DIY Googly Eyed Headband & Hat

I found a great craft on Pinterest done by The Crafty Blog Stalker.
The best part about this craft is that it is almost entirely a Dollar Store Craft. The one exception is you must buy or already own a hot glue gun and glue sticks.

Just so we’re clear you will need:

• Hot glue gun and glue sticks

• A package or two of googly eyes
• Headbands (the wider the headband the better for gluing eyes)
• And/Or, a knit hat

Step One: Gather supplies and get a workspace.

Step Two: Plug in your hot glue gun.

Step Three:
For the hat–Lay out a pattern that you like. I put a piece of cardboard (used the tag from the packaging) between the hat fabric layers. It would be lame to make a fun hat that you inadvertently glued shut.

For the headbands–Pick out a pattern that you like.

Step Four: For hat–Apply dots of glue to the backs of the googly eyes and stick to your hat. Allow to fully cool and dry before throwing it on your head. Again, you don’t want to have glue and hair and forehead all trapped and boiling hot.

For headbands–I applied glue to the headbands directly because my headbands were a bit more narrow than my big googly eyes. Be very careful not to get glue on your fingers. It’s stinkin’ hot! For the large eyes, I mashed them down and waited a couple of seconds to make sure I didn’t knock them back off while they were still cooling.

Step Five: Once you allow the pieces to fully cool, I picked away those little hairs that I always seem to have to deal with when hot gluing.

After doing that bit of housekeeping, throw on your accessory and hit the town.
I believe that people should dress up, or at least start getting festive during the whole month of October. I think the headbands would be a great accessory for people to wear who work in places they are not allowed to dress up. Offices and such typically err on the serious side. Hopefully your office doesn’t have a policy against wearing googly garb.

Kids: Get someone intelligent to supervise you. Or better yet, learn how to properly use tools, because when you’re an adult no one will stop you from chainsawing your fingers off. Hot glue is painful, please be careful.

This would make a fantastic costume piece too.
For example: I am working on creating a cherubim costume. The cherubim from L’Engle’s Wind in the Door were described as being a mass of eyes and feathers and wings. I believe a huge package of craft feathers and more hot glue is in my future. Feel free to use this idea and out-nerd all your friends at the next Halloween party. Perhaps more simply, this could be the spider eyes for a fun spider costume.

~Kat~

Luau Island Party

A couple of weeks back I went on a mini-vacation, just to get away from it all. I decided that I was going to the beach….In Illinois.
My SiL, Beth and brother planned an epic Luau party. Here are pictures, links, descriptions and recipes to what we did for our Par-tay.

Essential Party Supplies

• Accessories
• Food
• Music

Accessories

Believe it or not, it is very difficult to find Luau related party garb in September. However, true party planners never come up empty. After visiting several stores we got serious and ended up at a party supplies store. We hunted all over before finally getting desperate and asking gentleman sporting an officials vest—He was labeled as a Halloween Expert.

He also turned out to be a store expert and pointed us directly to the quarter aisle of luau supplies. We didn’t need much. We left the store with three sparkly leis in our favorite colors. We also grabbed a pack of shiny umbrellas to embellish our drinks. I brought some large colorful smoothie straws from home. They were purchased at salvage for $1.25.

Some things we didn’t find in the store is pictured above. Because money can’t buy a Hawaiian style skirt such as this! If you’re looking at cost or supplies needed: Staples and stapler, grocery sacks, and a binder clip for quick clasp of skirt. We’ll get to how you make it later.

Essentially, we purchased all of our accessories for under $10.

Food

I would call the drinks daiquiris, but truly, they were so much more than that. We added: very ripe bananas, frozen strawberries, mango, fresh pineapple, and tropical punch flavored white rum. Blend well and serve immediately with awesome umbrellas.

       Asparagus. Yes, I did just have this in my fridge and it needed to be cooked up. I love asparagus. If you cook it, I will eat it. This were laid out on a cookie sheet with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasted in the oven until delightfully crispy.

The very best and the highlight of supper was our Waikiki Beach Chicken and Tom’s Waikiki Beach Tofu (he’s vegetarian). Want to know the original recipe that Beth based the above on? Here is the original Waikiki Beach Chicken recipe.
We loved it! Here are some of our recommendations: We backed off the sugar in the sauce to 3/4 cup instead of a whole cup. You could back down to a half cup. We liked ours on the salty side, no worries, a dash of soy sauce and overnight the flavors mellowed so it was even better! We used boneless skinless chicken breasts and it did seem to take forever in the oven—This could have been because we were starving and are like small children waiting for Santa.

I don’t have much advice about the tofu version. Tom said it was delish though. If you have questions, please hit me up and I will consult the veggie-guru that is my brother.

Music

Why is music so important? Don’t ask such stupid questions. This will set the mood and help aid in the silliness that is a faux-Hawaiian. The more important question might be, Kat, what did you listen to? That is something I will answer. We used Spotify to keep our music rolling throughout the evening. No, they aren’t paying me money to use their name and yes, I wish someone was paying me for this drivel.

The obvious first choice here, the soundtrack from Lilo & Stitch the Disney flick. Now, I don’t care if you like the movie or not. The music is sweet.
Beth and I wanted to get in the mood before the party got started. Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride and a little Elvis. How can you go wrong?

Tom was smartsies. He found this premade Hit Nation playlist on Spotify and it had nice nice tunes on it. Both playlists are, as you may have noticed, finite. We needed more music so we added some tracks from these selected artists: Beach Boys, I accidentally added and discovered Spike Jones and His City Slickers, and more songs from that dude that sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole, I didn’t know either).
I am pretty sure I have discovered that next silly artist that my brother will get into. Spike Jones and His City Slickers have lots of weird and funny songs. Go ahead and listen to Water Lou (drip, drip, drip). I am sure that it is on….ah, there you are.

Tom also added some more awesome ambiance to our party by muting and playing this youtube video that shows 43 minutes of Hawaii landscapes and such. It was beautiful. If you need something to play in the background of your life, I highly suggest this.

Let me know, via comments, if you are interested in a step by step instructional blog on how to make a Hawaiian style “grass” skirt. Just to recap, we used grocery sacks (Kroger has brown!) that were fanned out or staggered then stapled together. If you are making one for a child or small adult you may want to add a second layer around to add more fluff. Cut slits almost to the stapled area (leave about two inches). Use a binder clip to pin it around the waist quickly. Do not try to go to the bathroom in these guys—you will want the quick removal aspect.

Tom is cutting the slits in his grass skirt.

 

Now, go and enjoy your own luau party!!    We did some hula dancing tutorials on youtube, but ultimately were too full and just laid around the rest of the night. It was great fun!!

Cooking oil Spray DIY

Call me a dweeb, I love some of the money/life saving tips that I keep finding on Pinterest. I use cooking spray like Pam in my kitchen all the time. It is more convenient that pouring oil in a pan and playing the tipping game until it is fully covered.

However, I don’t like paying the money for the cooking oil products. I also realize I am grtting more than just oil in my food from those pressurized cans.

Pinterest saves the day!
Okay, it was actually this blogger that had the great idea.
I found the idea on one of my favorite blogger’s site Jillee’s One Good Thing who was reblogging Natures Nuture‘s idea.

I have to admit that I did not do the recommended 1:5 parts of oil to water ratio. Rather, I did 1:2 or half and half. I was lazy, but it works just fine.

What is your favorite kitchen shortcut?

Day 330: Toilet Paper Roll Seed Trays

Last week, Kit and I made a seed tray out of empty toilet paper rolls. Much like the expensive peat pots, we will plan these directly into the garden. We bought a five dollar plastic box and cut each roll in half.

Next, we took out the rolls and put in several inches of dirt. We pressed the rolls down into the dirt, like cookie cutters and filled some of the rolls with more dirt as needed. We left some soil in between the rolls to help the moisture travel between cells when we water them.

They are doing wonderfully now and almost all the cells are up! We planted San Marzano paste tomatoes, oregano, dill and basil in this tray.
We need to get proper plant markers or popsicle sticks and we need more TP rolls to start another tray!

2013 Memory Jar

What is it?
Write down memorable happy moments that happen throughout the year and put them in a jar. On New Year’s Eve, open the jar and enjoy getting misty eyed as you read through the highlights.

What do I need?
•An empty jar
•Paper
•Pen or pencil
Optional: Frilly things to make your jar pretty and fancy paper or gift tags.
Do I have to use a jar?: No. Empty pasta sauce jars, canning jars, peanut butter jars (make sure you get all the oils out), pickle jars, piggy banks, shoe boxes, big mailing envelopes, a journal, photo album, write it down and take a picture (file on your computer), etc. There are many possibilities, so have fun with it.

How do you do it?
For Kit and I, it is completely impractical to sit down every day or the end of every week and write memorable moments.
We started ours today (Feb. 1st) and wrote down every awesome thing that happened in January. Kit remembers every, but I cheated and flipped through my journal.
We made a goal to write at least two good things–he wrote three and I wrote six.

That’s it! Write, fold and cram into the jar. It took us 10 minutes (which included me collection supplies)–it was soooooo easy.

Extra Tips
•We both wrote on slips of notebook paper independently and had one overlapping event (we got a goat!).
If you have a large family, or want to have a discussion with your family then you will likely get fewer duplicates.

•I cut up extra slips of notebook paper and threw those in the jar (unfolded) along with a pencil. If the moment strikes we can unscrew the lid and keep a memory.

•I highly suggest discussion if you have small children. If they are having trouble just help them think of one good thing. Don’t chastise if it is a material happiness that first comes to mind.

•Kit and I are both really good at letting date sensitive events just slide on by (Bills….omg). So I have set a reminder on my phone to pop up on Feb 28th and March 1st.

•Here are two links to keeping a memory jar. Also called Scrapbook Jars; some people make them quite fancy. Maybe a year is too extreme, consider a Month of Gratitude, like this blogger.

Have you ever tried this?
• Waste of time/worth it?
• Suggestions for newbies like me?