for another day) and didn’t really have time to cut wood for me and the family budget prevented me from spending money on foam.

NOW!

So, today’s post is really about using what you have and making it work for you. We had this great wool blanket that fit great on top and I found this apple crate and put in under the table for us to drop shoes in.

I’m hoping in the next month or so I can actually transform this into a “real” bench, but until then…I’m gonna use and be content with what I’ve got!

Missed a post in my 31 days of creating? Click here for a complete list.

31 days: the bathroom AFTER

Posted on 2011/10/12 by daisyeyes

Day 12: the bathroom reveal

I cannot tell you how pleased I am with how this bathroom turned out!

This is the first time I’ve painted with semi-gloss and it was a bit tough, not to mention the fact that this brown was sooo dark. But after everything was hung up in there, the imperfections in the sheetrock were easily hidden.

The only thing new in this bathroom is the little blue shelf. Everything else was something that was in there before, so overall this little re-do cost me a quart of paint, plus the shelf. Basically less than $20. I forget how just painting something can change a room so much!

I think my favorite thing in this bathroom is the shelf I found at Habitat ReStore. This little guy cost me $4.50, plus $3.50 for paint and a little bit of time. I lucked out and found exactly the color of paint that I was wanting too!

Here is the before: