Pattern Companies FAIL!

Over the weekend I refashioned some old t-shirts into new shirts for the kids.  The sad sad news is that the only basic shirt patterns I can find for sale (for children or women) are sold only in Scandinavia and do not currently ship to the US.  I don't understand why there isn't at least one American (or least sold in the US) company that sells basic patterns.  Isn't that what most people would want?  We don't need trendy patterns that are go out of style (if they were ever in style) in a year.  All we really need are the basics!  I'm under the assumption that companies do this on purpose.  Because if we were able to buy the basic patterns, we wouldn't need to buy any other patterns, and they would make as much money selling us patterns that we don't really like but have to settle for anyway.  Well not me!  I won't settle!

I typically make my own patterns from already existing shirts.  Take that McCalls, Butterick, Simplicity, Vogue, ect..  (I'm sure no pattern company will ever see this blog post, but it feels good to rant any way!)

First up was a shirt for Mr. T refashioned from an XL womens shirt I thrifted a few months ago.

I think this is one of my favorite shirts so far.

Next up is a shirt for Miss K made from some of Daddio's T's that were too small.

I've seen several heart doily printed T's around on Pinterest so I wanted to try it too.  Miss K didn't seem to like red and grey top, so I printed the heart on the white.

Painting the doily with pink fabric paint.

Made a pretty cute worn looking print.

I hadn't planned on putting anything on the back of the shirt, but I forgot to stick something inside the shirt to keep it from bleeding through so I had to hide few pink spots.  Oops!

Heart Garland

This one has been done by many and is all over Pinterest.  And I did pretty much the same thing everyone has done.

 

Valentine's Day Graham Cracker House

This is a bit non-traditional, but Miss K has been begging me to make a gingerbread house.  I hate gingerbread, and I didn't want to spend time making it so I kept trying to distract her with other things.  Today, I finally gave in.  Only I didn't make gingerbread.  I used (and this is a little embarrasing) old stale graham crackers, left over icing from Christmas, jelly beans from last from last Easter, and conversation hearts....  from last Valentine's day!  heh heh.  Now you all probably think I never clean out my cabinets.  And I guess you would be right.

Turned out kind of cute!

Miss K got her gingerbread house fix with minimal work on my end, which is much needed with the lack of sleep around this place.  Maybe she won't bug me about it again until next Christmas!  And after today's project, there won't be any year old candy laying around!

Sprouting Broccoli

Remember my "extra" purchases from Mountain Rose Herbs from this post?  I bought broccoli sprouting seeds and a sprouting screen to use with a mason jar.  Well, they are sprouted! They were super easy to grow.  And apparently they're good for you!  ;)

Here's what I did:

Day1 - Soak sprouts over night
Day 2 - Drain and rinse sprouts, then place in a sunny window.  Sadly, I don't have a sunny window, but it still worked.

Day 3 - Rinse, Drain, put back in window

Day 4 - Repeat

Day 5 - Repeat

Day 6 - Rinse, and apparently these are supposed to be done in 6 days.  

Unfortunately, my lid got rusty, so I don't feel very good about trying this batch.

 I plan on starting another batch tonight using a cheesecloth and a rubber band.  Hopefully, that will work out.

A Rainbow of Rice

I haven't posted over the past few days because Mr. T hasn't been feeling well.  To keep Miss K occupied while I was spending more time with the baby, I made her some rainbow rice. 

I put about a 1/4 cup of rice on zip lock bags.  Then I added a 1/2 Tbs of vinegar and some random amount of food coloring to each bag.  Then I let Miss K mix it up by whatever method she wanted. (squeezing, shaking, etc.)

Then I poured them out on waxed paper and let them dry over night.  This was the hard part because she didn't want to wait.

Once dry, though, she had a great time driving her cars and trains through it.  It kept her occupied for hours!

Sometimes vanilla smells good

but sometimes it is nauseating sweet.  The latter would be the scent of vanilla I bought from Sweet Cakes.  I bought the variety of vanilla that is "most popular".  Apparently a lot of people like their vanilla very sweet.  Personally, I like my vanilla a little earthy and muted. 

Today I tried my own concoction of ingredients to make some lotion.  I used equal parts of coconut oil, beeswax, and olive oil.

 Mixed it up in my trusty pyrex and microwaved it.

I also added some vitamin E. 

All was turning out very well...  until I added my new vanilla fragrance.  I opened the bottle and took a whiff, and it was pretty strong so I didn't add very much.  But as I was stirring the lotion, the smell became more and more nauseating.  :( 

I'm not sure if I will be able to stomach using this batch of lotion.  And I am pretty sure I won't be using this particular scent of vanilla.  Anyone want a bottle of nauseatingly sweet vanilla fragrance?  Free for the taking.  Anyone... ?

In other news, I have a variety of projects to show you in the next few days that I have been working on  over the past week.  Here is a sneak peak:

homemade chapstick

Sometimes you need/want to buy one or two items that can't be found in any nearby store and you have to buy it online.  Then the one or two items you need don't cost very much and the sites require that you order a minimum amount, say $25 worth of stuff.  Then you search their site for an hour trying to figure out what extra $10+ worth of stuff you think you might actually be able to use. Well, that happened twice last week. 

I ordered some oils from Mountain Rose Herbs and ended up with face lotion, broccoli sprouting seeds, and a sprouting screen.  Then I ordered some fragrances from Sweet Cakes to use in some future lotion recipes and I ended up buying some chapstick tubes as well.  Which aren't all bad purchases as I have been wanting to try them for a while anyway.

So, this morning I made chapstick using a recipe from one of my favorite blogs A Sonoma Garden.  It is thanks to this blog that I no longer feel like a complete weirdo for not using shampoo.  But that is a topic for another post!

I have made a few of her lotion recipes and have been wanting to try her chapstick recipe.  Last winter I made lip balm in little tubs, but I don't really like sticking my finger in it and smearing it all over my lips.  It's an OCD thing.  Again, topic for another post.

You can find her recipe here.  Surprisingly, I actually followed her recipe pretty closely. 

The recipe uses beeswax, cocoa butter, coconut oil, olive oil, and vitamin E.

All the ingredients except the vitamin E in my pyrex.  Then I microwaved mine until the beeswax melted.

Then added the vitamin E.

Poured the liquid into the chapstick tubes.

Here they are.  They turned out pretty nice.  I like how they kind of melt as they hit my lips.  I also like the slight scent of coconut.  As I was making them, I was thinking that I should have added some flavorings to my Sweet Cakes order.  I will probably find myself searching their site for $25 worth of stuff again soon!  Now I have enough tubes of chapstick to keep one in every room!