If your house is anything like mine, objects will randomly disappear when you need it most. Now that I have this cold (or maybe it’s allergies, I can never tell), all the tissues in the house go missing. The one thing we always have on hand is toilet paper! Because that would be a big problem if we didn’t. A roll of toilet paper is cheaper than a box tissues too! And that was the inspiration for this project.

You will need:

• An ice tea mix canister with a lid
• Box cutter
• Roll of toilet paper
• Acrylic craft paint (optional)

1. Using the box cutter, cut a circle with a diameter of about 1.5 inches on the the top of the lid. Cut around the canister, about 5 inches from the bottom.

2. This part is tricky. Remove the cardboard roll from the toilet paper. I find it easier to stick something in between the cardboard and paper and slide it all the way around. After removing the cardboard, pull the paper from the center of the roll.

3. Place the toilet paper in the canister and place the lid on top. Pull the paper through from the center of the lid.

Optional: You can decorate the dispenser / cover however you like. I painted it with acrylic craft paint but another option is to cover it with a magazine collage. If you decide to paint it, apply thin coats. Cardboard can sometimes absorb excess paint making it soggy.

Here’s the painted version:

No Comments »

Every once in a while I get this surge of excitement, a passion for life. This usually happens when I’m incapacitated in some way, like being stuck at work or the seconds before I fall asleep. And then it’ll disappear along with all of my ambition and drive until I once again get inspired. It’s like all of those people who make New Year’s resolutions and completely forget them until December rolls around and they make the same goals again and again never really accomplishing anything. I always disliked resolutions for this reason. I like to think of my life as a video game, every time I achieve something I level up. I need goals to accomplish, challenges to beat, time constraints to abide by and that’s why I can make web layouts in less than a day for a class but it takes me 4 months to make one for myself.

So I’m giving myself one calendar year to complete challenges in each of the following categories and I’ll use this blog as a way of tracking my progress.

Music

I’ve been playing the guitar on and off for about 8 years and the ukulele for 4 and quite frankly, I suck. Like really bad. After all this time, I still can’t play a full song. I’m also pretty self conscious about my playing so I mess up a lot more when people are watching. My challenge is to sing and play a song on either guitar or ukulele and upload it to Facebook. I would have chosen YouTube but I don’t think I’m ready for the world yet.

Craft

I mentioned before that I wanted to make this a primarily crafting blog. I love crafting and other people do it all the time so why not? Well, crafting is a lot more time consuming than I thought. I also only make things when I need it, which is hardly ever because I live off nothing. I didn’t want my challenge to be one big project because the difficulty isn’t in creating something it’s in creating something on a regular basis. So for the entire year, I would like to make and post something I’ve made once every 3 weeks. That might be a walk in the park for most crafters but for me it’s a big improvement.

Photography

Taking pictures is easy. It’s literally just pushing a button. But I want to do more than take pictures I want to take good pictures. The best way to do this is practice, practice, practice. Like crafting, this is something I want to do regularly but I can’t lug around my camera all day every day. My goal is to complete a 52 project. That’s like the 365 project but for people like me who can only dedicate one day a week. Top 3-5 pictures of the month will be printed and either displayed on my wall or in my photo book.

Fitness

Honestly, I don’t really care about fitness. I know I’m weak as all hell but I don’t find running around to be much fun. But I see the importance and thought I should add it to my list anyway. My friends want to do the Color Me Rad 5K run and I thought it was the perfect challenge for me. It’s difficult enough for me to feel like I’m accomplishing something and it’s fun. I really wanted to make this challenge about biking or rock climbing, things I actually like, but an event seems more objective.

Cooking

All I know is that I suck at cooking and I want to be better at it. I’ve been making my own lunches, observing people cook and reading a bunch of things on the net. Not sure what this challenge will be but I thinking an Iron Chef competition amongst friends. Any suggestions are welcome!

Design

I’ll be working on a number of design projects but my biggest one would be to create a professional WordPress layout for ThemeForest.It would have to be something extremely comprehensive. Any money I make would just be icing on the cake.

These are my goals for the year! I aimed low for some of these to start off because I know how busy I’ll be, but they’ll get more and more challenging as I go on.

What are your goals and how are you planning to achieve them?

No Comments »

It seems like the older we get, the less fun and more stressful Christmas becomes. Christmas is my favorite holiday. It’s the time of year we think about giving, we aim to make others happy and vice versa. My sister and I are Christmas crazy, we always try to get the best gifts for everyone.  The best gifts tend to be either expensive or time consuming and there’s so many of us (see Thanksgiving post).  That’s why we started a secret santa between the older kids. I coordinate our secret santa using this site. It’s pretty awesome because it sends out emails and I can check to see who opened them. But even with that out of the way, I still have a ton of people to get gifts for. I think the count is at 14 gifts this year. Despite all this complaining, I’m still very excited for Christmas and I can’t wait to see the faces of everyone I got gifts for. I wanted to knit a simple cream double knitted scarf for Jane, my secret santa. It was supposed to be a easy and quick project, but I never realized how much time and yarn double knitting takes.  So I decided to make it in to a cowl since it’s too short to be a scarf. Because it’s double layered, it ends up being a little too thick. Tam suggested putting a twist in it and here’s how it looks now:

I also teamed up with my cousin since her secret santa is Jane’s husband and made her a date night package. It consists of a gift card to Steven Starr’s restaurants, two AMC movie tickets plus popcorn, and a homemade babysitting coupon. I think I win best secret santa gift this year. Self proclaimed victory!

I finally got a tripod and wireless remote so taking pictures are a lot easier. Woohoo!

No Comments »

I tried crocheting a few times before but it never really stuck. I’m much better at knitting so I’ve always preferred it. I actually only bought a crochet hook to help pick up dropped stitches on my knitting. But I finally got around to crocheting a piece and it was pretty fun! I was trying to find a specific type of lace to make a collar for a dress I found in my closet when I came across this lovely pattern. My collar, however, looks nothing like that.

I used a size USH8/5.00MM hook because it’s the only one I have. I also just searched on Youtube how to do a treble stitch unaware of the fact that there are two versions, the UK one and the US one. Amateur mistake. This chart is a nice reference so you don’t make the same mistake I did.

It’s too big and I messed up a lot but no one has to know. I unintentionally made it my own and I like it, though I should give it another shot.

Here’s how it looks with the dress.

Lessons learned: I will never ever ever be a model (but I knew that already), I should get a tripod, read instructions carefully, try taking pictures earlier in the day, and get a full length mirror.

2 Comments »

Halloween is like a crafter’s dream come true. It’s the time of year where everyone comes together and show off their creativity. I usually pass on all the festivities. After being “too old” for trick or treating, I thought of Halloween as a child’s holiday until now. I’m strangely excited this year. I want to do a horror movie marathon (suggestions, please), pumpkin carving,  go to a costume party, tell some scary stories by the campfire, and all the typical things. I can’t wait to see all the DIY costumes people have planned. Who cares about store bought costumes? They’re lame. My friends are planning a group costume, so I took the liberty of making hats for their characters.

Can you guess who we’re supposed to be?

And while I’m at it, here’s a tutorial on making pompoms. Because pompoms make hats fun!

1 Comment »