Cute Kitchen Sign

Time Needed: 1 hour
Level of difficulty: easy
Materials needed: picture frame, scissors, embroidery thread, needle, embroidery hoop, fabric, quilt batting, pencil, computer and printer (optional)
Directions: Use your computer to print out the design you want to embroider. Then, trace it on to the fabric. (Or, just free-hand your drawing on the fabric.) Put the batting behind the fabric and put it in the embroidery hoop. Then, use the embroidery floss to trace the outline you drew on the fabric. This is done by poking the needle through the top of the fabric and then poking it back down a few millimeters forward and pulling the thread through. The next stitch will poke through a few millimeters ahead of the completed stitch and work backwards to where you've previously stitched from. This gives a clean, thin, even line. Continue until done. Then, use the cardboard form in the frame to back the finished stitched product and put it in the frame. Hang and enjoy!
Hint: when cutting your fabric to size, leave at least an inch extra on all sides to be able to fold around the cardboard when you're done. If you cut it exactly to the size of the glass in the frame, you're gonna have a REALLY hard time putting it in the frame without jaggedy edges or blank spots showing up. This extra inch or so gives you room to pull the fabric tight around the cardboard. I usually tape mine firmly into place on the back to make sure they don't go anywhere.
(PS - Don't judge that the wall under the picture frames is wet. I just did dishes and decided to wash down the wall as well. Promise it's clean!)

Craft Flashback

My parents recently moved, and when they cleaned house, they found this. My Grandma Maurine made this for me when I was born. My grandpa cut the wood for her and she painted the whole thing. What a fun find!

Upgrading Existing Products

Today, I went into Michael's craft store, and all their plastic gourds and pumpkins were on sale. I bought a green and white one to go with my orange one I already had at home. Problem is, the orange and green ones have frillies on the top, and the white one was plain. It started out like this:Well, if you'll remember my Flavors of Fall Door Wreath, I have a few little things laying around that I can use to froof things up a bit. I punched some holes in the top of the pumpkin near the stem and inserted a few leaves and curled wire. I then superglued them in place so they wouldn't fall out, and now it looks more like this:
Now it matches the other two pumpkins just perfectly. See?

Flower Arranging Made Easy

Do you ever get a beautiful bunch of flowers from the store or from your love, only to have them look all floppy and awkward once you put them in a vase? Well, I found this great, new product the other day.What this is is a wire arrangement holder. You put it on the top of your vase, bend it over the edges, and stick your flowers in. This holds the flowers in place without having them flopping around.
Once you get all the flowers in, your arrangement looks much more like the following shot than the average floppy vase flower placement.
Isn't that nice? I bought my wire holder for about $4 at my local super store in the plant/flower section. Definitely a worthwhile investment!

Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

This is a fabulous feature that showed up originally on my cute friend Nicole's blog!

Time Needed: 5-10 minutes
Level of difficulty: easy
Materials needed: 1 bar fels naptha soap, grated, 1 cup arm and hammer washing soda, 1 cup borax, 2 1/2 -5 gallons of hot tap water, 1 5-gallon bucket, containers to store soap in (like old detergent or juice bottles)
Directions: Heat up a pot of 8 c. water (don't bring it to a boil!- also anywhere from 4-16 cups works, just make sure you know how much you use!). Dump in your grated fels naptha soap and wait for it to dissolve, stirring occasionally, if desired. Dump into a 5 gallon bucket and add borax and washing soda. Make sure both are dissolved and add your water. If you go with 5 gallons just fill up your whole bucket, don't worry about measuring. If you do less than 5 gallons, there are 16 cups in a gallon. Stir a bit to make sure it's mixed. then, using a funnel and something to scoop with (I use a 4 cup liquid measuring cup) put your detergent into your containers.

NOW: to explain the difference in amount of water used. Helen, a friend of mine, has 7 boys ages 2-16, I believe. She uses the 5 gallon recipe and puts in roughly 5/8 cup detergent to each load. I imagine with boys (though hers seem pretty clean) the clothes are sometimes nice and dirty, and she has no complaints about her soap not working. Hilary uses the 2 1/2 gallon recipe and uses 1/2 cup unless the load is really dirty, when she uses 1 cup. So they've been using about the same amount of soap with very different concentrations. Last night when I made my soap I decided to meet in the middle and used 3 1/2 gallons (56 cups total) of water and plan on using 1/2 cup unless super dirty. I'll let you guys know if I think I need to use a little more.

This recipe costs about $1.50- $2.00 to make, depending where you get your ingredients!

Homemade Peanut Butter

Time Needed: 5 minutes
Level of difficulty: easy
Materials needed: 1 cup roasted and shelled peanuts, 1 1/2 teaspoon peanut oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt (only if using unsalted peanuts)
Directions: Put it all in a blender and blend until it's smooth as a baby's bottom. Want chunky peanut butter? Reserve 1/4 cup peanuts from the initial blend and put them in at the end just long enough to add some chunks. Just so you know, because this is homemade, the texture will be slightly grainy. I don't want you to get done and think you failed because of that!

Note: Don't have peanut oil and don't want to go buy any? You can use vegetable oil as a suitable substitute. Don't want to use oil at all? I've never tried it, but rumor is if you still blend the crap out of those peanuts, butter ye shall have.

The Power of Tin Foil

We all know that tin foil can be a kitchen creator's best friend. However, tin foil has about a bajillion other uses. The best list I've found was at Life Hackery, and I've reposted their list here, plus a few extra uses that I've found around the kitchen. Feel free to leave your tin foil ideas in the comments section!

1. Frosting a cake but you’ve run out of pastry bags? Just grab a double thickness of aluminum foil and roll it into a cone shape, leaving a small opening at the point. Fill with frosting of spreading consistency. Twist the top to close the cone and use the device to make pretty frosting designs on your cake. Admittedly, this whole process is easier with a plastic zip-close bag with a corner snipped off, but when aluminum foil is all you’ve got it can be a lifesaver!

2. Sharpen your scissors. In between professional sharpenings (or for those 99 cent pairs of scissors that you don’t want to pay to have sharpened), use aluminum foil to keep your scissors in top form. Cutting through 6-8 layers of aluminum foil will improve the cutting surface of most scissors.

3. Make an Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie. You know, for protection from mind control enemies.

4. Shine up rusty chrome. With a bit of water on a wadded-up piece of aluminum foil, you can rub most rust spots off of chrome car parts.

5. Keep your oven clean. Tired of scraping burned-on food out of the bottom of your oven? Line it with aluminum foil before making something particularly messy. Don’t leave it in there permanently, however, because it can lead to oven damage over time.

6. Protect the heating element in your electric oven. For those times when you have to scrub burned-on crud out of your oven, cover the heating element with long strips of aluminum foil before spraying the inside of the oven with oven cleaner.

7. Make your soap last longer. Put a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of your bar of soap to keep it from sitting in a puddle of water and wearing away quickly.

8. Make interesting cakes. Novelty cake pans in odd shapes are expensive. Get the same effect by using a regular cake pan but making a shaped liner for the inside. Make sure the liner is at least as tall as the edges of the pan and several thicknesses so it will hold its shape. This makes it easy to make that snowman or heart-shaped cake without spending a lot of money on a new pan.

9. Make a sun box for seedlings. If your plants are growing crooked or looking less than healthy, cut off the top and one side of a cardboard box, then line the bottom and remaining sides with aluminum foil. Place your plant inside and put the entire operation in the window with the open side facing the window. The sun will reflect off of the foil and cause your plant to grow up straight.

10. Make a portrait reflector. Forget those super-expensive professional photography reflectors. Just cover a sturdy piece of cardboard with aluminum foil and you’ll have an excellent light reflector for portraits and still lifes.

11. Keep birds out of your fruit trees. Hang twisted strips of aluminum foil all over your fruit trees using fishing line. The light reflections and the sound will keep birds away from your fruit.

12. Protect saplings. Rodents and other animals sometimes chew on young trees in the winter. Protect your saplings by covering their bases with aluminum foil. Remember to change the covering periodically as the tree grows.

13. Re-soften hard brown sugar. Many people put hard brown sugar in the microwave to soften it up, but this can actually backfire and make the sugar harden even more. Instead, wrap the block of hardened sugar in some aluminum foil and bake in a 300° (Fahrenheit) oven for 5 minutes.

14. Keep the bottom of your fireplace or charcoal grill from becoming encrusted with soot. Line the bottom of your fireplace or grill with aluminum foil before starting a fire, then dispose of the foil after the fire is out and the coals are completely cooled.

15. Protect your furniture. Pets can’t stand the feeling or the sound of crinkling aluminum foil. If you want them to stay off of your furniture, cover the seats with clean aluminum foil whenever you’re not using the furniture. Your pets will learn within a couple of days to avoid sitting up there. You can also prevent them from scratching or biting furniture legs by covering them in aluminum foil.

16. Avoid moving the heavy furniture. When you want to quickly shampoo your carpets but don’t want to lug all of the furniture out of the room, simply cover the legs with aluminum foil to avoid getting shampoo on them.

17. Although we haven’t tested this tip (and it seems a bit dubious), it’s said that you can put a wadded-up ball of aluminum foil in your dryer with a load of clothes to reduce static cling.

18. Get creative and make fun sculptures with your aluminum foil.

19. Remove daily buildup on silver jewelry. With some common kitchen items you can make a simple but effective way to clean your jewelry at home.

20. If your TV and DVD player are stacked one on top of the other, you may find the picture is a bit fuzzy. This often happens when the electromagnetic fields from both devices interfere with each other. Place a sheet of aluminum foil between them to cut down on the interference.

21. When ironing, put a piece of aluminum foil under the ironing board cover. The foil will reflect the heat from the iron so you can essentially iron both sides at once.

22. Steam your silk or wool garments by placing a piece of aluminum foil on top of the ironing board and under the garment. Pass the iron over the garment from a few inches above the fabric while holding down the steam button. The steam will remove wrinkles without harming the cloth with direct heat.

23. Use it as wrapping paper in a pinch. You can glue or tape interesting cut-out pictures onto the aluminum foil to make it even more personal.

24. Make interesting Easter eggs.

25. Reflect heat into your house. Put a layer of aluminum foil behind your radiator when it is off and completely cool. When the radiator is turned on, more of the heat will be directed into the living area and less will be absorbed into the wall behind the radiator.

26. Keep pie crusts from burning. This may be one of the oldest aluminum foil tricks in the book, but it’s a good one. When baking a pie, cover the edges of the crust with aluminum foil at the very end of the baking time to keep it from browning too much.

27. Make a cool noisemaker with your kids.

28. Make a solar cooker. You’ll cut down on energy costs and experience a traditional way of cooking.

29. Use strips of aluminum foil to wrap your hair, then coil them up to make impromptu curlers.

30. Cover doorknobs and hinges with aluminum foil to avoid having to take them off while painting.

Bonus Tip: In many locations, aluminum foil can be recycled along with all of the other household recycling. When you’ve used it for cooking and all of the other interesting projects listed here, just throw it into the bin along with all of your other recyclable materials to keep it out of the waste stream.

Create-A-Torium Tips:

• Have a full-sized bread pan but want small bread loaves? Use a folded piece of tin foil to separate the two loaves within the big pan. You'll end up with super cute square loaves.
• Want to save a bit of money? If you trust yourself to do this, buy an at-home highlighting kit and use tin foil like they do at the salon to keep highlighted and non-highlighted hair separate.
• Cover a piece of patterned or shaped cardboard with tin foil (maybe even colored foil). You now have a cute serving tray that you can chuck when you're done.
• Doing other crafts like beading, glittering, or using buttons and having a hard time keeping things in their place on the table? Bend a sheet of tin foil so that there are substantial edges and put your tiny pieces in your makeshift foil holders. Cheap and easy!