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Updating Couch Cushion Covers/Minimal Sewing Skill Required
I enjoy sewing and have experience making things like valances and envelope pillow covers. I love looking at all the fabrics and textures available when beginning a project. All the beautiful choices can be overwhelming! Recently I was lucky enough to score a beautiful couch at a nearby yard sale. The only thing I didn’t care for was the color. That I changed to more my liking with fabric dye. If you would like to see how I did this you can find the method and products in a previous blog I recently wrote. The couch that is the subject in this blog was still a very good piece of…
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Beginner Friendly Decoupaged Ornaments Using Napkins, Glue And Chalk Paint
My relaxation during the holiday season involves personalizing gifts and making them myself. This can prove to be time consuming but by keeping them easy and giving them some consideration ahead of time, these crafts and smaller projects have become one of my biggest stress relievers. This project requires little skill and a few affordable materials. One of the things I look for when the holiday season starts are assorted shapes of wood ornaments. These bell shapes are one of two I came across this year at Michael’s. These are approximately 4″ x 2 1/2″ which is a size I enjoy working with. They aren’t to small where the picture…
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Easy Holiday Accent Pillow Slipcovers Customized For A Gift Or For Your Home
My favorite gifts to give are the ones I make myself. I enjoy personalizing them for the recipient and making something that is functional. In doing so it has encouraged me, over the years, to sharpen my sewing skills and learn new crafts. This year I decided to make some holiday accent pillow covers and give them as gifts to a few of my family members for Christmas. I enjoy having seasonal slipcovers that can be changed along with the seasons. Slipcovers take up much less space then pillows so they are much easier to store. Here are the two pieces of precut fabric I found this year at Joann’s…
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Cooking And Freezing Fresh Sugar Pumpkins
I like to bake and cook with pumpkin throughout the year. Like many other squash varieties pumpkin is versatile when baking and cooking. For most of us pumpkin is available on the shelves of our local grocery stores all year long and the canned version tastes great. But I can’t bring myself to throw away those perfectly good little pumpkins we decorate with during the Autumn months. I don’t like to throw away food and this method of cooking these little pumpkins only takes and hour. The hardest part is cutting them up. Start by cutting your pumpkins in half from top to bottom. (I normally cut the stem off…
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Home Cooked Orange Scented Cranberry Sauce
I love to make my own cranberry sauce for our holiday meals. Its easy to customize by changing the sweeteners and spices. This recipe requires no more then one half hour from start to finish and very little cooking experience is required. One other benefit is it makes my home smell amazing! Here’s how you go from this⇑ to this⇓ I start with a medium size sauce pan. I then combine all the ingredients in the sauce pan before turning on the heat. This recipe is a combination of fresh cranberries, coconut sugar, orange juice, cinnamon sticks, water, a pinch of salt and the zest of one orange. ( The…
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Moist And Delicious Sourdough/Gluten Free Cinnamon Walnut Muffins
I became a sourdough enthusiast and began my starter earlier this year and I’ve been loving the process! Due to family health concerns, I’m becoming more mindful when baking and have been experimenting more with sourdough and gluten free recipes. I’m in the early stages of learning this technique but I felt with the slight modifications I made to make this recipe my own, the results were worth sharing. The key to this delicious muffin recipe is to let the starter, flour and water ferment overnight. Now let me tell you about these easy and tasty little treats:) These muffins begin with active sourdough starter, Flour (I have only used…
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Recover A Cube Seat Using Thrifted Denim/Adding Feet Part II
Our sewing/craft/guest bedroom is a never ending work in progress. It always ends up as the “catchall” when unexpected guests arrive or when I’m just to lazy to put things where they actually belong. When I last painted, the color didn’t come out as expected, it’s to blue and the bed could use a new mattress and box spring. There isn’t a piece of furniture that is a dedicated nightstand and the window treatments need updating. Nevertheless, it can be my favorite room, because of the crafts and sewing, or it can be the room that is never opened for the public to see, because of the state of disarray.…
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Recover A Cube Seat Using Thrifted Denim/NO SEWING
My daughter and I enjoy sewing and have been using this cube as our seat over the last few years. It’s lightweight, has a padded seat and fits into the opening under the sewing machine nicely. The problem is the fabric covering it… The pattern isn’t something I would ever use in my home. It has also gotten quite a bit of damage on the corners from one of our feline friends. This cube isn’t a storage container either. It was bought for my daughters bedroom as an extra little seat that just happens to fit perfectly under the sewing machine table. I decided to cover it with a durable…
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The Best Sweet And Spicy Pumpkin Seeds
I love to cook with pumpkin during the Fall season. The big “Jacks” we carve definitely aren’t as good to cook with as the smaller sugar or pie pumpkins but the seeds are great when well seasoned and roasted. After going through the trouble of cleaning these big guys out, make sure you treat yourself with theses tasty, sweet and spicy, crunchy treats. It’s a nice alternative to candy once you’ve had your fill after Halloween. To clean the seeds put them a bowl of warm water and swish them around. ( I use my hands) After a few minutes the pulp will start to separate from the seeds and…
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Easy Staircase Refresh With Gel Stain (Goodbye Nasty Carpet!)
The carpet on these stairs that leads down to our family room finally got under my skin enough to do something about. The damage our cats have done over the years was now impossible to overlook and I felt no matter how good the rest of the room looked the stairs dragged everything else down. We hired the carpet company that installed the carpet to remove it. They said they had special tools to minimize the damage that would be caused by pulling out the staples. After the job was finished, we came to the realization that we, could have done better. Everything looked like it had been just ripped…