Ring Box Photo Frames

I am going to be occasionally re-posting a few of my older posts (2+ years back) that most of you haven't seen, starting with this fun recycling project!  I hope you enjoy it!

 I have a couple of  shoe boxes full of those little boxes that rings, watches, and assorted jewelery come in- both the fancier hinged kind, and the cardboard ones.  Being the recovering pack rat that I am, I still have to look the other way when I am decluttering in my craft room, because they are just so dang cute that I cannot get rid of them!  And anyway, I might be able to turn them into something fantastic, right?

Well, after 12+ years of collecting these little boxes that I might use "someday", I am finally figuring out how to give them new life!  I hope to share many different ideas; here is my first.

I kept the boxes my engagement ring and wedding band came in, thinking they were just too pretty to throw away.  I wanted to do something sentimental with them, and display them somehow without looking junky.  They reminded me a little of photo frames, and that seemed like a feasible option.

 

I had to rip out the padding so that photos could lay flat over each square opening.  I thought about also ripping out the other piece that covers the hinge, but decided to leave it in.

  

I used E6000 glue to stick the two boxes together, and the drying time was pretty short.  I recommend using some sort of clamp to hold the boxes exactly where you want them.

I measured the squares and chose 4 portrait- oriented photos and re-sized them to fit the openings, which for this project was 1.5 x 1.75 inches.  For sentimentality, I had to choose one photo from the day we were engaged, where my husband was actually holding the ring box- it seemed only fitting.  The rest are from right after we were married, and from our reception.

I glued each photo over the square opening, and let it dry.  I kind of wish now that I hadn't left the white strip that covers the hinges, but not enough to rip the whole thing apart and start over.

For now, my little frame will live on top of my computer desk.

This idea works well if you have 2 identical ring boxes, but you could still use just one with cute results!  I am going to tweak the idea a little more with some of my other gazillion boxes and see what I can come up with.  I would love to see pictures if anyone else tries this (or some other way of recycling a ring box)!

A Peek into the Master Bedroom

About 2 1/2 years ago I started  dreaming, planning, and saving money for my "dream bedroom".  I was bored with my room and it felt really cluttered, so I didn't like being in there (I am a recovering packrat).  I made a goal to make my bedroom into a haven, a place of peace and beauty.  I still have a few details I would like to add, but it is almost there, so I am going to show you the progress!

The first year I updated linens- my bedspread, pillows, the whole nine yards.  The set I got came with sheer curtain panels and several small valences that didn't fit my window, so I cut one up and lengthened another, sewing the sheers to the bottom of the valance to make them longer.  With the scraps, I made the fabric- covered- Styrofoam wall hangings you see above the bed.  Then, when I made my faux- metal wall art for my front room, I made a couple small ones with the extra materials to hang on either side of the styrofoam wall hangings.

Later, I spray painted the red vase black (you can't really see it in the first picture, but it was on my dresser) along with a few other things.  My room was starting to feel more cohesive, but I knew I wasn't done yet.

What I really wanted was grown-up furniture.  A few months ago, the timing was right- some savings, a tax return and a steal of a deal on a discontinued bedroom set at a local furniture store, and I had the furniture of my dreams!

The drawers in the bed frame are one of the things that "sold" me.

Only one problem... the new bed was king size.  Why was that a problem, you ask?  I was still totally in love with my bedding, and it was discontinued, which meant that it would be impossible to get the king size version, plus I didn't really want to pay for it again.  So, I just decided to make it work.  I turned the comforter sideways and folded the top down and called it good.  If you look closely, you can see that the edges on the side are not quite long enough, but it's good enough for me.  Plus now I can just keep the same curtains and everything.



As far as accessorizing, I mostly just used what I had already, with a few minor changes, like putting the frame on an easel that I had been using for a different picture, and connecting my faux- metal wall art.

I did buy one accessory, and that was the big wedding photo- I ordered a high quality print (we are lucky in that we have the digital copies of all our wedding photos) and bought a $20 frame at IKEA to hang it in, and I think it turned out great.

I really love this picture and I felt like it fit in well in my room, so I brought in it from the office.  It has hanging on it the pearly beaded headpiece (made with love by my mom) which I wore in my hair with my veil.  I'm sentimental like that. :-)

I did keep one of the styrofoam wall hangings; I hung it up by my door, but you may have noticed that the wall space on either side of the bed is now empty.  That is the part that is yet to be finished, and I am still debating what to do (any suggestions?).

Anyway, every time I walk in my room now it finally feels like a beautiful, peaceful haven, and so from my perspective it was totally worth all the effort.  It might even be my favorite room in the house now.  All the other rooms are getting a little jealous, but we'll just take it one bedroom at a time, as the budget allows. 

Do you have a favorite room in the house?  Why is it your favorite?

Stripey Shirt Refashion

Here's another spring shirt refashion- from a shirt I wore once or twice circa 2004, and found recently in the camping supplies bin (?!).

Above is the original shirt: nothing special... thin stretchy knit material, semi-mismatched stripes (nothing I can do there), way too long sleeves, torso too short.

First step: Cutting!  I cut the sleeves shorter (in retrospect, I wish I'd made them cap sleeves- maybe if I get super motivated I 'll do that eventually).  The white binding around the neckline got chopped too.

I just happened to have some maroon-ish knit fabric lying around which worked perfectly for me to bind the neckline and sleeves, and create a gathered button- flower (man, I love those).

At this point, I figured I was done, but when I tried it on, I really felt like it was too short to be at all flattering.  So, after stewing a bit, I grabbed the sleeves I had just cut off, evened them out so there was no taper, and I sewed them to the bottom of the shirt (after first sewing their ends together to make a circular band).

Kind of funky, but I think I like it.

All this took maybe an hour max.  My point is that with most refashions, there is really nothing to lose!  I wasn't wearing this shirt and would probably have thrown it out, and everything I used to embellish it was free- just scraps of this and that.  It only cost me an hour of my time, and that's not bad-  you can do it!

I'm back...

Well, as much as I try not to be MIA here, sometimes having out- of- town- family spend a fun- filled week at your home and then coming down with the stomach flu will do that to ya.  But I'm back, doing my best to respond to emails and comments, and I've got a quick refashion to share... really in just moments.  So thanks for hanging in there, and stay tuned!

 

Play outfit refashion from men's clothing

Actually, I'm going to give you two for the price of one!  That is, I will share two separate play outfit refashions from the same two shirts.  One a sweater of my husband's, and the other a polo shirt of my brother in law's.

This was one of my first refashions I attempted, and it really got me started on the idea that I could totally transform clothing and give it new life. This sweater was one my husband wore for many years, and being sentimentally attached to it, he had a hard time with me telling him that it really wasn't the right size for him.  He didn't want to get rid of it and think of some stranger wearing this shirt he still loved!  He suggested that he might be ok with parting with it if it "stayed in the family".  I took that as permission at immediately started sweater surgery, knowing that it could make an adorable play outfit for my son.

I used another pair of pants that fit my then-nine-month-old baby as a pattern, and got to work.

I am fearless when it comes to cutting right into fabric with a nice, sharp pair of scissors.  I love that feeling!   (Although I do remember how terrifying it was when I was first learning to sew, convinced that I was ruining a lovely piece of fabric.)

I really only intended to make the pants; as I said this was one of the first refashions I ever tried, and I was tickled to have made pants that turned out decently well out of a sweater.  However, the portion of the sweater that was left over continued to nag at me until I decided that I had plenty of fabric to make a matching sweater, and that it was just scraps anyway, so if I botched it, it was no big deal.  So I went ahead and performed another life-saving procedure on the sweater (sorry for all the medical puns; I am a nurse after all!) and this adorable sweater was born!

The sweater wasn't perfect; I sewed one cuff onto the sleeve turned inside- out, and decided not to fix it.  (In addition to being a fearless cutter, I also have the superpower of turning my perfectionism on and off; this time I turned it off and was very happy to do so.)

As I had predicted, my sweet boy was absolutely precious in the outfit.  It was soft, comfortable, and durable!  After my son grew out of it, it was still in good enough shape for my next son to wear it, and he was just as cute in it!

Let's fast-forward about three years to this past March, when I was going through all my fabric, scraps and all.  I found the remains of my husband's sweater (really all that was left were the sleeves) and I remembered what great pants the sweater had made, and I decided to make another pair that would fit my now-nearly-four-year-old son.  There was just enough fabric to do so, and it was so easy because there was no hemming involved!  I just kept the original sleeve cuffs as the pant cuffs, and the whole thing took about 20 minutes at most.

Because I didn't have any more sweater fabric to make a top for my son, I pulled out an old polo shirt I swiped from Marissa's donate pile (I'm a scavenger, what can I say?) and determined to make a shirt that would be just as soft and cuddly as the pants.

I actually used an old pattern for this shirt (one from a large set my mom gave me that she used to sew for us from when I was a little girl), but I have also made raglan shirts for my boys using their old pajama shirts as patterns. 

I did my best to match up the stripes, but again, it wasn't perfect, and I'm ok with that.  After all, my son is ok with it too!

Do you ever sentimentally hold on to items of clothing hoping to give them new life in one way or another?

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter filled with gratitude, church, family time, and cooking and baking together.  We didn't do the Easter bunny thing, although we did have an egg hunt after dinner.  We took our kids to church, read the Easter story, watched a movie about Christ's life, and had a nice dinner.  The basket below has numbered  plastic eggs which contain strips of paper with scriptures and a symbolic object inside.  This is how we read the Easter story with our boys this year, and it went decently well considering their ages.  We actually ran out of time to dye eggs, but the kids were young enough and excited enough about everything else that was happening that they didn't even notice.

This year instead of buying whole new outfits for the boys for Easter, I let them wear clothes they already had and some new ties I made them the Friday before.  In my fabric stash I found quite a bit of leftover fabric from the blue satin dress I made for my senior prom, so my boys got ties made out of that!  Haha.

Click the photo or the link below to see the tutorial at Sharing the Wealth.

I hadn't made mini- ties before, but I came across the Little Boy Tie Pattern at Sharing the Wealth, and let me tell you, it was a breeze compared to the adult tie patterns I have used.  No cutting on the bias, no piecing together, no interfacing, no hand sewing.  Yay!  I really only had about an hour to spend on it, and I was able to finish both ties in that amount of time.  Then of course I put something off to make three more ties, but that's another story.

I'm so glad that we took some pictures of the boys before church because after church I immediately started making rolls (the same delicious crescent rolls I make for Thanksgiving), and before long Marissa and her husband arrived and we were busy making honey glazed ham, garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, orange strawberry jello, and deviled eggs.  I get full just thinking about it. :-D  Anyway, there was no time to take pictures until after dinner, and let's just say that at that point their outfits didn't look quite the same as they did in the morning.   

All in all we couldn't have asked for a better day!  I hope you all had a good Easter/ weekend!

Tender Mercies

This post is a little different than my usual subject matter, but I am full of gratitude and I feel I need to write this story and share it with all of you.

In my last post I mentioned that we went to Eastern Washington for my brother's wedding, and that it was a crazy trip... well, it really was crazy.  We were going to go visit my husband's grandparents first, and we were excited to finally see them in their new home.   We made the 13 hour drive with two somewhat unhappy children in the back.  But that's not the crazy part.  I meant to say that it should have been a 13 hour trip.  But, things rarely go as they should, right? 

We are a nutty family.  :D

We left our home at about 3pm (kind of late to be starting a road trip, I know, but we were only going to go halfway that night) and got as far as Boise, Idaho.  It was already almost 9pm but we were still planning on driving a couple more hours- the kids were asleep and things were finally peaceful (we love doing our driving at night for that reason).  We only stopped for gas, but as we were finishing up at the pump, we noticed that our car was overheating.  Really, just overheating as we sat there- the needle was almost at the highest level.  We ended up buying some coolant and filling up the reservoir, but that didn't help.  We decided we had better have our car looked at, but nothing was open at that hour.  We knew we would have to stop for the night.  We were so bummed.  We got a hotel, and tried to get a good night's sleep.  Bright and early the next morning, my husband took the car into a nearby dealership to have it fixed.  I was stuck in a hotel room with two small children, and no toys or clean clothes or shoes for them!  I put on a show for the kids to watch, but they weren't very interested.  Despite my best efforts, the boys spent the morning teasing each other and wreaking havoc (my youngest actually broke a beside lamp- oops).  When my husband finally came back, it was with bad news, and without the car (the radiator and a fan needed replacing- a repair running upwards of a thousand dollars).  The dealership did not have the parts we needed, and had to overnight them in from somewhere else.  Worst case scenario, we would be stuck in Boise until the following day at 5pm.  We decided to try to rent a car and just eat the extra expense so we could have that potentially irreplaceable time with my husband's grandparents.  We called every car rental agency in Boise, and the two nearby cities.  Every single one.  Who knew it was spring break there?  We don't have kids in school and it took us forever to figure out why there were no rental cars available anywhere.   I felt like crying (maybe I did, just a little).  Would this mean that we wouldn't have time to visit our grandparents (and who knows when/ if we would ever be able to visit them at their home again) on this trip?



So far this story just sounds like one big sob story, full of complaints and angst, right?  That's how I felt about it at this point, but let me fill in a few details I haven't mentioned yet, and you will see how God's hand was in all of this- yes, I really believe that we were blessed with countless "tender mercies" in this instance.  For example:

• We were planning on driving over the blue mountains that night.  Imagine overheating at that time!  What a horrible and unsafe place to break down that would have been.  I had no cell phone reception in that area. Boise was really the last "big" city that would likely have been able to meet our needs so quickly.

• The gas station we broke down at shared a parking lot with a truck stop/ travel station, and a Shilo Inn.  We were able to head over to the hotel just a few paces away from our car.

• My husband told the woman at the counter about our problem, and she upgraded our room to a suite.  For free.  I didn't love being stuck in the hotel with my boys, but imagine if it had been half the size!  >shudder<

• Also, the hotel offered a continental breakfast.  I know lots of hotels do, but some don't, and I'm really glad that the one we ended up with had food, because we were starving in the morning!

• My dad suggested we check the antifreeze/ coolant level and when we checked it, it was really low, almost gone, so filling it up may have prevented worse damage.

• We could have left home later in the week.  By leaving when we did, we arrived in Washington later than we wanted, but still in plenty of time for the wedding.  If we had left a couple days later, we probably would have missed it.

• The dealership (Bronco Motors) really went the extra mile for us.  They shuttled my husband around, and then brought us a loaner car to use until ours was repaired.  We were really anxious, and kept calling to see how things were coming, and they were really nice and promised to call us when the parts arrived and when they had an idea of when the car would be fixed.  They even had a rental car they were working on which was almost done and said they'd try to persuade the rental agency to give it to us!  Haha.  Glad we didn't have to do that.

• I called my parents to let them know our situation, and they made a few calls to family- I discovered I had family in that very city!  I didn't know it before, but my cousin lived there with his wife and kids, not far from where we had been staying.  I hadn't seen that cousin in years, and we had the opportunity to reconnect.  They even graciously let us stay with them in their home.  Our kids were thrilled to be able to run around and play with their kids (and nobody broke any more lamps).  This was a huge relief and blessing to us.

• My uncle and aunt who lived in a nearby city called to offer us their car to drive the rest of the way in case ours couldn't be fixed that day.  We didn't end up needing to use it, but their sincerity and love for us really touched me. 

• I know there were probably so many other ways we were watched over... it seemed like every time a door closed a window opened to us.

Long story short(er), the car was repaired a whole two hours before 5pm that following day, and we were on our way.  We weren't able to have a long visit with our grandparents that day, but the following morning we drove out to see them.  My family was very supportive of us making that a priority despite all the wedding preparations going on.  The wedding was wonderful, and happily, we had no car troubles on the way home.  In fact, the kids were much happier (despite one bout of carsickness) on the way home.  I don't know the reason (if there was any) that we had to break down, but I am grateful for the witness that God is in the little things as well as the big things, that he cares about the details of our lives, and I know that with His help, we can find happiness even in difficult circumstances.

Psalms 145:9 The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

A Wedding in the Family!

I just got back in town late last night after spending the week in Eastern Washington with my family and all our wedding preparations and festivities.  It was a crazy trip (but well worth it of course) but I will have to tell that story later.  My little brother Tayler got married on Friday morning to the lovely Heather!  The wedding was lovely, both the ceremony and the decor.  Man, we have got a talented family!  Heather's family put together a beautiful reception in the church.

Check out what Heather and her mom (and other family members) came up with:

Lovely draped sheers in front of hanging lights; pillars and greenery.

Hanging paper lanterns.

Coordinating chair covers and linens.

Photobook as guestbook.

Lovely refreshment table.

One of the entryways.

Gift area.

I was really impressed with the decorating!  Not to mention that the take down afterward was the fastest and most efficient I have ever seen.  Note to self- having a clean up crew with specific assignments (not just the exhausted family cleaning up) is a great idea!

My littlest munchkin and me.

For the wedding luncheon earlier in the day, my mom covered tables with tablecloths and then butcher paper.  She put out black tiles with flowers, candles, and bags of crayons for people to write messages to Tayler and Heather on the paper.  I was asked to make the word cutouts for each table with their wedding date, their names, and other lovey- dovey phrases. :)

My mom and sisters pulled off some pretty amazing creations as well.  For example, the cake. 

Would you like to see that a little closer?  I thought so!

Live flowers for the cake topper.

Marissa was the mastermind behind the cake (of course).  She spent hours pre- making the roses out of gum paste and royal icing.  I helped with that too, but really I was just following orders- aren't they all lovely?!

Strawberry frosting- flavored with real, chopped and strained strawberries.

Double chocolate cupcakes in doily wrappers.

Delicious cream cheese frosting.

The cupcakes, their creator, and the "helpers".

If you know my mom, you know she is a seriously talented lady in so many areas, and one of her many talents is flower arranging.  She did all the flowers for this wedding, and they all turned out beautifully!

The Bride's bouquet.

As you can tell from earlier pictures, the bride's colors were vibrant pink and blue.  I love how the flowers incorporate those colors and round it out with a variety of shades.

The mothers' wrist corsages.

Boutonnieres for the men.

Bouquets for the bridesmaids.

The last "craft" of the night was decorating the happy couple's car.  They did a pretty thorough job with window paint, cans tied to the back, balloons, a bag of Hershey's Kisses, and various other junk tied on the car.

The sendoff.

Everyone had bubble wands (or in my husband's case, a bubble gun) to send them off, and the kids were in heaven.

I just love weddings!