You and I or You and Me? A Short PSA

Hey, guys! It's the week before Easter, and I'm busier than a one-armed paper hanger, but I decided I'd take a minute while my lunch is cooking to bring you a little grammar lesson. I've been seeing the improper usage of "I" and "me" going around quite a bit, so I want to share with you a hint that is very helpful. In situations involving multiple people where you want to know whether you should use "I" or "me" in a sentence, always think of how you would answer the question if you were only answering for yourself. In cases where you're alone and you'd answer "I," use "I" when including multiple people also. The same goes for "me;" if you're alone and would normally answer with "me," then use "me" when referring to multiple people. Let's clarify with a couple of examples:

Example 1, Using "I":
Kim asks, "Who is going to the store?"
You reply (when speaking for yourself alone), "I am going to the store."
OR
You reply (when speaking for yourself and someone else), "Jan and I are going to the store."

Example 2, Using "me":
Kim asks, "Whose dog is this?"
You reply (when speaking for yourself alone), "It belongs to me."
OR
You reply (when speaking for yourself and someone else), "It belongs to Jan and me."

Pro Tip: Always include yourself last in these situations, it's just plain polite (e.g., "Jan and I," not "I and Jan").

There you go. My grammar may not be perfect, but I do try, and now you can try a little harder too!

Happy Easter, everyone!

Blah Weather

Today after a dreary morning, it's finally sunny and nice outside. Gosh, I really wish we could have a few consistently sunny, warm days. I tell you, the rain and cold has got me feeling pretty blue, and the peeks of sunshine have been a cruel tease. I want to sip sweet tea on my front porch, dammit! Speaking of which, Pinterest has once again been a source of inspiration for me:

Someone pinned this cool, handmade pillow you can find on Etsy. I like the saying, and I'd like to do one of my own with a little different design on some burlap. If you order this pillow, you can customize it with your own colors and sayings too. Actually, the whole shop has some pretty awesome stuff. I'm going to make a pillow like this and pair it up with some of these outdoor pillows from Target:

I'm really feeling the turquoise right now, you know? It's so bright and happy. Anyway, that's it for now. I'll post some pics of my new porch furniture when I get it all done. Until then, tootles!

Potatoes and Tusks

Fierce!

This week is the week of deliveries. Yesterday, I got my troll tusks from the wonderful people at Medieval Collectibles. I'm getting pretty excited about my costume now. Aside from the makeup, I now have all the elements of the costume that I myself am not going to make. I'm also expecting my friendly neighborhood UPS guy to bring my patio storage bench that I ordered from Amazon. Hooray for more storage space!

This week we've been blessed with beautiful weather. I have to tell you, after the crazy winter we've had, I'm thankful for some calm spring-like days. All this has got me looking outside in anticipation of gardening. A few days ago, my little one and I started some tomatoes, tomatillos, sweet and hot peppers, and zucchini seeds indoors. I was curious how this would go because the tomato seeds were some I saved myself a couple of growing seasons ago, and the peppers and zucchini are close to 3 years old. I honestly didn't expect any of them to sprout, but sure enough, the tomatoes and zucchini are.

Yesterday, we headed outside to plant some Dutch iris bulbs in a little, neglected garden bed under our tree. I found that daffodils and grape hyacinth were previously planted there, so that was a pleasant surprise. The grape hyacinth seems to be making a run for it though, because I see blooms popping up in the grass up to ten feet away from the bed. I weeded, put down ant killer and fixed the rock ring around the bed. We also planted some zinnia seeds in my umbrella stand planter and began a potato tower. I have a lot of plans in store for my yard, and a lot of work ahead of me to get it done, but I'll be glad to be outside. Who knows, maybe I'll even get a tan this year.

Poppin' Tags and Fletchin' Arrows

"I'm gonna pop some tags, only got twenty dollars in my pocket..." If you haven't heard this song, you need to. This song has become my theme song. Check out the radio edit here:

Why have I made Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" my theme? On my last trip to South Carolina, the mom-in-law and I made a trip to our favorite thrift store, where I scored four over-sized tees for 99 cents each. I altered the first one to make a cinch tee. I also made a skirt, and from there, it kind of snowballed. I made another skirt, then I altered two shirts I already owned, then I made several repairs to torn clothing that had been sitting in my project bin for months. Since then, I've been opening up my Sewing and Fabric Projects board on Pinterest and saying to myself, "What can I do today?" I think refashioning thrift store finds might just be my new hobby.

Ultimately, that's not what I want to tell you about today. In my last post, I promised to tell you about a part of my Halloween costume that's also a Valentine's Day friendly project. I know Valentine's Day is over and this post is way overdue. I apologize for that; life got in the way and I had other things to attend to. On the bright side, if you like this idea, you have a whole year to get it ready before Valentine's rolls around again! As you know, my WoW toon Leah is a hunter, and so my project was making arrows!

I started out by researching various bow hunting supply sites and discovering the average length and thickness of arrows. I then selected dowels from the craft store that were approximately the right thickness and cut them down to size. Then I sawed the nock in the end of the shaft. To make the arrowhead, I simply carved a sharp point with my knife and then smoothed it out with sand paper. I wanted a primitive look, and I thought this would work better than making arrowheads for that purpose.

Next, I looked for a user-friendly tutorial that would help me make realistic fletching for my arrows. I came across an article on primitiveways.com called "Fletching by Hand" that ended up giving me all the information I needed. I didn't follow the instructions to the letter, well, because I never really do. I'm a maverick like that. Besides, all I wanted was the basic idea for making an arrow that looks functional. For my fletching, I picked up some natural colored duck feathers from the craft store, and I split them down the quills with a utility knife. I trimmed them up to the approximate size and shape I wanted, then I used a dab of super glue to help hold the feathers in place while I wrapped them with dental floss. I didn't have any natural sinew, but the dental floss looked enough like it to suffice, so that's what I used. As I wrapped, I dipped my fingers in craft glue and slid the dental floss through them so it would adhere nicely without unraveling. And that's really all there is to it! Check back in the near future for my adventures in quiver making!

Just a couple of things

This week's post will be a fairly short one because we have company. My father-in-law is visiting all the way from sunny San Diego. It's been almost two years since the last time we saw him, so my little one is having quite a nice time with Grandpa.

Most of last week was spent getting ready for company, and that included reorganizing the little one's room to give her more space and better access to her toys. We used to keep all her toys in two big plastic buckets, which was a nightmare. To find anything, she would have to dump everything in the buckets out on the floor. The solution was re-purposing three sets of black, rolling plastic carts with the clear drawers. I had been keeping my craft items in them, but that wasn't working out, so I relocated my crafts to the bookshelves in the hallway. Then I cleaned out the carts and gave them each a coat of brightly-colored spray paint, and then loaded them up with my daughter's toys. Now she can see what's in each drawer, and she has more floor space to play. I can also get into her closet without having to move buckets around too. With my little one's permission, her big buckets now hold my fabric stash and add some cheery color to my craft area.

I also finished up two craft projects that I had been meaning to do. The first was a tin sign that my mother gave me that said, "Laugh" on it. I love metal signs, but I'm not a big fan of the "Live, Laugh, Love" stuff, so I thought I'd give it a new identity. Now it sits on my front porch, and it looks like this:


The first time I saw a sign like this, I laughed my butt off. I decided that I needed one for my house at some point. I like people to be aware when they approach that I have a dog, but I don't feel the need to scare them, because my mutt is not mean. I felt humor would be the best way to counter this, and since I have a cat as well, this sign is perfect.

The other project was fairly simple; it was inspired by all the lovely wrapped vases that can be found on Pinterest these days. I love the rustic, yet elegant look that the twine gives the vase. My vase used to be a Tropicana orange juice jug, but with its awesome shape, I felt it deserved a better fate than being tossed in the recycling bin. So now it's holding pretty fresh flowers on my kitchen table. Not bad for some trash and some twine, huh?

Well, that's it for today. Next week, I'll once again be talking about my Halloween costume, but the subject matter will be somewhat fitting for Valentine's Day. I'll be showing you how to make your own arrows (for decorative purposes, of course)! Stay tuned!

As always, if you're looking for more good ideas you can always follow me on Pinterest.

They're Here!

So here's the view from my front door today:

It's all ice and dreariness as far as the eye can see. Yesterday, I was so excited to see flaky white stuff falling in my yard, but my happiness was not long lasting. Shortly after the snowfall, it began to rain, and then sleet. Combine that with temperatures in the 20's and you have a mess. I needed to get something out of my car last night, but it was frozen shut. Today it's a tad warmer, so the icicles are melting, and by the middle of next week, we're supposed to be experiencing 70-degree weather. What?! I do not understand what's going on at all right now.

However, the crazy weather cannot bother me. Wednesday, I got my first package of costume accessories in the mail! I am now the owner of pointy-ear prosthetics and a wild pink wig. The wig has a little more black in it than I anticipated (Leah's hair is all pink), but I know I can make it work. The ears are just awesome. They're made in USA (bonus!) and are exactly what I wanted. A little makeup and they'll be ready to go. I might just wear these around the house sometimes!

I think the elven look suits me.

Step one to awesome troll hair.

The Pet Net

Part of my goal for this year is to more efficiently use the space I've got in my home. Our house is 1400-ish square feet, so it's not terribly tiny. However, it's an old home, so closets are small, and the layout is not quite as accommodating for a modern lifestyle. That means I'm having to get creative and make storage space where there isn't any.

My first project of the new year involved making a hammock or "pet net" for my little one's burgeoning stuffed animal collection. I know I could have just bought one, but none of my local stores had them in stock, and I would've felt ridiculous ordering that one thing, paying for shipping, and having some delivery guy drive all the way out to the boonies for that. That's not very thrifty or eco-friendly either, especially when my mother had just given me a large, fantastically bright pink piece of nylon material that I had literally no plans for.

Now, I cannot find the tutorial that I originally used to make this hammock, so I'll do my best to describe what I did. First, I measured how large I needed the net to be. This is a corner net, so I went to the corner and eyeballed how far out into the room I wanted the hammock to be and measured from that point to the corner. Then I cut out a square according to those measurements, folded it in half diagonally to form a triangle, and cut it out.

So I had the triangle that was to become my hammock. I then sewed a small hem on each side, somewhere between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch. After that, I folded each corner over and sewed it, which gave me a straight edge about 4 inches long at each corner. It looked something like the shape at the bottom left of this pic:

Source

The next step was to sew pockets for the hammock's hanging rope. I simply folded over each long side about 1 1/2 inches and sewed them like you'd do a rod pocket for a curtain. Then I ran a rope all the way through each pocket, starting at the corner that would be against the wall, i.e. the corner that forms the right angle. I made sure to leave enough extra rope so that  could have enough to  make loops at each corner, and then I tied it off. All that was left to do was install hooks in the ceiling and hang it up. Once I got it up, I made a few adjustments with the rope to get it to hang the way I wanted, then I loaded up with my little one's stuffed animals. Now she has more floor space and doesn't have to sort through her less played-with toys to get to her favorites.

Tell me that doesn't look nice?