I've been creating new stuff from old stuff

I turned some old ratty bath towels

into pretty dish drying mats. I just cut a bath towel into 6 big squares and covered each square with some cotton fabric. Now I have 6 pretty dish drying mats.

There always seems to be 2 or 3 items each day that can't go in the dishwasher and this is prettier than a traditional dish drainer sitting out all the time.

I also turned a pile of glass bottles that were headed for the trash into new treasures.

Quart sized peanut butter jars became canisters for my pantry and craft room.

And a giant pickle jar became a pretty Pottery Barn knock off vase.

It's been fun finding new ways to use old things.

Joining these linky parties...

Show and Tell Fridays at My Romantic Home

Plate Wall - My Way

*Be sure to see the update at the bottom of this post.

Which is to say the hard way. Ugh! This gave me so many problems. But, in the end, I won!!! And I think it was worth it.

So, I blog stalk. A lot. I'm a faithful reader of blogs like The Nesting Place and Cottage Instincts and Our Suburban Cottage and about a dozen other blogs of women who have beautiful taste and beautiful homes in the current cottage and coastal flavors. And I love them all. They really are so beautiful. Places I would LOVE to visit. I'd spend hours just soaking up all the creative touches they've added to their homes.
But I couldn't live there. All that white and neutral would get to me after about a week. And I'd be itching to paint something. Probably Purple!!! It's *my* turquoise you know.
I don't know if there's a name for my style. I'm not sure if I even know what it is yet.
So I stalk read and gather ideas and see if they can fit into our house in a way I'd want to live with every day.
One of the things that many of the blogs I read have in common is a plate wall. They're usually all white. Maybe with a robin's egg/aqua/turqouise plate or two thrown in. And they look GREAT. Gorgeous!
But my plate wall had to be more ... me.
I already had many of the plates I needed and some hangers bought a long time ago at various thrift stores. I just needed to add some more plates to make the grouping big enough for the large blank wall in the kitchen.
That wasn't too hard.
After I had all the plates gathered I had to figure out how to hang them up. The most obvious answer was these wire plate hangers. Seemed like a no brainer.

Not so fast. I put the hangers on and was moving the plates around on the counter to find just the right arrangement when, BEFORE I even tried to hang the first plate, SNAP!!! 

First one hanger snapped right off, then another shot across the room.

Thankfully no eyes were put out!

I lost ALL faith in the wire hangers and decided to go a different route that I had read about on various blogs.

The mystical, magical Command Strips! I've never used them before. But people rave about them. So I thought they might work for me.

Not. at. all. ugh! I don't know if my plates are super weird or what, but there was no way the strips could make contact with the bottom of the plate AND the wall too. Grr!!!

So I had a little temper tantrum and ate a rice krispy treat with mini M&M's. Sometimes that helps.

Then Roger and I wandered around Lowe's looking for a different solution.

I spotted these D rings...

And we decided to see if we could glue them on the back of the plates with Gorilla Glue. According to the glue bottle label it should work.
So we glued them and "clamped" them with painter's tape.

We waited an hour. Which was hard for me. I had already been waiting about a week to get these dang things hung up on the wall. 

We removed the tape.

And guess what?

It worked!

Tah dah!!!!

My very own plate wall. 

I love it!

It wasn't as easy as the pros I mentioned earlier made it seem.

And it has a flavor unlike theirs.

But very much like ours. 

It's perfect for where we live. :)

*UPDATED 9/1!
The gorilla glue gave up late one evening and resulted in the loudest crash you ever want to hear at ten pm and this...

This isn't working for me at all!

I only lost two plates. I removed the other two to spare them the same fate.

I'm off today to find the plate hangers mentioned in the comments.

Joining some linky parties...
 

Owning the manual mess

 Once upon a time I had a place for owner's manuals. It was that black box you see in the picture below.
Years passed by, it got full, and I started stashing them in the filing cabinet you see in the picture below.
Years passed by, it got full, and I started stuffing them in that white box you see in the picture below.
Years passed by, it got full, and we moved to a new house and made a pile of the new owner's manuals that came with the new house on that shelf you see in the picture below.

 Aaaargh!!!! While I was unpacking I piled all the piles together with an empty plastic file box that you see in the picture above and I resolved to get the piles under control as soon as possible. I finally managed it in the last week or so.
First, I threw away A LOT of owner's manuals. Like the ones from Kayleigh's infant toys. She's almost 25 years old and those toys are LONG gone. It's obvious why the manuals were taking over the place, I guess.
After I threw away the manuals to everything we no longer owned, I sorted the rest out and filed them.

In some cases I was very specific, and sometimes a general "Toys" or "Furniture" file seemed sufficient.
I just reused some folders I've had around forever. And I used a sharpie to label the box. I wasn't trying to make it beautiful. I'm never going to show it to anyone.
Well, except all of you.
I'll keep the box with our other files so we can easily access it when the need arises.
And I'll TRY to remember to get rid of the owner's manual to a thing when I get rid of the thing itself from now on. I mean, come on! 25 years is a long time to hang on to a piece (or 100 pieces) of paper!

Now if I could just get Roger to organize all his work paper piles into one manageable system.
One thing at a time...one thing at a time.

Linking up to a great organizing party. Lots of great ideas there, check it out!

Twice Built Spice Rack

I had a GREAT set up for spices in the old house. It was an over-the-door rack that we kept just inside the door to the pantry. Which was right next to the stove. Easy to get to and a perfect solution for my highly seasoned cooking experiments.
This house is set up differently so I had to find a solution that would work really well for us here.
Using the bottom shelf of each of the cabinets flanking the stove wasn't working. AT. ALL.

I've been going crazy for the last 2 1/2 months digging through every spice bottle trying to find what  I was looking for. 

I thought about using one of the drawers that flanks the stove but I already use those for other things that I like to keep close to the stove.

I put pen to paper and came up with these highly technical design plans...

for a custom built spice rack which would fit perfectly inside the cupboard above and to the right of the stove. Pretty nice, huh? 

Yesterday Roger and I set up a workshop in the basement by wrapping the future guest bedroom and bathroom in plastic wrap to contain the dust.

 And then we moved the power tools in.

In about an hour, with about $12 worth of materials, we had built the custom spice rack! And it was great!

Except....

when I designed it I forgot to account for the depth of it and the need to pivot it into the cabinet beyond the facing of the cabinets. Oops! It wouldn't sit flush against the back of the cabinet.

Back to the workshop we went. We disassembled the whole thing, reduced the width by 3/4 of an inch, and rebuilt it.

Tah dah!!!

Now we're in business!

The wood is hemlock which is very pretty. Or, it was, before we had to pull all those nails out of it and start over. I originally planned to stain it but after building it a second time we had used up all our time and my patience so I went ahead and attached it to the back of the cabinet with some velcro and loaded it up.

Now THAT is working for me!

I'm ready to build something else!

Joining some linky parties this week. Check them out! Lots of smart, creative people out there!

Hey, farmer, farmer, put away your DDT

Don't mind spots on my apples,

Leave me the birds and the bees, please!

*LOVE this song!

We took our first trip to the fruit and veggie stands yesterday.
We picked up a little assortment of all locally grown yumminess. I couldn't resist the 10/$1 limes even though they aren't locally grown.
It's a much longer drive from the new house so I don't know how often we'll go this year. We'll definitely make another trip for peaches when they're ready. But we might stick closer to home and hit the farmer's markets nearby for other things.
It was a nice drive though.
We were babysitting Maveryk and Tukker for the day so they came along with us.
Lots of toddler cuteness ensued.
There was playing...

And singing...

And napping...

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :)

T-shirt transformation. Just to see if I could.

Yesterday I followed this super well written tutorial CLICK HERE! to turn this...

Into this...

It worked! And it was pretty easy too.
It fits a little too snug around the shoulders for me. But Emily loves it and wore it to school today.
I'll see souvenir t-shirts in a whole new light now that I know how easily they can be transformed from boxy to breezy.

Again, sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.
The new camera arrived yesterday. Now I just have to figure out how to use it. Hmm...

My first slip cover. Not perfect, but not bad!

A LOOONG time ago, back in the old house, Kenzie moved from one room to another and we changed her room colors from Pepto pink and black to blue and brown.
Shortly after that we bought this hideous (her words!) chair from the DI for about $15.

We also bought a navy blue jersey knit flat sheet from the DI for a buck or two. I was thinking I would make a slipcover for the chair with the sheet.
For the past year and a half she's been living with it like this...

Not too chic...pretty dang shabby.
Yesterday I finally got around to making the slipcover. It only took about 2 hours total. I have no idea if I did it the "right" way or not. I just did it.
I was a little nervous about working with the stretchy knit. But it ended up being very forgiving of my inexperience. I'm pretty sure canvas or some other non-stretchy fabric would have shown my inexperience a LOT more.
I didn't think that there would be enough fabric to do the chair and the cushion but there was. There is even a little leftover. Maybe I'll make some other decorative thing for her room with what's left. You know, in a year or two.
I wanted to make sure the whole thing could be removed and machine washed. Let's face it, most things in life would be a lot easier to care for if they could just be machine washed. Think car upholstery subjected to toddlers, as one example. So I covered the cushion thusly

So it's cover can be removed and washed as well.
I think it's a successful first attempt at slip covering. I hope Kenzie likes it.

*My apologies for the awful pictures. Our ancient digital camera finally died last weekend. A new one is on the way. (PYP to my rescue, once again!) But I couldn't wait to post this project so I resorted to bad cell phone pics. Please forgive me. Maybe I'll replace them with good pics when the new camera gets here.

Because I crave attention for my toiling...
Linking up to


and...