Monday, July 21, 2014

Beachcomber Bag

Every time I vacation at the beach I wish I had a open weave bag for all the shells and stuff I find, and every time I get home I forget to make one--until this year.  Finally!


It's from a remnant piece of white cargo netting I found at Joann's a few months ago.  It should be perfect for letting the sand fall through and for air drying.

 I thought about binding the edges with some pretty fabric but decided to go with French seams on the polyester netting so that it would dry out quickly.  Nothing worse than a damp smelly bag of seashells.  Wait, there was that time the 145- pound dog rolled on the not so freshly dead cat when we were out walking in the woods.  Yeah, that was definitely worse.  Turns out that some dogs still have that ancient wolf thing of rolling on the kill to bring the scent back to the pack.  The message got a bit messed up by the time it was passed down to my dog.  His idea was to quickly roll on anything dead and gallop gleefully back to me, his pack, to share the great news.    Loved that dog--most of the time.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Just doin' the small stuff

I've not done anything particularly blog-worthy lately.  Just puttering around with the Silhouette making beautiful labels to turn my ugly, recycled Tide containers into zipper storage.  Look at those perfectly cut little zipper thingies!

 No,  the ugly containers will not stay on the shelf.  They are a cabinet,

 with the black, pumpkin looking one holding all the neutral zips,

while the zig-zag pink labeled one holds my colorful zips.

 I also made a little, everyday bag from old jeans.
Yeah, I stole Sandra of Sandra Sews little button eyes idea.  Cute and they're covering the uneven stitching lines I made at the top of the pockets.  That pen is supposed to look like a nose. No one else sees that but me, though.

We've also been trapping and releasing these guys in a lovely forest far, far away from our house

 because they have been doing this

to my newly sided house.  They are also gnawing on my lawn furniture, eighty dollar bird feeders, and anything else they can get their little teeth on.  Fifteen down and still have four more out there hanging off my bird feeders this morning.  I think I may have to stop feeding the birds to get rid of the problem.  That's a bit sad.  I do love watching the beasts.  I liked the squirrels, too, before they started chewing all my stuff.

Did some fun stuff like hiking at this beautiful place in the Huyck Preserve at Berne, New York
 with my lovely husband, Brian and daughter, Keegan.

Last, I started doing Nutrisystem this week!  When the last ten pounds I needed  to lose (for the last eight or nine years) turned into twenty, I HAD to try something different.  Why I could lose well over fifty pounds on my own, but not this last bit is beyond me.  I tried Weight Watchers, but didn't like all the time I had to spend counting and recording and just thinking about food.  I think I need these two things:  recognizing what an actual portion should be again and paying attention to the extra-eating triggers.  I figured Nutrisystem would quickly work well for both those issues.  It has already been an eye-opener on both counts.  I lost a couple of pounds  in the half a week I've been on the program.  Good start!  Wish me luck...