Oatmeal cameras

Happy Monday!! On my birthday this year we went thrifting (or whatever you call it) and found two old cameras at Goodwill for just a few bucks a piece so we figured why not. If anything they look really cool and would look good on a shelf.

This is the Polaroid 250 Land Camera. This camera is from 1967 and at that time it retailed for $160 we paid $2.00 for it.

The next one is the Polaroid 320 Land Camera and this is from 1969 and it retailed for $60.00 then. We paid $3.00 for it. This one came in a case and had a flash with it.

We bought these back in June and recently decided that we wanted to find out if they actually worked or not. So at around $15.00 for a 10 exposure film and $10.00 per battery we decided to go for it. It would be fun trying (and expensive). Well guess what? They worked and they worked good. So that totally made it worth the money spent on finding out. It took us some time getting used to the settings and getting the pictures right. We had a bunch of fails-but the ones that worked looked really great.

Next on our weekend agenda was to make a pinhole camera out of an oatmeal box. We used the instructions from this blog http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=441&Itemid=92. He uses some pretty foul language but he is funny and very thorough in his directions. The camera was very easy to make. Sorry but I did not get a picture of my finished product and I left it at my sisters so I am unable to get a picture of it now. But I will add a picture as soon as I get it back.

Taking pictures on the other hand were very hard. Either you had too much light or not enough. I scanned in a few of the ones that I thought looked really cool. The first one is a negative that I made and the next two are my attempt of turning that negative in a photo. My chemicals were getting low and old but we were at the end and didn't want to mix a fresh batch for just a few pictures. That is why the last two are dark and splotchy. I still like them though :)

My sister did this photo on the computer using my negative. Very AWESOME!!

We do plan on trying this again soon-so maybe we will master it and get some awesome pics to share.
I hope that you enjoyed reading this-we really had a great time doing it.

Have a great week!!

Lesley

Homemade Laundry Soap

Good morning!

I have put my quilt on hold for a little while because I haven't had a lot of free time, but fear not. I will complete it soon.

One thing I have done is tried to be more Eco-friendly. I started getting water delivered to my house instead of buying bottled water. That way I will be putting 150 less plastic bottles into landfills every month. Ouch!

I have also made my own laundry soap. To be fair, this was also an attempt to save money. I have read about it a lot and always thought I should do it, but I never took that first step. Well, on Tuesday I took that step. I bought Borax and Washing Soda at Kroger. I already had some Ivory soap at home that I was planning to use for this same purpose.

I found a dozen different recipes online, but only a couple for powdered laundry soap. I wanted to make powdered because it takes up less space and I didn't want to cook soap. I mean really, who does? The only drawback I saw was some people mentioned the powdered soap being bad for septic systems, which I have. I don't understand that though. It is all the same ingredients. The only difference is that I am dissolving the soap beforehand instead of after. I thought maybe people were using too much powder because that can make it difficult to dissolve. Whatev.. I like to live dangerously so I was making powdered laundry soap.

I took a cheese grater and started grating my Ivory soap into a bowl (I had the smaller bar, prob about 3 oz.). It didn't work out like I wanted. Apparently my soap was a little too moist to grate and it ended up smearing all over the cheese grater. Well, there goes that plan. I guess I am cooking soap after all.

I got out a paring knife and cut the rest of the soap bar into thin slices then put it in a pot with some hot water. I heated the water while stirring with the grater to get all the soap to dissolve (I stirred with the grater to get all the soap off it). Once the soap was dissolved I added 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 cup washing soda to the water and stirred until it was all dissolved. This all probably took about 10 minutes. Then I realized I didn't have a large sealable container to put the soap into. So I looked everywhere and found a milk jug, but it wasn't going to be enough. I put half my mixture into the milk jug anyway and then added water to finish filling the container. I shook it up to mix and set it aside. My husband brought me a bleach bottle that he had just emptied so I cleaned it out and put the rest of my mixture into it, added water and shook to mix. Done. I now have 2 gallons of laundry soap.

I let it sit for a day and then decided I should try it out on some dirty towels. I shook my milk jug to mix up the soap then measured out about 1/8 - 1/4 cup of soap. Probably closer to 1/4 cup because it was a full load. Now, I read that you can use white vinegar as a fabric softener and this was a guinea pig load. What the heck? I added some vinegar to my load.

The end result? I have clean towels. They smelled clean, but not like soap. Just clean. And I still had that Ahhhh.... Moment when I first pulled them out of the dryer. You know the one. Where you just want to lay all the hot towels on a bed and roll around in them. All in all I would say this was a success. Good thing too because I still have 2 gallons left to use and enough supplies to make about 100 gallons more.

Here's to saving the environment!

Believe it or not I am HERE :)

Hello Everyone!!! I have missed you all :)
I know it has been a really, really (times like a million) long time since I have been here. I have no excuses-at least not any good ones. I think that I let life keep me too busy and unmotivated.

I am not sure if this will be the start of regular posts by me again or not-But I am here now and that's what matters right? My poor sis has tried to keep this thing going on her own for awhile-Sorry sis :(

This past week the boys went back to school. This is always a very sad day for me. They always seem to grow older so much faster when school is in. Here is a picture of my handsome boys on the first day. I am so very lucky to have them in my life :) Hopefully they will not forget their mom once they are all grown up.

We had a really good weekend. My husband went deep fishing with some buds of his, so my babies and I had a nice laid back weekend enjoying each others company. I decided to try to get alittle crafty. It has been so long I wasn't sure if I still had it in me-Just Kidding :) I have a pair of shoes that I have been wanting to redo for awhile now, so I figured why not? I LOVE the wedge on these but I do not like the patent leather look. It reminds me of the shiny Mary Janes I used to wear as a kid.

I went to Wal Mart and bought some cheapo ribbon and pulled out the handy dandy glue gun. I was going to wrap the ribbon around the straps and soon learned that was way too much work. So I just glued the strips of ribbon on the straps and I think it looks a lot better. If I were to change one thing though I would have used a different kind of glue. Using a glue gun on this was a really BIG pain in the booty. I love the way that it turned out so I am not complaining. I thought that I would try to get "fancy" so I made a Korker bow to stick on it. I think that I will make more of these-I just love the way that they look and they are sooo easy to make.

So what do you think? Long Korker bow or short and fluffy? I think that it looks cute both ways but I ended up with neither. My son told the bow was ghetto and my goofy butt listened to him.

I read several different blogs and I found this really easy and amazing recipe for Smores Brownies. I am sorry I can not remember which blog it was.

I used a brownie mix from the store and mixed it up following the directions on the box. Pour half of the mix into a greased pan. Lay graham crackers covering the brownie mix, then chocolate bars (I used chocolate chips) and cover with small marshmallows. Pour remaining half of brownie mix on top and cook according to brownie mix instructions. These are too die for. Make sure to eat them warm because they taste way better that way. This pictures does not capture their complete goodness.

Have a great rest of the week!! And hip hip HOORAYYY this weekend is a 3-day one!

Lesley =)

Almost finished!

Afternoon everyone! I made a promise and now I am here to deliver. I feel bad writing a tutorial now that I have realized just how many mistakes I have made on this quilt. If you look really closely you will probably see some. I thought about selling this quilt once it was finished, but I don't know that I can accept money for what I think is a sub-par quilt. I guess I will keep it and add it to my vast collection of blankets. My husband says you can never have too many blankets, but I have to disagree. If the whole world froze over and I loaned out blankets to all my neighbors I would still have enough cover all my beds three times over.

Enough of that. On to Step three-ish.

Last I left you we had just finished our four squares.

Now we cut 8 1/2" rectangles from our 2" strips of white and sew them to the tops of our four squares. Once that is done we press them open. I always press to the side without seams which in this case is the white. Normally you would press toward the darker fabric. After you press them you trim them so they are all square (or rectangle).

Then you sew them all into one long strip and press. You want to trim the strip to make sure it is straight. To save time and trouble I folded my strip over twice, lining up my seams, and trimmed each side.

Next you sew two of your 2" white strips together on the short side so you have one REALLY long 2" wide strip. You will need to do this two more times so you have six long 2" wide strips. Sew one strip to each side of your four square strip.

I started one strip from the opposite end of the other so the small seams in the white strips do not line up.

Press, trim your ends, and sew the other four square strips to your white strips. Pay close attention that all your squares are going the right direction. Press.

Then you sew one 4" wide strip to the top and one to the bottom (And again, press). You should be left with four 4" wide strips. Sew two to each other to make two really long 4" strips. Then sew those to the sides. I alternated ends again so the seams in the white fabric don't line up with each other. Your quilt top is finished!

Now comes the fun part. The sandwiching, quilting, and binding step. I am being sarcastic. The quilting part is the part I hate most. You will see why when you get to that step. I have started the final step but I won't be able to finish for awhile so don't hate me if it takes a couple of weeks to finish this up.
In the meantime you can play a riveting game of "Spot the Mistakes".

Forgetfulness

I'm sorry guys. I have completed the next step on the quilt I am working on and even started on the step after that but I can't seem to remember my camera so I can blog about it. Again, I'm sorry. I even started ANOTHER quilt (because I have a serious problem that I should probably seek counseling for) that I took pictures of. And then yesterday I started ANOTHER project. Fortunately the third project has nothing to do with quilting or sewing.

I make a promise to our 11 followers that "I, Carey, do solemnly swear that I will bring my camera to work this week so I can upload the photos and share my project progress with anyone who cares to read this blog". For reals.