Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Story Of Louis Pasteur

We have to watch this movie for school in a couple of weeks and trying to find it at my local library or on Netflix is near to impossible, however YouTube.com has it is 7 parts. Here are all 7 parts for you pleasure.

Part 1/7


Part 2/7


Part 3/7


Part 4/7


Part 5/7

Part 6/7

Part 7/7





Sunday, August 19, 2012

What sparks your creativity?

What sparks your creativity? 
 Listening to music, taking a walk in the woods, sitting and listening to the sounds around you, getting a cup of coffee, talking with friend?

For me it can be hearing the right words or seeing something that I have been wanting to do and just doing it, granted it can be a little hard to do somethings when your are almost 27 weeks pregnant. 
Recently much of my creativity has been put towards writing. I currently have 5 children's books written, 1 of which is getting published by Tate Publishing. I am waiting to see how that book does before contacting my editor again and sending in my other manuscripts to hopefully be published as well. For instance 3 weeks ago inspiration hit me to write another children's story, so I quickly wrote down the main points of my  book and went back to enjoying church service (which was really good that day).

House decorating and design comes to me while looking at pictures on Pinterest, Facebook and watching HGTV or DIY channels, I like certain aspects of what they are doing and then find a similar product or image and move on to that project. Like I said it can be difficult to do when pregnant, especially with a every growing baby bump to get in the way. 

Here is a little snippet of the book that is getting published, it should be available to the public around February/March time frame.


"My name is Honey, I am a Golden Retriever and I love to go on long walks with my girl Gracie who loves to go on walks just as much as I do.  Her brother Michael isn’t old enough to go on walks with us just yet, but next summer he will be.
We like to take long walks each day and that is how our day started. Gracie and I were walking through the woods when we came upon a doe and her twin fawns who were napping in a patch of grass and a beam of sunlight. Gracie put a finger to her lips and told me to be quiet so we could sneak around and not disturb them. I like chasing deer, rabbits and squirrels but I know Gracie wouldn’t give me my after walk treat if I chased these three deer into the woods and left her all alone to finish our walk. So I stay with Gracie and we continue on through the woods.
The next thing we came upon is the creek that runs through the woods we take our daily walks through; usually we don’t see much of anything in or around the creek. But today we see a mother duck with 6 baby ducklings swimming behind her on the creek. We watch them as they swim under the bridge and around the bend before we move on.  We also saw a few minnows, tadpoles and crawfish in the creek; we even heard a bull frog bellow his daily greetings."

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Frozen Lemons + Water = Yummy Drink

       During my pregnancy I do not drink caffeine at all and those who know me know I am a huge mountain dew fanatic, thankfully my husband has found a caffeine free mountain dew for me to drink so I don't have to go without this time. I try to only drink 1 or 2 cans a day and drink water or milk the rest of the day. I am not a fan of plain water, it is boring and I just don't like it. However I do like to add a slice of lemon to my water, buying a single lemon is more expensive than buying a bag of them at the grocery store. I usually throw them in the fridge to keep them fresh longer but they still go bad quickly and I hate wasting good lemons.

Here is my very short tutorial on how to freeze lemons.
1. Wash the outside of the lemon first, think about it. It is going to be in your drink and you don't want dirt in your drink.
2. Cut them up into slices then cut each slice in half, you can get twice as many lemons for my drinks.
3. Put wax paper down on a tray, I used a  very small tray and could only get 3 or 4 sliced and halved lemons on it.
4. Put Tray in the freezer for a few hour until lemons are frozen.
5. Put lemons in a freezer bag and put back into freezer.
6. Do this until all of your lemons are cut, frozen and bagged.
I did this last month and still haven't been through the first bag of lemons yet, but I will use the same slice of lemon all day.

I will even put a small slice of lemon in my sons sippy cup just to add a little bit of flavor to his water, no sugar necessary.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

How to make Display Trays

Back in March I participated in a Craft Show with my Vintage Shoppe, while preparing for this show I decided that I needed a couple of display trays to display brooches or earrings. However I didn't want to buy any because I was trying to keep myself on a budget.
One day while retrieving something from my basement I came upon 2 small window frames that originally belonged to a door, they were PERFECT size for my display trays. 
~A little bit of background on my basement, the man we bought our house from didn't clean the basement out at all. So there are all sorts of random things and treasures not to mention trash down there. My loving husband has been slowly cleaning all of the junk and trash out.~

Here are the instructions on how to turn an ordinary small window frame into a beautiful display tray.
This is what they looked like when I found them in the basement. Covered in grim, dirt and cobwebs.





I scrubbed them up really well with hot soapy water and let them dry for a couple of days.





This is what they looked liked after I cleaned them.
There is a big difference isn't there?

I liked the style but not the color, it is just wasn't what I was looking for so I decided to paint them.
I couldn't decided what color, but I knew that I needed to prime them first since they were stained at one time.
I didn't sand them at all since the stain was so old and there wasn't any wax or clear coat on them.



I primed each frame twice with a basic white primer paint that I had laying around the house.
I was going to leave them white or just paint one with color but then I decided to paint them a very pretty blue, again this was paint I had laying around. 

The frame on the right in this picture only has 1 coat of the blue paint on it, I kind of liked the shabby chic look of the white peaking through. But it looked unfinished and sloppy to me, so I did two coats of the blue paint on each frame.

After I had finished putting the 2nd coat of blue paint and let them dry, I thought they turned out really well. Don't you?









I had to address the holes in the frame on the left, what could I do with those? I could fill them with putty, but I would have to buy some and I really didn't want to do that. So I dug through my jar of vintage beads that I have from broken jewelry, it took a while but I finally found 4 faux pearl beads that were all the same size.
I just used a hot glue gun and glued each bead into place.



Backing: I use cardboard and material for the backing, both of these I had just laying around in my house.
I measure and cut the cardboard to fit. 
I measured and cut the material to overlap the cardboard for a nice finished look. I ironed the material before cutting and applying to cardboard.
I used a generic Elmer's Glue to apply the material to the cardboard, I didn't use my hot glue gun because I didn't want it to become lumpy.
After I glued each piece of material and let it dry I then folded the extra material around the cardboard and used a little bit of glue to hold in place.

After that had dried, I used a staple gun to attach the cardboard backs to the frames.
 
The total time to make these was about 3 hours, but it was over the course of 4 days with waiting for the frames to dry.



Closer look of the right frame.


Items Used:
2 wooden frames
White Primer Paint
Blue Paint
1 1" paint brush
Hot Glue Gun
4 Faux Pearl Beads
Cardboard
2 pieces of Material
Generic Elmer's Glue
Staple Guns

All of these things were found around my home.
Cost of this project $0.00.


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