Yes, I’m really making doll blankets

Well, my little darling Madison has discovered Amercian Girl dolls.  Which is wonderful- they were a huge part of my own childhood.  However, American Girl doll stuff is crazy expensive!  We love craft projects, so we decided we were going to start making some projects geared toward American Girls.  First off, her dolls (Kirsten and Samantha) have been “freezing cold” this spring.  So I took a trip to Hobby Lobby to find some material that would be worthy.  And for $3, I found some gorgeous pink fuzzy fabric that I knew would be more than enough to make a comforter set.  I had already had a bag of fiberfill that has been sitting in the closet forever, so we were pretty much ready to go.  It was a super easy project and ended up costing about $4 instead of the $30+ bed sets listed on the American Girl site.  Plus there was the added bonus of getting to do a project with the kids.  Riley and Madison learned how a sewing machine worked and really enjoyed helping the project come together.

During the project:

And I’d say she was pretty happy with the result.

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The Jar Challenge- Project One

“Hoarders” is a show that will scare the absolute crap out of anyone, especially us thrifty ladies who like to find ways to upcycle or recycle things.  I have to admit, the first episode I watched had me throwing away EVERYTHING I had saved in the name of saving a penny- the three empty Country Crock containers I sometimes use to store leftovers in, the basket of my husband’s old shirts that I use for cleaning rags, and the slightly out of control pile of scrap paper.  I was pretty proud of myself.

Enter my Aunt Patsy.  Aunt Patsy is my Grannie’s sister, and has always been a sweet, lively, crafty lady.  She’s also known for going a little overboard on her craft stashes.  So when Patsy asked if I wanted to get some boxes full of vintage jars out of her garage, I was like, “Heck yeah!”  Jars don’t just sit around like lumps doing nothing- haven’t you seen Pinterest?  They become lamps!  Storage!  Decorations!  Cups!  The possibilities are endless.  But I promised myself if I was going to take two boxes full of jars like this:

I would make at least one project a week with them until they were all gone, or I had given or (eek!) thrown them away.  First order of business: getting my house organized a little bit better.  I was in awe of the pantries on this post about fabulous pantries.

And while I, unfortunately don’t have the space in our current little rent house to do something so fabulous, I am able to do something about little things like this:

I don’t have the cabinet space to spare, and these are some of my most used cooking herbs and spices, but the above post gave me some inspiration to streamline and bring a little uniformity to what is displayed.  So, I cleaned out the jars, ran them through the dishwasher a few times, spray painted the lids, and they turned out gorgeous!  I just needed the right labels.  Then I came across 101 Pretty Printables on Everything Etsy, and low and behold, was Round Vintage Labels, free for printing!  A little spice dumping, label printing, lettering, clear-contact papering later, and I have a much prettier contertop.  At least I think so!

And even if not, there’s a few less jars in sweet Aunt Patsy’s garage for her to trip over.

Love, Mandy

P.S.  I did have to crop that last picture in order to hide a speck of spaghetti sauce that had fallen down the crack of my stovetop.  The magic of photo editing!!