Organization on a dime

Have you ever heard of Cansolidators? They look pretty handy, right? When I first saw them I thought that they would be the perfect tool for organizing our food storage. The problem is that the smallest ones cost about 30 bucks.
Each. Yeah.
I'm cheap. No, I mean really, really cheap. I've never spent more than 12 dollars for a pair of jeans. All of the furniture in our apartment was either gifted or thrifted. There's no way I'm going to spend 30 dollars for a little platic thing that organizes canned goods, no matter how handy it is. So, instead, I 'organized' our closet like this:

looks nice, right? Heh.
And then, one day I came across this amazing istructable about making furniture out of cardboard, and the wheels started to turn in my head. A quick Google search later, and I was looking at a tutorial about making your own cardboard can rotation system. Awesome! Adam made three of them for us. We didn't follow the diagram on the tutorial, instead using the measurements that worked best for us, but we did like their idea of using a tube of caulk (which we had on hand) instead of elmer's glue. The caulk dries much faster and leaves the finished product a bit sturdier. We also doubled up the cardboard to make sure that it didn't buckle under the weight of our canned goods. So now one small corner of my closet looks nice and tidy. Now I just need Adam to make about a dozen more...



While Adam was making food storage solutions, I made myself a shoerack. And because I just can't resist a chance to turn ANYTHING into an art project, I mod podged scrapbook paper onto it, and then painted it.

So an old diaper box went from this:

To this:


And the pile of shoes behind my door went from this:
to this:
Ah. Much better. As I was making it I had the idea of modifying it a little to make a doll house. You could mod podge pictures of furniture and art from magazines onto it, and make pretty rugs out of scrapbook paper... Anicka and I might be doing something like this together, soon.

And, lastly, here is my progress on my knitting:


It's coming along, slowly but surely. I've made a few mistakes, but overall I'm pleased with it. Hopefully I'll have myself a nice little scarflet in a couple of days.

My new obsessions

• Knitting!

I tried to pick up knitting when I first got married. I hated it. I wasn't coordinated enough to work two needles at a time! So I stuffed my knitting needles into the back of the closet and tried crochet, instead. I loved crocheting. But I was always jealous of the people who could knit cool cables and lace. last week, when I cleaned out my closets, I found my knitting needles and decided to give them another chance. This is my progress after two hours and many, many slipped stitches:

Why yes, I AM ridiculously slow. Thanks for noticing. But, yay! I can knit!

• Mod Podge Rocks

Yes it does! I love mod podge. You can do so many things with it! I can't hotlink the photos from their blog, but that just gives you more of a reason to click on over to there and check it out. Because who doesn't need a pair of modpodged shoes?

• Wardrobe Refashion

The members of this blog take a pledge to make their own clothing for a specified amount of time. You can also buy handmade or used items during your pledge, so many people take old clothes and thrift store items and refashion them into something totally different. There are some awesome ideas! like turning a man's button-up shirt into a little girl's dress


or embellishing boring tanktops with crochet collars.Sign ups for the next round of pledges start this Thursday, and I've decided to add my name to the list, since I just cleaned out our closets and I have a giant pile of clothing that needs to be repurposed. This should be fun.

• Crafty Nest

This blog is rife with ideas for the do-it-yourselfer. I only wish that I had a house to decorate, so that I could attempt some of these projects. look at these awesome ideas!

We got our little glue ghosts hung up yesterday. It took them an entire day and a half to dry completely. My guess is that we did them a little thicker than they needed to be. But that's okay, because I figure they're less likely to tear now. Don't they look cute, haunting my center piece?

And this is the vase that I talked about in my last post. It was a graduation gift to my brother from our high school art teacher, Mr. Jones. Eric asked me to keep it safe for him, since he has nowhere to store it. (Oh, I'll keep it safe for you alright. Verrry, verrry safe.) Isn't it awesome?

I mean, of course I have my own vase from Mr. Jones, but... I want this one too. It's so pretty. The picture doesn't do it justice.

We've done a couple more Halloween crafts this week, too. Anicka did a cute painting of a tree using apples as stamps. I don't remember where I first saw this idea, but it's floating out there all over the Internet. And it turned out really cute. I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall for the fall season.

I found some fuzzy black yarn in my stash and tied a spiderweb up in the corner of our living room.

It was super easy to do, and if anyone wants instructions I can tell you how I did it. I think it has a cool, graphic look to it, and I like it better than the cheesy cobwebs that you can buy at the dollar store. (But anicka loves the cobwebs, so we'll probably be putting some of that up, as well.)

Super cute crafts

Today while Ryker was napping Anicka and I decided to get our craft on and decorate the apartment for Halloween. We don't have many decorations, and can't buy much because... erm... we're poor. But there are a ton of cute Halloween ideas here, and I think we're going to be busy testing them out for the next few days.

First, we made a couple of kitty pencil holders. Anicka made the first one black, for me, because she knows that I love Halloween. But she had to make a second 'pretty' one, because... well, the girl is a diva, and she likes her crafts to be as pink as possible. Seriously, look at how excited she is about these things:
Do you like her belly-shirt? It's one of her favorites. Because it's pink. But today I decided that I'm going to add some long sleeves and some fabric at the bottom to give it a layered look for winter. I've never attempted a refashion before, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Our second craft of the day was this sheet of glue ghosts. Aren't they cute? The little one on the bottom left corner is supposed to have "lots of mouths to make it scary" but I think it looks like she needs to wax her upper lip. Just sayin'. They're supposed to dry overnight and then you can peel them off of the wax paper and hang them up. I think they'll look pretty awesome hanging in our oh-so-stylish vase-full-of-twigs. (Seriously, Eric. You're never getting that vase back.)

Why I've Been Gone - an Etsy preview

Some of you have heard me complain about how busy I've been lately. Well, it's my own fault. I've been working like mad to get some merchandise made for my upcoming Etsy shop. So, I thought I'd give you all a little preview:

Those are a few of the things that I'll be listing. I'm expecting to open the shop at the end of this week. I'll let you know for sure when I get things up and running!