My Future Greenhouse

These are the plans that my husband and I drew up last night for the greenhouse we want to make. We still need to buy the materials and get it made, but I will tell you how we are making this so that we can grow our own food and so that nobody can steal our goods.

 

 The house we are renting does not have a backyard fence, so we are afraid of thieves trying to steal our food. This means that we must design this in such a way that when we move again (soon we hope) we can easily take it apart and transport and make it thief proof.

Materials that we will be using:

Wood (mostly 2x4's)

Metal L-shaped brackets

Metal strait prackets

Skrews

Nails

Chicken Wire

8mm clear Plastic

Saw

We are going to make out green house into panels and we want it to be sturdy and we do not want it to get broke into. So, each 3ft by 6ft panel will be built as follows.

Step 1: Lay down the plastic and attach them to two two by fours. This is going to be the inner layer of the greenhouse.

Step 2: Stretch the chicken wire across the plastic as tightly as possible and lay down another two by four on top of the other two so that the plastic wrap and chicken wire are sandwiched in between the two boards. Screw them together. Continue until 14 panels have been made.

Step 3: Using the strait and L-shaped brackets, attach the panels together with screws.

Step 4: Construct the roof using the same concept. (use Pythagorean theorem from school, A^2+B^2=C^2).

Step 5: Put it all together and fill with shelves and plant with your vegetables and fruits.

We are going to use ply-board for the floors. Plus, in the middle of the greenhouse we are going to have a big flour bed for potatoes and corn and others that we do not feel like dealing with in pots.

We are going to run a water hose around the roof with three holes in each section to water the plants.

There are all kinds of materials you can use for making a greenhouse, old windows, CD cases, plexiglass, and any kind of material that allows sun and heat to come in and keeps it warm.

First Glass Etching Projects

I decided to learn a new project and this project is glass etching. I bought the supplies at a local craft store and tried out my new supplies.

It is actually really simple and I was surprised at how little time it took (even though it did take about an hour for each of my two projects with preparing and everything that goes along with it). Below are the pictures of my first couple of attempts.

I am very satisfied with my results and with the knowledge I have gained. I do plan to continue practicing and learning more about this new craft of mine. There are also a few others that I want to start doing, soap making and stone steps with glass.

My husband wants me to etch our wedding glasses, so that is a future project as I get in more practice. He also wants me to etch the windshield of the motorcycle that I bought him for a father's day/birthday present. It is plexiglass, so I'm not sure if it will work, but hey, I will give anything a shot.

I can potentially etch anything with glass, salt and pepper shakers, drinking glasses, vases, fish tanks, storage containers, and any glass decoration. So I am very excited and can not wait to experiment further.

Have you recently tried a new craft? What is it? How were your results? Are you going to try again? Comment below, I am interested in hearing the good with the bad.

Family Tree Embroidery Project

For Christmas this year, I decided to make my father-in-law an embroidered handkerchief. He uses them all the time and he is so hard to buy for Christmas (yes, we like to prepare throughout the year so that it is not one big splurge in the end). He is a huge family-man, so it did not take me long to decide that I wanted to do something that had to do with the family, that is when I decided on a family tree.

I searched for awhile to find an image that would work with the embroidery that I wanted to do and came across a quilt that gave me an idea. I grabbed my ruler, protractor, pen and paper and began drawing images on a sheet of paper and moved things around until I came to something similar to the image I had seen and that worked for what I wanted.

Next, over a course of a few days, I stitched diligently until I came to my final project similar to the image below. I used an s-stitch for the bark, grass and birds and I used a fishbone stitch for the leaves.

 

The final project also had some tufts of grass on the ground and a couple of simple birds flying in the air. I was quite proud of the final result and I can not wait until he sees it. I tried to make it simple, since it was for a guy and men are simplistic creatures, but as a creative person, simple is so boring!

Each of the leaves represent his three sons and their four wives (one of my husband's brothers has been married twice) and all of their children. The main part of the tree, I put the family's last name and it represents my mother-in-law and father-in-law.

Comment below and tell me what you think and tell me some of your simple embroidery projects.

Pot Holder

Well, I had a great fun-filled and busy weekend, but of course I had to work on at least one project. I made a quick and simple pot holder with a cluster stitch. I was able to finish it in a matter of hours and it turned out pretty well. (Picture below) I did not need anymore pot holders, you can only imagine how many I already have, but I wanted to make a few stitches as samples for my Facebook page.

You may or may not have seen my post on the homepage form the other day that my friend and I have opened up a Facebook page and a business together making and selling various items. I will post a link later in this article and it is also on my homepage article New Articles. 

 

Even though I made this as a pot holder, I could easily use this stitch for just about any crocheted project imaginable. Here are just a few examples:

Blanket (entirely or just a section)
Pot Holder 
Sweater/Shirt
Pants
Socks
Shoes (flip-flops, slippers)
Scarf
Drink cozee
Purse
And so much more

I will continue to post more of my projects. Please comment and tell what you think of my projects and leave me an email to contact if you are ever interested in buying from me.

Do you have a special craft or project that you would like to see advertised on my blog? Let me know and I would be more than happy to put it on here for others to read about.

Baby Blanket

This is one of my current projects. I am crocheting a blanket in hopes of selling it at my mom's city-wide garage sale next weekend. It is a fairly basic pattern and I am still not quite half-way finished with it. It has a gold-colored end and the rest is going to be brown.

Row 1: chain 108

Row 2: *10 half double crochets (hdc) on the first ten chains, skip two chains then hdc in the next ten chains. 3 hdc in the next chain.* Repeat from * across to last four chains. hdc in last four chains, chain one, turn.

Row 3-?: hdc in first four hdc, *skip the next two hdc, hdc in the next ten hdc, the hdc in the next hdc. Hdc in the next ten hdc. *repeat from * across to the end, chain 1 then turn and repeat row 2 in each hdc across.  I put a question mark because you can keep doing this pattern as long as you would like until it is the desired length. Alternate between rows two and three until you get to the end. I also added some front post stitches in every other row in the brown section.

 

Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoy the pattern. The hdc can be replaced with a single, double, or treble crochet as desired. Since I was doing a baby blanket, I wanted there to be few holes that were small enough to not get a baby's finger stuck in.

Cloth Diapers

One of the main things that I do in my household to save money is by making and using cloth diapers. I cut out a pattern and then sew basically a cover together that I insert a regular cloth diaper into. They are fairly simple to make and do not take much time and they have been very helpful in times that we are tight on money. 
One of the most common complaints of people on cloth diapers is that you do extra laundry. Well, my husband has two pairs of work pants-that I keep having to re-stitch up because he does not know how not to get his pants caught on something at work and rip them-and so I have to do laundry at least every other day to keep up on his laundry. So, all I do is add the small diapers in and it really does not add to my total laundry load. I still do as many loads of laundry as we always have....read the rest of this article here.

I wanted to post some pictures as I make the diapers and a step by step process with a few details left out.

Step 1: Pin the pattern to the fabric, cut out the pattern on two sets of fabric.

Step 2: Put on snaps on the front side of the outer fabric.

Step 3: Pin the two pieces of fabric together with the right sides facing.

Step 4: Sew down the elastic spot.

 Step 5: Sew the fabrics together with a 1/4 in gap from the edge of the fabric.

Step 6: measure out the elastic.

Step 7: Sew on the leg elastic.

Step 8: Repeat steps 6 and7 for both legs.

Step 9: Get ready for the top stitch.

Step 10: Do the top stitch.

 Here is another image of what my top stitch looks like.

 Step 11: Add the last snaps.

Step 12: Here is the finished product!

And there you have it, a cloth diaper cover. Now just insert a cloth diaper and it is ready to use!