homemade salsa

It's that time of year when gardens are exploding with fruit and vegetables, and we start trying to preserve everything our garden is producing in glass jars so that we can enjoy it all year long.  Well, some people do, anyway.

I have just about the blackest thumb you've ever seen!  I inherited the ability to kill any plant from my mother, who also has a fairly black thumb.

Luckily, I married well, and my mother-in-law can grow enough produce for an entire neighborhood, which she doesn't mind sharing!

So, each year at this time, we steal tomatoes from Enos' mom and we make homemade salsa using Mrs. Wages seasoning packets.

 

They are the easiest way to do it!  Just prepare your tomatoes, add the packet and some vinegar,

(we also like to add a few extra peppers for a hotter salsa,) then cook for 10 minutes. 

At that point, you can eat, freeze, or bottle the salsa for later use.

 

There is even an option for using canned diced tomatoes!  We tried it that way once, but if you have access to fresh tomatoes, they tend to taste better.

deep cleaning

At the encouragement of my best friend, I've decided to show you the mundane things that have been eating up my time as of late.

I called her one day to complain that I dislike deep cleaning because no one ever notices.

No one is ever going to climb up on top of my counters to look above my cupboards and notice how clean they are. 

Nor are they going to open up the cupboards under my sink, or the countless drawers that used to be filled with masses of junk, but are now stocked with properly organized junk.

When looking inside my fridge, they probably will not notice that all the glass shelves are once again clear, as opposed to sticky and cloudy like they started out this week.

My husband notices all these things (partially because when I see him at the end of a long day of seemingly unproductive cleaning, I drag him to the things I've done and make him look underneath, on top of, and inside all the areas I've been working on so hard that day,) and now I'm going to give you a chance to "notice" them, as well.


Under the kitchen sink:

A few days ago, this area was the catch-all for miscellaneous kitchen items that didn't have a home.  However, since we also keep a lot of our cleaning supplies under here, it seemed an oxymoron to leave it in the state it was.

Above my cabinets:

See this cabinet?

the top has been scrubbed clean,:

as have the tops of these cabinets.:

Nobody but those within my own family would look at this closet and think it looks "amazing," but if you had seen my crafting supplies a week ago, you might have thought I owned the company that makes plastic shopping bags because that is how it was all stored.

This closet also happens to be where the extra toilet paper is kept, and look out if you needed to re-stock the bathroom because this closet was an open-at-your-own-risk, knee-deep hazard.

These are not the only areas that have been subjected to deep cleaning lately, but they are the only ones I took photos of.  (Even I realize you can only indulge me for so long.)

While cleaning the tops of my kitchen cabinets, I discovered that the installers drilled no fewer than 17 holes in the wall looking for a stud!  I guess it's kind of a good thing that nobody ever climbs up to look at the tops of the cabinets because I really don't feel like fixing what no one will ever see!

basement reveal

Poor, neglected blog!

Would you like to see what I've been working on while I haven't been blogging (or even making) cute sewing projects?

Last time I showed you the basement bedroom, hallway, and closets we've been working on, we had primed and painted the ceiling, doors, and trim white.

It looked a little something like this:

The wall paint made a huge difference, and then we added carpet, and I'm pretty excited to move our older 2 troublemakers downstairs and rearrange the bedrooms upstairs.

Here are some reveal photos:

Bedroom before:

After paint:

After carpet:

The other side of the bedroom before:

after paint:

after carpet:

Hallway before:

hallway after paint:

hallway after carpet:

This room has been "finished" for about  a year, but we decided to wait to carpet until we had the bedroom and hallway done.  During the interim, we have been using a large carpet remnant in the center of the room.

Family room (angle 1) before:

Family room (angle 1) after:

Family room (angle 2) before:

Family room (angle 2) after:

Whew!  It was a lot of work just to make a room into something that we can now personalize with furniture, curtains, photos, etc!!  Now the fun part begins.

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crib sheets

My husband's cousin had a baby shower this past weekend, and I found myself wanting to make something different than what I normally make (ie: burp cloths, blankets) since I knew my mother- and sister-in-law, as well as several aunts are quite adept at making those cute crochet-edged blankets and burp cloths.

So, I got to thinking about why it's nice to have all those blankets and burp cloths.  Naturally, it's because babies, while sweet and adorable, are also sometimes little packages of poop and puke just waiting to leak or, heaven forbid, explode.

The worst possible times for this to happen are in the middle of the night.  Imagine entering your child's room in the middle of the night to realize he has spit up or blown out sometime in the 3 hours since you saw each other last.  You find yourself staggering around in the dark, eyes half open, brain completely off from the countless nights without sleep, trying to clean up after your infant and his lack of control over bodily functions, only to reach into the drawer where his sheets are kept to realize that he did this exact same thing earlier in the day, and you haven't gotten to that mountain of laundry, yet.

*sigh*

So, what do you do?

Strip down the bed and lay down a blanket big enough to tuck in on the sides so as not to be a smothering hazard and vow to buy more sheets in the morning.

The next morning, when at least half of your brain is firing again, you wash a load of laundry containing both sheets, and then suddenly the need for more crib sheets is pushed right out the back of your brain until the next time you need more than one sheet in a day.

Having experienced this predicament more times than I care to admit, I wanted to provide the new mommy with a head start.  I made her 3 crib sheets out of varying fabrics so she can decide what she likes.  Hopefully these, coupled with the sheet that comes with her crib set will give her enough sheets to keep ahead of the disastrous projectiles coming out of her sweet little angel.

I winged the pattern all on my own, but if you're interested in making your own crib sheets, I recommend using Dana's crib sheets tutorial.  It's detailed, fun, and like all her tutorials, full of great, easy-to-follow pictures.

The only things I changed were that the sides to my crib sheets were 6 inches, rather than 8.  Also, instead of creating a casing around the bottom edge, I simply serged around and then attached the elastic directly to the serge using a triple step zig-zag stitch, stretching the elastic as I went.

I used flannel:

cotton:

and super-soft Minky fabric:  (this is what I would want to sleep on, if I were a baby)

So, the next time you're making something for a baby shower, don't forget to include a crib sheet or two!

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memorial day "crafting"

We have been finishing a bedroom, hallway, and two closets in our basement.  It's been a long slow process since we're doing the work ourselves.

Things are really coming together.  We've finished priming, and painting the ceilings and trim white.  Soon we'll roll the wall color, but yesterday we finished up the white by painting the doors.  There are 4 of them, and it took up a lot of the day, but I got them done!

It's not much fun to look at pictures of white doors, but I'm proud of them and wanted to show them off (and I'm hoping that by showing the progress I made over the weekend, it'll push me toward finishing other things up in a timely manner.)

And so, without further ado . . . my white doors!

Since I'm such a go-getter, while I was waiting for paint to dry between coats, I started taping off the ceiling.

And there you go--the sum of my "craftiness" during the Memorial Day holiday.  What did you do with your "extra" time . . . as if there really were such a thing?!

unobtrusive coat hooks

I have an adorable friend with whom I have a lot in common--not so much the adorable part, but other things.  She also is pregnant with her 5th baby (and due within 2 weeks of mine,) has the exact same style house as I, and loves to be creative.  Her creative strength, however lies with furniture and home improvement, which mine does not.

When Veronica posted this cute coat rack, I realized how much I hate this part of my house.  Puffy coats practically grabbing you as you enter, backpacks sprawled out on the floor (and half the time they're open and spilling the contents onto the floor.)

So, I stole her idea and followed her simple directions to replicated it . . . twice for my front entryway.

I can't even tell you how much I love it!  The coat tree was always overloaded and felt like it took up too much of the room.  Having everything flat against the walls really opens up the room and makes everything look cleaner and more organized.

Now I just need to get a cute floor mat for wet shoes during the winter.

decorating dud

When it comes to home decor, I'm somewhat of a decorating dud. 

I can pick out colors that match, clash, coordinate, etc.  That's not the problem.

I can arrange a room in a practical manner, but I just don't have an eye for home decor.

You know those women whose homes look like they could be photographed for Better Homes and Gardens or the Pottery Barn catalogue?  You know the ones.  They have unique, adorable furniture.   Knick knacks all over the place with no practicality, but they really pull the room together without making it feel cluttered?  That's not me.

However, every now and then I make an effort at adding something to our home to make it unique, and a little more ours.

That's what I did yesterday, and I've once again born my weakness for all to see.

I took a left-over bottle from some Sparkling Cider, and tried to make it into something cute to put . . . well, I don't know, but somewhere.  I hadn't planned that far ahead, but in the back of my mind, I pictured it on top of my cupboards in the kitchen, or maybe on the large entertainment center in the front room which now houses toys and games.  Whatever the subconscious plan, it doesn't matter now.

I took that bottle from this:

to this:

It's probably not as horrible as I made it sound, but it's not something really cute, either.  I tried to step outside my comfort zone and go for random . . . and this is why I don't do random.  It just looks like a sloppy, wrinkled mess.

I need help, people.  Someone tell me whether this is worth keeping? 

Should I cover it in plain brown paper, or will that make it look like I'm some kind of drunk trying to hide my bottle during biology class? 

Should I just throw it out? 

Is there something out there that I could pair it with that would make my sad, sad bottle look less out of place wherever I set it down?

Help!!

Sincerely,
the Decorating Dud

simple kids - day 2

Today's idea for a project with the kids is a gingerbread house!

Now, the only way this is a simple, non-messy project is if you buy a kit.  Look for one with pre-made frosting, fun pieces, and ours even came with a base that had grooves to put the bottom of the house, the sleigh, and the reindeer in!

Don't forget to "accidentally" leave out a few candies for the smallest trouble-maker!

Oh, how I love those chubby hands!!