Homestead Organization

  An organizing tool that I have been pulling out more again lately (after a quiet spell through the winter) is my homesteading notebook.

  This is where I keep track of things like my bees (when I check them, how they are doing, what sort of harvest I get, etc. ), the garden, fruit trees and other stuff like that. Soon I will need to add a section for chickens!

 I wrote more on how I use this tool in this post.

  Do you use notebooks to stay organized?
 

Be a little Spontaneous!

Ken and I tend to stay up a bit late on the weekends. Anyway, the other day it was rather late (around midnight) and I had just gotten in bed and Ken was following me but went to make sure that all the doors were locked first. Then I heard him go outside for a bit and come back in. That made me a little curious. So when he got to our room I questioned him on what he had been doing and he proceeded to tell me how beautiful it was outside. It wasn't fully dark and there was this really neat mist.....

  I said "Oh it would be fun to take a walk in that" (though not really thinking about getting out of my warm and cozy bed to do that) and Ken responded, "Yes it would, be you're already in bed." I could tell he really did think that would be fun to do. He started towards getting ready for bed when I decided to be a little spontaneous and so I said "I can get up, let's go!"

  So we went on a walk. We didn't go that far (we had sleeping children in the house) but it was fun to go out and enjoy the beauty together. It was fun to do something that was rather unusual for us, fun to be a little spontaneous and make a memory.

  It can be very easy to just follow the same routines over and over (and I do love routines!) but sometimes it is good to shake things up just a bit. Do something a little different.

  Do you like to be spontaneous once and a while?

16 ways to turn old t-shirts into "New" clothes

A skirt, scarf and leggings

Undershirts.

A little girl's slip.

 

A Onesie Dress

 

A dress

 

Underwear

A skirt

 

 

Fixing up a t-shirt

 

 

A high-waisted dress

 

 

Leggings from a long sleeved t-shirt/turtleneck

 

Raglan Sleeve shirt with reverse applique

 

 

 

Cover an top hat! (smile - I am sure everyone needs one!)

A nightgown

 

 

A colorful skirt

 

 

Tie-dye them

 

Make scarves

 

I have also pinned on Pinterest many other fun ideas for using old t-shirts. You can see them on my neat repurposing ideas board.

 

Update.... 

I had taken this picture of my niece wearing a vest that she had made from an old t-shirt specifically because I had a post like this in mind - then I forgot at first to include it. Here is yet another idea of what you can do with an old t-shirt.

 

I am also linking to Clever Chicks Blog Hop

 

Nothing can succeed against the Lord!

 

"There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD." Proverbs 21:30

  We have been reading Proverbs lately and this verse really jumped out at me when we read it. We have been reading books about World War 2, we are aware that many of those in high positions in our world currently tend to make plans that lead to evil, those things are sad and can be discouraging but I love the comfort that is found in this verse. God is the one who is in control, He is mighty and powerful. He does allow bad things to happen but He is still over all and He knows about every thought and plan that goes on. If He needs to He can stop them at any time. We can be completely at rest in Him!

Decorating for a party without spending any money

 Last week my sister-in-law graduated from the university and we had a party for her. My younger sister and I were in charge of decorating. I think decorating is fun and I especially love the challenge of decorating while using what I already have on hand.

 My sister-in-law, Molly Bea, loves colorfulness more than any other person I know so we decided that a rainbow decorating theme would be in order.

   We even tried to make our food colorful - we had lemon bars, orange pumpkin bars, granola bars with blue sprinkles, brownies with red raspberry topping and a cake with a rainbow sing on top.

 We also had sandwiches on orange buns (made with squash), red ham, green sprouts, yellow potato salad, a colorful pasta salad, red punch and more. It was rather fun trying to think of all the ways we could make the meal colorful.

 I have seen various buntings made from fabric strips just tied onto a string. I decided to look through my t-shirt box (or t-shirts ready to be turned into something else) and see if I had rainbow colors. I did. Yeah!  I cut a long strip out of a knit shirt and then a bunch of strips around 10 inches long from the rainbow colored fabric. Then we tied them on according the colors sequence on a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, violet). We did two strips of each shade and then we repeated the sequence over and over.

 I thought it ended up looking pretty cool and it made it seem very much like a party.

 Molly Bea also loves pin wheels and so we decided to use pinwheels for the table decorations. We made them out of construction paper and/or old wallpaper scraps (from those sample books). We put beads that were threaded on florists wire through the center and then attached them to some sticks that were in our craft cupboard (I don't know their original use).

 Keren made a really big one that ended up rather floppy so it got tacked onto the wall.

 Also on the tables I had cut out circles of various sizes from construction paper and other colored papers that I was able to reuse from another project and placed them onto the table.

  We enjoyed our simply, inexpensive and fun decorations. Keren had thought about getting balloons and flowers too but we decided it really wasn't necessary.

  Do you have any fun party decorating ideas that are inexpensive? I would love to hear!

Next week we will be decorating inexpensively for some friends' wedding. I will try to blog about that too.

A Jumper turned into a skirt

 This month has been a little busier than I anticipated and I haven't managed to blog about as many clothing remakes as I had hoped but here is one today and I hope to post about more soon. :-)

 I had a jumper that my sister had made for me when Mara was a baby. That was 13 years ago. Yes, I do keep clothes around for quite a while!
  The jumper was made from a blue and purple flannel which I found very comfortable and I think it is pretty. However I currently prefer skirts to jumpers. So.... I redid it.

The remake was really quite easy. I simply cut off most of the top. It was lined to all I had to do was to flip the raw edges to the inside and top stitch it closed. Then I just made a couple of darts in the front to make it fit me better.

 

The finished skirt is a very comfortable low waisted garment that is nice and long. I find it very comfortable and like it a lot.

 

 I am quite pleased to have yet again turned something from my closest into something I wear rarely to something that I will enjoy wearing.