Save a fish

  Wait, don't throw it away!
  Plastic that gets dumped in the ocean kills 100,000 sea creatures every year. www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-facts.html  
     The first step is re-ducing.  The next step is re-using.  Save a fish, make a bracelet.

bottle top magnets

It snowed last night so this morning I took a quiet, peaceful x.c.ski.  It is still winter like. On that note, I don't have  anything else to say right now.  Except that I really do like how heavy duty these magnets are.

Embracing winter

  I looked out my window this  morning  to happily see sunshine and fresh snow.  I love spring skiing, but we don't get much of it at the resort.  In fact the last day at the resort was so nasty most people quit after 1 run because it was so cold , foggy, and windy that you couldn't see worth a hill of beans.

  So by the time spring actually rolls around here, the resorts are closed and everyone has fishing on their mind.  Including my little dog Stinky.  She drew this fish while she was sniffing around for a place to tinkle this morning.

Drawn by Stinky

 

Stinky and Tiny (Tiny's the big one)

I decided to head out for a short ski,  just up the road.

In the summer this is a gate, its almost totally covered right now

This is the creek that runs along side the road

Here is where the hiking trail would go if you could see it

Some old buildings at the quarry, I'm going to ski down the little hill behind them



Before









what goes up must come down







After

Not long after arriving home the clouds rolled in and it began to snow.  They say in Idaho " If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

Green bling, an old chair , and re used pillows

R.P.B. stands for re purposed plastic bottle.  It's recycle day, but I'm saving some plastic bottles to make these bracelet cuffs. 

  I started off with the plastic bottle 'base'.   This one still needs to be cut straight.  I cut this one in half and rounded the ends to make it into a cuff.

  Then I glued a piece of brown paper to it, wrapping it around the sharp edges.

  After that dried I brushed on a light coat of modge podge to seal the paper  so that it is more functional.

Now the fun part.  Picking out the beads.

You just have to make sure what ever you use for string or yarn can fit through the hole in the bead.  I always forget about that.  So I couldn't use the tiny stones that I thought would perfectly complement this natural fishy bracelet. 

       So I improvised.  after I wrapped the thick hemp twine around the base, I went back and wrapped a thinner hemp string that I could fit all the other beads onto.   

Who would guess this is part of a plastic bottle?  Its pretty easy to do.  I got the idea from the craft book "Green Bling, turning bottles into bangles".  If you have some plastic bottles  16.9 oz or larger, some yarn, glue, and beads laying around you can easily make these.  It's the perfect thing to do on a snowy blizzardy  April afternoon.

I found this chair in  my parents barn.  No one knows where it came from, Or how it got there.

Since I recently moved into a little larger apt, I needed a chair.  So I went "shopping" at my parents house.  Now this chair is pretty grungy, but it is the perfect shape to fit into the corner of my little living room.  I covered it with a throw until I can figure out how to re fresh it without reupholstering it, because I actually really like the pattern.  It goes with my retro bar.And yes the walls are green.  But when the outdoors are white about 7 months out of the year,  green is a good color to have around.

I also "shopped" for the futon at my parents house.  I have four siblings and one of them left it behind, woopsies.  I helped myself to it, and will keep it till the day he remembers it and wants it back.  Anyway, futons are large sofas and this one seems to lean way back so I wanted some big pillows to take up some of the space on it. 

  My mom is so crafty and artistic,  always creating her own things.   Her craft room is  like walking into a craft store ( just a little disorganized, sorry mom, I need to come over and help you out with that).   She has a few pillow forms kickin' around in that craft room, so we went to the fabric store and found this nice heavy duty-ish fabric for rather inexpensive.  I think it cost around $6. to cover this pillow form.  My mom sewed it up for me in her craft studio.  I was indecisive about what colors and patterns I wanted, since I am working with green walls, but I finally made up my mind.  I am going with 2 yellow pillows and 1 turquoise.  The turquoise one is on the way.

You won't be findin' this pillow at Pier One, it's one of a kind.  Well 2 of a kind , but I have the other one too. 

Extreme Couponing

Where I live there is alot of extreme skiing, but not alot of extreme couponing.  I just recently saw a TV program called extreme couponing.  I have two thoughts on this.  1.  What a great way to save some money.  and 2.  How greedy extreme couponers are.

  If you haven't seen the show, I'll give you a little intro.  Ok, so extreme couponers, who I am going to call "these people" strategically plan out their shopping trip.  These people put countless hours into this.  These people get their kids involved, their husbands involved, and probably the neighbor, cutting coupons out of gazillions of ads and searching the store online for the 'weekly sales'.

  Then these people hit the grocery store with their game plan and massive folder of coupons.  These people will buy every single last mustard off the shelf even though they already have 27 bottles in their cart and their husband doesn't even  like mustard, just because they can get it for practically free.  I frown upon this aspect of extreme couponing, it is extreme inconsideration for others shopping after them that actually might really need that bottle of mustard that is on sale. 

  But NOW after watching them save like hundreds of dollars on one grocery trip, I thought to myself I really need to start using coupons.  If you are anything like me, you forget you have the coupon, or find it in your pocket after the cashier has already completed your transaction, or it expired the day before.  Sometimes it is a big pain in the butt to save a little money.  But I have a bigger hole in my pocket after paying taxes SO I decided I'm going to try a little harder to use coupons.

  AND I  learned something new.  Did you know that if you have a rewards card from your grocery store,  that you can load coupons onto it online?  So that when you swipe your card it automatically uses the coupons you picked out online.  This is genius, no more forgetting coupons, and it saves paper.  You  also have the option to print out your list so you know what coupons you loaded onto your card.

  To the grocery store I went,  to try out my new method of shopping with magical coupons.  I also had some paper coupons in hand.  I shopped for only things that I had a coupon for &  that were on sale.   After spending probably an hour longer than I typically would have,  I proudly checked out with my re-usable grocery bags and a savings of $ 15 bucks.  Now I also had accumilated over 100 points on my rewards card which gives you 10 cents off a fill up at the gas tank.  My car was totally on empty, which I had planned.  I saved a buck.  I know that doesn't sound like much, but it's a coffee from the market, or a Sunday paper, or 2 peanut roll candy bars.

  I am now hooked on couponing.  I promise though that I will only try to  be extreme in outdoor sports and not in the grocery store.                       

 P.S.  Don't forget your reusable grocery bags, you can get 5 cents off a bag you know.

No place to go? I would find one for this dress!

Lemonade Makin' Mama has the goods.  This is a super cute dress that is going to make someone's day on Lemonade Makin' Mama's giveaway .  Fresh and clean lines, makes me want to grab a sleek bag and hop on a jet plane to somewhere WARM and tropical.
  Nice pick L.M.M., I think this Shabby Apple dress is  LEMONY SMOOTH.

Thanks for sharing!

blogging to myself

Right now this feels more like a diary than a blog, because I don't think anyone reads this blog.  So I'm gonna go for it, and  get down to the nitty gritty.
   You feel mad at a boy that's your friend,  you have to pay taxes, you need a vacation but it doesn't look like you're going to get one, you're just sick and tired of cold weather and snow???
  So what do you do on a Tuesday night by yourself?
  That's me.   Well I'm trying to do something different with my bad mood. First thing I'm gonna do is eat something that I haven't eaten in years, a frozen pizza, along with some organic chips, and a bottled beverage.

   It's the bottle caps I'm interested in. ( I can hear you saying "yeah right").   I have been dying all day to try to make bottle cap magnets, but had no bottle caps.  Then I got into a bad mood and thought what a perfect excuse to buy a beverage containing bottle caps.  Now this could be an expensive bottled soda or beer.   Your choice, if you choose to try this at home.

  1) Very carefully open the bottle caps not to bend them.  2) simply trace around them on a piece of paper  3) color or write on the paper, I used water color pencils 4) cut them out 5) press or glue them into the underneath side of the bottle cap.  6)  mix ' envirotex lite ' pour on high gloss finish.  7) pour into the bottle caps  8) follow directions of envirotex  9)  let them dry 10) turn over and glue magnets onto the top.

  OK so right now mine are drying and it might take 2 days....so stay tuned for the final magnet debuting on the fridge.  Now I can go to bed feeling better that I made something good out of my bad attitude.  But will need to work off the pizza and chips  tomorrow.

 

Healthy dog biscuits

Well, if I'm going to try to eat healthy then of course I'm going to feed my animals healthy food as well.   AND Tiny LOVES treats.  Can you tell?  In his defense, he's not fat, just big boned.  I have had him on some pretty strict diets and he just doesn't get any smaller.
  Anyway...now that I have an oven, ( I went a year without one in my last apt), I like to bake dog treats.

I snatched this jar from my friends house before it ended up in the trash, with a deinite purpose in mind for it.  It makes the perfect treat jar.  So I decided to bake some treats and fill this jar up.  I doubled the recipe.

Wanna bake some?  This is what you'll need:

• 2 farm fresh eggs
• 2 Tbs soy flour
• 2Tbs wheat germ
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 Tbs cold water
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 Tbs nonfat dry milk

First beat the eggs and then add the next four ingredients, then combine flour and milk into the dough.

Pat the dough, or roll it, into a rectangle about 1/2 " thick.  Cut with cookie cutter in whatever shape your heart desires. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, flip and bake for an additional 25 minutes.

                " Huh, you bakin' me some biscuits?"
IN the meantime, you can make a label for your RE-USED jar, if you don't allready have a biscuit jar.

Little ones for STINKY and big ones for TINY

Now you've got some healthy biscuits for your dog.  And if there is a natural disaster or something,  you could eat these yourself.  My dad tried one but they are pretty hard, you wouldn't want to break a tooth. 

Moose friend

Here is a video of the Moose that likes to visit my yard for her breakfast.  Actually, it is her home that I live in.  So technically, I'm the visitor.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtGT14KhptA

Reduce,Reuse,Recycle

This is somewhat my theme in life.  I am always looking for ways to re-duce, re-use,  and  re-cycle .
  Here are a couple of projects this week that reflect re-using.

I wanted and needed a coffee table, instead of buying a brand

spankin' new one, I found a used one on craigs list.  It is real wood, and very light, which made it super easy to carry up a flight of stairs into my apt.  My dad sanded it down to the natural wood with his electric sander, saving me hours. 

I live in the mountains and experience winter about 6-7 months out of the year.  So I wanted the coffee table to make me feel like I am visiting a beach cottage when I shut the blinds to the snowy mountain view.   So I went for the turquoise ceramcoat that I had on hand.  Not having a large paintbrush I used an old sponge and wiped it on, with some floating medium to help the wood show through.

I then used the same sponge to wipe on some brown glaze to give it a rustic look, and then touched up some of the lighter areas with a dark stain.

I decided to paint fish on it for a couple reasons, 1. I'm a pisces and 2.  Fish can have a flowy mystical  effect.  Well, I think so anyway.

I found a picture of some koi fish and thought it would go perfect. 

 I drew a stencil of the outline of the fish and traced around it onto the table and then drew in the detail last. You have to look close to see.

Then I began painting.  

Almost finished!

                                               Last step is a polyurethane coating

Next project...Seashell topiary.

  SO I'm making my mountain apt a beach cottage on the inside.  I'm always on the look out for cool beachy things.  I found a topiary online made with seashells on a wood base of what looks to be a candlestick holder.  It cost $179.  Um, cough, choke, gasp.  I  can not justify spending that much money on a "knick-nack" that only stands 8 1/2" to boot!  I mean, I could buy a pair of used skis for that much money.

  Off to to thrift store, where I lucked out.  I found a pair of cobalt blue glass candlesticks for $3. ea.,  they were 50% off.  I stopped at the only two random stores in the vicinity of my home that just may have  styrofoam in a cone shape.  But no luck. 

  This is when RE-USING comes in handy.  I had a piece of cardboard in the recycle bin that I cut and rolled into a cone shape.  I hot glued it together, painted it turquoise, painted glue on it, sprinkled sand( from the last beach trip) onto it, then hot glued shells (collected from the same trip to the beach) onto it.  Then simply placed it onto the candlestick and here is the finished product.  $1.50 for the candlestick, and whatever gas it cost me to drive to the store, I would guess roughly 2 bucks.  Paint and glue had on hand.



Now this is NOTHING like the one I saw on RSH

but it works for me and it has sentimental value as the seashells and sand came from one of my favorite beaches, Seal Beach in So.Ca.