Quick Projects

After reading my sister's blog about her homemade bonsai tree a few months back, my mom and I decided to try our hand at it.  Rachael put a tutorial on her blog so we could follow her steps because I could not fathom how to turn a shrub into a tree when she tried to explain it to me over the phone. 

We ran to Home Depot to find the exact kind of tree she used because hers turned out so well and I wanted mine to be just as cute.  We searched through all of their little shrubs, getting poked and scratched all along the way, but were unable to find the kind she used.  We finally settled on some type of Cyprus shrubs.

I took mine home and attempted to follow her instructions.  I don't know that mine turned out quite as cute as hers did but I love it and it has survived; which, quite honestly, surprises me.

Here is a picture of the final product,
I never took a picture of what I started out with.

And here is a view from the side:

The bonsai turned out a lot better then I had expected and the tree itself only cost me 6 dollars.  The pot was 10.  So I would say I saved a whole lot of money, considering that bonsais start around $20 and often go up to more than $100.  It was a fun project and now I'll never have to worry about buying another overpriced tree again, unless I want the real thing, of course.

Around the time that I made my bonsai tree I also made a few clocks and again I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.  I bought a clock kit from Roberts, some black paint, and some fabric and matching ribbon.  I painted the numbers and clock hands, glued the fabric around the clock face and attached the numbers and ribbon.  I love the simplicity of it and how easy it is to personalize each one.  I've made six clocks so far and each one looks unique from the others but of course I didn't take any pictures of those.

Here is the clock I have hanging in my living room.

Both of these projects cost less than 20 dollars and took only about an hour each to complete.  I love quick projects that aren't too overwhelming when you realize too late what you've gotten yourself into.

My Attempt at Organization

I have never been a very organized person.  Just ask my mom.  Even going through elementary school my desk was always the one with papers stuffed in it and finished but not turned in homework filling every part of it.  It just seems like too much work to organize something that is just going to get messy again.  But as I have gotten older I have found that it is much easier in the long run to have things organized.

I love to cook, collect new cookbooks, and find new recipes.  I have a whole cupboard full of cookbooks and recipe cards but up until I finally finished my project of cooking organization all of my cards and recipes were a mess.  I had little recipes everywhere and I could not keep them straight.  It was such a mess that it was easier to just go out to eat or cook something very easy with little effort.  I hated dinner time and I began to really hate cooking. 

Around Christmas this last year Lindsey Karr and I decided that our new year's resolution would be to cook dinner a lot more often than we were because she was having similar problems.  So we came up with an idea for a meal calendar.  I painted a wooden framed magnetic board, applied ribbon daily separators, and sewed little envelopes to hold the extra monthly labels and meals that we may not be using at that time. The magnets are great so I can change the meals around however we want.  It took me about four months but I finally finished the project.  It took me a long time to go through my recipes and pick the ones that I knew Eric and I liked to eat.  We have experiment days about once a week and those are usually my favorite days along with nights we spend with our parents and out to eat nights. 

 (sorry about the big bright spot from the flash right there in the middle)

This calender helped me become more organized than I was before but all of my recipe cards remained out of order and it was still causing me to shrug off the strict meal plan listed on the calendar.  I tried putting them in boxes or folders but I still just hated to search through each and every card for whatever recipe I wanted to find.  My sister Sarah gave me the idea of gluing the edge of each card into a journal so that the recipes would be organized in a book.  I thought that was a wonderful idea so I set to work getting them into a journal.  Luckily I didn't glue at first because I filled up that journal very quickly with many cards left over and no room to grow.  At that point I was about to just give up the whole thing when I stumbled across the composition notebooks at Walmart for 75 cents each.  I bought eight of them and some fabric to cover them.  After I covered them I embroidered titles and attached them to the covers and then glued in the recipes. 

I now have eight new cookbooks that are custom made by me.  All of that work has paid off because I now only have to plan meals once a month and I can always find my recipes within a minute or two. 

My cupboard with my cookbooks in it is about full but it's looking pretty good, in my opinion.  All of my handmade cookbooks are on the bottom right.  It's been nice getting that project out of the way.  Cooking isn't such a chore any more and I love having just a little bit more organization in my chaotic life. 

Florida

Well, I finally made it back from Florida.  I was there for my cousin's wedding on Anna Maria Island.  It was beautiful and I took a lot of pictures.  My mom did a few posts on the wedding and you can see them here.

I took a bunch of pictures from the plane.  I don't know what is so intriguing to me about seeing the clouds, mountains, and rivers from above.  We even flew over a rainbow.  I could see the entire bow.  It was pretty amazing, unfortunately I was not able to get a picture of that.

This is a picture of the Mississippi River:

 

These clouds reminded me of popcorn and stretched as far as I could see:

And these are the Rocky Mountains.  They don't look quite as huge flying above them:

I also took about fifty pictures of birds.  I chased a heron along a pier trying to get good pictures of him but he yelled at me and flew to a post in the water.  He was pretty amazing. 

<--- Here he is walking away from me as calmly as he could given someone was walking up to him trying to take pictures.

At this point he freaked out, screamed at me and flew a few feet away as quickly as he could --->

Here he is trying to smooth his ruffled feathers.  He is beautiful.

The egret and pelican don't have any stories to go along with their pictures.  They were just minding their own business far from me so the most I could interfere was by taking their pictures.

We saw a ton of lizards running all over the sidewalks.  They were pretty cute and I'm not one for reptiles.

It was beautiful there and I had a lot of fun but I am sure glad to be back home.