Category: uncategorized Page 11 of 76

Upcycling Dress Shirts

On September 30, 2013

I’ve read lately about where donated clothes end up and it didn’t leave me with warm and fuzzies. I still save up clothes for donations to Goodwill, but I’m also a lot more open to other ways to upcycle them. Most recently, I’ve been attacking cotton button down dress shirts. From what I can see, I have three, easy things I can create from them:

The back of a men’s dress shirt makes a pretty decent sized cloth napkin. For folks like me who use a cloth napkin with every packed lunch and dinner at home, this is a way that favorite clothing can keep making appearances.
The sleeves of shorts make great scrap fabric. I used a bunch recently to create a baby blanket for Mart Girl. The end result is a little amateur but really, I am SO PROUD of the results that I don’t care. Below are some pictures of my pattern, states and both sides of the finished piece.

The cuffs of shirts can be repurposed into little pouches that make great change purses or lipstick / lip gloss cases. I created a bunch of those and have them posted on Etsy now.

I salvaged as many buttons as possible for use in future projects and in the end, my only waste was the collar and a few scraps of fabric that were just too small to use for anything.

Love

By Kate

On August 9, 2013

In uncategorized

We were at the beach and I woke up first, because that’s what I do when I have the opportunity to sleep in as late as I want … wake up early. I tiptoed out of the room and went into the bathroom and I saw it. It was horrible. I screamed and went to grab Wonder Boy.

He was lying peacefully in bed but I poked at him anyway.

“You have to get up.”

“Why? I’m asleep.”

“There’s a cockroach in the bathroom!”

“Just don’t go back in there. I’ll get it later.”

“You have to go kill it! It’s the size of a small dog!”

So he rolled out of bed and walked off to kill a bug. When he didn’t come in saying he had killed the bug, I tiptoed back towards the bathroom. Wonder Boy was on his hands and knees looking under the sink.

“I lost it. I’ll find it later.”

And he went and crawled back into bed.

I admit to being a baby about most bugs, but this big, giant, glossy black cockroach was just too much. I carefully walked around the kitchen making sure I didn’t come across any more bugs and got myself some coffee. Then I went back to a stool and carefully sat, with no parts of my body touching the ground or anything aside from the one stool, drinking coffee and reading a book.

An hour-and-a-half later Wonder Boy woke up and came into the living room.

“Have you been on that stool the whole time?”

“That bug was huge. I can’t go back there.”

Wonder Boy went back to the bathroom and returned a few minutes later with a cockroach nestled in some paper towels. He walked outside and set it loose.

Just to be safe, I stayed on my stool a while longer. Finally I announced that I was going to brave it and go back to the bathroom so I could do my morning routine – medicine, brush my teeth, wash my face – and Wonder Boy told me I was safe.

“How do you know? Maybe there was more than one.”

“I already checked. I’ve checked twice since I caught the one. No more cockroaches.”

And THAT. That checking twice after he knew it was okay. That is love.

Books

By Kate

On July 24, 2013

In uncategorized

Lately book have become a primary focus here. That’s not intentional. I’ve just been very immersed in the book surrounding me. It’s part of who I am.

Wonder Boy recently observed our differences as we’re preparing for an upcoming vacation. He has some magazines set aside and two books, which he may finish while we’re gone. I also have saved up some magazines but my stack of books is literally toppling over. Before we head to the beach, I will need to cull the pile for the best picks but my stack will still be somewhere around 8 or 9 books. And I will likely finish what I bring along with me. For me, that’s what vacation is about. Surviving on sunshine and books. And maybe naps and mid-day cocktails.

Officemates!

By Kate

On May 9, 2013

In uncategorized

My new officemates are cute as can be (is that unprofessional to admit?) but pretty loud and so, so messy. We may only be sharing an office until Friday (we’ll see how the rest of the building’s tenants take to them) so I think I can manage.Did I mention they’re pretty cute?

Professional Desk-Jockey and Amateur Crafter

By Kate

On May 6, 2013

In uncategorized

I’ve written several times about my forays into the arts and crafting so when I got an opportunity to review an early copy of Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity, by Emily Matchar, I was pretty psyched. I’ve never considered myself domestic, but I acknowledge that a lot of my creative pursuits are things my stay-at-home-mom grandmother was doing about 65 years ago.An Etsy enthusiast (and shop owner) and avid Pinterest viewer, or, as I say in my review, a professional desk-jockey and amateur crafter, I think the topic Matchar is exploring is incredibly timely. Matchar defines new domesticity as “the re-embrace of home and hearth by those who have the means to reject these things.” Some examples of how I see this playing out:

Many of my friends make their kids baby food on their own. This has been happening so much, that I don’t even think of it as a thing anymore. One woman started buying her own grain to mill on her own for making pancakes. That was the thing that made me say, “Whoa.”
A while back my sister-in-law started making her own laundry detergent. My first reaction was a snarky comparison to the Duggars, which Wonder Boy made me promise not to vocalize. Little did I know she was onto a thing. All over Pinterest there are recipes for making your own cleaning products. It’s cheaper and uses less (if any) chemicals. If online posts are to believed, my inner Duggar comparison was too quickly cast.
Years and years ago a co-worker used to pack her cloth napkins with her lunch each day to reduce paper waste. The woman’s sister made the napkins. I thought it was pretty uber hippie. Until I started doing the same thing.

I have more examples, but the point I’m trying to make is that all around me people are trying to live more simply, even though that sometimes means more work. Matchar interviewed hundreds of people who ranged from people living off the grid to those who craft in their spare time or others who provide for their family by what they create and sell on Etsy and at craft shows.

Is Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity a perfect book? No – at times it dragged a little for me and I found myself getting really ticked off at some of the people Matchar spoke with… enough so that I would have to put the book down for a while and work to pick it back up. But the book does a great job at capturing the trend of new domesticity and, to a large extent, explaining it.

You can read my review of Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity by Emily Matchar on Nudge.