Rosie is 5 today.  Such a big age.  And yet so small.  She’s happy and terrified all in one.  Thrilled to be “plain 5″ (as opposed to 4 and 1/2 or 5 and 1/2) and terrified of the changes coming in her life – kindergarten.

I have to say, I am scared, too.  Scared for her and us and all of the big changes that school brings.  She is a very sensitive soul and is very cautious to say the least.  She loves to snuggle and play with dolls and is so compasionate and caring to others… but any sort of change or putting her in the spot light is too much for her.  And for that reason, school will be hard at the start.

She woke up this morning and told me that “it is hard being 5″.  I asked if it was harder than being 4 and she said yes.  After some probing she revealed that 5 is hard because you have to leave your mama and go to school.  How I wish that Kindergarten was still 1/2 days!  She insists that she will never go to college because she doesn’t want to leave home.  And she doesn’t believe me when I tell her that her opinion will likely change when she is 18.

I wish that I could keep her here at home with me forever – to be able to freeze this time in place and never have to leave it.  To be able to keep my beautiful, happy little “craftist” just like this forever.  I love her so much just as she is and it seems nearly impossible that I will love her more as she grows into the adult that she will become.  And yet – she will be an amazing adult and I am just as excited to see who she becomes.

So, happy birthday my most beloved little girl.  Mama loves you a zillion billion kadzillion.

Since I have so many of my baby bibs to mail out to friends and our future contest winner, I needed something to mail them in…. and looking at my recycling containers, I had lots of flat boxes!  You know the type – cereal or cracker boxes.

So, take an empty box and open up both ends.

Flatten the box.

Tuck in the end flaps on one side into the box.

Then use clear packing tape to tape the other side over the end.

Now, put your fairly flat item (like 2 baby bibs!) inside.  Repeat the above procedure for the open end.

Add mailing labels and take it to the post office!   Hopefully, the lucky recipient will recycle the box after they get whatever goody you sent them!

And because she needed bibs, I decided to make a FEW bibs.  So, I pulled out the fabric that I had (much of it donated or yard saled) and started cutting out.  And, as I tend to like to cut out a bunch of anything at one time and then spend weeks sewing… well, I cut out a few.  Just a few.  Like as in enough for 35.

My idea was to send bibs to people that I know who have or are about to have little babies and would be able to use and appreciate bibs.  Part of my “Pay it Forward for the rest of my life” plan.  So, about half of these are already spoken for.  The rest I planned on putting in my stash to use as baby gifts to people I know or don’t know in the future.

The pattern I used was the Bapron bib pattern that is currently for sale for $6 at Craftiness is not Optional blog.  I saved the pattern a couple of years back when she still had it up on her blog for free.  Even at her current price – it is a good price!

I also made ALL of the bias tape used in all of the bibs.  First, you should know that each bib needs about 2 1/2 yards of bias tape.  Each.   Yes, you did the math correctly.  That is over 80 YARDS of bias tape that I made by hand.  80.  Yards.  I got the fancy Clover Bias Tape Maker and bought flannel fabric…. and realized that flannel doesn’t work in bias tape makers.  So, 2 yards of flannel had to be ironed into tape.  By. Hand.  Sigh.  At over $2 for a 4 yard packet of less than wonderful store bought stuff in boring colors… I got 20 yards or more from each yard of fabric that I bought for $5.  So, I saved a bit of money ($5 vs $10 for store bought) but it is MUCH prettier!   And really – not that hard!  It was almost fun all of the ironing while listening to NPR (which is what I do most of the time when I sew).

I bought normal fabric for the edges and really, small print is best.  The browns and purple came from Walmart of all places (about our only local option and I wasn’t going into the city any time soon) but worked up really well and was a surprisingly nicer weight fabric.  But, because my brain is a bit slow on baby sleep, I had to resort to on-line tutorials to figure out how to make the tape.  To get the most tape out of a yard of fabric, I used this tutorial at Whipstitch Fabrics to cut the fabric on an angle and then sew it to the other side – so the entire yard of fabric can be cut into strips on the bias.  But, they then wanted it to be cut all in one long strip and honestly, drawing lines on the fabric and then pinning and then cutting – blah… too much!  So, after I got my yard cut and re-sewn the right way, then I switched over to Dana Made It and used her tutorial on how to cut the strips and then sew the strips together once they’re all skinny.  For me – much easier!  Plus, Dana has a fab description of what bias tape is and the different types of makers and sizes and… good basic info!

As I was sitting in my little space sewing, I was thinking about the year past in this house of ours.  You see, this past weekend was our 1 year anniversary to move into the house.  It wasn’t done (still not entirely finished – still no steps out the back doors and some trim still needs to be painted) but it was time and I was hugely pregnant and not fitting so well into the RV any more and…  We were so relieved to be back into a real house.  We still are.  And we are so grateful to the huge number of people that helped us get back to this state of “normal”… Part of my  “Pay it Forward” campaign is to have give aways just because.  To share the love with people that I don’t know just as people that didn’t know us helped me helped during my time of disaster.

So, I am giving away these two bibs.  (Above and below pictures – they are the front and back shots.)  Both gender neutral so good for little boys or girls.

To enter, please comment below, be sure to include your email address.   Please tell us what random act of kindness you’ve done recently.  Big or small doesn’t matter…

Like me on Facebook at Life on the Clothesline  and then leave a comment on the contest post on FB for an extra entry.   If you already follow me on FB, please leave a comment on that post, too.

Contest closes May 19 at midnight.  That’s two weeks.  Please tell your friends and share the love.  More importantly, be kind to each other and help when you can.  Even if you never hear the words “thank you”  it doesn’t mean that your actions didn’t matter.   Thanks to you all…

Sadly, no pictures of the finished products of these vintage recipes.  I think that reading them should present enough of a visual image for most of you.  That, and I have never in my life enjoyed jello salad, especially the sort made before it was called Jello.

So, what is gelatin?  According to the wikipedia site it is :  “Gelatin is a mixture of peptides and proteins produced by partial hydrolosis of collagen extracted from the skin, boiled crushed horn, hoof and bones, connective tissues, organs and some intestines of animals such as domesticated cattle, chickens, pigs and horses.  Food-grade gelatin is produced mainly from two raw materials, beef skin and pig hide.   Photographic and pharma grades of gelatin are generally made from beef bones, although some beef bone gelatin is used by the food industry. Gelatin is an animal protein unlike many other gelling agents used by the food industry.”  YUM!

Back in the days before purified gelatin was available in the stores, you got to make your own by boiling a calves foot.  Thus, the “calves foot jelly” really is just a jello salad made from the gelatin extracted from the foot of a calf.  Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Now, to be fair, sensibilities back in the day were a bit different than now.  Most people weren’t as far removed from their food as we currently are (save for the few farm kids, which I am proud to say I am a member of).  Even if you did grow up on a farm and raise the calves from babies that you were later to eat at dinner like I did, we still never boiled a foot to make desert.  And regardless, it was never the source of the gelatin that made it unpalatable for me – it was the texture.  There are some instances where it is fine but most of the time I just can’t do it.  My brother however – he loves the nasty stuff.  And my mother, as most moms of the 70′s and 80′s did – she seemed to make a lot of it.  It was an easy way to get fruit into the meal I think and was easy for pot lucks.

Now, I do have to say that my mom has a fabulous cranberry jello salad that I WILL eat.  That recipe will come on another day when I have time to make it.

For now, you get two very romantic gelatin recipes taken from the 1948 owners manual of the Westinghouse Refrigerator.  I found my copy of this little cookbook at a local antique store and knew it had to be a part of my tiny little collection.  And the romantic recipes?  Yesterday I was married 8 years to my amazing husband.  I think it was gift enough that I didn’t make either recipe for him!

And as an aside… most fruit used in jello recipes are canned or cooked first.  Fruit like pineapple, kiwi, figs and papaya all have proteases in them that chemically cut the gelatin resulting in a jello that never sets which is why it is important to used canned or cook the fruit before making the salad.  Bananas are lacking in these proteases so those are usually used fresh in salads.  Just in case your favorite salad, like that of the greatly esteemed Mr. Cosby, is boiled calves foot jelly.

Sweetheart Salad

2 c crushed pineapple                                              2 T lemon juice

1/2 c sugar                                                                  2 T cherry juice

1 1/2 T granulated gelatin                                       6 ounces cream cheese

1/4 c cold water                                                         1/2 pint whipping cream

12 cherries

Heat pineapple with sugar, add gelatin which has been softened in 1/4 cup cold water.  Stir until melted.  Add lemon and cherry juice, cool.  Mash cream cheese, add cherries which have been cut fine, mix with pineapple, adding a small amount of pineapple mixture to cheese at a time.  Chill until slightly thickened.  Whip cream and blend with pineapple mixture.  Mold and chill.  This makes 12 small servings.

Valentine Vitamin Salad

1 package strawberry gelatin                                 1/2 c shredded carrot

1 c hot water                                                              1/2 c celery, sliced fine

1/4 t salt                                                                      2 ripe bananas

3/4 c ice cubes and water                                        2 T lemon juice

1/2 c pineapple

Dissolve gelatin in hot water and add cold water to cool.  Shred carrots, slice celery, and cut bananas into cubes.  Sprinkle lemon over the bananas.  Add the salt to the hot gelatin.  When cool, and it begins to thicken, add the vegetables.   Mold in decorative molds and serve with mayonnaise on shredded lettuce, garnished with water cress.  Serves 6.

Do your part in reducing polution… line dry your undies. 

Enter “MamaEarth” in the coupon code section of my Etsy shop and you’ll get 15% off of your clothespin bag purchase all week long!  (Sale ends April 27, 2013 at midnight central time.)

Don’t see the bag you were looking for?  Please contact me – I have lots more bags in my inventory!

Happy line drying and earth day everyone!!!!

Welcome to my Sewing Closet!

This was supposed to be a normal closet for a bedroom… but I knew from the beginning that I wanted something different.   I always do research and had looked at a LOT of other peoples sewing/craft/office closets and pinned them to my Sewing Space Ideas board on Pinterest.   Click on the link for lots more ideas that I have found!   I knew that this was the answer.  I wanted it because it was tidy and because then the sewing room could also be the guest room.  (And as it turns out, it was also for 3 weeks the chicken brooder room.)

And you know what?  It’s my favorite sewing space ever.  Why?  Because everything is organized right there.  Easy to reach.  Hubby took a long corded power strip and plugged it into the light inside the closet so that the entire set up turns on and off with the light switch on the wall.   (Our electrician couldn’t understand why I wanted a light in a little closet… I now wish I would have had him put in a bunch of outlets on the back wall instead of this power strip but oh well.  Next time.    It also just works well for sewing.  I have enough light, enough cubbies to store bobbins and scissors and… and it’s just pretty.

So, this is the left side.   The white shelf I got at the thrift store for $5 and then painted it.  The pretty print in the back of it – cardboard covered in wrapping paper from the $1 section at Target covered in clear contact paper!  I used the same method to make the trash can (below a few pictures) and I just love it.  It goes with my paint color.  The shelf brackets – normal white brackets that I spray painted red before we installed them.  They’re there anyways, may as well make them fun!  And the owl thing kind of evolved.  I never liked owls until my friend Edna started pointing them out… and then I made a Pinterest board for owls.  And it kind of happened.  Then, I found the green owl (next to the pictures) at the Target dollar section for $2.50… and it had to come home.  It holds my seam ripper, pens, chalk pencils…. that sort of thing.   The picture to the right of the owl is my great gram (of Gram’s Cookbook) when she was in her early 20′s…

This is the wall to the right.  Because the master bath shower water is all on this wall, we didn’t want to put any nails or anything into it for fear of busting a pipe.  The owl I found in the craft section at Walmart… And the magnetic dry erase board.  That was a challenge!  I tried using the sticky pads that came with it, but after a few months, the board came off of the pads.  However, the pads stuck to the wall and then when I tried to take them off it took the paint off too!  So, my suggestion – don’t use the sticky pads.  If you have a narrow space like this  you can do what I did.

I used a tension curtain rod and then ran that through chip clips!  These are Oxo Good Grips clips that conveniently came in red!  My husband again refered to it as “girly carpentry” but really – it works and was easy.  So there.

And the silver hook on the bottom of the board is magnetic and what I use to hold my tiny thread scissors.

So, back to the first picture – you’ve already seen my fancy thread holder.  To the left of that is the bar with purple cups on it – to hold scissors and tape and whatever I’m needing at the moment.  Below that is the magnetic bar (Ikea) that I use to hold my little metal boxes.  They hold all sorts of doo-dads.  The first shelve above – dish pans from Walmart!  Super cheap (and red) and fit just right.  Great for projects in process.  The shelf above is the fabric box cubbies.  I would like to say that we planned the height of the shelves so that this would all fit but… ya, it was totally a happy accident!  And then the top shelf holds yarn bags and scrapbook paper and other hard to store stuff.

I use lots of buttons, magnets, and other things… like my sewing tags for my bags.  Keeps things accessible and organized at the same time.  Plus, who doesn’t need a small can of Spam?

Down below, I have my trash can.   And my sewing stuff box.  Very exciting.

But, the trash box?  A friend of mine gave me this box (I asked for cereal boxes as I use them in shipping my clothespin bags)… and while it is a cereal box, it wasn’t the size that I needed.  But, it was a great trash can!  And for a long time, it was just a cereal box that I used as a trash can.  But, then I had to make my sewing closet all pretty for you all to see… so I finally got around to gussying up the place.  The same thing – wrapping paper and clear contact paper.  Easy peasy and now it matches!

So, of course, I need fabric storage and that doesn’t fit in my closet… so out into the room we go.  A nice cabinet that I have fabric and I optimistically thought would store all of my fabric that I would keep in the house.  Ah well, a girl can dream.

Then we added the tall closet next to it.  And while it looks like a lot of fabric, I’ve gone down a good bit and am making lots of stuff still…  A lot of that fabric was donated after the fire or fabric that I find at thrift stores.  Though, I do admit to having bought some of it.  And I use it and plan on using more… currently I’m making baby bibs but after that is done, then aprons and closet safes and coffee bag wallets (tutorials on all of those to come!) and…. so many plans and so few naps from the baby!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed my little sewing nook tour.

Have a lovely day!

Isn’t this cute?

Any idea what it is?

A wooden silverware drawer organizer tray!   On it’s side!

Yup.  I spray painted it red, then glued the little metal hangers on the back with my trusty E6000 glue.  I didn’t nail the hangers on because the wood of the tray is so thin it would have cracked and just been a mess.  Plus, this is easier.  And, because the paint and the glue off-gas a LOT and it smells terrible in the process, I let it air out for over a week outside on my porch.  Then, I used the paper idea to identify where the hangers were, taped the paper onto my wall where I wanted it and then put two little nails (one for each hanger) on the wall… and hung my fancy thread holder!   (My husband refers to this as girly carpentry but I prefer to think of it as not needing a man.)

Ta Da!!!!!

This is what it looked like before I added the very fancy pretty paper to the part on the right.

Another stunningly simple yet pretty tutorial for the sewing closet will come your way tomorrow or soon there after – depending on what the baby decides!

Have a lovely day!

OK, so to update this… I am Farmgirl Sister #4945.  Yup, I officially joined up and now I get to earn merit badges in fancy things like sewing, knitting, recycling, cooking…. it’s like 4-H for adult women.  And so far, it’s fun!  You can join too… at Mary Janes Farm sisterhood.  They even have local chapters, though none where I live, so I think I’m going to try to start one here.  Originally, and I’ll be honest here, I wanted a way to reach this group of ladies who seem to be of the clothesline drying persuasian.  And they have this fancy Girl Gab thing where sisters blogs are posted up there and… but as I read more and get more into it, it’s like the sort of group that I’ve been needing my entire life.  Farm type women (even in cities) who like to recycle and eat healthy food and even gluten free stuff…. and of course, line dry their clothes!

So, anyways, I needed to put the buttons on my side bar but had to have them on line to link to… so they went here.  So, now you know.

These are called spiderworts, or Tradescantia.  There are two local species… the tall ones and the short.  We transplanted these tall ones from another location in town several years ago and they have been very happy here ever since.  (And we’re glad we did – the original population has since been bulldozed.)  Last weekend, we moved some of the short ones that were already on our property to a more prominent position.  But, I don’t have pictures of those yet.

There are also natural variations that are pink.  We had more of these before but our old dog Monster (who died of some sort of cancer last summer) liked to dig wallows and this was one of his spots until we added spikey sticks in his hole.  They’ll recover and now we’ll always remember where he liked to dig!

Our redbud tree survived the fire but didn’t bloom last year.  We’re very happy to see it blooming this year!

There are also bluebonnets.  There is the species that is native to this area that have the blue on the flowers but the top of the spike is blue, too…

But these are the other Texas native, that the highway folks seed out… and are usually in the traditional spring picture.

Happy Spring everyone!

I had chickens as a kid.  I don’t think I loved them very much.  They were stinky and pecked my hands and back then – I didn’t appreciate how much better the eggs from our farm were compared to store eggs.  Likely because I’d never had store eggs before!

As an adult and after learning the horrors of commercial egg production, I REALLY  wanted my own chickens.  Even city slickers were getting hens for Pete’s sake!

So, for my birthday last fall, my hubs gave me the Raising Chickens book and a promise of a coop.  And it became our first building project that was just to make a new thing.  And it took nearly 2 months of weekends.  It’s a bit hill billy constructed, we used lots of leftover supplies from our house – including the metal roofing and the yet to be installed hardy plank on the outside.  Porch decking became the subfloor.  Remant piece of linoleum over the floor to water proof it… Bought a used chain link dog kennel from a friend….  And LOTS of research on the Backyard Chickens website.

But, with time, the coop is nearlydone.  This is a picture of the pen, which is hopefully critter proof.  It has the wooden braces on top and chicken wire attached over that.  There is hardware cloth burried out over a foot, up and over the cinder blocks and up the next 2 feet to keep coons from pulling chickens through the fence.  The chain link is tied into the ground with building anchors that go into the ground… we know there are lots of critters out here in the black forest.  We would not like to give them a chicken buffet!

These are a few of our girls.  We have 18 – we plan on keeping 10-12 of them.  First, we had the minimum order of 15 issues, then they gave us an extra and then we wanted a couple of Easter Eggers so got those locally … so that’s how we got to 18.  Will be selling the rest on Craigslist when they’re ready to move into a pen with older chickens (8 weeks is the rule I think).   We have 6 Barred Rock (not my favorite – more aggressive than the rest), 5 Buff Orphingtons, 5 Brahmas (“gentle giants” good with kids) and 2 green egg girls.

This is our fancy tree branch playscape.  That they haven’t had any interest in yet.  But… if not, no big deal, it can go on the burn pile where it would be anyways.

And the chicken water system using nipples.  Hopefully they figure it out today.  As it turns out – chickens are not very smart!  As they grow, we’ll take aways paving stones so that they stay at the right height.  The 2nd picture there is the storage tank that hubs re-plumbed.  Still needs a few tweaks but… And you can see that the hardy plank isn’t on the entire outside yet.  The girls moved in anyways… at 3 weeks, we were all ready!

We will have a gravity feed system soon… and I’ll post pictures of that and tell you if the girls are able to figure it out, but in the mean time, their old little feeder works for now.  The yellow worm, a flower planter that a friend gave me, now holds chick grit.  I thought the irony worked well…

This is where they sleep for now.  In a few weeks we’ll be able to take the heat lamp away… And I need to get the cinder blocks to use for roost supports as the bricks clearly didn’t work.

And when they’re bigger, we’ll have a ladder up to the big roosts.  It has a poop board under it with Sweet PDZ under that… kinda like a cat litter box, that all of the forums say keeps most of the poop out of the pine shavings…. and as it dries the poop out and is naturally amonia adsorbing, also keeps the flies and smell down/gone.  We’ll see, but I tend to believe the hoards of folks on the chicken page who have done this all before me!

The coop is only 10 x 5, the run is 10 x 10… and an open air coop as it is so crazy hot here in Texas most of the year.  We did position the coop under a few oak trees that are still alive so hopefully the shade will help.  We still need to add a bit to it to keep the rain out, and add hardy plank and paint the outside… but it is at least liveable for now.  And the girls are out of my sewing room!

As soon as I get my sewing room cleaned up and looking happy, I’ll do a show and tell of my favorite room in my house… so hopefully by this next week!

Happy chickens everyone!