First, I painted the board bright orange, using an inexpensive sample-sized tub of Behr paint from Home Depot. Using the fabric as a reference, I freehand drew the elephant and the tree onto the board in pencil, then used a foam brush to paint in the accent colors, both of which came from the clearance rack of miss-mixed paint, and cost 50 cents and 1 dollar, respectively.

All that’s left is to mount it high on the wall of the room and put hooks in it to hang up my tools and tidbits in a handy-dandy fashion.

Materials
Unfinished wooden picture frames (I got mine at Michaels for $1 each)
Decorative scrapbooking paper (Joann had it 4 for $1)
1 Bottle of Mod-Podge
1 Foam Brush

1. Open one picture frame and turn it face-down on your fancy paper. Trace the inside and outside of the frame.

2. Cut out the shape you have traced. Cut it a little large, since it can be trimmed later, but not expanded!

3. Brush a thin layer of Mod-Podge on the wooden frame and let it dry a bit until it is tacky.

4. Position your paper on the frame, and smooth it down with your fingers or a brayer.

5. Brush a coat of Mod-Podge over the surface of the paper, and leave the frame to dry. Repeat with another coat, and leave to dry overnight.

To be continued…

We’re thinking red roses, gerbera daisies, alstroemeria, and calla lilies. Red and white. Could anything be more romantic? I’ve been trolling the web for ideas:

This one from Bloomery Weddings is just lovely.

Nice, restrained Callas and Roses.Admittedly, this one is a little over-the-top, but I love the exuberance.

So yeah, I made a mattress and sheets, but I’m not sure if I can call this a tutorial, because I’m not sure that somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing would be able to take these directions and use them to make anything worthwhile.  Well, anyway, here goes.

Materials for the Mattress
2″ thick firm foam, cut to the measurements of your cradle, in this case 18.5″ x 36.5″
Upholstery lining fabric (Any sturdy fabric will do)
Waterproof fabric (I used vinyl tablecloth fabric from Joann)
Thread, needles, pins, etc.

1. Cut the necessary fabrics to size. Since my cradle measures 18.5″ x 36.5″, I cut the foam to that size using sharp scissors, and cut the waterproof fabric and lining fabric to measure 21″ x 39″. The formula I used was surface measurement+ 1/2 height measurement+1/4″ seam allowance. Since this is 2″ foam, that resulted in 21″ x 39″.

2. Right sides together, pin waterproof fabric to lining fabric and sew fabric into a pocket, leaving most of one short side unsewn. Make sure to sew around all four corners, though, so that you can box them in the next step.

3. Box the corners. This blog shows you how I did it. Isn’t the internet wonderful?

4. Turn the pocket right-side out and stuff in the foam, being careful to fit the corners neatly into the corners of the casing. Hand-stitch the remaining opening. Voila.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how I made the sheets. They’re cute. They have dogs and monkeys.

We made 84 tamales altogether, a pitifully small number compared to more traditional tamale-making parties, but plenty for our two households. Red pork and green chicken tamales were the savories, and apple pie and pumpkin tamales the sweetes (or doces, as my Portuguese-tuned brain still wants to call them).

Forgive the blurriness of the photos–most were taken gingerly with masa-encrusted fingers. We actually forgot to take pictures until the very end, when we were making the sweet tamales, so what you see is the making of the pumpkin ones. It’s not difficult to make tamales, just labor intensive. Soak your husks really well, make sure your masa is fluffy, and don’t stress over messes. They will still taste great, even if there’s a little sauce leaking out. We steamed these for an hour in the oven on a roasting pan with water in the bottom and airtight foil sealing them in. They are delicious.

Foolishly, rather than finishing weaving in the ends of the Drops cardigan, I have started another sweater for Tim. Coming in high off the success of the last sweater, I decided to try again, this time generating a classic, top-down raglan using the percentage system. To get my numbers, I made a spreadsheet. I’ll post the real file of this after I’ve played with it a bit more.

What I did was make a gague swatch with my yarn (more on the yarn later) and put the gague into the spreadsheet as stitches per inch. Since I knew I wanted a 38″ chest measurement, I made a list of the percentages given by Zimmerman, then created formulas that would give me the correct number of stitches at any given point, such as neck, upper arm, wrist, chest, etc. Then, I decided how many to cast on for my v-neck raglan using the funny cross-shaped set of numbers at the bottom, and took off in 4×2 rib. It’s pretty easy, especially since Excel does the math for me. I may have gotten a little carried away by this, since I dragged the formula boxes out to figure numbers for sizes from 36″ to 54″. Not that I will ever knit a 54″ sweater, but someone else might. The cool thing is that if I want to make another sweater using the same spreadsheet, all I would have to do is change the number in the gague box, and all the other numbers would change along with it.

There are various websites out there that will generate a raglan pattern automatically, but I prefer to see the nuts and bolts of the math myself, so that I can feel confident fudging the numbers where I need to to make them fit into the stitch pattern. I can also add measurements directly into the spreadsheet wherever I want them, and make adjustments manually as I go, rather than relying on somebody else’s program. For instance, I added a line for waist shaping, even though Tim doesn’t need it, so that I could use the same spreadsheet for a sweater for myself…which I may or may not have cast on for as well.

It’s pretty simple, if you’re handy with your fingers. Basically, you decapitate the flower, stick a wire through the calyx, and bend it down to make a new stem. Wrap the wire and pierced calyx with floral tape, stretching slightly as you go so that it sticks to itself smoothly.

Once you have several of these wrapped flowers done, you can add small accent flowers, leaves, or ferns to the wire stem, arranging them in a pleasing shape. I also wired up loops of ribbon beforehand to incorporate the bride’s exact wedding colors into the scheme.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of the finished products, but they turned out great. I didn’t even impale any of the groomsmen when I was pinning on the boutonnieres. The wedding came off without a hitch, and my friends were the cutest couple imaginable.

A cursory Google search brought me to this site where, in true Lobolita fashion, I glanced at the picture of the light box, thought “I can do that,” and neglected to read a single word of the post. That’s how we like to follow directions around here. We pretend they do not exist.

The necessary materials were gathered:

Sturdy cardboard box, tape, scissors, and freezer paper (because I have had it for four years, and still have never used the whole roll). Admire the Ikea rug below the items. It’s new.

I proceeded to cut big holes out of the bottom and three sides of the box while watching Penelope on Netflix “Watch Instantly.” Overall good movie. Somewhat disappointing moral. Accepting yourself will not actually solve all your problems. Honest.

Oh, and I traded the scissors for a serrated kitchen knife. I like to live dangerously. And I couldn’t find a razor knife anywhere.

I taped the freezer paper over the holes:

And then I taped a piece of freezer paper inside to serve as a backdrop for my photography. Dull side up, so there wouldn’t be a reflection.

And there you have it. A light box. For free. If I can get my lamp set up and find my tripod, tomorrow I’ll take some pictures with it to see if it works.