It's Almost Halloween!

Okay, maybe not almost but it's a "chilly" 99 degrees here today; and it's less than 100 days until 10/31/2013. So, with that in mind, I have a fun little pre-project for y'all.

RavensBlight Toy Shop has some amazing, FREE printables for you. Just go to their website, pick your desired piece and print away.

There are a variety of fun paper toys, a hearse, a cemetery, a haunted house, board games, mini coffin gift boxes and more!

Fun for all ages, and best of all, it won't cost you a thing for the patterns! You will need tape, scissors, glue, and cardstock. That's it. Enjoy!

Just Add Water

We had some work done on the yard today. Let me start by saying that I don't garden, I have never gardened, and I never will garden. I live in Texas, I'm allergic to bees, I have sun allergies... Oh, and I kill anything that isn't a weed, and some things that are. Regardless of the current Texas drought, my "garden" has exploded over the last decade. If you've ever read the book "The Secret Garden" our yard was the thicket that needed to be traveled to find the secret garden. It was literally not possible to see certain parts of the yard, depending on where you were standing. 

So, back to my point. It's Texas, it's hot, it's only June and we're in the 90s. We had a landscaping crew out today; before everyone arrived, I put about five pounds of ice and a little bit of water into the dispenser in the picture, it holds about five gallons. The secret on a hot day like today is to add LOTS of ice. The ice melts and turns into ice-cold water. When the water and ice are low, just add more ice. I also sliced up five lemons and five limes (knowing that some people prefer one over the other) and placed them out in covered dishes with some disposable cups. This whole set up cost me less than five dollars (I already had the cups). There were three guys on the crew. They drained the first five gallons by 1:00 p.m. I refilled it, and they nearly drained it again by the time they left at 6:00 p.m. When I stepped outside to thank them for all of their hard work today, one of the landscapers stepped forward and said, "thank you so much for the water. Nobody has ever given us water before. You are a very nice lady, thank you!"

Am I posting this because I want everyone to think I'm an awesome person? Well, I wouldn't hate you for doing so, but no. I'm posting this because I think that people don't think about doing these things. It's not because anyone is a "bad" person, or they "don't care" about hired labor. It just never occurs to anyone. I'm here to tell you that it makes a huge difference to the people you're employing. Just one little thing like this. These guys were so happy that I'd thought of them. I know that most work crews bring a big "Gatorade-style" dispenser and fill it with tap water from the hose. But, it's not cold and it's not very refreshing. To say nothing of the fact that there are no lemons or limes. I swear EVERY SINGLE SLICE of citrus I put out was used today. 

Was it worth the extra $5 to let these guys know how much I appreciated them? Absolutely. I'm considering having them come out and do another job for us. Next time, I may just put some fresh fruit out for them!

A simple act of kindness goes a long way.

Ice Cream Social!

So, it's May! I thought, what better way to welcome the coming summer than with some ice cream? But, this ice cream is calorie free and fat free! This is my latest creation. Three dimensional nail art. All I can say is that it looks adorable in person and it's nearly impossible to photograph. Did I mention that we happened to have a freak cold front blow in? Now it's nearly 40 degrees outside. Oh well!

So, here's how I did it. I did a "regular" manicure, and filed my nails to a point (not a super sharp point, I didn't want to put an eye out in my sleep).

Then I painted my base colour and did a nail plate overlay with Konad Plate M57 (the fishnet image).

Next, I built some hot glue ice cream scoops. I did this by placing a "flat" drop of hot glue on a silicone pad. Once that drop cooled, I placed another, smaller, "round" drop on top of it. When the drops have cooled they can be picked up. (If you have very curved nail beds, you can use the tip of the hot glue gun to add a curve to the back of the scoops to help it adhere better.)

Glue the scoops to your nail at the base. (With nail glue, NOT hot glue.) The tip of your painted nail is the cone.

Once the scoops are securely adhered, you can paint the ice cream whatever colour you like. If you use coloured hot glue, then you don't even need to paint.

The final step is to add a matte top coat over the cones, but leave the ice cream shiny and wet looking.

Hot Glue Scoops

Please note that this is NOT an incredibly sloppy paint job...

Top view of the manicure.

It is ACTUALLY three dimensional!

Side view of the 3D scoops.

A Rose Garden for Your Nails (Perfect for those who do not have a Green Thumb)

If you like nail art, you'll probably enjoy what I have to offer today. I've been toying with ways to make my Konad and Mash nail plate images a little more detailed. In the past I've been able to come up with some cute ideas, like my spiders and skulls (at right).

Or, my "High Roller" nails (at left).

But, more often than not, I felt like the images I could get with the Konad Plates were a bit... static and flat (at right).

I was always hoping to be able to create something more like the images I've been able to capture through my waterslide transfer method, like these "Graphic Novel" nails I did last year (above).

However, the other evening, I thought of a new way of layering. I was inspired by the stemless wine charms I'd made for my Etsy shop. Instead of layering the same image over itself, I thought of layering the image over a different color from the base color. I'm not a big Valentine's Day fan (our anniversary is right before February) so it didn't even occur to me that this would be a perfect manicure for February 14th, but it is. (As a side note, I'm not sure if this is true since I kill every plant I try to grow, but I'm told that February 14th is the ideal day for rose pruning. See? It works on so many levels.) 

And so, my Nail Art Rose Garden grew. 

1. I did a base coat in a light grey polish.

2. After that dried, I used the "vine" image from image plate Mash-10 with a shimmery green polish.

3. Then I made small dots (but large enough to accommodate the rose image) in random spots on my nails with the lavender polish.

Once the spots were dry, I added the "rose" image from KONAD plate m65 (I used my thumbnail to remove any part of the design from the stamper I didn't want to keep, but masking it off with tape would also work).

That's all there was to it!

A Small Change is Easy to Make

So, yes, I do still have a blog.

One of my goals this year was to do a monthly post about a good change. (Let's just ignore the fact that this my first post of the year and it's February.) At the end of last year (2012) I started to read Rachel McKay's blog about sustainability and zero waste. One of her first tips was about disposable paper products. You can read all about it here. Two of the tips that I found very easy to incorporate into our lives were the reusable napkins and the dishtowels. We don't use a lot of disposable plates and utensils, and years ago my hubby taught me the value of using old socks and t-shirts for cleaning rags.

Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm a bit squeamish about reusing the same napkin over and over. However, a quick inventory of the linen cabinet revealed that she was correct; we have so many of these. Where did they even come from? It seems crazy that there are so many of these lovely napkins in the house and they never see the light of day. In other words, we own more than enough napkins to have a new one at each meal and then we simply drop them in the wash at the end of the week. She's correct about that too, they take up almost no space at all.

Next issue, dishtowels. I love the idea of hand drying the dishes; but here again, there's that squeamishness factor. Easy solution, we hang one dishtowel by the drying rack, a second dishtowel is placed near the sink for wiping water off of counter tops, and the third dishtowel is on the refrigerator for hand drying. Switch them out once a week and we're ready for the next several days.

We are already down from at least three to four rolls of paper towels per week to one roll of paper towels per week. If we're particularly well behaved, we can make that roll of paper towels last a week and a half. If we try really hard, maybe we can get one to last for a month! I'm not sure we'll be able to achieve the heights of one roll per year, but one never knows.

Whether or not we can achieve our goal, I feel better that we are creating less waste in general. We're also saving not only trees, but money, in the process!

Shopping Bags (Grocery Time)

If you're like us, you have a ton of reusable shopping bags (in lots of different sizes). It's frustrating when you go to the grocery store and the courtesy clerk doesn't realize that you have insulated bags (the bags with the lining to keep the cold stuff cold) until all of your frozen food has been neatly put away; so, you end up with loads of strawberries and bread in your insulated bags and ten minutes to make it home before the milk turns.

We went through this countless times, and every week the ugly process would happen all over again. When we would get home, the bags would all get stuffed back into one of the bigger bags and they would be ignored until our next shopping trip.

Today, I came up with a solution [Disclaimer: I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I haven't seen it from anyone else]. If I "roll" all of the smaller bags into one of my larger bags, then I can store them, see them, and pull out the one I want.

Also, if you add a wine bag to your reusable bag stash, you'll have a handy bag for wine OR for tall bottles!

Neat and Tidy Bag Storage

Start with a reusable bag.

Roll it.

All the way, just like a jelly roll.

And just slip it into place with the other bags; tuck in the bag straps for a tidier look.

Wine bags are great for wine and save you from the cardboard wine box...

But, with those six separated compartments, they're also great for anything that comes in a bottle. Sodas, dishsoap, body wash; the list goes on! :)

Glowing Coals

Oh wow, I found this out there today. It's a way to make glowing coals that are really realistic. I've seen variations on this before, but this is the best version I've seen. I think that if I build it on a different base and then add the lights from the bottom, I'll be able to work around the problem of not being able to replace the bulbs. Another thing to add to my To Do List!