I can sew! Kind of...

I have been an HGTV fan for years. LOVE it. Unfortunately I didn't think I could do very much home decorating now that our budget is so tight. But that was before a sewing machine came into my life and I realized that most of the things you buy are actually made by someone -so why shouldn't I cut out the middle man and make it myself!?


I am still learning and these curtains are not done yet - they are different lenghts despite my incredibly precise measureing skills (insert frustrated sigh and sobs of despair) BUT they look pretty good I think and they fram up our glass doors very nicely. They are also great for keeping the air conditioning INSIDE the house and preventing the sun from heating us so much during the summer.


I also got inspired by this website, where I found these tutorials, and somehow managed to make this:



Cool huh? Why all the yellow and green you ask? Hubby and I have always liked yellow kitchens so we painted the kitchen yellow, and then we found this dishtowel at Wal-Mart and loved how the yellow looked with the green. So there you go! PS If you are wondering where I get my creativity from, trust me it does not come from THIS lady's noggin - it comes from this one. Visit my mom's blog and check out her new Etsy shop with lots of cute purses! Here's a picture of the one she made for me (that I LOVE) and here's how she made it.

Frugal Friday - Making it yourself

One frugal way of living I've discovered recently is that I can actually make the things I need - I don't necessarily need to buy them all. This was an oddly profound moment for me. My mom at Homemaking Dreams, loves to sew and quilt and is always making gorgeous handbags and household items. For example she recently made me some cloth napkins, which I use a lot, in fact I've stopped purchasing paper towels all-together. So my mom is partially responsible for my new found realization. The other culprit is my new/very, very old sewing machine. My Grandmother died in a car accident 8 years this month, and for 8 years her old Kenmore sewing machine has been resting in its cabinet in her home - until my Aunt came across and thought I might be interested - YES I WAS! In fact I had a very surreal moment when I pulled it into the house and plugged it in. I simultaneously realized I did not know hot to thread a sewing maching, AND that the machine was STILL threaded from the last time my Grandma had used it. So I examined how she did it and learned. It brought tears to my eyes to be able to learn something special from her 8 years after her passing. So there's my backstory - here's the frugal part:

I've been using online tutorials to actually MAKE things with my sewing machine! This past Saturday I made a bathmat (pictured below). Who knew you could MAKE a bathmat?? They are fairly expensive at the store and it never occured to me that I could design one myself and for only about 5 dollars!

In addition to my bathmat, I am sewing curtains for my kitchen. Most full length curtain panels that I've seen cost anywhere from $20 and up, EACH. Yesterday I found Clearance fabric that matches our kitchen perfectly - and for only $15 total I'm making custom curtain panels (3 of them!).

For Crafty ideas and to see take part of the GRAND OPENING of the Homemaking Dreams Etsy Shop visit HomeMaking Dreams. For more Frugal Friday tips visit Biblical Womanhood.

Making a Rag Rug From Scratch

My mother at Homemaking Dreams introduced to me this site: Sew Mama Sew, where I found a great blog with a tutorial on making a rag rug, with, um, rags...! I thought it looked really cool and fun and so I tried my hand at it. I thought it was going to be very difficult, but it was exactly the opposite. In fact, it was the easiest project I've ever done that I actually thought would have been incredibly hard. To make the rug I went into my closet and found a few shirts I no longer wear. I bought a size 11 crochet hook, cut up my shirts and made the rug! Because its my first one, and I was just using random materials in my closet, the colors don't really match - at all - but its looks pretty cool I think! Here it is:

Inexpensive Yard Project

Yesterday I undertook a project I had been putting off and I decided Sunday was the day! What was this amazing project you ask? I created a stone stairway!!! (Exciting I know...)

When we first purchased our lot we had two options. We could select a sloped lot or a flat lot. The choice seems clear right? Who wants a hill for a yard?? Only here's the catch. The flat lots are incredibly small and by the time you put a house on it, your back yard is almost nonexistent. Plus, those lots will eventually have houses behind them so the privacy will be nonexistent as well.

The sloped lots however have a wooded view and are larger. So you get pretty scenery and an actuall back yard - even if it is downhill! Our yard is slightly better than our neighbors though because we selected a lot that flattens towards the bottom so that Goose will have a place to play one day. Here's a pic of the pretty view from my kitchen table:

Anyway, getting back to the project, the area coming down from the steps on our deck is very steep. I can't get down the incline safely unless I hold on to the deck posts as I go. So I decided to make some steps!

This is a very cheap solution to the problem: We bought five 2'x2' stones at Lowe's Home Improvements. I think they were $1.50 each. I already had the shovel so the cost of this fix plus tax was approximately $10 or less.

Basically I shovelled and scooped and stomped until I created a dirt staircase! With each dirt step I would create a place to set in the stone so that it would be flush with the dirt, and what will eventually be grass!!

Even if you don't need a stone staircase, you can still use the stones to create walkways through flowers for an inexpensive landscaping project!

Here's the finished product: