Halloween Chandelier

        Usually at this time of year I paint a painting as a birthday gift for my friend. However, I didn't have the time to paint anything gift worthy so I decided I would craft instead! I got the inspiration for this from a project I saw here on Dollar Store Crafts that involved making a chandelier out of plastic beads and a wire bowl frame thing. However, being that it is almost winter, I couldn't find the wire bowl thing that is normally used for some sort of floral arrangement. So, I used my creative mind and did the project completely my own way. Here are the materials I used...

         All of this stuff came from the Dollar Tree (besides the spray paint which can be found at ACO or Home Depot). I also used two or three 6 packs of the beads, detatched them, and hung them on a hanger like so...

         Next, I went out to the ol garage and hung up the hanger, the skeletons, and the rope to be painted.

         I just spray painted those and waited for them to dry. Once dry I got out the glue gun and got to work. I first glued the beads to the mesh basket. Sorry for not taking photos of the process but I was totally in the zone. There was a thick wire handle on the mesh basket that I bent into a circle and attached the beads to on the top. This proved to be very difficult, getting the beads to all hang evenly from the wire circle to the basket. It was pretty crooked at first and took a lot of taking apart and putting back together. If you have an easier way to do this, please feel free to post it!

 Next I cut the cheese cloth stuff into strips, bunched them, tied them to the top, and then glued them where they touched the basket. Also I decided to tie them together at the bottom instead of having them just hang but it looks cool either way. Lastly I added the glow-in-the-dark spiders and the skeletons here and there, making it look all fancy.

          My husband said it looked too cone-like so as an after thought I tied a piece of a bead strand around it to give it more shape.

Here is a complete list of the stuff you'll need for this project.

-Mesh Basket
-A piece of thick wire or a piece of a wire hanger shaped into a small, 2-3in. circle.
-Pliers (if you aren't strong enough to bend the wire with your hands)
- Glue Gun
- Spray paint
- approx 12 Mardi Gras beads
- 4 plastic skeletons
- 12 Glow-in-the-dark spiders
- 1 package of Black cheese cloth
- Clothes line rope

That's everything! You can really get creative with this adding almost any kind of Halloween goodies you can find and spray painting them to match. I saw some fake crows at the dollar store that I wish I got so I could have added one to the center of the basket but ahh well. Also, I wanted to add some sort of lights to it but didn't have the time. If you do make this project please take pictures and show me your version, I'd love to see different takes on it!!

            Look at Donovan creeping in the background hehe.

No-Sew Bustle, Turn Long Skirts/dresses into Short ones!

        Awhile ago my friend Gio showed me a really easy way to add a little flair to plain boring long skirts. All it takes is some safety pins and about 5-10 minutes!
        I have this cute purple dress that I never wear because something about it just didn't look right to me. It didn't fall right around the hip area and was pretty unflattering.

        It is really helpful if you have a dress figure to put it on first or at least someone helping you so that you can get the gathered parts even.
        First, go down to the side seam of the dress about 12 inches or so from the bottom.

       Pinch the fabric at each side of the seam at about an inch or so away from the seam. Bring the two parts you are pinching together to the middle and keep that fabric pinched with one hand. Use your free hand to do the same thing on the other side. It should look something like this on both sides...

        Now, bring the pinched sides up to where you want the bustle to end. I brought it up to where my the top and skirt of my dress meet. If you are doing this to a skirt you can bring it all the way up to the top or wherever you think looks best.

       Use a safety pin to pin each side where you want it to end. You can re-pin the safety pins on the inside later so that they don't show but for now do it on the outside so you can make any needed adjustments easily. Once you pin the sides you will have to do some messing around and tucking to the front and back so that it has a nice even fold to it.

        At first the fabric will fall weird at the place where my hand is. Just tuck any extra fabric in the big pocket that was created in the middle. Like I mentioned before, just play around with the way it falls until it looks good. You can also try re-pinning it at different places to get different looks. This technique works best with loose fabrics and fuller skirts. It is an awesome and easy way to turn a long dress or skirt into a short one.

        Once it looks the way you like it and the fabric is falling nicely, you can re-pin your safety pins on the inside. You can do a really quick stitch if you want your dress or skirt to be this way permanently but I prefer the safety pins since I can just take them out if I decide I want it to be long again or if I want to do a different type of bustle.

        I love doing this to my long skirts and dresses, you can change pretty much any of the steps to make a whole new look. You can gather the fabric at a lower point in the dress, gather it closer or further apart, do more or less bustles (if you want to do a bunch make sure the skirt is really full), or have them meet at different places on the dress. It's all about experimenting and seeing what looks good with the fabric.

Zucchini & Cherry Tomato Pasta

        This is a dish I've seen around before however it was always served cold as a pasta salad type thing. Since I am not a fan of cold pasta and I had zucchini and tomatoes that needed eaten, I decided to make my own hot version of this dish.

        I started by getting out my wok (which I use to make just about everything) and throwing in about 4 table spoons of olive oil and 5 cloves of crushed garlic. Next, I cut up some onion and put that in with the spices Mural of Flavor, black pepper, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning. I don't have exact amounts for the spices because I just keep adding them every time I add more vegetables until I get the right amount of flavor.
        After the onions started to loose opacity I added 3 small zucchini chopped. While the zucchini is cooking add about a half cup of Parmesan cheese (give or take some depending on how much you like Parmesan). After adding the cheese put a cover on the pan and start cooking your noodles. Once the zucchini gets you can cut your cherry tomatoes in half and thrown them in for a couple minutes to get warm.  

        Once your noodles are cooked, strain them and throw them in with the veggies. You can add another half cup of Parmesan at this point and stir it all up. This makes a large amount of food so if you aren't feeding a lot of people definitely save the left overs! Since this dish is typically served cold you don't even have to heat up the left overs if you don't want to, my husband says it still tastes good either way.


Zucchini & Cherry Tomato Pasta
4 table spoons of olive oil
5 cloves of garlic
1 table spoon of Italian spices or spices of your choice
1 cup of Parmesan cheese
1 box of noodles (any kind you prefer but I usually use penne or rotini)
2 onions chopped
3 small zucchini sliced
1 entire container of fresh cherry tomatoes halved
Garlic powder (optional)
Mural of Flavor spices (optional)

Painting the Swingset

      When we first told Apollo we were moving he was not very happy about the idea at all. He thought that we would be leaving all of our stuff behind and getting new stuff in the new house. For a 3 year old the thought that you'll never see any of your toys again is pretty traumatizing. Luckily, I explained to him that all of our stuff would be coming with us and he warmed up to the idea of moving a little more. What really won him over though is when he saw that the new house came with it's very own playground!

 

Well okay, not so much a playground and more like a dirty old tetanus trap of death.

      Even though this thing was in horrible condition I knew that Apollo would throw a crazy fit if we got rid of it. So then I reluctantly accepted the responsibility of cleaning and painting the swing set. I started with a Brillo pad and bucket of hot water and got to scrubbing. It got the dirt off pretty well and a little bit of the rust but just wasn't doing the job (plus it was taking FOREVER). 

      So, I hit up the store for some CLR. I guess they make a CLR formulated for outdoor use that doesn't kill the grass but I couldn't find it. I started scrubbing with the CLR/water mixture until the dirt, and as much rust as I could bear to scrub, came off. It even took some of the paint off which worked out well for what I was trying to do. I would HIGHLY SUGGEST wearing some rubber gloves for this because that stuff starts to burn the hands after awhile. 

      Then, I took the hose to the whole thing with a power washer tip on it and rinsed the CLR off. I waited a few days before I got the paint but you could start painting once the swing set is dry.

 

      I used this Rustoleum spray paint that is good for multi-surfaces and outdoors. What I also liked is that it is really thick and one coat is equal to two coats of regular spray paint. As you can tell from my hands it is probably a good idea to wear gloves. As you can't tell in this photo, you should also wear long sleeves, some kind of glasses, a painters mask, and anything that will protect your skin. Spray paint is not easy to get off and I had to live with blue specs all over my face, arms, and feet for a few days.

    Here it is about half way done. At this point I decided that just one shade of blue looked boring so I went back and got another, slightly darker, shade. I used masking tape to tape off certain parts I wanted to leave the lighter blue. I also used a sheet of paper to protect the spray from hitting some parts I didn't want to spray with one or the other color. If I had to do it again I'd use a piece of thin cardboard instead of paper because the paper was too floppy. 

     And the final result! Okay nothing too dramatic or exciting but I was able to get rid of and/or cover up most of the rust. I was kind of disappointed with the colors, the blues were really really close in shade when it all dried so I didn't get the contrast I wanted.
    A really important thing you should check before you go through the effort to paint an old swingset is that the rust is only on the surface. If the rust has ate through any part then either replace the part or get rid of the set completely. 

      Apollo is too small to reach the monkey bars right now but I plan on removing these and replacing them before he is. Rusted through play equipment can be VERY dangerous, just because it is painted doesn't mean it isn't there! So please please please replace any parts that are rusted through like this. 

     I also want to replace the chains on the swings and the actual swings themselves since they are pretty rusted as well. I will keep this page updated with more photos when that happens!

   

Chevron/Bright Nails

    I was at Sally's a few days ago getting some hair stuff (just put a sweet white streak in the ol' bangs) and I let the clerk talk me into buying a neon purplish nail polish for 94 cents. If you know me at all then you know neon really isn't my thing. Aside from the bright blues and purple I now have in my hair I don't stray outside of the earth tone color range in my style. However, I liked the color and came up with a design that toned it down a bit. Here are the three polishes I used...

   A black nail polish with a long thin brush for making lines and designs, a clear top coat, and of course, my little neon purply/pink color.

   I began by french tipping my nails with the neon color (very sloppily). You can stick those little round stickers that are used to reinforce holes punched in paper to your nails as a stencil to get a more perfect french tip but I just free-handed it.

    Don't worry about getting it all over your fingers because you can fix that later when you're finished. Next I grabbed my black dollar store Art Deco polish to do the lines. If you want you can use any ol' black nail polish and just use a thin paint brush to do the lines. The Art Deco stuff gets really thick and dries fast which isn't always preferable for doing tiny straight lines.
    Start your black line at the bottom middle of your nail and then go out on an angle to the end of the pink. Do the same thing with the other line only going out to the other end of the pink forming a V. It should look a little something like this once you're done.

  

   Once you get your V's on both hands, go back and using the same technique make smaller V's on the inside of the larger ones. You can keep going if you want but I stopped at 2 V's on each finger.

     Add your top clear coat (you may want to do 2 or 3 clear coats to prevent chipping) and then use a q-tip and nail polish remover to clean up where you got the polish on your fingers. I usually just skip that last step and rub/scratch the access polish off once it's completely dry. It isn't the most intricate or complicated design but it looks really great in person and helped tone down that neon color.

    You can of course us any colors you want and you may also want to do a base coat as well. Anyhow, I hope you like it!

Crazy Easy 3-Ingredient Strawberry Nutella Popcicles

    In case no one has noticed, this summer has been RIDICULOUSLY hot. Usually I enjoy the heat and gladly frolic around outside in the sun while most others are panting and sweating profusely in the shade. However, this summer has turned my energetic frolicking into barely crawling to the nearest place with a/c. So, in order to make an attempt at both cooling down and avoiding anything majorly unhealthy I tried my hand at making some low-effort, healthy, and tasty popsicles.

   First of all, it helps a lot to have a nice little popsicle mold. You could always do the classic popsicle sticks in the ice cube tray thing but who really is satisfied by an ice-cube sized popsicle? Not I! So I picked this cute lil thang up from the Dollar Tree and it was a dollar (plus tax) well spent.

     Okay now comes the fun part, the actual making of popsicles. No wait, I take that back, eating them is the fun part. This is the slightly annoying making process that involves actual effort and waiting a million years for the damn things to freeze. It helps a whole lot to have a blender, I'm sure there is a clever creative way to make them without one but since I have one I'm going to bypass the effort of Googling that info.
      So, take your blender out and in it throw about 1 3/4 to 2 cups of milk(depending on the size of your mold) in there. I use almond milk because it tastes better and is better for you! Plus, if you want to add booze to the mix it won't upset your stomach which is always a major bonus. Next you can cut up your strawberries and add them. Depending on how strong you want the strawberry flavor to be use 4-10 medium sized strawberries. I think I used 6 last time I made them and that seemed to be pretty good level of yumminess. Blend it depending on your desired level of strawberry chunkiness (I did it until it was completely smooth.)

   If you want to by-pass the Nutella because you want a low sugar popcicle or you have a nut allergy you can fill up your molds now and pop them in the fridge. If you want to bypass the Nutella because you don't like Nutella LEAVE THIS PAGE NOW, YOU ARE NOT HUMAN! Sorry, sorry, you can just add a little sugar instead of Nutella if you truly wish, no judgement here. I however, thought that the Nutella was a perfect substitute for sugar and so what I did was I spread a little bit on the insides of each empty mold.

    Okay so it isn't the most beautiful or clean looking thing in the world but trust me, it doesn't really matter how it looks at this point. Now you can go ahead and liberate the strawberry/milk mixture from the blender and pour it into the molds. (Or just forget the whole thing and eat mass quantities of Nutella straight from the jar.) Then you just add the sticks and freeze over night! 

    So that's it folks, 3 ingredients and you have yourself a super simple, easy, and delicious treat! To get the popsicles out of the mold just run hot water over the outside of it and when they look loose just twist and pull! 

  "It needs more muhtella." - Apollo

3-Ingredient Strawberry Nutella Popsicles

- 1 3/4 to 2 cups (adjust depending on mold size) of milk or almond milk(recommended)

- 4-10 medium sized strawberries (again depending on mold size and/or strawberry preference)

- Nutella (add as much or little as you like)

Add milk and cut strawberries to blender, blend until smooth. Spread Nutella on the inside of empty molds. Pour in strawberry/milk mixture and freeze for a few hours or overnight. Run outside of molds under hot water and twist/pull to get popsicles out. Eat one, realize it's pretty healthy and low-calories and then eat the rest.

So many projects so little...energy.

     Buying a home is probably one of the best changes in the lives of my family. We majorly upgraded from living in a tiny dark condo (where our storage was non existent as well as our privacy) to an awesome house of our very own. It has a huge yard, two car garage, awesome kitchen, and a finished basement! I can tell my husband (Donovan) and son (Apollo) are just as happy as I am in the new home.
     Aside from all the greatness, there is however SO MANY PROJECTS! Just thinking about all the things I should be doing may cause me to spontaneously combust. It also doesn't help in the least bit that this summer has been ridiculously hot which makes working on anything in my air-conditionless house fall somewhere between "undesirable" and "aw hell no!"
     Anyhow, I need to pull my eyes away from the N64, crawl out of the dark basement and actually accomplish something, anything really. One goal is to prove I am capable of doing more than beating Duke Nukem on "Damn I'm Good". So alas, here I am starting a blog as a vessel for showing everyone that (eventually) I do actually get around to doing productive things.