Memory Crates

My daughter calls them my junk sculptures (lovingly), but to me they are my memory crates.  They are repurposed Coca Cola crates embellished with little mementos from my life.

This is an idea that I actually came up with on my own years ago while living in Colorado (without the Internet for inspiration).  I don't remember exactly how it came to be a memory crate, but it did.  I know I purchased the crate because I loved it, and somehow it became my memory crate.

My grandfather's old watches are in there, an old Navy ring pendant that I've had as long as I can remember, and my Mom's old Brownie camera (which now holds even more sentimental value since learning that my mother loved photography) sits on top. I believed for years that the Navy ring-pendant had belonged to my Dad.  I doubt that now, but it sits on the shelf as a reminder of my youth.

I have two now, but need a third because the two are overflowing and have my eyes looking for the next one.  Sure, the crates are all over the place, but sometimes those antique shops want outrageous amounts of money for something old that they probably got for free anyway.  I have my own arbitrary pricing system in my head and if something doesn't fit into that system on a particular day, then it stays at the store.

I did find a great deal on one at a garage sale when I was in Washington last year, but it now hangs in my daughter's room waiting to be filled with important mementos of her life.

Honey Apron

Here is the latest in my apron designs.  I'm calling this one the honey apron, cos it's yellow, and some of the fabric actually has bees on it (and isn't the girl in this picture a little honey herself?!).

This was part of the Eco-friendly aprons I made for Christmas, but my daughter, being the diva that she is, saw one of the aprons I downloaded from the Internet and liked that one.  Of course, I didn't have pieces of yellow large enough for the ruffles so I had to buy some.

The apron I based my design on is to the left and mine, complete with pearls on the pocket, is on the right.  The bottom portion of the Honey apron is recycled fabric.

Repurposed Ice Cream Container

I finished the last of the ice cream that my bestie had brought over for my birthday, and just as I was ready to toss the container into the recycle bin, I realized that it is perfect to mix grout in and toss away when finished.

Usually I buy a bucket from the 99 cents store, because cleaning up the grout container is a pain in the butt.  You can't wash it down the drain, and since I live in a condo in the city, cleaning outside is not much easier.

Now, next time I grout, I have a container that I won't feel bad about throwing away!  And, even better, I have a nice deep container to break up my glass mosaic pieces into!

What other "throw-away" items have you repurposed?

Cooking Day

The amount of posts on this blog about cooking will probably be sparse.  It's not that I don't like cooking, it's just that cooking in itself is an art that requires prep time, cook time, clean up time.  When I am busy, I just want some food fast, but don't want to have "fast food."

So, what I do frequently is make large meals and then freeze them in single servings. It's much healthier and less calories than eating out.  Last night I cooked chili and spaghetti with meatballs and I took some pics while doing it.

By the way, I also cook a pound of spaghetti and package it into 2 cups servings and freeze it in plastic bags. If there is ever an earthquake and water is limited, I'll have spaghetti to eat because I keep a jar of Ragu in the earthquake kit!


For my chili I altered the recipe a bit for the budget and for calories.  Where I usually put in 2 pounds of ground beef (I love my beef, but it is high in calories), I put in just one pound this time, added a chicken breast (it needed to be cooked), an extra can of tomatoes, and for fun added a can of corn.  This reduced the calorie count per serving by 157 calories!!!  Woot!

To cut down on prep time of meals during the week, I also like to get some garlic peeled and ready to go.

Time for some spaghetti with meatballs!  Yummy!

I haven't smoked all year!

I rang in 2012 as a non-smoker!

I quit 10 lbs ago.  With the holidays and my quitting, I had a hey day with food and I let myself have it.  I figured I wanted to focus on getting past the early stages of quitting before I started to stress myself out about weight too.

I am finding it a little difficult to stop the food train though.  If it all just hung at the caboose, I'd be all right, but...

I am proud of myself and it feels very real this time that I have quit!  Yay me.

I finished another apron and I will post it later when my model is wearing it.  It happens to be her apron too. Of course, the photos of the aprons would be better if she were taking them.  A good photo eye is necessary to make product look as it does in real life, and that is a skill that I did not acquire.

Aprons

I made aprons for Christmas this year.  I had lot of fun making them and they took waaaayyyy more time than I thought they would.  Only because I was dedicated to using fabric that I have had laying around for years and years, so it was somewhat of a scrapfest. Plus, I kind of played around with creating my own pattern, but I altered it here and there as the fabric dictated.  


Mostly I made kitchen aprons, but I made three berry picking aprons (2 shown) which I really love.  They are reversible! 

I got the instructions from here and the original pattern was from a 1944 USDA Farmers Bulletin. Perfect, because that is the year my mother was born.

Here are the others: (note: most of them have rings on the waist band to hold a kitchen towel)

This apron (right) has a belly button!