DIY: BODY BUTTER

Chocolate and Peppermint Body Butter

Since I have been trying to stop exposing my body to so many toxic chemicals I decided lotions were next to go. I don't want to be putting chemicals all over my skin. If you look at the list of ingredients it's mind boggling to think it takes all that just to make our skin soft and smelling good? So I started looking for something else that would get rid of my dry skin without adding unnecessary chemicals and stuff. 

I found out that if you whip up coconut oil straight out of the jar, it makes wonderful lotion. It is light and creamy,and soaks into the skin fast. It does go greasy ,but doesn't that way for long. It only takes a few ingredients to make and is fairly cheap once you have all the oils.

Body Butter

1 jar of coconut oil

2 vitamin e capsules 

10 drops of peppermint essential oil

7 drops of cocoa essential oil

Mixer (I used my Kitchen aid mixer with the paddle attachment)

To make this just scoop the coconut oil out of the container (do not melt it or warm it up first) and into the mixer. Mix it for about 5 min or until is is light and fluffy! Then squeeze the contents out of the vitamin e capsules, put in essential oils mix it up for another minute until everything is well incorporated. Store in a sealed glass container.

DIY: Planters

These fun little planters where made by my boyfriend. He is just as passionate about re-purposing old things into new, as I am. He made the bottoms out of wood and attached them with some glue and screws. The bottom one comes up threw the center of the top one and makes it a double planter.

I planted some four o"clocks in each of the heads! I will post more pictures when the plants take off and start climbing up the hangers.

DIY: Meal in a Jar

Beans in a Jar

Beans...you either love them or you don't! In this house most of us like beans,my granddaughter calls them jelly beans! The store that we shop at has lots of bags of beans to choose from but, they are all just one type of bean. I love the flavor of 7 bean (or more) soup and all the different bean textures.I want a flavorful pot of beans cooking! The first two jars pictured I used a total of 3 cups of beans. I just layered them in there because it looks nice. The last jar I used 2 cups of beans and added in some dried noodles. Now I won't have to climb up into the top of the cupboard and haul down all the bags of beans I can just grab a jar of pre-mixed beans for chili,soup or just a pot of beans.

DIY: Wind Chime

This project was a lot of fun and only took a few hours to put together. I love wind chimes and the sounds they make. They can be kind of expensive (at least more than I want to pay), so I made my own.

This one is made from an old pulley wheel and some metal tools. I wanted to make it  more colorful, so I added some wire wrapped stones for the hangers and then attached the tools with fishing line.

DIY :Beaded Lamp Shade

This fun DIY Lamp Shade was so much fun and went together fast and I like that!! The lamp has an aged based that I like, but the shade needed to be given new life! I have always wanted to do it in beads but lets face it, that could be time consuming to string beads for the shade. Lucky for me I had two beaded hanging curtains tucked away in a corner of the closet. I have thought about getting rid of them a few times, but couldn't do it! 

This was the lampshade before hand. It was just a paper one that I painted and put lace over. Then decided that I didn't like it turned out! So it was time for a make-over! I stripped the paper from the frame to discover that it was two floating circles held together by the paper, so I just used the top ring of the old lamp shade. I used a glue gun to make this project go by super quick but discovered that while the glue does stick to the metal it didn't want to stick on until it was dry and that was going to take to long.So, I glued white bias tape around it first and then glued the beads to that. It actually looks more finished that way!

The left over beads will go into the craft box for later projects and I ended up cutting two beaded curtains  to have enough to give full coverage, so I now have two cute beaded valances left instead of the full beaded curtains!

Happy Crafting!!!

DIY: Jean Skirt

This was a super fun project and only took about an hour.I was inspired by a longer one I saw on Pinterest. Here is how I did mine.

I took an old pair of shorty shorts and cut the crotch off.Then I cut a rectangle out of some scrap fabric. To figure out the length I put the shorts on and measured it that way. For the width I measured my waste line and then just added on a few extra inches for gathering. Once I had the length where I wanted it, I put the bottom hem in. Next I ran three lines of stitches (loosely by hand) to gather the top part of the fabric where it will connect with the skirt. I loosely gathered the fabric before I started pinning it to the shorts. Once I was happy with how it looked I sewed on with the sewing machine.
Happy Crafting!

Up-cycling: Shirts Into Skirts

I have really gotten on board with recycling and reusing items in creative ways. My daughter and I are always looking for ways to re-use clothing before passing it on. Giving new life to old clothes can be really fun and a money saver. I mean who can really afford to buy a new wardrobe every season!
Instead I took a look at some tops I had from the last two summers and some hand-me-downs and made a few really cute butt covers to go over leggings.

Here is a look at the first set of butt covers I made. Both of these are just tank tops that I cut the top portion off of. I added a small casing and elastic, so they stay in place.

The white butt cover is actually and old shirt that had stains on the top portion. The fabric was nice and stretchy and gives a perfect snug fit. The pink lace is actually a cheap camisole that I had bought at a Dollar Store. I just made casings for the waste band on these, they fit perfect without elastic.

The top burgundy butt cover I made out of a piece of fabric my boyfriend found at a second hand store and the bottom shades of green on is actually some of my youngest sons shirts (size 5 toddler) that I cut into strips to make this cute little maxi skirt. I just used the hem of the bottom part of one of the shirts so I didn't need to hem it and I left the waste alone.

Hope these inspire you to up-cycle some of your own clothes!

Happy crafting!!!