Recycled Box Becomes Valentine Basket

Dear Friends,

As I was putting the trash in the recycle bin I had a paper heart laying near a box and the inspiration for this craft just took hold. I could use the corner of a box, the 90 degree angle as the point of a heart and make a heart basket.

I started by using this TV dinner box, but a cereal box or jello box, any size really would work. To the left of the box is a piece of junk mail. I just needed a scrap piece of paper again for the 90 degree angle as I needed the corner of it.

Fold the piece of scrap paper diagonally to make now a 45 degree angle.

Cut a semi circle along the top of it. When opened it now makes a heart shape.

Open the heart shape paper and place on the box. Trace around the heart on both the front and back of the box.

See I did that here and I connected the front heart to the back heart with a short line across the side of the box.

Cut along the lines you've drawn and it should look like this.

Cover box front, back and sides with pretty paper and embellish as desired. I punched holes at the top to attach ribbon and make a handle.

What a fun way to recycle something that would have gone in the trash.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Enjoy!

Nancy

Make One Change

Make One Change


Do your best to add goodness to your faith; to your goodness add knowledge; to your knowledge add self-control; to your self-control add endurance; to your endurance add godliness; to your godliness add brotherly affection; and to your brotherly affection add love. (2 Peter 1: 5-7)

Dear Friends,

There are times in life when everything seems overwhelming. I know these days certainly occur in my life.  There is so much going on you don’t know what to do first. You know in your heart this is not the way you want your life to be. You need to make one change.  Make that one change today. Through the scripture we see one of the very first things we are to do is to add goodness to our faith, add goodness to our lives. Start there. What is one thing you can do to add goodness in your life? Perhaps it is feeding your family healthy meals. Perhaps it is maintaining a budget so you are not stressed over family finances. Perhaps it is just maintaining the cleanliness and order of the kitchen. Perhaps it is just ensuring your family has clean laundry. Perhaps it is spending one evening a week with your children playing family games. Perhaps it is planning and taking the time as a family to go to church each Sunday.  Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. What is it for you?

Do these things seem overwhelming and too great even to accomplish? If so then break it down. If the laundry seems too overwhelming then tell yourself you will do one or two loads each day until it is caught up rather than tackling the entire mountain of it. If the thought of planning three meals a day seems too overwhelming then let’s just look at breakfast. There are many healthy and easy foods that your family can have for breakfast rather than sugar laden cereal with artificial preservatives and colors.

Choose just one thing in your life and begin it today. Begin it now and resolve to stick with it. (sticking with it is a real key here)  Then in one or two weeks from today, you decide, add one more change for the better. All these changes which are for the better will aid in your self-control. Improved self-control will motivate and help you increase endurance. As you do all these things, do them to glorify God. This will increase your godliness, brotherly affection and ultimately love. 

For myself, I have a schedule written of household chores to be done.  It is a page I print off of the computer each day and it takes me room by room to check each area for potential clutter and piles.  I'll share this list with you over the next few weeks.  It is easy to get off track of that list and when I do, not only do the household tasks fall apart, but other areas of my life start to slip through the cracks.  This past week, I've been back 100% on my schedule.  It is amazing how much more smoothly my house runs as well as the attitudes of everyone in the family when I just keep my schedule.  I resolve to work hard to stick with my schedule each and every day.

It all begins with just one change.  Just ONE change and do it for the goodness of all in your family.  May that change be an action that will ultimately glorify God.

Do you have a change you are wanting to make?  Please feel free to share it with us here.

Love,
Nancy

Staining Baskets - A Reader Question and we need YOUR advice

I have a question from a reader who knows I just use Minwax straight to stain my baskets. You can read how I stain HERE. She says her instructor advises adding linseed oil and mineral spirits to the Minwax helps the baskets from becoming brittle.
What do all of you think? Is it necessary to add mineral spirits and linseed oil to the Minwax?
Here is my own observation of my baskets using straight Minwax....

Some of my baskets are 15 years old and some I use daily such as my stair step basket and my bag basket. These two are baskets that truly get used and moved around, things thrown in them etc. Yes, I do notice that my baskets have become dryer over the years. Remember over the last 15 years I've lived a number of years in the low desert of Phoenix and now the high desert of Albuquerque where we often have 0% humidity. These baskets have not broken structurally. What has happened is on baskets with curly-q's and woven bows, those embellishments have snapped and broken with use and have had to be replaced. As I think now, there was one basket that did become quite damaged with use over time and that was my kitchen utensil basket. I'd drop and stuff wooden spoons and spatulas into the basket the utensil handles eventually poked holes in the basket. I used that basket several times a day for probably 10 years. You can see the photo of it below and that it is already starting to get damaged around the base.

That basket was always stuffed full and did get abused by me. Would linseed oil and mineral spirits have helped the life of this basket? Hmm....I'm not so sure it would have in this case. I've since replaced it with another basket I've woven. What about the heirloom baskets that you weave and want to just show and pass down for generations? Should those use a special staining treatment?

Thank you in advance readers for your comments and suggestions here. If you use a special treatment, would you please be as specific as possible with your staining recipe.
Have a happy weaving day,
Nancy

Free Valentine Crafting e-books

Hi Friends,
FaveCrafts has done it again with two great new free e-books available for downloading.  They are full of Valentine crafts that include paper crafts, crocheting, jewelry, home decor and more. 
Enjoy!
Nancy

A Correction on My Post

Good gravy friends did I make a mistake! This sweet basket from W.H. Baskets that I posted about HERE is not a Bug Catcher Basket, it is a BAG CATCHER BASKET!!! It is funny how our eyes and our minds play tricks on us. Timothy had been talking about parts of insects in his science class. It got me to thinking about how when the children were younger we would catch insects in a bug catcher. Then when I saw the wooden base with the hole in it I guess my mind just wandered. I had bugs on the brain. But let me tell you, it is a BAG basket for all those grocery sacks that you accumulate. I am so laughing at myself and hope you are laughing at with me on this. Please go back to W.H. Baskets and take another look at this sweet basket and download your free pattern. A bag catcher basket is very handy indeed. (although a bug catcher can be just as handy at times) I have a bag catcher basket hanging in my pantry that I wove years ago and it gets used daily. (I have a bug catcher too but not a bug catcher basket) Ok, just shut up Nancy. Know when to quit.

Forgive me W.H. Baskets for my slip.

One more thing as an FYI. There had been some question as to the cost of shipping as W.H. Baskets is located in Canada. They have informed me that they shipped two large bases to North Carolina for $7 so that can give you an idea of how much shipping might cost.

Baskets of Blessings everyone,

Nancy

The 90/10 rule

Dear Friends,
I was writing a paper just this morning titled "Keep Ahead of the Game." It is my personal motto and it is basically the same as the Boy Scout motto of Be Prepared. The synopsis of the article is basically, the more we plan ahead and prepare ahead then the smoother things will go and the better everyone's attitudes will be. There are things in life that we cannot control that just happen. These things can affect our life negatively but.....if we have been prepared, and if we have the right attitude a negative situation can be halted in its tracks and not allowed to fester and snowball. Then wouldn't you know that I ran across this beautiful video on Jen's blog. I thought it reflected so eloquently on what has been on my mind today. The video is just over four minutes. I hope you enjoy it.
Blessings,
Nancy

Make Your Own Groceries

Good Morning Friends,

As you know I've been speaking about menu planning and trying to live more frugally and I ran across this book at our local Goodwill store last week. It's called "Make Your Own Groceries" by Daphne Metaxas Hartwig. It was published in 1979 but is chuck full of 256 pages of make it yourself ideas. Did you know you can make your own baking powder or your own vanilla extract? Now of course you do have to weigh time vs. money so I don't know that I'll be making those things, but I am interested in making my own salad dressings and seasoning mixes among many other things. One of the real benefits of doing this for me is with Emily and her fibromyalsia, along with medication we are eliminating some very specific things from her diet as well as ingredients in soap, shampoo, etc. to help decrease the pain. With making my own, the benefit is knowing exactly what is going into what we put into and on our bodies.

I've never tried making my own pasta, but that is on my list of things to try this week. I'll let you know how it goes. Remember Mike's birthday present HERE? We've been grinding our own hamburger from very lean chuck and it has been so easy. Now, it did make for rather dry hamburgers one evening, but when cooking up the ground chuck for casseroles and other dishes like burritos, it has been perfect and we've been pleased with the purchase of our grinder. It will soon have paid for itself.

Do you make your own groceries? I'd love to hear what you make from scratch.

Blessings,

Nancy

This post links with the following blogs:

A Free Basket Weaving Pattern

Updated note:  I am so sorry W.H. Baskets that I mistaked the name of your Bag Catcher Basket as Bug Catcher.  My mind was on other things and it truly was a mistake.  Below I've striked out the word Bug and have replaced it with Bag as it's proper name.--Nancy

Hi Friends,
After all this talk about my robins, which by the way had my pyracanthia bush stripped of berries by 2:00 that afternoon, I saw this adorable basket with a bird house embellishment no less.
The pattern comes to us from W. H. Baskets.  The pattern is called "Bug Bag Catcher Basket" and it has two patterns for different sizes.  You can get the link for it HERE.   It uses a really interesting specialty base that is a semi circle with a hole.  The bases are on sale this month for either $4.00 or $5.00 depending on if you are making the large or small Bug Bag Cathcer Basket.  Very unique and clever basket and even though I say this, it looks to be a beginner basket.  Be sure to visit W.H. Baskets and take a look around.  They sure have some pretty baskets.  One more thing, be sure to print off the pattern because their free patterns change monthly.
Baskets of Blessings,
Nancy

The Source of those Robins

Here it is 7:00 am this morning and I'm listening to the birds chirp and thinking to myself that spring is right around the corner.  I love to listen to the birds.  Honestly, they are really getting quite loud and so I go take a peek and there are all those robins that I mentioned yesterday.  Big ol' fat robins!  The pyracantha bush was LOADED and the picture doesn't do it justice with how many were in the yard.  They were on the fence, on the garden shed, in other trees.  I have two other pyracanthas in the yard and it looks like the berries on the other two have been picked clean.  Will probably only be a day or so and this one will be stripped too.  I always thought pyracanthas were poisonous but obviously the birds don't agree. 

Here are just a couple of pics from my indoor garden that is coming along.
You all can do the happy dance with me because spring is right around the corner.  I say this as it is 30degrees outside right now.  I'm soooo looking forward to warmer weather.
Enjoy your day!
Nancy
This post links to:

A Couple of Interesting Oddities

Just a couple of funny things I noticed today. 
There were just a whole flock of birds sitting on our garden shed.  The interesting thing is that they were all beautiful robins.  I told the kids they were having a discussion as to where they were soon going to build their nests in the yard.  Wish I had a picture because it really was a site.  I could have understood if it were pigeons all gathered together, but these were pretty robins.

Second, I thought my shopping cart sure containted a lot of "white" items.

No veges or fruit, no meat, just a few needed things and they were all white!  You sure have to watch the labels close these days.  I wanted AP flour but they have bread flour right next to it.  Same with the sour cream.  I want fat free and it is right next to the low fat and regular sour cream.  Dang, this adds minutes to my shopping time having to watch the labels so closely.

I've been noticing that my refrigerator and pantry are looking more and more white all the time lately.  How about yours?

Have a wonderful evening,

Nancy