Learning to crochet...

So ive had a few friends that know how to crochet quite proficiently. I have always wanted to learn. I asked to be taught but it seems that time always escaped us and now i live pretty far from most of them So thats when i though...Ill teach myself! Ok let me be honest here. I have been supposed to "teach myself" to play the acoustic guitar that has been sitting in my room for years. I have yet to try more than twice. Time always escapes me. Im also Pretty good at doing alot of things, but I am yet to find something that I am really good at. Well my friends, i think i may have found my nitch! I am just learning and im pretty good at it if i do say so myself :) So i started off by buying a kit at wal-mart called "I taught myself to crochet" It helped with the basics. I learned how to hold the string, how to do a chain, single and double crochet. I made my first few blankets....they looked awful. I guess i didnt quite understand. I never really have the money to go out and just buy stuff to mess around and see if i can do something. It doesnt work like that when you are living on one income. two years ago on my wonderful sister in law gave me an amazon gift card. YAY!!! I bought the Crochet "For Dummies" book. and have been slowly going through it over that time and made some junk and now am starting to really get the hang of it. I skipped the first few chapters since i knew some of the basics already. But it worked out great, even now if i come to something i dont understand or remember i can refer back to previous chapters. Ive never used a "For Dummies" book, but they way it is set up is so easy and user friendly that i will definitely be using them again if the need or desire arises. So now without further ado, I have made a few things that are actually worthy of use!I have also taught myself amigurumi!I made a frog... For a first try i think its pretty good! Also below is a scarf i made using every stitch i know.

Don't Throw it Away!!!!!

Heres two great ways to recycle, One is an old standby for me, the other i just started doing the other day when i realized the area under my sink is a disaster.

Would you throw this away? You used the butter, now what?


Dont trash it, i flatten them out, put them in a freezer zip-lock and pop them in the freezer. Next time im baking and i need to grease up a cookie sheet or casserole dish, i pull one out and rub it on! Works great. Only then do the butter wrappers make their way to the garbage can in my house.

Next up, New use for Paper towel rolls. I always threw these out unless we were making binoculars or some other project for the kids. The other day I was grabbing a plastic bag from under the sink for doggie duty and i realized it was probably the messiest place in my house under there! The reason was all the plastic bags that i cant bring myself to throw away....they had taken over!!!! SO i decided something had to be done. shoving them inside each other just isnt working for me anymore. I feel like I read this somewhere or saw someone else do it, and i wish i could give credit where credit is due but i have no idea where i found this or whether it was just luck that i happened to look around the kitch and see the empty paper towel roll. I shoved all the plasic bags i could inside and have been collecting them and doing the same everytime the roll is empty. Soon i will have a nice neat stack of rolls of plasic bags. So easy to just reach in and pull one out!

Crayon Rocks

I did this project the first time with The big minion when she was about 3. Its one that you really have to judge your childs direction following skills before doing since it involes an oven and a hot cookie sheet. Basically you melt the crayons onto a hot rock. Stands up to the elements pretty nicely so we put them in the garden. My Iz USED to be a great listener HA! but in all seriousness, she is now almost 6 and still remembers doing this when she was little. We had a blast with this the other day :)

First you need to find some large rocks, which can be an adventure all on its own. We have a "nature bucket"  that we keep stocked outside with all sorts of treasure that  we find on our nature walks and such. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with foil. Place the rocks on the cookie sheet and pop them in the oven. for younger kids just a few minutes to heat it up should suffice, but we put it in for about 30 min (i may have forgotten about them for a bit..oops, oh well!). While they are heating up pick out some colors of crayone to use. I like to use old crayons we have stored in an empty coffee container. Peel back the paper off the crayons  Once the rocks come out of the oven they will be very hot. make sure to take caution that the kids avoid touching the rock or cookie sheet. If you want you can put dish old dish towels over the cookie sheet but keep in mind they may get ruined. Then you simply melt the crayons onto the hot rock by touching them to it. Its super easy and alot of fun if you keep safety in mind. Our rock was so hot that the crayon actually bubbled in some spots. It turned out beautifully.  Let cool completely before picking up.