Perfect for a cold drink

Two of my girls are bead crazy. They love to make the designs with those plastic beads, then you iron it and they all stick together.

Like these:

Well, I had several of those sitting on  my island waiting to be melted together. I just felt like I HAD to do something with them other than get them all stuck together so that they could just get lost in the other piles of junk that my kids love.

Sound familiar to anyone?

Then it hit me....coasters!!

For these I traced the shapes onto some cotton batting scraps I had.

Then I cut those out, placed them on top of the design (while it was still on the holder) and ironed it until the beads melted enough to stick together and to the batting.

The girls had made a few designs and we've actually been able to use them as coasters. My husband didn't think it would work, but so far they've held together.

They've made up several more. This time I think I may iron the beads together a little before I put the batting (or felt for that matter) onto them and then continue to iron until it sticks. I'm just wondering if that might strengthen them even more.

So there you go. Give it a try. If you have as many of these around your house as I do, you'll probably be thrilled to actually turn them into something useful. lol

Still stitching....

I haven't given up!!!


I was stitching along quite nicely for last years Christmas Wish BOM and somewhere along the way I got behind.


Big surprise, right?


It was only 9 blocks and I should have had it done in plenty of time for Christmas.


But I didn't.


I did finish another block when we were out of town for Memorial Weekend.

That leaves me with only two blocks to go.

I will get it done for this year's holiday decorations!!!

I will!

My sistern-in-law had twins in late April. She had a boy and a girl and since she is very picky about things out there on the market I was stumped as to what I should send.

After several ideas swam around in my head I finally settled on burp cloths. Goodness knows that when mine were little, there were never enough absorbent items around for drool patrol.

Since I knew she had painted the nursery a dark brown I decided that would be my main color. I found coordinating fabrics that I liked for both girl and boy but that weren't inpastels (I don't think she likes those either.)

I used a brown cotton terry cloth towel as the backing. I figured that should be plenty abosorbent.

Quite frankly, I don't know if she liked them or not, but I was pleased with them. :0)

I had some extra fabric left over so I made some for my etsy store too.

Transfer-Eze continued......

Getting back to the transfer-eze.....

I cut out a couple of the pieces of my stitcheries to see how the transfer-eze  came off.

I placed the pieces in a pie plate with just a little bit of water. (I didn't even bother to get the water warm.)

The transfer-eze felt a little slimey as it started to dissolve and disappear.

I don't think I even let it sit for the full minute before it was all gone!!

I took the pieces out, got the excess water off with a towel and let them dry.

There was no residue left at all.

I think I might be in love with this stuff. My head is swimming with all the ideas for stitching on all kinds of darker/thicker fabrics that I might not have otherwise.

Woohoo!!

Knowing when to quit

We went out of town for Memorial Day weekend.

It was great to get to spend some time away from everything. The place we stayed has no t.v.'s, no phones in the rooms, and no cell phone reception. It's great to embrace that kind of un-availability every now and then.

When we were on our way home we stopped in a small town at a Chinese buffet. When I went into the bathroom and had one look at the walls, I had to go again with my camera just to get some pictures.


I felt like this was proof that sometimes, even with the best of ideas/intentions, you've got to know when to quit. When to conceed defeat.

In this picture you can see that they put the border along the top and then decided to paint the wall a different color so they just got as close to the border as possible.

There is a vine that goes up the wall by the sink and on along the door frame (as seen in the first picture.)

I felt like someone should have taken the sponge away long before the whole bathroom was done.

'Put the sponge down and back away 'mam, and no one gets hurt.'

Now on the bright side, my daughter loved it!!