pinning projects

I've started "pinning." The addictive website pinterest is growing in popularity, and I've become rather hooked on browsing while nursing, since it's a one-handed activity.

My favorite categories are craft ideas and "diy" do-it-yourself projects around the home. But I don't like to pin projects that are unrealistic for me to do, and I really want to be more active in my creativity than a passive pinner.....

So I'm proud to present a series of products resulting from pinterest that I actually did.

1) birdies (modeled after this)

This is so far the best reproduction of a pinterest item, and the most fun, so I'll start here.

Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving I had some friends over for crafting, specifically to make these, but there was other pinterest-inspired projects going on as well...

We made a few changes from the "directions" and I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Kristie picked up an old Czech novel for 5kc -- already "distressed," and I love that the birds'll always remind me of Prague.

Twine would be cute, but we didn't have any, so we went with festive red and white ribbon.

I found that rubber cement works best for gluing them. I could quickly slab glue between the three birdies, position the papers as I liked, and then slide both the stick feet and the

ribbon hanger between them, avoiding the birds having a front & back side.

Rubber cement also is a nice coat on top if you want to sprinkle a layer of glitter on them. We used elmer's glue write shapes and words in glitter too. [And Julie got her first hand-made ornament!]

I hung them on our windows, in lieu of a Christmas tree this year.

2) the belly & baby photos (like this)

This didn't come out all that great, but I did take the photo before and after, like I wanted to. I just don't feel that the before shot emphasizes how HUmongus the belly was. Oh well. I'm glad she's on the outside now. =)

3) homemade baby wipes (from here)

I was very excited to see this last summer, anticipating Julie's arrival, since I know wipes are expensive. And I've started making them this fall! The directions were easy to follow, but I'd change it a bit: Half the ingredients. Maybe they meant to say it's for both halves of the paper towels and it was unclear. At least for my paper towels, 1 cup of boiling water + 1 tbsp of each baby oil & baby shampoo was sufficient. Pour it in slowly, circling round the roll. It still won't appear to be enough liquid at first, but in time the water will seep through, saturating it all nicely.

Next I'd like to try the solution with wash cloths to save on paper towels...=)

4) scarf hangers

Here was a simple diy organization project that I could do without buying a thing! (isn't that the idea of re-purposing? it killed me when one comment to a re-purposed craft blog said, "any particular place where I can find fruit boxes?" really?!) Of course, I adjusted it as I felt would be best. The scarf storage has been an issue, and though I have so many, I wear the same few because the rest get lost under the pile. This is much better.

5) hat storage

This is not from pinterest. But now it could go on pinterest. And its in the same spirit of making this apartment nicer. Kudos to Elizabeth; I saw it hanging in her place. Now I can display all of Julie's cute hats, plus they are where I can see all of them, hopefully avoiding the sad "oh, she never wore that hat and now it's too small for her" fate.