Day 35/36: Book Binding!

Yesterday, our gardening adventures began.  I want to keep track of everything important and useful things I find, but I didn't have a journal or really anything other than a comptuer (and lets face it, I wanted a hard copy, not a digital one), so I decided now would be the perfect time to create my very own upcycled journals.  Here's the pin, but more importantly, here's the original blog post.  It has all the good details on how this great blogger created hers.  I followed these rules for book number one, but changed it up a bit for book #2 using this pin, but changing it up some too.  I think my book is a baby of these two, to be honest, and I enjoyed every minute of making both books.

This one is made from an old reader's digest book.  I felt bad/guilty when I cut the cover off of the book even though it was pretty much torn up anyway.  Time to attend Bibliophiles Anonymous.   Of course, I'm ok now because the book turned out great.  I did cut the pages a little too big, but that's ok.  I feel like I should send it to my grandma though.  She'd love that cover.  Oh, and it has roughly 100 pages.  I didn't actually count, but it looks to be that many. 

Protip:  Leave a little bit extra room on the spine.  I had to take some of the pages off my original page block of sorts because they didn't fit right.

Anyway, on to my gardening adventures book.  Here's how I made it:

Materials:

-Lots of glue.  (Spray adhesive from the other directions would work well, but I didn't have any.  I did -find that a glue stick worked better for this.  A glue pen would be excellent for the spine also stated in above book directions.)

-Homemade Mod Podge
-Cardboard

-Scrapbook paper  (I ended up using 3 12x12 pages and 2 8.8x11 pages of colored cardstock)

-Copy Paper

-Small strip of fabric (11 by about 3 inches)

-Patience  (Good luck here.  I have just enough to keep me from opening and messing with my journals.  They have 22 hours until I can.)



How to:

First, cut out your cardboard to the size of a normal sheet of paper.  8.5 x 11, assuming that is the size of your paper.     You'll need two pieces of cardboard this size:

Then, glue one piece of scrapbook paper you choose as your cover to one piece of cardboard like so: 

Use some modpodge or the glue stick (or both if you want) and glue the cardboard to the paper.

Fold the paper over the cardboard and glue down.   Repeat for both sides.

Then glue down the smaller sides of the paper.  You might need to put something heavy on top to keep the paper down while the glue dries.  It takes about 5 minutes.  Also, the glue stick works best here. 

Repeat for back cover.

Protip:  Don't use a paper that is covered in glitter.  It just doesn't help with the whole gluing thing, but for the record, it DOES work, it just takes a lot longer for the glue to dry/work for you.




Next, cut the 3rd piece of 12x12 paper in half.  These will be the spine.  Pick out the amount of pages you want, and measure how tall they are.   Then, measure out this much plus about 1/2 an inch in the center of one side of the paper.  Glue down the cardboard covers, cute print side out, cardboard part in.  This picture should help explain that:

Notice how there's two pieces of paper.  glue the bottom one like I described above, leaving enough room in the middle for the pages.    Then, trip down the second piece of 6x12 paper to 6x11 that way there isn't any excess hanging off.  Then, glue it down in line with the cover.  Press down on the spine part so the two pages are glued to eachother and there's an indention.  

Then, fold the little excess from the front side up and glue it down.

Now, just glue the 8.5x11 pieces of cardstock to the covers:

Finished cover inside

Finished outside:


Now for the pages.

Take your stack of pages and sandwich them between something you don'd mind getting glue on.  I didn't have paint sticks or binder clips like the orginial pin did, but I did have some creativity.

I stuck my stack of paper between two pieces of cardboard and then put heavy books on top of it.  Then, cover the spine in a bunch of modpodge.  Let it dry.  if your pages come apart (other than the top one and bottom one that are probably stuck to the cardboard if you did it this way), repeat. 

Once your pages stick together, take the piece of fabric and glue it to the spine.  You'll have some of the fabric on both the front and back of the pages. Let it dry for about five to ten minutes. 

Lastly, cover the spine on the cover part with a ton of glue and stick the pages in the book.  Close the book and let it dry 24 hours.  It seems best to put a little bit of weight on top of the book.  (The original pin says to fill the channel where the pages are with glue.  I found this much easier.

Book closed and drying:

Once it is dry, its all ready to use!  I'm rather excited for mine to be done!  I'm also thinking I might cover it in a layer of clear mailing tape so the cover stays awesome.  We shall see.


Did you decide to make this or something similar?  Tell me about it!

Our Gardening Adventures: Starting Seeds (and a pin for day 34)

Yesterday, I picked up some potting soil to mix in with a compost pile of gross.   Ok, so compost really isn't gross, but I was out of ideas and things I could mix in with my veggie peels and what not, and quite frankly, there wasn't much option.  Why does everything have to be closed on Sundays? 

When we arrived home, my precious 3 year old daughter thought we HAD to plant some seeds NOW.  We had strawberries, parsley, and some radish seeds on hand for starters, so I agreed.  After her telling me all these things as to why we needed to plant them.  Yesterday.  She actually said, "Mooom the sooner they grow, the sooner we can eat them!  We should have planted them a week ago!"  Mhm. 

Since these plants are staying inside anyway, why not?  Our window generally gets about 6 hours of sunlight on days there's sun, so it couldn't be too bad.  And I had all the supplies.  We had saved a few egg cartons to do this pin.  You just plant your seeds in the differen't sections of the egg cartons, and watch them grow.  Once they sprout, you transplant the egg carton sections into pots or into your garden.  The carton will degrade and the roots will tear it apart, so why not? 

This set, my daughter planted all by herself.  I'm slightly proud!

And the dog?  She wouldn't stop sniffing the soil.   Hopefully she doesn't eat the seeds/plants.

I will say though that I don't expect these to really sprout.  Why?  Well that precious little girl in the picture decided that those seeds needed her apple juice more than she does, but we will see.  If they sprout, awesome!  If not, I'll be planting more seeds at the end of next month for planting into the yard, so I'll just start a few more then and hope to god she learns her lesson the first time.

Kids..

How about you?  Do you plan on growing anything this year?

Day 33: Painting Jugs

I have been saving up a few juice containers the past week or two so we could use them to plant our seeds in.  Well, yesterday, while browsing pinterest, I came across painted wine bottles, painted mason jars, painted terrainiums in random containers, and a myriad of other random painted things.  This gave me the brilliant idea of painting our garden containers!  Why not?  Here's how they turned out.

Of course, I was hoping I'd get a beautiful shining picture of the sun showing right through our painted jugs, but of course, this is germany, and while I tried to get a good picture of that, the sun disappeared before I had a chance.

Anyway, if you want to do this, its such a simple process.  Cut your jug.  Take a lighter to the rim of where you cut and dull it down by slightly melting the plastic.  Wash, dry, and paint.


I'll show you more when it comes time to plant!  My daughter is super duper excited to be planting a garden this year!  I can say ME TOO!  I've never actually successfully grown anything, so hopefully this year will be different since I have friends to help explain everything, a few books I've ordered, more patience, and the internet.  I'm hoping things grow, but if not, at least I will know what to do differently next year.

Day 31-32: Pie Page and some Robots

Slowly, but surely, I've been managing to get a few of the quiet pages done.  I figured you'd probably want to see them, right?  Well when I found this cute little pie page on pinterest, I decided it HAD to be done, simply because I needed a weave me page, and pies are just that awesome.    We have a simple cherry pie.

The outer circle measures 9 inches.  I cut an inner circle out at 8 inches.  Make sure you measure the pie filling at 9 inches too or you'll have a small problem like I did.  Some of the back green fabric is showing through the pie in a small spot.  Yep I was dumb enough to use the inner 8 in circle as my pattern.

Then just take a sheet of fet and cut out 9 inch strips.  10 strips to be exact. 

And the robots.  Nothing to see here, just some puffy robots that slide along some yarn.   Simple, but I figured my son would like it since I used the excess fabric from making is favorite blanket.

I guess now would be a great time to mention the actual making of the page:

I took twice the measurement of each page, and cut the fabric to that, but added two extra inches.

So the fabric page will measure 10 x 10 on each side.  So I cut the fabric for two pages at 12 x 22, since I'd want 10 x 20 to show. 

I then pinned batting on the inside, and stitched away with details.  Lastly, I just sewed the page together to make one 10 x 10 page with two sides.


For better instructions on this, check out THIS link.  (my second pin making this worth TWO days.  WOO!)

Days 28 - 30: Smoothies!

This past week I've been suffering from a not so pleasant cold, and instead of any soups, all I've wanted to eat were random smoothies.  So, taking advantage of this awesome opportunity to use some of the pins I've found on smoothies, I took off to the kitchen! (and the grocery store.)

First up in my pinterest smoothie round up is this most delicious banana peanut butter breakfast smoothie.  The ingredients include, oats, a banana or two, peanut butter, and some milk.  AND its almost thick enough to just be ice cream if you freeze enough of the bananas.  YUM.  Amazing breakfast.  Only thing I wanted to add but didn't have was some almonds.  Next week....   By the way, it goes GREAT with Skyrim.  Just sayin'. 

Next, we have the all wonderful Strawberry smoothie!  This smoothie is yogurt, strawberries, ice, vanilla, milk, and sugar.  I personally didn't add any sugar.  Instead, I just added about a tablespoon of honey.  And a banana.  PERFECT.  (Oh, and only one teaspoon of vanilla, and used vanilla yogurt.)   Still Perfect.  I am most definitely buying ALL the frozen strawberries on Saturday.  So if any of you go looking for them, expect none.

(By the way, photo credit goes to the pinterest link for this one.)

Lastly we have the most amazing orange julius smoothie I've ever had.  Why?  Well, no artificial ingredients of course!  And so much awesome all in one glass!  If you've never had a smoothie of this type, I suggest going to your local store ASAP and making this.  I hadn't tried one until a friend made some at her house one day.  Then, I was HOOKED.  I wanted one so bad, but all we had were real oranges, and real ingredients.  How in the world was I suppoed to go get orange concentrate being as lazy as I am?  Nevermind.  Found this much better recipe.  Fair warning though, DO NOT use yogurt in this.  It decreases the awesome by about 50%.  

Do you have a favorite smoothie!?  What is it?

Conquering the Clutter.

After spending this entire month trying to be more organized, I have yet to have a day plan, my house is yet to have a place for everything, and so many things are just, well, thingy.  Every day I accomplish something, I find my self taking one step foreward, two steps back.  Every. Single. Day. 

Mout washmore is getting ever bigger, Mt. foldmore is twice that, and the folded laundry, well, its about triple.  My clothes really need to stop procreating already.  Especially those socks!  I mean, if you're going to procreate, sure have at it, but dear mr. socks, stay with your mate.  I'm not a fan of polygamy and I'd like it to be easier to keep you and your pair together.  Next time, you're being safety pinned if that's what it takes!

And the craft room.  Oh the craft room.  I really don't have too many crafts.  At least, I don't have too many compared to many people.  What I lack is places to put them!  I need shelves!  Or something.   Big rubbermaid totes and the ONE bookshelf aren't doing it.  And I'm too much of a bibliophile to put my books away.  I -NEED- those amazing things there too.  So, I've reached a conundrum, and quite frankly, I feel stuck.  In a giant hole of what the hell do I do with this?  Where do I put it!?  I mean, most of it is used or will be used, as I've already gotten rid of everything that I don't/won't use.  (Yay for decluttering!) 

And the rest of the house.  Lets just stop right here.  Ok, so the rest of the house really isn't bad at all. I just happen to be OCD it seems.  I feel like I -have- to be organized, but I just don't know how to get there.


Enter the Flylady!  If you've never heard of the Flylady, go check out her website.  This woman's principals are definitely for those overwhelmed procrastinators like me.  I don't like cleaning, and I certainly don't like spending all day doing it, especially when theres -a lot- of mess.

For now, while I continue to work on establishing my routines again, I'm going to try to spend at least 15 minutes in each horror room that needs tackling.  Why?  Well, you can do ANYTHING for fifteen minutes.  (And yes, this can be used against you.  Just as my husband.  >___> )

Anything. 

Time management seems to really be the key behind all my sanity and lackthereof.  So, I've been timing myself.  I'll set a timer for fifteen minutes, and see what I can accomplish.  As I finish a task, I'll write the time down, and move on, that way I know how long it takes me to do each task individually as well.

General tasks:

Folding one large load of laundry:  Average 7 minutes
Vaccuuming/Mopping my Dog's Room:  8 minutes
Picking up the toys in the kids' Rooms:  Average 5 minutes
Vacuuming kid's rooms:  5-7 minutes for both.
Cleaning up the entire bathroom:  2 minutes 
Putting away everything on ground floor and general cleaning:  10 minutes
Vacuuming the ground floor:  6 minutes
Mopping it:  8 - 12 minutes  (this one depends on what kind of music is playing.)
A day's worth of dishes:  13 minutes


Those are only the tasks I actually timed.  If I did all of that consecutively, it would take me about 80 minutes, or a little over an hour.  That's quite a bit to manage in such a short amount of time if you think about it.  Though, this is considering most of the tasks are generall done every day, so of course, the cleaner it is already (such as picking up the random items on the ground floor), the less time you'll spend doing it. 

So, in reality, most things don't exactly take more than fifteen minutes, and you'll accomplish more if you do one thing at a time than doing all the things at one time.  Time for me to teach myself how to better manage my time, and I think the fifteen minute rule will work.  Afterall, I'm coming close to the fifteen minute mark on this blog post, so I'd better close it up.


Oh, before I do go, I must say, spending hours on the internet is a huge waste of time.  I do it often.  Especially on Pinterest and Memebase.  Sigh.  Timing myself on the computer is now in effect.  More to come on how this went EVENTUALLY!

Now, I challenge you all!  What can you do in fifteen minutes?  Tell me about it! 

Day 27: Magic Binder!

I made these awesome binders for my kids for Chirstmas, and they loved them!  Correction:  They LOVE them.  No past tense, as they're still happily entertained for about an hour at a time with these. 

(On a side note, does anyone know how in the world to keep blogger from rotating my pictures?  I mean, come on, blogger.  This is getting annoying.)

Anyway, back to the topic!  In these coloring books, I've placed a many different things.  In my son's book, since he's still a wee little one, I put those toddler markers as well as the beginner triangle crayons, along with a few heart shaped crayons I had made.  Oh, and don't forget the stickers!  What kid doesn't like stickers?  Of course, I printed off coloring pages as well as added the uncolored ones from their many different random coloring books.

As for my daughter's, I put watercolors, colored pencils, normal awesome crayons, stickers, and some new paint brushes.  On top of the coloring pages, I added watercolor specific pages by printing fun pictures on to water color paper I found at the PX.  (And, yes, the PX actually sold something crafty I was looking for!  Amazing, isn't it?)

So, now, I bet you're wondering how in the world I made this, right?  Well, here's how:

You'll need:

-Binder  (I imgaine 3 inch binders will work best.  My 1.5 inch ones are incredibly bulky

-Fabric  (Two types or even three if you feel adventurous)

-Stationary.  (the crayons/markers/pencis/ect you want in there as well as the stickers.)

-Coloring pages of your choice.  I'd advise cardstock for paints/markers.  Or, you know, the watercolor paper for, well, watercolor.

-A hole punch for the type of binder you're using. 

-Anything else you want to add for personal touches.

How to:

First, you'll want to cut a big piece of fabric for the covering of the book.  I used a recieving blanket.  It was the PERFECT size.

 I laid the binder on the fabric and cut the slits of sorts where the metal thing is.

Next, I folded the top down and tucked it under the bracket.  (Is that what its called?)

Then, I pinned everything in place, mostly so I could figure out what needed to go where, especially on the front.

Next, I sketched out what I wanted to embroider on my son's book.  Then, undid everything and did my embroidery business.

Then I redid the first three steps and measured out the fabrics.  (see more on that below).  Before pinning them into place, I stitched the crayon pockets into place.

I pinned all the pieces into place and started sewing.   One thing not shown above is the paper pocket on the right side of the book.  (left picture, though.)

Then, I just sewed it all into place.   Make sure when sewing that you only go through one layer of the receiving blanket fabric piece that way you can slide the binder back into the pocket created, thus covering it.

Bam!  The difficult part is done!  Now all you have to do is fill it up with whatever.  Here's my completed two:

Now, about why a three inch binder would be best.  This is what my daughter's looks like when I close it:

All in all, that's all there is to it!  Simple project, right?  Oh, by the way, if Lisa Frank sold fabric, I would be in pre-teen heaven.  I loved those products and probably always will!  How about you?

Curious as to what I'm doing?  check out that original post here.

Day 26: Planner Pt. 2 - The Pages

I previously posted about the binder part of my planner, but not the pages, and as with all planners, the pages become the most important part of having one in the first place, right?  Well, at first, I made my own templates inspired by a few pinterest posts including this one, and a few of them stuck:

My montly planner pages:

My Random Thoughts on blog topics quick plan notes page:

My Projects Page (and lists!):

 

My Journal Pages:

My Meal Planning Page:

My List Template Pages:

My Finance Pages:

And My Notes Pages:

As for the actual day planner pages, I made this template, but as you can see, its too... crowded?  I really don't like it too much. 

So, instead, I'm going to use >THIS< weekly planner template from diyplanner.com and a notes page for planning out my actual day.  That way I still have my main things on the weekly part and then my actual day/to do list/goals on its own page, so no crowding!  Here's an example of today's plans:

Yep, that's it.  Ok, no it isn't!  How can I not show off my crafty dividers?  I mean, really.  The tabs are just those sticky page marker things you can find at virtually any store in existence.  (Except maybe whole foods.  I'm not sure if they sell any stationary.  Or the Commissary.  Not sure there either.  Anyway, you get the point.)

 Of course, in this section is all the planner-y things, like month, weekly, and daily pages.  This is my sanity section for sure.

 Here's where I keep up with all my current projects as well as a list of ones I want to start, and even a list of ten minute crafts with kids for those boring cold days.

 Here's where I'm attempting to keep a food journal (which I haven't even made the template for or found a good one I like yet...) as well as my grocery and meal planning pages.  In here is also a list of everyone's favorite foods as well as foods they highly dislike.

 Here's where I'm keeping up with the blog topics I haven't written about as well as the short notes on each topic section. 

 This section contains all my journaly things.  I quite like to journal and write, so I figured this section would be quite the use for my sanity.

 This section contains exactly what it says it does.  My routines (or moreso what I want my routines to be), the kids' routines, and my general and specific goals can be found here.  Not much more than that in it.

 In here you can find my cleaning lists, my to read list, and pretty much everything in between, as well as my wish list.  I love lists, can't you tell?

Here, you'll find my budget and my spending tracker pages.  I'm hoping we can become a little better at money management through watching what goes where and how to more effectively budget.  This section -should- help, and so far, it actually is useful.

In this section, you'll find the random things, like a quick reference address book.  Actually, that's about all that's in there for now, but I imagine more will soon arise that I will put in there.  Like when to- garden planning section, because you know, I'm going to try and probably fail at growing things this year.

Lastly, this section is another self explanatory.  I mean, what else could "notes" mean other than, well, notes? 

I must add, this is what happens when your daughter gets her lisa frank stickers taken away because she stuck them EVERYWHERE.  I'm quite pleased, to be honest, as my planner wouldn't be NEARLY as cool if she behaved.  >___>

As for those dividers, they are made from colored cardstock, some really pretty scrapbook paper, lisa frank stickers, ribbon, and hearts cut from my cricut machine.  I had too much fun, obviously, but atleast this is quite useful!

AND, because no planner is complete without the perfect pen, I must show up close this awesome pen I found at Tedi's.  Its a fountain cartridge pen, and I have fallen madly in love with it!  Of course, I could spend too much money on a super expensive sleek black one, but why when I could spend a whole five euro on this pretty pink simple one?  That way, if I lose it, I can potentially get another.  (A cashier at the commissary tried to take it one day, as did the bagger.  She didn't get much of a tip that day.)  Also, I can make it write ANY color I want, so long as I can find the ink cartridges for it.  Anyway, here's my pen:

And my scratch n sniff root beer sticker.  =D  Also, see, I got these cartridges for 1 euro..  Fifty of them with about...5 or 6 different colors.

I think that's everything!  Hope this has inspired you to get creative.  Tell me about it!  Would you use this?  Why or why not?  What works best for you when planning?