A New Look with Old Sheets
I have lots of windows in my house, which is nice, but sometimes I want to walk around in clothes that the neighbors shouldn’t see me in. I have an easy, lazy solution. This is especially lazy if you are lucky enough to have curtain rods already in place.
You can see the bare curtain rod in our library-but-supposed-to-be-a-dining-room.
These magic little clips are the key. You just hang them on the rod, then you can clip any fabric onto it. You don’t have to add loops to the top, or sew a giant tube at the top or nothing. Just clip the sheets on, and poof! New curtains!
Right now I can hear my mother going “BAH!!! I only gave you those to use as drop cloths! Don’t you know how old those are?! They’re probably 90% dust mites by now! And they’re POLYESTER!!!!”
It’s all true. These were sheets from the family farm that my parents just moved into. The whole family has been storing excess furniture etc, up there since the ’60′s. That place also supplied the makings of Flapjack’s dog bed. These particular sheets are in great shape, probably because they’re polyester. I have several reasons for using these:
1) They match each other. I had nothing else to put up that was not just going to be one big panel across the whole thing.
2) I love my neighbors. They’re quiet and polite, and bring me cookies at the holidays, but their son has a trampoline, which was obviously a good investment because he uses it all the time. I don’t like wondering if he’s seen me walking around in my panties and a sweater while I do laundry.
3) Flapjack has learned he can see squirrels through this window if he climbs on the couch, and I want something over there I don’t have to worry about. He’s been scampering back and forth like he’s on speed.
So those are the curtains. They’re staying there for awhile, or at least until my mom comes over and rips them down in a fit of Martha-Stewartism. Just kidding. She’ll probably show up with hand made curtains made from vintage fabrics cut specifically for this window that will put all my crafting to shame. That’s my plan, anyway.
How to make a dog bed
Look at my precious little baby dog! Would I ever let him sleep in a cold, bare crate, especially with the way the weather has been? Banish the thought! I am not dumb enough to spend $80 on a pillow for my dog to lay on, so I decided to make my own, crafty chick that I am.
He’s already laying on some of my homemade pillows, so I’m sure he’ll love any bed I make him.
These are old mattress covers that have been in my garage. We used them for padding things while we moved, and for covering plants when it frezzes (before all my plants died because I’m terrible with them). So these were laying around, useless. They are all lightly padded, so I could fold them into the shape I needed, but it would still be cushiony for my sweet precious baby, Flapjack.
You can see the dismal blankie he’s been stuck with up until now. I measured the width and depth of the crate so I could make the bed fit. I left a few extra inches at the front for his food bowl.
I folded the matress pads as evenly as possible into the right size. I tried to make sure the bed was an even thickness all the way around. I used 2 full size mattress pads, because that’s what I have on hand. My sis, Beans, used an old sleeping bag once, and her dog loved it. My mother’s dogs stole her yoga matt, so she just let them have it.
I used a big huge needle, like the kind for crocheting, and I used crocheting yarn, and I ended up needing pliers to pull the needle through. I would stab the needle through as far as possible, and use the pliers to pull it all the way out. I used the really simple tie method to attach all this stuff to itself. You can do this in lazy quilting also. You just sew down, then up, very close together, then tie a knot. Leave the ends dangling, an inch or so, then move onto the next spot. I made sure all the dangling ends are on the bottom, so Flapjack doesn’t try to eat them or anything. Somehow this whole process made me forget to take pictures.
Once the bed was done, it fit snuggly into the crate, and I have to actually wedge his food bowl between the crate and the bed. This is actually a good thing, because it prevents him from flinging his food all over the place, which is what he has been doing. So far it’s working great. I wrapped him blankie around it, so I won’t have to wash the whole bed, just the blankie.
You can use whatever stuff you have laying around the house for this. For small dogs you can even just stuff a pillow case, sew it shut, and throw it on the floor. You can also get great stuff for this at thrift stores. If you plan on having the bed on a floor, rather than in a crate, you can use an old rug for the bottom to keep it from sliding around, and to make it more durable. You could sew a ton of old towels together. The possibilities for recycling are endless!
Don’t Drink and Drive
I distinctly remember as a child, telling my mother she shouldn’t drink and drive.
This is my fuzzy recollection of the event: we were in her old Toyota Camry that was a horrid brown color. The way I’ve remembered it, I was sitting in the passenger seat, but I would have been too young at the time, so I was probably in the back. Mommy Dearest (who hates that nickname, but can’t think of a better one) took a drink while driving RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! Of course I had to admonish her strongly. My cartoons were apparently liberaly sprinkled with “Don’t Drink and Drive” ads, and I had taken it to heart.
Mom had to explain they were refering to alcohol in those ads, not coffee, which she was drinking.
Thinking back now, I’m surprised she didn’t just bust out laughing at me. That would have been my automatic reaction. I did have my own logic about why drinking anything would be bad. I was young enough, maybe 5 or so, that I didn’t know that alcohol impaired you in any way. My Mom was always drinking alcohol constantly, and seemed pretty functional. I’m kidding, of course. (Dad used to say “There’s Mom, drunk as usual”, when reading children’s stories to us. He would just point to pictures and say ridiculous things, like Ankylosaurus has a whip-like tail. I think he got bored of reading the same dinosaur book repeatedly, and had to find ways to amuse himself.)
My thought process was this: you’re driving your car, watching the road. You look down to get your coffee cup. Assuming terrible screaming death doesn’t attack you in the 2 seconds that process takes, you will now take a drink of your beverage. This will obviously impede your line of sight, thus leading to imminent horrible burning death carnage. Makes sense, right? I have always been logical to a fault. We’ll see if Mom comments about this. Hopefully she remembers it better than I do.
